Everyone Says That at the End of the World Read online

  “Shoulders back, girl. Let those puppies lead!”

  “I don’t want to show them off.”

  “Yes, Rica. Yes, you do!”

  On the last night of her visit, the girls were invited to a pool party at the Malibu home of a game show host’s son. The whole day had been a ritual of preparation. New swimsuits were modeled, then discarded; makeup styles were debated; and flirtatious laughter practiced.

  They arrived as the sun dipped into the Pacific. It seemed impossible to Rica that this same sun’s light touched Plano. Surely, Plano lived under the reign of the humid, half-witted brother of this sun.

  Rica followed Cece’s lead, circling the pool like seasoned dolphin trainers and laughing as the boys palmed water toward them. Cece was the first girl in the water, sliding into the shallow end and inviting Rica to follow. Soon the sky was dark and the pool full. Radio grunge poured from speakers, beach balls bounced, exposed skin incidentally touched exposed skin, and the pool transformed into a chlorinated pheromone stew with nubile teens splashing about like eager, effervescent dumplings.

  An hour after sunset, a boy strolled into the party wearing jeans and a perfectly wrinkled, button-down shirt. Rica didn’t know him but understood from the naked admiration of some and the willed disdain of others that this boy was important. He smiled a near-perfect smile—the ratio of lip to teeth a mathematical wonder. He walked a near-perfect walk—a gait communicating endless energy but charming restraint. And though he looked younger than some of the boys wrestling in the deep end, he surely was more emotionally mature. Too worldly for such trivialities as swimming and beach balls. Someone handed him a soda, which he drank with the gratitude and slightly disguised skepticism of a visiting dignitary sampling a traditional meal in some exotic country.

  Rica went warm.

  “My gawd, Rica.” Cece tickled her midriff. “Don’t drool.”

  “I’m not!” she said, blushing. “I just thought I recognized him.”

  “Yeah, you do! That’s Hayden Brock. The kid from White Slavery. He’s been on Saved by the Bell.”

  “Zack’s cousin!” Rica gasped. “Ronny?”

  “Ronny.”

  The party rumbled on. A pint of vodka, snuck from some father’s freezer, was tipped into Sprite, Coke, Orange Crush. The party migrated from the pool into a game room separated from the main house. The teens spread about the ping-pong table, the vintage pinball machine, the PlayStation set up on the largescreen television. Noise and play, laughter and illegal sips. Then the game show host’s son locked the door and turned, grinning, to the room.

  “Let’s play a game.”

  It was clear the game would not be ping-pong. A new, illicit anticipation simmered. Boys nodded, girls giggled, vodka urged, hormones cheered. Spin the Bottle? Truth or Dare? Seven Minutes in Heaven?

  Rica’s skin prickled. She sipped her Sprite and vodka and stole a glance at Hayden, who leaned against a far wall with an expression of boredom and ease that Rica found exhilarating.

  Seven Minutes in Heaven was the game of choice. Two people in a closet, seven minutes, no questions asked.

  Boy’s names were scribbled on paper and placed in an ice bucket shaped like an L.A. Rams football helmet. The girls were given an oversize sombrero. The game show host’s son drew the names. He had inherited some of his father’s pizzazz, slowly dipping his hand into the ice bucket, patiently unfolding the slip of paper, reading the name to himself and making rascally eye contact with the onlookers, playing with the crowd’s nervous excitement.

  As Rica watched, she had a vague sensation that this game was an all-tooaccurate metaphor for partnering. Her name was only in the sombrero because she was here that night. If she hadn’t moved to Texas, her romantic opportunities would, more or less, comprise the boys in that L.A. Rams ice bucket. She knew another, less impressive ice bucket, probably a Dallas Cowboys helmet, sat waiting for her back in Texas.

  Sure, there were exceptions. Lovers who discovered each other in different social circles, different locales, different generations even. But the common narrative involved being paired, with a name from your near world.

  This truth sat in Rica’s stomach like a spoonful of gasoline, equally equipped to poison her or light a fire of rebellion in her belly. She swallowed more of her drink.

  The game show host’s son announced a boy Rica didn’t know and Cece. Cece looked to Rica, her eyes screaming. Hoots and hollers raged as the two slunk into the closet and the stopwatch was set.

  The door clicked closed and the rest of the party slipped into a thoughtful funk. The game show host’s son put some music on, threw out a few jokes, but the kids’ minds were all centered on one question: What were they doing in there?

  Quick images of flesh and hands and lips flashed through Rica’s mind. She took a long sip of her drink and pretended to laugh at a joke she hadn’t heard.

  Hayden retreated to the pinball machine with a few other boys.

  Finally, after the longest seven minutes of Rica’s life, Cece and the boy emerged.

  “What’d you guys do?” a boy screamed.

  “No!” demanded the game show host’s son. “You can’t ask. It’s their little secret.” He stared at the crowd with the solemnness of a priest. “Of course, in nine months we’ll all know what happened.” The room burst into laughter.

  Rica watched Cece closely. She would wait to ask, but it was clear, something had happened. Good or bad was nearly impossible to tell from the confused colors in Cece’s cheeks. Rica was still studying Cece’s face when she heard her own name called. Her lungs refused any air and for a minute Rica thought she might faint.

  “And Rica’s lucky compadre is”—the host grinned—“Hayden!”

  The blood that rushed to Rica’s ears prevented her from hearing the jokes, the laughter as she and Hayden were ushered into the closet. She wasn’t at all sure what was happening until the door closed and she stood in half darkness a foot away from Hayden.

  For a long beat, neither said a word. The rest of the party was a muffled world away. Chlorine and cologne filled her nose and spiked Sprite bubbled her throat.

  “My name is Hayden,” he said.

  She nodded. “I’m Rica.” Her voice felt close.

  “I don’t really like these games, do you?”

  She shook her head, though she hadn’t considered the question until that moment. But she wondered if Hayden would have preferred the game with another partner. Cece, perhaps. Or the blond girl with the chest of a college grad.

  “But if I had to be locked in a closet with someone,” Hayden said with a smile that seemed to shine even in the dim light, “I’m glad it was you.”

  Heat—glowing stove-top heat—rose to her skin. She was sure he could feel it.

  “I saw you when I first got here. Truth is, I would have left hours ago if it weren’t for you.”

  “I don’t live here,” she said, not knowing exactly why, but wanting Hayden to understand she had made it into the night’s sombrero under false pretenses.

  “Maybe that’s what I like about you,” Hayden said with a perfectly executed chuckle.

  Everything in Rica liquidized. Shake her, and she’d have sounded like a fresh coconut.

  “Five minutes!” someone called from outside. Hayden glanced at the door, then his feet, then her eyes. He stared with a fearless certainty that Rica wanted to devour. A bright, clear realization crystallized in Rica’s mind. This will be her first kiss! With this boy. This magic, perfect boy. It will stay with her always. This moment will change her everything. Her head pounded and something acidic like old orange juice filled her sinuses.

  “Would you mind,” Hayden said, “if I kissed you?”

  Rica’s soul was already puckering as Hayden leaned closer. He was an inch from her face when she uttered, “No.”

  Hayden paused. “No?”

  For an instant her mouth remained closed. She begged her body to obey, begged her stomach to hold down the fo
rt, begged a yes to her lips. Please, please, please don’t let this be the way things are!

  “I—” Hayden began to speak when the line of vomit exploded from Rica’s mouth. He stumbled back. Rica reached out, futilely trying to wipe the vomit from his shocked face.

  “I’m sorry!” she mumbled, hot tears and snot joining the stomach acids dripping from her chin. Hayden shook his head. She wasn’t sure if it was he or the host who threw the door open and spilled light—horrible, unforgivable light—into the closet.

  As Hayden shoved past the party toward the bathroom, the onlookers stared into the open closet with disgust, with humor, with relief that they were not the ones being stared at. And Rica knew her name would never again grace a West Coast sombrero and the magic of her first kiss was lost forever to the realm of could-have-been.

  Everything happens

  MILTON PUSHED THROUGH the unlocked door. His father never locked the door. “If they want in, they’ll get in,” he’d say. “A deadlock is the worst kind of false security. Like wedding rings and yoga.”

  He stepped inside, still sweating from the mile bike ride from the high school, his denim jeans sticking to his legs in the early spring heat. Thick olive curtains barricaded the front room from the sunlight. The dust and shadow gave the room an otherworldly feel. A soft squeaking—like a mouse filibustering—emanated from somewhere inside the house. Then a soft crack.

  “Dad?”

  “Kitchen!”

  His father was now almost constantly at home. With no more explanation than “Those damn small-minded Bohr-heads!” his father stopped making his daily drive to the physics research department of the University of Texas. He still dressed for work, the same short-sleeved button-down white shirt and navy-blue Rice tie. He still woke each morning before dawn. Milton would leave him sitting at the kitchen table sipping instant coffee and staring into nothing. He’d come home to find him pacing through the rooms of the small house scribbling into notebooks. Milton would throw two frozen dinners into the oven, and he and his father would spend the rest of the evening in front of the television watching rented horror movies. Each strangled, stabbed, drilled, impaled, or defenestrated teenager would send Milton’s father into a fit of giggles.

  Once, during a rare bloodless spell of film, Milton asked his father what he was working on all day.

  “Immortality,” he said, then pointed at the TV. “She’s getting it next. You just know it.”

  In the kitchen, Milton found his father scribbling with a permanent marker on the closed freezer door. The lower half of the refrigerator was ajar. His father clenched the marker between his teeth, reached into the fridge and retrieved an egg. He held it up to his face, then let it fall. It smashed on the floor beside the yolks and broken shells of several eggs puddling on the linoleum.

  “They say it can be done.” He clucked his tongue and shook his head. Taking the marker from his teeth, he made another note on the freezer door. “Just have to drop it at the exact right spot.”

  “Dad, it’s a mess.”

  “I always wanted to give it a go! Can you imagine an egg landing all in one piece? Maybe balanced on its point. It happens, you know. Everything happens.” He turned to Milton. “I’m glad you’re finally home. It’s been hours.”

  “Marching band practice.”

  “Waste of time.” He walked past Milton and into the hall. “I’ve been waiting to do this until you got here. I want you to see.”

  “See what?”

  “How to live forever!” His father pulled open the basement door and nearly stumbled as he started down the dark steps. “It’s Everett’s idea. He figured it out. Bohr, the bastard, snubbed him. But it’s all there and makes a hell of a lot more sense than the babbling of those Copenhagen cronies. I mean, right?”

  Milton flipped the light switch at the top of the stairs. His father stood at the bottom, staring back up at him.

  “It’s pretty fucking clear, yes?” his father said, gesturing to a wall covered with pages of handwritten equations and graphs, the handwriting immaculate.

  Milton stepped down the stairs into the damp, low-ceilinged room. Half of the basement was piled with sagging cardboard boxes and broken furniture pieces. One light-blue suitcase sat near the top—a remnant of his mother’s presence.

  The suitcase had been left in the hallway the afternoon she walked out. For months it remained there, untouched. Though it was never said, Milton knew he and his father shared the same hope. They imagined the day she’d walk back through the door to retrieve her belongings. Then she would see her son and her husband and she would stay. She wouldn’t have to apologize or explain. She could just step right back in.

  Stumbling to the bathroom in the middle of the night, Milton tripped into the bag and the two learned that the suitcase was empty. She had left nothing behind.

  “Tegmark gave me the idea for building one. But he only speculated,” his father said, walking toward the far wall of the basement. “But what good is a gift if you don’t unwrap it! Right? Take a look at this!”

  On a sagging card table sat a metal and plastic contraption looking like four carburetors stuck together with duct tape and a series of wires. Linked to the contraption by two more wires was a black, metal lockbox with two drilled holes half an inch apart.

  “Two main components. First, a spin-value detector.” He patted the contraption. “I borrowed one from the university! Ha! If they come asking, tell them it was my retirement present. Ha! Better than a gold watch!”

  “You stole it?”

  “It measures a single electron’s spin. Clockwise or counterclockwise. Like a quantum flip of the coin. I’m using hydrogen. Just one electron. Easy.” He paused and looked up at Milton. “Feynman told everyone there was only one electron, period. Just one little guy popping around the universe appearing in a zillion places at once! Crazy, huh?”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty crazy,” Milton said.

  His father returned his focus to the machine, turning one of three black knobs at its base. The machine purred. “So the machine sits here. I stand over there.” He pointed to a large X duct-taped near the center of the basement floor. “And you, monsieur, your table is right here.” He took on the persona of a snooty French maître d’, a game he hadn’t played with Milton for over a decade. Chuckling, he gestured Milton toward one of the narrow poles positioned around the basement.

  “Maybe I should go upstairs and clean the kitchen.”

  “No, no,” his father said. “I want you to see this. Hell, I might need you to see this.” He locked on Milton’s eyes and stepped close. “Son,” he said softly, “I know sometimes I seem a little eccentric, a little off. I know that. But I know what I’m doing.” He took a slow breath. “You’re going to witness something. And there’s a good chance it won’t be pleasant.” He took Milton’s hand in his own. “Can you trust me?”

  Milton found himself wordless.

  His father smiled. “Don’t worry. I understand,” he said.

  And Milton felt the handcuff click. Instinctively Milton yanked his arm. The other end of the cuffs pulled against the pole.

  “Dad!”

  His father was already moving toward the duct-taped X.

  “I measured it all out. Tested and retested it again and again.” He pulled the permanent marker from his shirt pocket, bent down, and circled the X. “I go right here.” He stood straight, facing the machine as if at military attention. He eyed the machine, raised his marker, and drew a small X on his own forehead. “The bullet will go here.”

  “What bullet, Dad?” Milton pulled harder, but the pole didn’t budge. “Stop this, Dad. Let me go.”

  “Well, the bullet will and won’t go right here.” He walked slowly to the whirring machine and lockbox, counting under his breath. He placed his open palm on the lockbox. “I thought getting the guns would be an issue. Turns out it’s pretty easy!”

  “Dad, stop this.”

  His father twisted the other
two knobs on the machine and returned to the X on the floor. He again stood at rigid attention, facing the machine and lockbox. “I’ve set it for a hundred readings, once every fifteen seconds. If it reads a clockwise spin, it fires a bullet. Bam! Into the old soft, gray stuff. If it reads counterclockwise it—”

  Click.

  “Ha! It does that. See. I’m still here. But that quantum event has created another world where I’m dead! See, do you get it now?”

  “Dad, tell me there’s nothing in that box.”

  “Hot damn, Milton. I’m not playing with myself down here!”

  Milton shook the pole violently. He kicked at it, pushing his body back. The cuffs cut into his wrist. “Dad, please.”

  Click.

  “Dad! Stop this! This is stupid.” Milton reached out, stretching toward the card table and the lockbox.

  “Don’t fuck with this, Milton. Do not fuck with this! It needs to be a clean shot! Fatal. If not, I’ll be stuck. And it needs to be fast! Immediate!”

  “You’re not making any sense, Dad!”

  “No such thing as sense. It’s just a word small minds use to praise their limitations.”

  Click.

  “Please stop this!” Milton pulled at the pole. He felt a slight give where the pole met the ceiling. “I’ll call someone. Get some help.”

  “Don’t worry, Milton. This won’t kill me. Not everywhere.” He grinned and nodded at Milton. Then faced the machine again. “Okay. Look. Consciousness ends when the brain dies. So if I get shot here, my consciousness will just continue in some universe where the brain didn’t die. A universe where I make it through all one hundred clicks. Get it! You’ll see me die. Numerous yous will see me die. But no matter what, all I’ll experience is any world where the guns click a hundred empty rounds. Immor—”

  Click.

  “Only ninety-six more rounds! At this point, there’s 93.75 percent chance that you will see me getting a bullet through the head.”