The Universal Laws of Marco

by Carmen Rodrigues

  “I escaped,” she said. “Your mom let me in.”

  “Who’d you escape from?” I sat up, subtly rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

  “My dad. I’m on a”—she did the air quotes gesture “run. He’s up in arms with my mom, so he couldn’t come.”

  “They’re still fighting?”

  She nodded, rolling her eyes. “It’s this whole thing with grandma.”

  “I thought she was getting better.”

  Sally sighed. “She is, but you know my dad. He always has to make everything dramatic.”

  “Like how?”

  She shrugged, her eyes drifting to the right. Then she smiled that wry smile and said, “Can we not talk about it? I’m happy that he’s in my mom’s business and not mine.”

  I smiled, because that sounded good. “Okay.”

  “Anyway, I predict my fastest time.”

  “For what?”

  “For this run.”

  “How long?”

  “Well, I’m claiming five miles.” She glanced at her wristwatch, bright yellow and plastic. “I’ll give it thirty minutes, I think.”

  “A six-minute mile.” I whistled.

  “Like I said, I am the wind.”

  “Think he’ll buy it?”

  “He’s not really paying attention, so yeah.”

  She was in my room by then, leaning back against the dresser, one foot perched on my bedframe. She studied me for a second, her expression turning somber. “You weren’t in math. Where’d you go?”

  I turned my eyes back to that poster and its unanswered questions. “I kind of left,” I admitted.

  “Left? Like skipped?”

  I nodded. “I guess. It didn’t feel like that though. It felt like . . . like leaving.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “Nowhere really, kind of around.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know.” I debated telling her about the pain in my chest, but I hadn’t brought those feelings to any kind of conclusion. So I settled on saying, “I just couldn’t be there anymore.”

  Her foot fell to the floor. A few seconds later she sat beside me, her hand next to mine. That pinkie of hers slowly made its way over until our fingers were linked.

  For a second I marveled at this touch. How casual it was. How easy. How her pinkie might always be available to me for such clandestine meetings.

  “I get that. I feel that way sometimes too. So, did you tell your dad?”

  “About leaving?”

  “No, about Jade.” I shook my head. “Why not?” she asked, clearly disappointed.

  “I was going to. . . . But come here.”

  I pulled her to my window. We stared at Jade’s house across the lawn. The windows were open and, for once, music—not fighting—floated out onto the lawn. I had heard the music earlier as I sat on my bed. I had also heard their laughter. I turned off my light and pointed to the dining room window. Jade and her mother sat across from each other, eating and talking quietly. “They look okay, right?”

  “For now,” she said, her voice a little harder. “But what about when her dad comes home tonight drunk?”

  “But I think we’re wrong. See? She’s fine.” I pointed back to the house, to Jade, who looked like any other girl having dinner with her mom.

  “You don’t get it.” Her voice went from hard to firm. “It can be both.”

  “Both what?”

  “Both okay and not okay. It can be both all the time. And from the outside you don’t know what that means, but on the inside”—she looked back at Jade, who was up now, clearing the dishes—“from the inside it’s terrible.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked. “How can you be sure?”

  “I just am,” she said quietly, and I think I knew, even then, that she was speaking from her own experience. She clicked on the light. “You have to tell your dad.”

  “But—”

  “No.” She held my stare. “You have to tell. Promise me.”

  “Yeah,” I said, agitated that she was pushing me into something I wasn’t sure about, especially when I could see with my own eyes that Jade was fine and Sally was overreacting. That telling anyone about her suspicions—not facts—would only make a bad situation worse.

  She checked her watch. “I have to get home for dinner. When Dad can’t run, he cooks. We’re having meat loaf.” She was trying to get us back on steady ground.

  I knew that, so I teased, “Who still makes meat loaf?”

  Later, when Pop came to say good night, I looked out the window and heard only silence from Jade’s house.

  “You better?” Pop asked as he leaned in to give me a hug good night.

  “Yeah.”

  “You sure?” His brow wrinkled. I could tell he didn’t believe me. “What was today all about, anyway? It’s not like you to skip. Or . . .” He didn’t say cry, but I knew that’s what he meant.

  “I know,” I said. “But . . .” I looked for a way to tell him about Sally, about Jade, but all I could get out was a question. “What do you do when you’re not sure about something?”

  “Ah . . . I see.” Pop mulled that over, his thumb rubbing the space above his lip. “So all this is about a girl?” he asked, a twinkle in his eyes.

  “Sort of.” I could tell he thought I was talking about Sally, not Jade. But I didn’t see how his confusion would alter his response.

  He patted me on the shoulder. “I say give it time. Time has a way of telling. You’ll know what to do in time.”

  “In time,” I repeated.

  “Yep,” he said, confident. “Time.”

  That night in the dark, I went back and forth between Sally’s urgency and Pop’s advice. And I reasoned that time was the better plan. Then I could see how things played out. Jade, I told myself, had been fine up until now. She’d be fine for a little while longer. And maybe, with time, I could find the right moment to talk to her about everything. To get her to tell me the truth. I went to sleep feeling like that was an okay plan. A solid plan, really.

  But looking back, I see that I chose the easiest plan. The path of least resistance. A way to move forward by not moving at all. Because when you give something time, you also give it space to grow. That’s fine if what’s growing is good—a girl liking a boy, a boy liking a girl. But what was happening in Jade’s house was dangerous. Sally saw that, but I chose to take my father’s misplaced advice and look the other way.

  I looked away when what I should have done was look harder.

  WORMHOLES IV

  THERE IS A THEORY, THOUGH, that if you travel back in time—wormhole or not—you might actually end your life.

  Scientists call this the Grandfather Paradox—La Paradoja de Abuelito.

  The idea is that if you travel into the past and run into your abuelito, you could change the course of his life. And if you changed the course of his life, you could change everything that follows. In chaos theory, the idea of one small change leading to bigger—maybe even destructive—changes is called the “butterfly effect.” The term goes all the way back to a meteorologist and mathematician named Edward Lorenz, who discovered this phenomenon while trying to predict the weather.

  The weather.

  Look it up.

  So let’s say your return to the past prevents your abuelito from meeting your abuelita, and as a result, your pop’s not born and then you’re not born. And if you’re never born, then how can you go back in time to create the ripple effect that stops your own birth?

  Scientists say the Grandfather Paradox proves that time travel to the past can’t happen. Because how can you go back in time if you never existed in the first place?

  But other scientists disagreed. They came up with a new hypothesis that asked: “What if it’s more like parallel tracks running through a parallel universe?”

  In one version of the parallel universe theory, you go back in time, you create that butterfly effect where your abuelitos never meet, and you’re never
born in the future. But in the past—that place where you created that ripple—you continue to exist. You jump the track from your current world into another kind of world, where every outcome of your abuelitos’ meeting disappears except for you.

  Strange, right?

  Here’s where it gets crazier: Scientist believe that the second world—the one where you still exist but your parents don’t—is just one of “many worlds.” That, in fact, there are unlimited versions of your life playing out simultaneously—one where you do go back in time, one where you don’t. One where you go back in time, but you don’t meet your grandparents, one where you do. The possibilities of what could happen would blow your mind.

  And I guess the question is, if you could find yourself in another version of your life, what would you change?

  For me, the answer is, What wouldn’t I change?

  Maybe my father never gets injured.

  Maybe Diego’s dad takes that football scholarship he was offered, but doesn’t screw around while at school, thinking football is going to be his life. He gets a degree or a trade, takes the straight lane, and doesn’t strip cars and go to jail.

  Maybe I go back even further to a track at the University of Miami, and I stop Sally’s father from being injured, so that he ends up at the Olympic trials like he planned.

  Maybe I go back even further than that, and I stop Jade’s dad from taking his first drink.

  Maybe I go back further than that and stop Sookie’s mom from dying so that her bio dad didn’t have to give her up.

  Or maybe I go back to the moment before ovum met sperm, when my parents were two kids my age with dreams that could still happen. I stop the moment of my own conception, giving back to them all that was lost the minute I was born.

  Pop would go on to become a teacher and Mom, a fashion designer. And in this parallel world, I’d still exist, just not to them. I’d be on my own, and they’d be free from being teen parents. They’d be free to be whoever they were meant to be.

  Instead of working so hard to make me the person I’m supposed to be.

  Would I give my whole life up to make things right for my mom? For Pop? They’ve done that for me. But could I, for them? Sometimes, late at night, watching that fan swirl around my room, I’d like to imagine that I could.

  Because that would guarantee that all the wrongs I’ve done in my short eighteen years of life would suddenly be made right.

  Senior Year

  19. SOMEHOW, A PARTY

  THE NEXT NIGHT I FIND Sally parked along the curb of my house at midnight.

  “See? I drove,” she says, hopping out of her car, keys jingling. Staring at her, I am reminded of that talk with Mrs. A about Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann, a German math guy (with a really long name) who theorized in 1854 that space is curved. If so, that would make our universe a closed system—much like a circle. And what makes that cool is that the farther a traveler journeys from the starting point, the shorter the return. The traveler is living that expression of “coming full circle.” And Sally was too, looping her way around our circular planet until she had—somehow—returned to me.

  I watch as she gathers her hair into her hands. Long strands spill over her fingers like vines, which she threads into a teetering crown. When she steps farther into the streetlight, I notice she’s wearing makeup—her eyes are wrapped in silky black, her lips luminescent in red. Her dress is loose yet fitted—a snug curvature here, a flow of fabric there. Hers is a body in three dimensions.

  She stares at me staring at her. I clear my throat, point to her clothes, and say, “Not running tonight?” Then I move my gaze to the cracks in the sidewalk, the hopeful green that spears the concrete.

  Her bracelets jangle as she speaks. “No. I’m going somewhere in a little bit.”

  “Where?”

  “A party, maybe. I’m supposed to meet Boone there.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  “But you’re here,” I say, eyes finally back on her.

  “I really want to talk to you.”

  I look at my dark house, exhausted. Today was a hard day—Mom lecturing Domingo and Lil’ Jay about their behavior at school, Pop sitting in his chair just beyond the kitchen, suddenly laughing. A chuckle that grew and grew until he sounded like a hyena, the vocals twisting at its peak until Pop’s voice became the mournful cry of that same hyena dying. The twins twisted in their seats at the kitchen table.

  LIL’ JAY

  What’s wrong with Pop?

  MOM

  Sammy? You okay?

  DOMINGO and LIL’ JAY

  Mom? Mom? Mom? Mom?

  MOM

  Sammy? Hey, Sammy, it’s okay. Sammy?

  (kneeling beside him)

  It’s okay.

  DOMINGO

  We’re sorry.

  LIL’ JAY

  We won’t do it again.

  DOMINGO and LIL’ JAY

  Sorry, sorry, sorry.

  And afterward, the silence.

  An “episode.” Maybe these will become common again.

  Pop in their bedroom, door shut, and Mom at the kitchen table, pretending to be fine while going through the mail, stacking up the bills into a little pile on her right-hand side. Later, she sat with her laptop, reading.

  “What is that about?”

  “It’s a site the Dr. Khan mentioned for more info on epilepsy.”

  “What’s it say?” I peered over her shoulder.

  Silence.

  “Well?”

  “Nothing good, except your father seems to be out of the ordinary; most people with TBI who get post-traumatic epilepsy get it in the two years after the initial injury. But in the comments section, I read that one guy started having seizures twenty years after a car accident.”

  “Twenty years?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Man.”

  “Some people have up to six hundred seizures a month. Some people get really depressed—”

  “I don’t blame them. That sucks.”

  “Yeah, it does suck. Others are, miraculously, able to try to function normally. Some benefit from medication; some don’t. It’s a crapshoot. Who knows?” Mom shut the laptop with a definitive snap. She shook her head. “Who knows?”

  “Are you worried?”

  Her eyes rolled up to me. They said, Yes, very. But her mouth said, “A little.”

  She tapped the bills on her right, as if they were an extension of the worry or maybe a primary source. I knew the money was dwindling. I had access to the accounts. We had a couple hundred in savings, if that. There was my college savings, but she would never ask for that. Just like I would never point to the bills and ask if we were going to be okay. I knew if I did she’d say, “We’ll be fine. Don’t worry.” The truth could only be found in her eyes. So I stared at them every chance I got as she fussed about the house.

  Her eyes said, I am drowning. And you, you are watching me drown.

  Even the boys sensed her impending submersion. Lil’ Jay kept coming up behind her and squeezing her in bear hugs, and when she sat down to watch the news after dinner, they sat beside her. Domingo pushed his left shoulder against hers, Lil’ Jay, his right. I remembered when they were three and used to fight over who sat in her lap. But today they were like tugboats, ferrying her to shore.

  And now Sally wants to “talk,” but I just want to escape, to do anything but talk.

  “How about that party?” I ask.

  She is puzzled. “To talk?”

  “Nope.”

  To remember why any of this is worth it.

  I don’t say this, but somehow she understands. Or I think she does. Her eyes seem to say, To forget.

  “Okay, the party.”

  “I’ll drive.”

  • • •

  She was coming back in pieces. I could trace the arc of her return, the slow unfolding of herself that began with the admission that she didn’t run competitively anymore. That continued with her a
ttempt to joke around at her birthday party. And now here she is, talking on and on as we drive eastbound through late-night traffic.

  SALLY

  But my mom’s up, watching sad TV at least two nights a week. And then she’s crying, and when she cries like that and has a few glasses of wine, she wants to drag out the family photo albums—actual albums—and reminisce about how things used to be, how we were almost—so very close—to being a happy family. It sucks . . . . . . And Dad left Mom for an artist. Can you believe that? She creates wire sculptures, which are supposed to be protests that come out of her, quote, social consciousness. They look like large balls of yarn made out of wire to me. One looks like a fire hydrant, and I still don’t know why. Are the balls the world? Is the fire hydrant something we should piss on? I seriously have no idea, and Boone is like, “Give it a rest.” But I think it’s a mystery that should be solved.

  . . . And then Boone dropped out of school. Well, really, he didn’t go back. Just his freshman year, and then he never went back.

  . . . Is this okay? Me telling you all of this? I feel like I’m rambling. Suddenly. I don’t know.

  ME

  It’s okay.

  SALLY

  You sure?

  ME

  Yeah, it’s fine.

  Sally isn’t coming back in pieces; we are, who we used to be together.

  • • •

  “So, this is a college party?”

  The room is chaotic—beer bongs, neon bracelets, and a DJ who miraculously fits into the corner. Yet, somehow, through a window to my left, I see on the ground floor a small garden lit with twinkle lights.

  An escape.

  But we are up here, having the college experience. Sally scrutinizes my face, telepathically agreeing with me that this isn’t the best. “Impressed yet?” she shouts.

  “No,” I shout back, just as Boone finds us.

  “Sally Pearl!” He wraps her in a bear hug, lifting her off the floor. But he’s wobbly, and they fall backward from his weight. I catch them before they hit the ground, and Boone looks at me, squinting. He shouts, “Marco, you are a big mother fu—”