Swansong

  What? What's in front of my eyes? There's Annwn. Nothing else. I'd forget her in an instant, if such a thing were at all possible. But my mind doesn't seem to like me enough to grant me that small respite.

  Is there no escape from the human mind? Is there some way--any way--that I can get away?

  "You've forgotten something," Annwn tells me. "It's small, but significant. When you remember it--if you remember it--everything is going to change. I'm sorry. It can't be helped."

  I don't know what she's talking about. I don't know what she could conceivably mean.

  Hasn't enough changed? I'm tired of change.

  "Maybe," Annwn says, "that's the precise reason why you've managed to forget it."

  I pick up the water bottle on my nighttable. I throw it at her head.

  * * * * *

  "You got me a cat?" Judas asks, stunned.

  It's Christmas Eve. A fuzzy calico kitten leaps in and out of the litterbox on the sitting room floor. She's so tiny, I keep expecting her to disappear.

  "It's Christmas," I argue, smiling.

  A small, fiberoptic Christmas tree sits on the server beside the paint-splashed wall. No use going overboard when it's just the two of us. I rip open a package of PetLac and read the instructions on the back.

  "Wendy," Judas says. I can't really decipher the tone of his voice.

  "We've been here half a year, and the super never looks in on us," I say. "We're not going to get in trouble."

  "You think I'm worried about the super? Hell."

  I realize he's saying thank you. I realize it's not something he's had a lot of opportunity to say.

  I tuck my hair behind my ear. I smile, feel it tugging at my lips. "Thank you," I say.

  "What for?"

  "For the palette, dummy." He gave me a new lacquer palette for Christmas. They're about a thousand times easier to clean than the wood ones. "I'll paint you something with it."

  "Paint me a gin and tonic."

  "Jude."

  Judas kneels on the floor. He takes the kitten in his hands. It's unbelievable how gentle he is. Those are the hands that took another life ten years ago. Those are the hands that whittled knives in prison, built cars and built bombs.

  The kitten licks Judas' knuckle. I don't think she knows the difference.

  "I'm calling you Maurice," Judas decides.

  "Jude!"

  "What?" He looks at me, stymied.

  "You can't call a girl cat Maurice," I argue. "You'll give her gender dysphoria."

  "What's so bad about that?"

  Maurice opens her mouth in a wide yawn. I guess it's settled.

  "Think we can take her to mass with us?" Judas asks. "Could hide her in my pocket or something."

  I roll my eyes. "I don't think that's a good idea."

  "We can't just leave her alone."

  "She's not a human baby. I covered the garbage disposal. There's nothing she can get into while we're out."

  "What if she gets lonely?" He notices she's fallen asleep. "Huh." He puts her down in the nesting box.

  "Big baby," I tease.

  "Am not," Judas counters. "Just never seen anything that small before. Or furry."

  "Not even when Mom and Dad brought me home from the hospital?"

  "They didn't bring you home from the hospital. They found you in a dumpster."

  "You've gotten more consistent. When we were little, you told me I was a vegetable."

  "You do look kind of leafy."

  I stand from the sofa. I put my hand on his shoulder. He looks up at me from the floor.

  For a moment, I think, Judas looks like a stranger. It's a strange and fleeting sentiment: I can't find myself in his face. It's a scarred face; a haggard face. But my freckles are on his cheeks. My eyes are in his eyes. This man is the only family I have left. It's still so surreal.

  I smile; even if I don't mean it. "I made torrones."

  "Yeah?" Judas asks.

  "Like the ones Mom used to make around Christmastime? I don't think they turned out the same."

  "I bet they turned out fine."

  "We'll have them after mass." Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad are dead.

  Judas puts his hand on mine. His hand's so big. The scar on his heel is rigid against my fingers.

  My brother is my world. I don't think I've thought of it that way before, but it's true. There's the world I can escape to with Azel, a world-within-a-world that lets me get away without getting away; there's the world Annwn wants to take me to, a tempting, dangerous world I've never seen with my own eyes. But this world--right here--right now--I'm still in it because of my brother. That much I've known all along.

  You are at the center of the universe.

  Those are the words I don't tell him. Those are the words that comprise my reality.

  * * * * *

  I wrap myself in wool and warm leggings. I follow Judas down the sidewalk, past the ramshackle trailer parks and the sleazy dive bars. Snow falls around us, quiet and white.

  The entire universe sits inside a macrocosmic snowflake. I catch the snowflakes on my bare hand. Each one might as well be a separate universe. It's strange to think of something so grandiose fitting inside something so small. Maybe it's true nonetheless. Maybe it's true that we're bigger than the universe around us. So much of the universe around us relies on where and how we perceive it.

  Just how many realities are there? We are consciousness. Consciousness is energy. Energy can't be destroyed. To be conscious, you need something to be conscious of. If consciousness can't be destroyed, then reality, to some degree, can't be destroyed, either. Does that mean reality goes on forever? This universe will die someday. Reality won't. So there has to be another universe. And if reality goes on forever, then so do those universes.

  Infinite universes. Infinite snowflakes. Up until about 2010, one septillion snowflakes were falling on Earth's surface every year. Earth has been around for billions and billions of years. The number of extant snowflakes is so large, it surpasses quantifiable observation. You could say that number is infinite. Each of those unobservable snowflakes has its own unique pattern. That shouldn't be possible. It shouldn't be. But it is.

  One hundred and eight billion people have lived on this planet. Two hundred and sixteen billion completely unique eyes.

  It's impossible to see this universe through any pair of eyes but your own.

  One hundred and eight billion universes.

  That I can never see those universes for myself is unfathomable to me. How can there be anything outside of what I'm capable of seeing?

  Maybe it's true that we were all One Mind. Maybe it's true that we were all one "Adam." And "Adam" wanted to see all those beautiful, unique universes. And "Adam" split himself one hundred and eight billion ways.

  And I have seen all those universes.

  And when I die--and when this universe dies--

  The snowflakes melt in the heat of my palm. Water swims in the grooves of my palmlines.

  It's as if they were never even there.

  * * * * *

  The church is stony and dim. Candlelights dance on the carpeted blue predella, candles wrapped up in Christmas garlands. It's dark in here, solemn, but serene. We sit on the oak pews, the priest ascending the altar.

  I don't know that I believe in God. Half the time I hate God; the other half, I wonder where it's gone. But when I think about it, God is probably the one thing every culture on earth has in common. Every culture has an established path to God. Individually, there are disbelievers. But if you could somehow learn all 6,700 languages on the planet at once, I'm sure you'd find that each one has its own name for a higher being. Tianzhu. Wakan Tanka. Theos. Elohim. Allah.

  And doesn't that seem like a strange thing for every civilization on the planet to have in common? That even the two most remote civilizations believe there's something Greater, something Other? Why is that? How does that happen? My Id wants me to say that God is a stand-in for science where science isn't
immediately available. My Superego reminds me that there are observable phenomena science can't even begin to explain. Science doesn't know why bicycles don't topple over. Science doesn't know why we have likes and dislikes. Science says we don't have a subconscious. Science says we don't have minds.

  My Ego is silent. It sits somewhere in between. God--science--maybe they're two names for the same event.

  Every language has a name for God. Maybe mine just happens to have two.

  My attention wanders. My eyes wander. I notice a girl in the front of the church, sitting all alone in an otherwise empty pew. Her rose-colored curls fall loosely to her shoulders. The priest calls for the Sign of Peace. She turns around to shake hands with the old woman sitting behind her. She catches my eye and smiles at me, an azure ribbon hanging next to her ear.

  I smile back. My smile is weak. She hasn't done anything to me. It's my own mind that taunts and terrorizes me. My mind is fragmented. My skull is cracked and sprained and splintered.

  Have I forgotten something important? That question has been bothering me since I heard it. It doesn't have to mean anything. It came to me in a moment of psychosis. Why should I consider it?

  Why shouldn't I?

  The truth is, I can't trust my own mind. I've known that for a while now. I forget things. I see things. I have to take seven different medications just to keep my brain from shutting down.

  So, then...

  What could I have forgotten? Were Mom and Dad on the brink of divorce? Did somebody sabotage the car's brakes? Do I have another best friend stashed away somewhere? A secret twin sister studying in Paris?

  Why am I considering this?

  "The Lord be with you," says the priest.

  "And also with you," the parish chants back. They sound like one person. One mind in many bodies.

  * * * * *

  We stop in the bagel shop after mass. I keep telling Judas not to ruin his appetite, but he swears he'll go nuts if he doesn't get a cup of coffee. I guess it's pretty cold out, and I can't fault him for that.

  The shop, on the other hand, is overheated. The moment we step inside I start to sweat. I unzip my jacket. The windows beside the booths are fogged up where hot meets cold. Sitting at one of the booths is Sarah Ayello, a spacey girl from school.

  I wave at her while Judas gets in line at the counter. She looks at me like I'm the Eighth Wonder of the World. That's always the way it is with Sarah.

  "Are you having a good Christmas?" I ask her, just to be friendly.

  "I don't observe Christmas anymore," she intones, "now that I've converted to Wicca."

  "O-Oh. That's..."

  "Are you okay?" Sarah asks, doe-eyed. "I heard you were in an accident."

  And I thought I had a bad memory. "I'm okay." We had this talk months ago.

  "Your hair's so short now. It's even shorter than mine."

  "That's..." Maybe I shouldn't have struck up a conversation.

  "I have to go," Sarah says, standing. It's as if she's answering a call only she can hear. "Bye, Wendy. I hope you feel better."

  She glides out the door like a specter-girl, her half-eaten muffin left behind. I stare after her in confusion.

  "You know her?" Judas asks. He makes his way over to me, coffee cup in hand.

  "A little," I hedge. "Let's go home."

  We head out the door. The snowfall's dwindled to a slow and leisurely drift. A fine white dust coats the sidewalk, trampled to a misty slush underfoot. I zip my jacket up again. I can't feel my fingers. The city lights drown out the lights of the stars.

  Judas tilts his head back to watch the falling flakes. I grab his coffee cup before he can drop it.

  "Hell," Judas says. "Last time it snowed I was..."

  He doesn't finish. I wonder why.

  We walk to the street corner. The asphalt is slippery. Maybe I shouldn't have worn my Mary Janes.

  "Do you think this universe wants to live?" I ask.

  Judas looks at me funny beneath the stoplight. "You asking me if the universe is sentient?"

  I don't know. It's smaller than us. It's bigger than us. It's everything. But it's only the tip of the iceberg. I don't even know what you would call that.

  "Is it fighting to live?" I ask. "Or is it fighting to die?"

  He takes back his coffee cup. He drinks from it. I thought he didn't like coffee. I guess I was wrong.

  "We live in something called a Fine-Tuned Universe," Judas says. "Do you know about three-degree kelvin radiation?"

  "Yes." Kory told me months ago. He told me the Big Bang's still giving off radiation. The universe is still expanding.

  "Right, well, if that radiation were even one degree hotter than it is right now--if it were four-degree kelvin radiation, or five, or six--we'd all be dead. Matter of fact, there wouldn't be a universe at all. The air would be so hot, all the hydrogen would fuse together. Without hydrogen, there wouldn't be any stars. No stars means no Periodic Table. No Period Table means no water, no oxygen, no nothing."

  It's all very deliberate. It's hard to just dismiss the universe as some cosmic accident.

  "In astrophysics," Judas says, "there's something called an Anthropic Principle. Basically these physicists all believe that the universe is as Fine-Tuned as it is because we need it to be. Because we're observing it."

  Then we're back to phenomenology. "They really think so? Actual scientists?"

  "Actual scientists. The stability of the universe is predicated on way too many coincidences. The three-degree kelvin radiation is just one of them. At some point, it all stops looking coincidental."

  "But...can we really call the universe 'stable' if it's on the verge of dying?"

  That's what I want to know. I want to know what this universe wants.

  But if this universe exists just because we're looking at it...

  Maybe I just don't want the burden of making a choice. Maybe I want to run away.

  I want Azel.

  "Kiddo," Judas says. "Anybody ever tell you you can be a mite depressing?"

  I rub my cold cheeks, embarrassed. "Blame my brain."

  "I do. Don't worry."

  We cross the street.

  "I think it's Kory's fault," I say.

  "Kory?"

  "The sculptor kid? A couple floors down?"

  "Can't place him," Judas says.

  "Glasses and earrings?"

  "Probably a good thing I can't place him."

  Well, that's kind of mean. "And Azel," I go on. "Those boys are crazy. They make me question...pretty much everything. Until my head hurts." Often literally.

  "Azel. The Arab kid?"

  "Why do you word it like that?" I wonder whether he would call Sarah Ayello "the Italian kid." I doubt it, somehow. But then, I'm not sure she's even Italian.

  "I gotta meet this kid," Judas decides. "He spends too much time around you."

  "What's wrong with that?"

  "He's a boy."

  "Jude..."

  "He's the one who gave you that cat, right? Where's he getting all these spare cats from?"

  "It's just the one cat. It's his sister's friend's."

  Now that I think about it, I don't actually remember Azel handing the cat to me. This is what I mean when I say I can't trust my mind anymore.

  Azel. I think of the Pavane. I think of the way he danced for his semester project. He was like smoke. He was like water. I want to see him dance again.

  I almost forgot about my own project. The Lynx Arc Supercluster. "Did you get my report card?" I ask.

  We're just outside the shooting gallery now, the one with the spinning holo disc. "What do you mean?" Judas asks.

  "They didn't send them out yet?"

  "Send out what?"

  The snow's stopped falling. "Report cards. I thought they'd send them out over the winter break."

  Judas looks at me, candy pink lights from the holo disc spilling down his scarred face. I can hear muffled voices inside the shooting gallery. The cops can't be both
ered cleaning up messes like these. It's pretty scary how blatant that is.

  "Are you talking about school?" Judas asks.

  Why is he being so--? "Yes. My report card." I want to know which subjects I'm failing.

  Judas takes my shoulder in a big, skeletal hand. He draws me away from the rotting, boarded building. I almost thank him. It's on the tip of my tongue.

  "You know you haven't been to school," Judas says. "Right?"

  A sinking feeling settles in my stomach. "It's winter break..."

  "Wendy."

  He's wrong. He's wrong. I say he's wrong.

  "You haven't been back to school," Judas says. "That's what we agreed on back in September. You weren't ready."

  He's wrong.

  "Do you remember the accident?"

  "Of course I remember the--" I don't remember the accident. My voice is high, tight.

  "Wendy."

  "I want to go home."

  "We're going."

  No, we're not. That's not home. That's not home.

  I want to go home.

  * * * * *

  It's quiet in my bedroom. Dark. I pretend that if I strain my ears hard enough, I can hear the snow falling outside the stucco walls.

  I haven't back to school since June.

  That doesn't make sense. It absolutely does not make sense. Of course I've been back to school. I've been taking Comp and Precalc. I've been taking History. I just finished a take-home test on Vercingetorix. I--

  I turn the lamp on low. I root around underneath my bed. I stowed my take-home test underneath the box spring. It's there, I know it's there.

  My hand meets bare wood. I find a striped blue legging, rolled up and forgotten. No take-home test.

  I sit back on my knees. The hardwood's hard on my knees, my kneecaps sore.

  This doesn't make sense.

  He's wrong. Judas has to be wrong. Of course I've gone to school, because where else have I been going everyday? And what about all those paintings Miss Rappaport made me hand in for homework? Where did they go when I finished painting them?

  Did I finish painting them? Did I paint them?

  No. No, I can't start thinking like this, because this is insane, because of course I've gone to school, because--