“So if we stayed … our younger selves wouldn’t exist?” Thomas asks. He makes a head-exploding gesture with his hands.
“And eventually, teenage us would disappear too, because we’re not meant to be there,” I confirm. “That, or it’d be your basic end-of-the-world-type situation.”
As I explain it, I understand: I can’t stay. I’m not supposed to be here. Five days from now, I’m missing. Whatever happens between us tonight—I’ll have to go back. Find a new wormhole to the future, and leave this Monday unchanged. Thomas will have no memory of this conversation—it won’t ever have happened.
I can’t undo my lie. Even if I told Thomas right now, about Jason, it wouldn’t make any difference. So what’s the point in any of this?
“What, then, if we don’t do that?” He tilts his head at me, waiting carefully for the explanation. “If we don’t stay?”
It’s still hot, but the air smells of roses now. And it takes me a minute to answer him.
“We bake a second cannoli,” I say, “and we leave the past as it was, and return to the present, and nothing will have changed at all.”
“Holy cannoli,” says Thomas. “As it were. Look at that, I understand science. Don’t tell my dad; it’ll only make him happy.”
We go quiet, looking at each other.
“G. Why would you go back at all, then? If in the end, you couldn’t change anything?”
“You could learn something,” I say. “Find out things about yourself.”
“Where would you go?” he asks. “What do you want to learn? And please don’t say ‘How to paint better,’ because I’ve grown to love you at your Wurst.”
I take a deep breath, bunching up my hand, sticking my little finger straight out. I point it at Thomas and he curls his into mine.
“I’d go back five years,” I say, pulling him towards me. I want to make sure we do this in every reality. “And I’d make a really stable pile of books, and I’d find out what it was like to kiss a boy. And even though it wouldn’t change the future—I’d always know what it was like.”
One hand clasps Thomas’s, drawing him close. With the other, I reach up and do what I’ve secretly wanted to do all summer: poke his dimple. And when he laughs, I kiss him.
It’s electricity. It’s light. It’s a shot of liquid silver.
When I said I believe in the Big Bang theory of love, I never thought it could be like this. We fit together like Lego. It’s overwhelming. Thomas’s mouth moves to my neck, and I open my eyes to take in this moment, take in everything—
The kitchen is changing.
A row of spices on the far wall Mexican-waves itself into a new order. Over Thomas’s shoulder, the basil on the sideboard splits and blossoms and flourishes into parsley. The clock spins around; suddenly it’s sunrise. And the roses outside the window, which have always been peach—my whole life they’ve been peach—are now yellow in the pale dawn.
This kiss is changing the universe. I have butterflies, the earthquake-in-Brazil kind, as I pull away.
“Wow,” says Thomas, fake-staggering. Then he pulls me back towards him, pressing our foreheads together, his hands on my face. His glasses squish against my cheek. “Sorry,” he whispers. I don’t know what for. He doesn’t say anything about the spices, the roses, the basil. He doesn’t know anything is different. For him, it’s always been this way.
Every instinct tells me that behind me, on the other side of the kitchen door, is my bedroom. A week from now. The universe’s safety exit.
He trails a finger down my arm, whispering into my mouth. “We should probably go to bed.”
I squeak in surprise.
“Separately, to clarify, you perv,” he laughs. “Before Ned storms out here and murders me.”
“I should…” I turn and gesture to the open kitchen door. I’m right: I can step through it into my bedroom. My ceiling glows with stars, and no storm rattles the window. The books I left scattered on my bed are stacked neatly on my desk, and—oh! Umlaut is there, sleeping on my pillow. I’m going back to a different world than the one I left.
But not necessarily a better one.
On my wall, among the equations, there’s a pool of dark matter. Waiting.
There’s a week to go to the party. And I walked through the worst aspects of the universe to come back here. I don’t believe the Weltschmerzian Exception will let me get away with that.
And I can’t take Thomas with me to hold my hand. If this version of him jumps five days forward, he’ll displace his future self—time will still be twisted. He belongs here. I belong in the future. Only I can go through the wormhole.
These are my choices: Path A. I take this chance to tell Thomas about Jason. I stay in the kitchen, with the truth. And the universe would gradually implode.
Or Path B. I go through the doorway. The universe stays safe but my lie still stands.
Either way, it’s the end of the world.