“So,” Calvin said. “That’s it.”
Less than a quarter mile off the beach, the sky had disappeared, replaced by a void. That was the only way to describe it. It wasn’t black, it wasn’t gray. It was the complete and total absence of everything. Even the word “empty” implies something that can be filled, but the vast nothing in the sky was bottomless. Calvin and I could have poured forever into it and that boundless zone of negative space would have simply devoured all that we were and remained more than empty.
“It’s moving toward us,” I said.
“Is it?” The universe must have rewritten Calvin’s memory every time it shifted. He could have remained standing at the edge of the ocean until the universe consumed him, and he would’ve thought it normal.
“It’s never going to stop.”
Calvin pulled his hoodie over his head and tossed it aside. Then his undershirt.
“What’re you doing?” I asked.
He continued undressing. He unbuckled his belt and kicked off his jeans. “Why wait?”
“Calvin, stop.”
“I want to know what’s on the other side.”
“Nothing!” I yelled. “There’s nothing on the other side.” I grabbed him before he could strip off his underwear, and he pushed me away. I tackled him to the ground, but Calvin was a champion wrestler. He swung his legs, wrapped them around my waist, and held me in a headlock. I struggled, but I couldn’t defeat him, so he let me go.
“Do you want to be trapped here forever?” Calvin asked. “What if we’re meant to escape? You keep saying you’re waiting for Tommy and your family to return, but how do you know they’re the ones who have vanished? What if you’re the one who disappeared, and they’re on the other side waiting for you to find your way home?”
I didn’t know. Calvin’s theory made as much sense as anything else, but I couldn’t know for certain.
“I’m scared,” I said.
Calvin took my hand, helped me up, and kissed the tops of my fingers. “It would be weird if you weren’t.”
“But why is this happening?”
“Why does anything happen?” he asked. “I sure as hell don’t know. The only thing I know for sure is that we can do nothing and maybe we’ll wind up taken like you said Tommy and your family were, or we can face the uncertainty and see what’s on the other side for ourselves.”
“It’d be easier if someone would just give me the answers,” I said. “If everything that’s happened—Tommy vanishing, Flight 1184 crashing, the universe shrinking—is a message, why not come right out and tell me what I’m supposed to do?”
“That’s not how the world works, Ozzie. Some things, you have to learn for yourself.”
Calvin was right. Since the day Tommy disappeared, I’d been waiting for him to return, but he hadn’t, and now everyone had vanished. Every person I ever knew or loved. And soon, with or without me, Calvin would follow them. I didn’t know if the universe was a simulation or a bubble about to burst or even a spooky quantum reality I’d willed into existence. All I knew for certain was that I’d wind up alone if I stayed.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll go.”
I squeezed Calvin’s hand and pulled him toward the ocean. But he didn’t follow.
“Come on. We can do this together.”
He shook his head and let go of my hand. “I think you should do it,” he said. “And I want you to, but I need to do this part on my own.”
“You sure?”
“No,” he said, laughing.
I didn’t want him to leave—I didn’t want to face the void alone—but I understood why he needed to do this himself. If he was going to survive what Coach Reevey had done to him, even if he couldn’t remember who Reevey was, he needed to face the future on his own terms.
“Whatever happens,” I said, “I want you to know that I care about you, Calvin Frye. Maybe this universe was never real, but you are. You’re the only real thing in it.”
“That sounds like a good-bye,” Calvin said. “But I think we’ll see each other on the other side.” Cal stripped off his underwear and turned toward the water. He walked until the waves lapped against his bare feet. The void grew closer. With each second that passed, it devoured more of the ocean.
“You’re going to find your way, Ozzie.” He took another step into the water.
“Just wait,” I called after him. “Wait for it to reach the shore. It’s too far out to swim. You’ll drown.”
Calvin glanced at me over his shoulder. He was smiling. “I won’t drown, Ozzie. I can breathe underwater.”
He walked until the water reached his waist, and then he dove in and swam. I watched Cal until his pasty skin disappeared under the stygian sea.
Calvin Frye was gone.
I sank to my knees. I thought maybe I would feel the moment Calvin entered the void or was swallowed by it or whatever happened when he reached it, but I didn’t. And there was no one left to tell me he no longer existed.
I wished I could’ve gone with him. I wished I had his courage. I knew if I waited long enough, the emptiness would swallow me. I wouldn’t have to do anything but stand on the shore and let it take me. I thought watching Calvin swim to the void would give me the strength to do the same, but I was a coward. The nothingness shuddered and moved closer. I couldn’t do it; I’d already lost everything and everyone I ever cared about, and if I died, no one would remember them.
I ran back across the dunes. I stumbled and fell, and when I looked behind me, the ocean was gone. I forced myself to my feet and kept running up the hill to the road. I tripped and stubbed my toe. A flap of skin and blood and gravel hung off the end of my big toe, but I kept running.
I reached my house and slammed the door behind me. I climbed the stairs to my room, and tried to shut that door too, but a force on the other side pushed back. A soundless wind blew into my room, carrying with it a crumpled scrap of paper that floated through the air and landed on the floor. I leaned all my weight against the door and finally slammed it shut. I picked up the paper, crawled into the corner, and hugged my knees to my chest. I didn’t know where the paper had come from, but I recognized the writing. It was from my journal. The journal from the world where Tommy had existed.
The nothingness was all around me. I didn’t need a map to know that only my house and I remained.
Finally, I was alone, and I smoothed out the paper and began to read.
TOMMY
TOMMY AND I LIE SIDE by side on top of his trailer. His father’s snores drift up through the thin metal. The Fourth of July is still a couple of days away, but one of Tommy’s neighbors is already shooting off fireworks in the distance. The dazzling lights dim the stars for a moment, except there are so many scattered across the sky they can’t be outshone for long. The stars look haphazard, though I know they’re not. Someone put them there. There’s some design. I just can’t figure out what it is.
“Tell me we’ll always be together, Tommy.”