19 December 2015
If I weighed 146 pounds and Diego weighed 162 pounds, and the distance separating us was fractionally nothing, then the gravitational force between our noncelestial bodies was approximately equal to three times the force a seat belt applies to a restrained passenger in a vehicle traveling at sixty-three miles per hour when it collides with a stationary object.
You can’t fight gravity. Gravity is love. Love requires us to fall. Anyway, I couldn’t have reached the escape velocity required to break free of Diego even if I’d wanted to.
“Why do you keep laughing?” Diego asked. His skin was damp with sweat, but I didn’t mind.
“Your hair tickles my nose.”
“Then stop kissing my neck.” Diego paused. “On second thought, definitely don’t stop.” He pulled me on top of him, running his hands up the back of my shirt, holding me like the last note of a song.
When Diego kissed me, I could hardly believe it was real. Believing Diego liked me and wanted to be with me seemed more implausible than being abducted by aliens who wanted me to decide whether to save the world. If I thought about it too long, doubt burrowed into my brain, multiplying and feeding on my fears. Mom was working, and I’d only invited Diego over to play the new Zombie Splatter, but we started kissing and I knew we should stop, but I didn’t want to.
Diego sat up, breathing heavily. “I think my lips may fall off.”
“That would be unfortunate. And gross.” I grabbed one of the glasses of water sitting on my desk, and drank. My tongue felt heavy and my lips raw.
Diego started rifling under my bed before I could stop him. He ignored the dirty socks and went straight for the spiral notebooks. “What are these?”
“Nothing important.” I tried to sound casual, but my voice cracked.
“Are they stories? Read me one.”
“They’re my journals.” I grabbed the notebook and shoved it back under the bed.
Diego raised himself onto his elbows. “What do you write about?”
“Personal stuff.”
“You’ve seen my paintings.”
“Those weren’t hidden under your bed.”
“Only behind a closed door.”
“Why don’t you tell me why you were arrested for assault? Then maybe I’ll read you something.” I hadn’t meant for it to come out like that, but I couldn’t stand how easy it was for him to demand to know my secrets without giving away any of his.
Diego’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I read about it online.”
“You Googled me? What the hell, Henry?”
“Forget it. This was a mistake.” I pulled my knees to my chest and tried to wipe the feel of Diego’s lips off my mouth.
I waited for him to leave, but he didn’t. “Why does the past have to matter? Can’t now be enough? Can’t this be enough?”
“I want it to be.” If Jesse had asked me to read to him from my journals when he was alive, I would have. Maybe if I’d shared my secrets with him, he would have told me how much pain he was in. I’ll never know. I lost my chance with Jesse, but Diego was sitting right in front of me. One of us had to blink, and I had nothing to lose. “Sometimes I write about how the world might end. Sometimes I write about the abductions. . . . You know, for science. I forget the details otherwise.”
“What’re they like?” Diego spoke softly, like he was afraid he’d spook me if he spoke too loud.
“It’ll be easier if I read you something.” I reached past Diego and retrieved the notebook. The pages were filled with my cramped hieroglyphics, a byproduct of being born a lefty. I cleared my throat and began to read before I lost my nerve.
“Last night I was created from light. Stoplights and patio lights and campfire lights and Christmas lights still up in summer. Sunlight and moonlight and starlight and light that’s taken a million, million years to arrive. I was made of them all.
“It happened like always: the shadows, the urge to pee, the helpless paralysis. The dark room. I love and loathe that room. It’s there that they deconstruct me, study me, and rebuild me. It’s there that they probe me, searching for answers to the mystery of Henry Jerome Denton. I try to tell them there is no mystery. I am not special, not unique, not even a little important. They never listen. As they perform their experiments, which make little sense to my primitive intellect, my mind wanders. It wonders. Why me?
“Do mice ask the same questions when scientists study them? Do they believe in their uniqueness as they are injected with syringes of experimental drugs? When a hand reaches into a cage, grabs one by the tail, and vivisects it, do they marvel at their specialness? Will the sluggers kill and cut me open one day?
“Tonight something unusual occurred. The tallest slugger touched my forehead, and I ignited like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. Shards of dazzling light rippled under my skin. I was the constellation Grus. The Trifid Nebula. I was the Big Bang, expanding endlessly through time and space forever.
“I thought I was dying. That I was going to expire on a cold slab, trapped inside a UFO, my body filled with every light that had ever existed. I couldn’t imagine a better way to die.
“But I didn’t die. The lights rose to the surface of my skin, through it and into the air where they hovered over me, maintaining the form of my body. I was no longer filled with light; I was light. My photonic heart beat, pushing my glittering blood through my glowing veins.
“This was probably a routine procedure for the aliens—no more wondrous than a CT scan or an X-ray is to us—but seeing that twin of myself created from heavenly particles made me believe that I was special to them in some way.
“One by one, the lights began to fade and slowly die. Not with the big bang that birthed them, but with a whimper and a gasp.
“They returned me to Calypso shortly after, I think. I woke up in Mr. Haverty’s backyard. I really wish they’d stop taking my pants.”
My throat was scratchy, so I drank the rest of my water while I waited for Diego’s reaction. His mouth hung open, and his eyes seemed unfocused. I couldn’t read his expression, but I felt exposed under it.
“That was a dumb one, I can find you one where they cut—”
Diego grabbed the back of my head and pulled me to him, kissing me like I was the only water in the desert. He sucked the air out of me, but it was okay because he breathed for both of us—his heart pumped blood for us too. We were a closed system, complete.
“Read me more.”
“It’s bullshit.”
“It’s beautiful, Henry. You’re beautiful.”
Diego never did answer my question, and after a while, I wondered if it even mattered.