I expect him to answer immediately. For him to tell me that nothing will keep us apart, that it’ll always be him and me against the world.
But he doesn’t. And I wait.
“Tommy?”
“I can’t,” he whispers, even though his father could sleep through a nuclear bomb strike.
“Come on. We’re going to be together forever, right?”
“Actually, Oz,” he says, “I was thinking we need some time apart.”
I slap Tommy playfully. “Stop fooling around.”
“I’m not fooling.”
I tilt my head and search his face, his eyes, for the joke, but don’t find it.
“Since the day we met, our lives have been all about each other. I’ve spent years so focused on you and on us that I haven’t given hardly any thought to the rest of my life. I don’t know how I’m going to afford college, you don’t know what you want to do with the rest of your life.” He throws his hands up. “It’s like we’ve spent the last nine years being one person, and I don’t know who I am when I’m not with you.”
“What does it matter?” I say. “I don’t even care about college. All I care about is you. Being with you.”
Tommy sits up on his elbow. The metal roof groans. “And I care about you, but that’s the problem, you know? Being together isn’t enough if we’re not whole individual people.”
“But I love you, Tommy. Don’t you get that?”
“I do,” he says. “It’s just . . . I need to know who I am on my own. I need to figure out who Thomas Ross is, and I can’t do that with you stuck to my hip.”
My heart is breaking. “I don’t know what to do without you.”
“I know,” he says. “That’s the problem.”
“Are you breaking up with me?” I already know the answer, but I need him to say it. I won’t believe it until I hear him say it.
“Yeah,” Tommy says.
There it is. I’ve known Tommy since second grade. He was my best friend and my boyfriend. And now? Now I don’t know what we are.
Tears roll down my cheeks, bile rises in my throat, but I don’t move. I don’t leave. I can’t.
“What happens now?”
“I don’t know. Maybe one day in the future, after we’ve both had time to figure out who we are, we’ll find each other again and see if the love is still there.”
“But how will I find you?” I say. “The world’s a big place.”
Tommy takes my hand. He’s broken up with me, but he still holds my hand. “Trust me: It’s not so big.”
25 FT
TOMMY HAD BROKEN UP WITH me.
I’d remembered everything about Tommy—the deep thrum of his voice, the way his hands felt tender when he touched me even though his skin was rough, every fight we’d ever had, every single kiss we’d shared, the dimple on his left cheek, the freckle on his big toe. I could recall the most random details about Tommy and our life together, but I’d forgotten that night. The night he broke up with me. I’d rewritten every memory of Tommy I could recall from my journals, but I hadn’t rewritten that one.
I’d spent months searching for him, I’d almost died on a plane crash to find him, I’d waited around Cloud Lake hoping he would return, but Tommy was never coming back, and even if he did, he wasn’t coming back to me.
The void waited outside my bedroom walls. I was alone in the universe.
I still didn’t know what had happened. Even now that I remembered Tommy breaking up with me, I didn’t know whether I’d created this universe from my broken heart or if I was a brain scientists had plopped into a jar and were experimenting on, with Tommy nothing more than a part of the sadistic test, but I still had to decide whether to stay here, afraid and alone, or be brave like Calvin and see what, if anything, was on the other side.
Lua had fought to achieve her dream. She knew she might fail, but she refused to stop. Trent had broken her fingers, but she still moved forward.
Dustin had spent four years killing himself to get the best grades. He’d had a plan, and his parents’ bad choices had stolen that plan from him, but he hadn’t given up. He’d pivoted. Made a new plan. It might not have been the one he’d wanted, but he kept moving forward.
Coach Reevey had nearly destroyed Calvin, but even he had found the courage to take a stand. To walk into the abyss without knowing what might lie on the other side. He’d embraced his fear, and I knew he hadn’t drowned.
I looked at the page in my hand. The memory of the night Tommy had broken up with me, blocked before, throbbed in my mind. It hurt like it had happened just yesterday. I remembered hating him. Crying in my bedroom, swearing I’d never speak to him again. I’d hated him so much, I’d erased him from my life.
But he’d been right.
We’d spent so much time as Tommy and Ozzie that I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted without him. I thought Tommy disappearing and Flight 1184 crashing and the universe shrinking were messages telling me to stay in Cloud Lake. I’d spent months waiting for some kind of sign, but I was beginning to think none of this had ever been about me. I wasn’t special or important; I was just a boy chained in a cave, too stupid to know I’d been staring at shadows on a wall while the real world was happening behind me. And now the chains were gone, broken, and I had to make a decision. I had to choose.
I opened my curtains. The void had stopped on the other side of the glass, and it waited for me outside my bedroom door. The universe was no longer contracting. I felt certain I could remain in my room until I grew old and died, but I’d do so alone.
Or I could step into the unknown. Maybe I’d find Tommy and Calvin and Lua and my family. Maybe I’d discover the future or nothing at all. I knew what awaited me if I stayed, and there was comfort in that knowledge. My future on the other side of the void was unknowable and frightening. Here in my room, I was the center of the universe, the single star around which everything revolved. Beyond the void, I was probably just another insignificant particle floating amongst a vast sea of countless others, and that terrified me.
The scariest thing in life is the door that closes and can’t ever be opened again. Once I opened the door and stepped into the void, that door would slam shut behind me and I could never go back.
But maybe it’s okay to be afraid. Mrs. Ross hadn’t let fear stop her from walking away from her old life and slamming that door behind her, and maybe those slamming doors are the scariest things in life, but they’re not the worst. The worst is never going through them at all.
I didn’t know whether my world was merely shadows on the wall, but it was time to turn around and find out.
I took a deep breath, held it, let it out. I gripped the knob, opened the door, walked into the void, and pulled the door shut behind me.
∞ AND THEN SOME
I’D SURVIVED.
I guess.