“Remember the Big Bang? Everything in the universe comes from stars. Before anything else existed, there were just stars. Stars are like ovens,” she says. “Inside, they’re cooking planets and asteroids, and when they explode, out spews all this, like, space vomit that’s been cooking all these years. And solar systems formed, and Earth formed, and algae and eventually oxygen. And small organisms evolved into big animals and after about a billion years we came out, so that’s your answer. We come from the stars.”
“That’s impossible,” I say.
“You’re only saying that because the idea that you exploded out of a star is scary.”
“The Prophet said stars are God’s eyes.”
She rolls her eyes. “And what did he say the sun was? A really, really big eyeball?”
“Just . . . the sun. He didn’t talk about the sun.”
“The sun is a star,” she says. “And every star is a sun, so far away from us they seem tiny.”
In that moment, I feel the Prophet’s canvas ceiling lift away from my head, walls flying off me, and a pressure I’ve never put into words hisses somewhere at the back of my mind as the size of the universe assembles itself in my mind. If I close my eyes, I can see it, the endlessness beyond my ears, and knowing I’m only in a corner of that vastness doesn’t make me feel tiny. It is amazing that, though I am small and ungifted and barely educated, even I can appreciate the scale of the universe.
And from this perch in space, for this moment at least, it seems unimportant whether someone made it, or if it made itself.
Chapter 49
The stars bump around in my chest for days and days afterward, light as carbonation against the edge of a glass, and I start waking up in the morning thinking about stars or cities, or nothing: entire seconds spent not remembering to touch the hurt spot where Jude and Philip and Constance live for entire seconds, minutes even.
I have started to think this isn’t such a bad thing.
? ? ?
“Did you like the book?” Dr. Wilson asks when he visits again.
I shrug in agreement. In truth, besides picturing the sky every moment I can, I’ve done little but read Tess of the d’Urbervilles since he gave it to me.
“What did you like about it?”
“Tess isn’t a victim,” I say. “I mean, she is. For, like, the whole book. But she fights back in the end.”
“How does she stop being a victim?”
“She kills the man who abused her.”
He nods. “What do you think about that?”
“He deserved it.”
“And, by that logic, didn’t she also deserve her punishment?”
“No,” I reply. “He made her life miserable. He earned the knife in his belly.”
“Still murder, though.”
“But sometimes murder is justified, and don’t look at me that way, that’s not a confession or anything. Sometimes circumstances are . . .” I search for the word.
“Extenuating?” he asks.
“Yes, extenuating. And the fact that the law didn’t see that makes it cold-blooded, not Tess.”
“You seem very certain.”
“I am.”
“And just consider how a few months ago you said you weren’t certain of anything. Now you’re almost too much the opposite. What do you suppose is responsible for that?”
“If I had to guess, Angel.”
“I agree,” he says. “I think Angel is becoming a negative influence on you.”
“She’s a good person.”
He laughs. “Is that so?”
“Angel’s the best person in here.”
“Angel is a convicted murderer.”
He says it as though that’s all there is to know about her.
“It was self-defense,” I say.
“She told you that?” he asks. “She waited in her uncle’s bedroom for three hours, a loaded gun in her hand. When he got home, she crouched behind his bedroom door until he was less than a foot from her, and do you know what she did?” he asks. “She shot five bullets into his neck.”
I look away, unconsciously pressing my stumps together. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you’re not like her. You shouldn’t aim to be.”
“Angel fought back against a man who made her life a nightmare.”
“Do you know how many murderers try to excuse their actions by saying they were victimized? It explains their actions, but it can’t excuse it,” he says. “There is no justifying murder.”
He sees things so clearly. But he’s never lived in fear. He’s never had to dread the choices of big men with their large, dark-haired hands. “I’m just sick of the victim being judged for fighting back.”
“It was a victim who killed the Prophet, wasn’t it?” he asks. “That’s why you won’t talk to me. Because you think whoever did it doesn’t deserve consequences.”
I clamp my lips together. If I answer, the entire story might fall out of my mouth, and that can’t happen, not yet.
“People like you see murder and motive and malice everywhere,” I say instead. “Whatever I tell you, you’ll take it and twist it and make it sound wrong. Just like they did at my trial. That lawyer made me out like a monster, and I’m not gonna let that happen again. And don’t try telling me you wouldn’t do it. You’re a—”
“Don’t say cop.”
“Well, you are.”
“And you’re a convicted felon. Have I ever treated you like one?”