MY MOTHER, FATHER, AND BROTHER had all become casualties of the same Great Whatever that had stolen Tommy from me. In the new and not-so-much-improved history of my life, my parents had abandoned me, and Ms. Novak had adopted me. I’d grown up with Lua, whose own history had changed so that she’d been born and raised in Cloud Lake. None of it made a damn bit of sense, but I had to go on about my life like everything was peachy.
Renny and I used to play this fun-for-him-but-not-for-me game where he hit me in the arm in the same place as many times as he could before I told him to stop. The first couple of punches hurt the worst, but after a while, I stopped feeling the pain. I grew numb to it even though I could see the bruise already beginning to form and knew it’d hurt like a son of a bitch later on. That’s how it was losing my family. I was numb. I’d lost so much that I couldn’t feel it anymore. The universe was going to keep taking and taking and taking everything I cared about from me, and I was powerless to stop it.
Even with all the theories I’d come up with for why the universe was shrinking, I was no closer to a way to stop it. So I did the only thing I could do.
I kept moving forward.
? ? ?
Dr. Sayegh smiled from her chair but didn’t rise to greet me. “I didn’t expect to see you again.”
I didn’t bother sitting, as I wasn’t planning to stay long. “I just wanted to tell you in person that I won’t be returning.”
“So you kept your appointment to tell me you won’t be coming to any more of your appointments?”
I nodded. “Something like that.”
“Have a seat, Ozzie.” Dr. Sayegh motioned at the couch. She slipped her glasses off and let them hang around her neck on a silver chain. I considered leaving, but part of me was curious what she had to say, so I sat. “You’re an interesting young man, Oswald Pinkerton.”
“Don’t you mean crazy?”
Sayegh shook her head. “I dislike that word,” she said. “And I don’t think you’re crazy.”
That surprised me, and I sat up straighter. “You believe me, then? About the universe?”
Dr. Sayegh paused for a moment. “Do you believe in God, Ozzie?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know.”
“Neither do I.” Dr. Sayegh kept fiddling with her glasses, which was making me nervous, like her anxiety was creeping across the distance between us and seeping into me. “There are things in this world I can’t explain, that I may never be able to explain, but that doesn’t make them less real.”
I wished I hadn’t come. I wasn’t sure why I had. I hadn’t bothered telling any of the other doctors in person I wasn’t going to see them anymore, and now that I was eighteen, my mom—or Dinah, now that my parents were gone—couldn’t compel me to see any doctor I didn’t want to, but I’d felt like I owed it to Dr. Sayegh to tell her to her face. Which, in hindsight, was stupid.
“It doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not,” I said. “I can’t fix it. The whole damn universe is going to collapse into nothing, and I can’t do one damn thing to stop it.”
“Maybe you’re not meant to,” Sayegh said. I started to interrupt her, but she didn’t let me. “Have you ever considered the possibility that you’re not supposed to stop what’s happening?”
“No,” I said. “Because what’s the point of knowing something’s wrong if I can’t do anything about it?”
Dr. Sayegh’s eyes lost focus like she wasn’t seeing me anymore. “Maybe the point is to just live your life.”
I snorted. “Not sure how much of a life I’m really going to have when the whole world is Florida and will probably keep shrinking until there’s nothing left but Cloud Lake.”
“And what, exactly, did you do with your life that was so wonderful when the world was larger?”
“I . . .”
“Exactly,” Dr. Sayegh said. “You claim that the world used to be much bigger than it is, but did you explore it? Did you take advantage of it? How is your life all that different now than it was before?”
I couldn’t answer, because I hadn’t done much of anything. Even when there’d been a whole universe to explore, Cloud Lake and Tommy had been my everything.
“So that’s it?” I said. “I’m just supposed to go on living my life no matter how much the universe takes from me or how small it gets?”
Dr. Sayegh nodded. “It’s what the rest of us do, Ozzie.”
I stood up but didn’t immediately head for the door. I thought Sayegh would try to stop me, try to convince me I needed to keep seeing her, but she didn’t say a word.
“See you around, Dr. Sayegh.”
“Good-bye, Ozzie,” she said. “Please close the door on your way out.”
1,473 MI
ON THE DAY OUR ROLLER coasters were due, I didn’t bother calling Calvin to ask him if he’d bring in what we’d completed because I knew he wouldn’t answer his phone. His attendance at school had become sporadic, and I’d heard through the Priya Spy Network that most of his teachers were allowing him to complete his assignments from home and take his final exams early so that he didn’t have to return. Once the news about Coach Reevey had gotten out, seven more boys had come forward with allegations that he’d tried to coerce them into having sex with him. One was still a freshman, though his name was kept confidential, and the other six were previous graduates. I was surprised the school hadn’t given Calvin As for the rest of the semester to keep him from suing.
As the other students filed into physics class carrying their own projects, including Dustin, whose roller coaster looked amazing, I kept hoping Calvin would walk through the door and slide into his seat, flash me a smile, and that everything could go back to the way it had been before I’d betrayed him. But I doubted that was going to happen.
I kept thinking about what Dr. Sayegh had said about how I was supposed to keep living my life even though everything was changing. But how could she expect me to care about prom, which was only a couple of days away, or graduation, which was a couple of weeks after prom, when I’d lost my parents, Renny, Tommy, and 99.9999 percent of the universe? How was I supposed to move forward when everything I cared about was gone?
I couldn’t stand around and wait for the universe to collapse completely. I had to do something, find some way to fix it. It was easy for Sayegh to suggest I might not be meant to stop the universe from shrinking or bring back Tommy and my family, because she couldn’t remember the way things had been. The universe had always looked small to her, but I knew differently. I knew what it could be, and what it would be again.
Ms. Fuentes talked excitedly about our projects before launching into her review for our final. I hardly heard any of it, and then time seemed to skip forward and the bell rang.
“Ozzie?” Ms. Fuentes called as I stood to leave. “Would you mind waiting around for a moment?”