25 December 2015
Grief is an ocean, and guilt the undertow that pulls me beneath the waves and drowns me.
I woke up in Audrey’s bed, clutching my throat, gasping for breath. In my dreams I was drowning. I was in Jesse’s bedroom. It still looked the way it had when he was alive, except the ocean was rushing in to fill it. I tried to keep my head above water, but Jesse was at the bottom, pulling me down.
Light streamed through the windows. Audrey was deep asleep, hugging her pillow, a shirt covering her face. It didn’t feel like Christmas morning. I wanted to close my eyes and sleep until the end of the world, but I needed to go home before my mom realized I wasn’t there.
Rather than wake up Audrey, I left her a note and borrowed her bicycle. Her house was only a couple of miles from mine, and the ride gave me time to think. A little about Jesse, but mostly about Diego. I’d screwed everything up. He was right that I shouldn’t have had to ask him if he was responsible for smashing Marcus’s windows. I should have trusted him. I wasn’t sure if he’d accept my apology, but I needed to try.
When I reached home, I was sweaty and out of breath. I dropped the bike in front of the duplex. Mr. Nabu was watching me from across the street. I waved; he waved back. I wondered how many times he’d seen me sneak home in the morning wearing nothing but my underwear or a trash can lid.
I figured I’d peek through the window to make sure the rest of the house was still asleep before I snuck inside. When we were kids, Mom had discouraged me and Charlie from waking up at dawn on Christmas morning by instituting a rule that the first person out of bed had to make breakfast for everyone else. By the time we hit our teens, it was a competition to see who could stay in bed the longest. Usually, we didn’t get around to opening presents until after noon.
I eased into the bushes and spied through the window. To my surprise, everyone was awake and gathered in the living room. Mom must have picked Nana up from the home early, and they sat on the couch together. Zooey was relaxing in the recliner next to the sofa, and Charlie had his back to me, digging around for something under the Christmas tree.
Mom clapped her hands and held up a chef’s knife. The knife I bought for her. They were opening gifts without me. Had they gone into my room to see if I was awake? Did they even know I wasn’t home? I was about to storm inside when Charlie stood in the center of the room. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but Zooey’s hand flew to her mouth as Charlie took a knee. He slipped a ring on Zooey’s finger, and she threw her arms around him and kissed him. I imagined her shouting, “Yes! Yes, I’ll marry you,” acting like it was a surprise even though she had to have been expecting it.
I couldn’t believe he’d proposed to Zooey, and I’d missed it. He hadn’t even waited until I was awake. They were opening presents and proposing without me.
“Everything all right, young man?” called Mr. Nabu. He was tough and stringy, like old celery, but his bright eyes missed nothing.
I walked toward Mr. Nabu’s house. “If you knew the world was ending and could prevent it, would you?”
Mr. Nabu set his newspaper in his lap. His bald head was speckled with liver spots, and his spectacles sat low on his nose. “It’s Christmas, young man, and I’m reading my newspaper alone on my front porch.”
“Merry Christmas, sir.” I nodded and trudged around to the side of the house to crawl in through the bathroom window.
• • •
Physicists theorize that up to 27 percent of the mass-energy content of the universe is composed of what they refer to as dark matter. Dark matter is nonreactive to light and has so far eluded all efforts to prove its existence. However, the existence of dark matter is widely accepted because it explains the discrepancies found between the mass of large astronomical objects and their gravitational effect. The argument for the existence of dark matter can be observed in the motions of galaxies. Most do not contain enough observable mass to support the gravitational forces necessary to hold them together. Much like my family. Sometimes I watch them and wonder how we all don’t fly apart.
The engagement was all anyone could talk about for the rest of the day. No one heard me when I accidentally tore down the shower curtain sneaking into the house. They didn’t even apologize for not waiting until I was awake to open presents. Every ten minutes, Nana gave me a sticky kiss on the cheek and told me how glad she was to see me. Charlie and Zooey couldn’t stop touching each other, and Mom spent nearly every minute in the kitchen, making trays of hors d’oeuvres a troupe of traveling acrobats couldn’t have finished.
I couldn’t wait to leave.
Mrs. Franklin must not have called the police to report me, though I jumped at every sound and spent hours peeking out the windows, waiting for a patrol car to arrive. Honestly, spending a few days in jail might not have been the worst thing to happen to me. When my mom and brother were tipsy enough that I knew they wouldn’t notice I was gone, I rode Audrey’s bicycle to Diego’s house. I stood at his front door, sweaty and stinky, clutching a bag of gifts.
Diego opened the door, wearing pajama bottoms decorated with cartoon elves, and a gray tank top. His hair was rumpled like he’d just woken up, even though it was midafternoon.
“I’m sorry.” Before Diego could tell me to leave, I rambled on. “Audrey smashed the windows and I should have believed you but I trusted Jesse and he kept secrets from me and killed himself and I don’t think I could ever go through something like that again.”
“I’m not Jesse.”
“I know.”
“I’m not going to kill myself.”
“I know.”
Diego stood in the doorway, blocking it with his whole body. I hoped he could forgive me, but I doubted my chances. “I wish I had smashed Marcus’s car windows. I wanted to smash his face for what he did to you. I will if he ever hurts you again . . .” He shook his head. “I think you were right about us just being friends. You’re still messed up over Jesse, and I’ve clearly got my own issues to work through.”
I couldn’t argue. Starting a relationship under the best of circumstances is difficult. For us, it would have been a disaster. That didn’t stop me from wanting to push Diego into the house and kiss him until the world ended. From imagining what a future might look like with him in it. But I couldn’t afford to think like that. I held up the bag. “Christmas gifts.”
“I got you something too.” Diego hesitated before standing aside to let me in.
“Where’s Viviana?”
“Her boyfriend’s house.”
“She left you alone on Christmas?”
“Nah,” Diego said. “We had breakfast and opened our presents earlier. She had to go do the Christmas thing with her boyfriend’s family.”
“Oh.”
“Wait here.” Diego left me in the living room, and I sat on the couch. He returned a moment later with a couple of wrapped packages that he set on top of the coffee table.
“You first.” I pulled the presents out of the bag and handed them to him.
“What’s this?” Diego tore the paper like a pro. None of that prissy trying-to-spare-the-paper-to-reuse-next-year stuff. He was a ripper, and I adored that. “I love Frida Kahlo.” Diego fingered the book’s cover before flipping through it, stopping at some of his favorite works.
“Your paintings remind me of hers.”
“It’s . . . perfect!” Diego sat with the book in his lap, just staring at it for a moment before opening the rest of his gifts. Along with the book, I got him a pair of real flip-flops, Doctor Who pajama pants, and a one-pound bag of cereal marshmallows. “What am I going to do with all these marshmallows?”
“I don’t know, but everyone should have a bag of emergency cereal marshmallows.” I pulled a last gift from the bottom of the bag.
“Henry!” Diego frowned but accepted the gift.
“The others were . . . you know . . . This one is special.”
Diego tore into it with the same zeal as the others but froze when he saw the front. It was a simple black journal with leather front and back covers, and pages with a deckle edge. But it wasn’t the journal that had caught his attention; it was what was etched into the front.
REMEMBER THE PAST,
LIVE THE PRESENT,
WRITE THE FUTURE.
Diego traced the words. I couldn’t tell if he liked it or not. He’d practically gone catatonic.
“I thought you could use it to record all the stuff you want to do,” I said. “I don’t know. It’s stupid. If you hate it, I can take it back.” Of course, I couldn’t take it back because of the etching, but whatever.
“Thank you, Henry.” It was only three words, but it felt like more to me. It felt like a wish that we could go back and forget I’d accused him of breaking Marcus’s windows, that we could forget about his past and my Jesse and meet at a time before tragedy had consumed either of us. But that wasn’t possible, and this was all we had. For these last thirty-five days we could be friends, and that would have to be enough.
Diego handed me my gifts.
I looked at the wrap job, and grinned. “That was so sweet of you to let those poor orphans with no fingers do your wrapping for you.”
“Whatever,” Diego said. “It’s abstract wrapping. You just don’t understand my art.” There were four badly wrapped gifts in all. A book about rockets and space travel written in 1948, a retractable fountain pen, a bottle of dark red ink that looked like blood, and a star chart.
“You shouldn’t have done all this.”
Diego grinned like crazy. “There’s one more.” He handed me an envelope. “Open it.”
I expected it to be a card, and I felt like a jerk for not getting Diego one. Only, it wasn’t a card. Inside were two tickets to see Janelle Monáe in concert. I’d only mentioned liking her once. “I can’t believe you remembered.” I turned the tickets over, scanning them for the when and where. The show was at a club in Fort Lauderdale. On February 2, 2016. “Diego—”
“If the world doesn’t end, we can go. Or you can take Audrey if you want. Either way, I thought having something to look forward to might help you make your decision.”
“You still want me to press the button, even after what I did?”
Diego smiled. His hand twitched like he wanted to touch my cheek but was fighting the impulse. “I still want you to want to press it.”