It’s basic physics, really. We all need an equal and opposing force.
Kit stares at me, and I stare back. Eye contact usually feels like an ice headache. Just too much, too fast. Sharp and unpleasant. With Kit it feels like the first few seconds on a roller coaster, all gravitational force, no escape, pure thrill.
I am nervous. I keep talking.
“There’s something comforting about the thought, isn’t there? That even something crazy like that—two identical snowflakes—can actually happen? I think about that sometimes when I’m upset.” She flashes her perfect smile at me, which isn’t perfect, not really. Her third tooth from the left is slightly chipped. But it’s literally breathtaking, and so I stop talking because I don’t want to activate my asthma.
“Everything is so unbelievably shitty right now,” she says, even though she’s still smiling. “I can’t even begin to tell you how shitty.”
I nod. I don’t know what to say to this. I want her words to match her face or, maybe to a lesser degree, vice versa. A tear escapes out of the corner of her eye, and she wipes it away, fast.
“But I’m going to take that as good news. The snowflake thingy,” Kit says. “So thank you for that.”
“Should we walk?” I ask, because I suddenly don’t want to climb into a car. I want to stay outside, in this light, quiet snow. I want to stand next to Kit, watch her brace herself against the wind, hear the tiny whoosh of snow as it falls onto her jacket.
“Yes, please,” she says, and then, like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like we do it all the time, she interlaces her fingers with mine.
—
We hold hands for two minutes and twenty-nine seconds, but when we turn the corner onto Clancy Boulevard, we stop, and I wish I knew who initiated the release. Did I get distracted by the counting and accidentally reduce my pressure, thus signaling a desire to let go? I don’t know. There’s a ninety-two percent chance it was Kit. I liked the feeling of her hand in mine. Her fingers were longer than I would have guessed, the collective weight of a dog’s paw. I think about what it would be like to kiss her, to touch my fingertip to her clavicle cluster, to not worry about our physical boundaries. I imagine it would be like splitting an atom, a distillation into component parts. Everything small enough to be countable. Everything as perfect and forever as pi.
“You’re quiet today,” Kit says. We haven’t spoken in two minutes and twenty-nine seconds. Too hard to talk and hold hands at the same time. That would be system overload.
“Was just thinking,” I say.
“Me too. I wish I could do it less.”
“What?”
“Thinking.” I look over and see that Kit’s face is wet. From the snow? From tears? Has she been crying since we left school?
“You’re sad,” I say, and it occurs to me that it is entirely possible, likely even, that I’ve been having the best two minutes and twenty-nine seconds of my life while Kit has been crying.
No, I was wrong: There will never be two identical snowflakes and I will forever be out of synch with the rest of the world.
I look at the mini mall across the street because I don’t want to see Kit’s face. The mini mall is an emotion-free zone. A bagel place, a dry cleaner, the Liquor Mart, and a knickknack store that sells an assortment of useless items like miniature figurines and napkin holders. Why do they wrap everything up in clear cellophane and twirled ribbon? Little Moments, that’s what that store is called. Little Moments. I hate that place almost as much as I hate Justin.
“My mom cheated on my dad. I just found out,” Kit says, and uses both of her hands to wipe her face. “How screwed up is that?”
I don’t say anything, because I’m pretty sure her question is rhetorical. And if it’s not, I wouldn’t even know how to begin to measure the precise dimensions of how screwed up something is. So I stay quiet and wait for her to say more. This technique seems to work with Kit.
“I don’t even know what to do, you know? Like what the hell am I supposed to do with that information?” she asks, and this time I think she is seriously asking, but before I can answer she goes on. “It’s all irrelevant now anyway. I mean, he’s dead. D-E-A-D. Dead. Adios, amigo. Hasta la vista, baby. Why should it matter?”
“I’m sorry.” I picture a Venn diagram and three circles overlapping for this catchall phrase, I’m sorry, best used (1) when someone is sad, (2) when someone dies, and (3) when you have no idea what else to say. In this case, all three apply. In my mind I scribble the word Kit in the overlap. “It probably doesn’t matter, but I get upset all the time about things that don’t matter. Like open loops, for instance.”
We cross at the light, and I let Kit lead the way. I have thirty-three dollars and fifteen cents on me, more than enough cash to pay for a meal for both of us in most of Mapleview’s under-two-dollar-sign Yelp-rated restaurants. I doubt Kit would pick three dollar signs.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” she adds. “I haven’t even told Vi or Annie.”
“We’re friends.” I say it like it’s no big deal, like it’s the truth and has always been the truth, and also like I’m not suddenly terrified that just by uttering the words out loud I’ve put myself in the “I will never get the opportunity to kiss Kit Lowell” zone. “Anyhow, I wish there were a way to fix this for you. I would undo it if I could.”
“You’re sweet,” she says, and that smile is back, the one that I’m starting to realize is not a smile at all. It just resembles one in form. The snow is starting to fall harder now, in bigger geometrical formations, rendering the possibility of two matching ones infinitely more remote.
“You know what we need? To rip a major hole in the space-time continuum. And then we could go back in time and fix everything for you.” I realize with a pang that time travel would do nothing to fix me. I’m different at the genetic molecular level. We’d have to alter my dad’s sperm or my mother’s egg, which would, in effect, undo my very existence. I don’t want that. “Have you asked your mom why?”
“Why she cheated on my dad?”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
“Maybe you should. Could help close the loop.”
“You are obsessed with this loop concept.”
“Think about the infinity sign,” I say, and I wait for her to do it. To imagine it. She stops walking and so I assume that’s what’s happening. She’s letting me paint pictures in her mind. Picture me kissing you, I want to say. Picture that. “You see how it just flows into itself. Or even the concept of pi. It has an order and a rhythm and doesn’t end. Ever. Continuous flow. That’s how everything should be. Closed loops. Just ask your mom why.”
“I like your new haircut,” she answers, apropos of nothing, and then reaches up—to touch my head, I think, but then she jams her hands back into her jacket pockets. “Your outsides match your insides better now.”