Swansong

  Wouldn't Kory have mentioned it if I hadn't gone to school? All those times we talked about homework. All those times he shadowed me between classes. He--

  Oh.

  Oh, no. No. No. Don't tell me that. Don't tell me that.

  My stomach tightens and convulses and dark spots coast across my eyes and don't tell me that.

  "Wendy?"

  I vomit on the floor, the back of my throat raw and aching, my stomach crushed against my spine.

  A gentle hand rests on the clammy curve of my back. I know who it is even before I turn around.

  "Leave me alone!" I shout at her.

  Am I shouting? I think I'm shouting. I don't know that I'm shouting. I don't know anything. I don't know. I don't know. Kory isn't real. No. I don't know.

  I finally have it: the proof that I have lost my mind.

  "Wendy," Annwn says.

  "Leave me alone," I beg, my eyes hot, my eyes dry.

  Annwn is beautiful. That's always the way with Great Whites. Soft, rosy curls. Warm, sleepy brown eyes. She looks like she just came from mass, her skirt pencil-straight, clasped shut with a belt.

  An azure ribbon hangs next to her right ear.

  Was she ever real?

  What is-- Is there anything that's real?

  "There's no way to know for sure," Annwn says thoughtfully. "You've said it yourself: Everything that happens happens inside your head."

  The Renaissance frescoes. The concert pianist. A friend's laughter. A mother's embrace.

  I want to scream, but I don't.

  I wonder if I'm awake right now. I wonder if I'm asleep.

  "That's another good point. How do you know you ever woke up?"

  "Ever..."

  "From your hospital bed, I mean. Suppose you're still in your coma right now. Or...suppose you even died in the car accident. There's no possible way for you to know."

  I'm screaming.

  I'm not screaming. If I were screaming, Judas would run into the room, ask me what's wrong, take me into his arms.

  But I'm screaming.

  "Shh," Annwn says. She's as soothing as a mother. She's as treacherous as a mother shark. Mother sharks eat their young. Some eat their young while they're still in the womb.

  She's going to eat me alive.

  "I've lost my mind," I say. I have proof. I have proof.

  "It's sad, isn't it? This world?"

  The vomit is gone. It's crazy. That's crazy. I can't feel it when I put my hands on the floor. I can't taste it in my mouth when I swallow.

  I'm crazy.

  "I'm sorry, Wendy," Annwn says. "I really am. I didn't want to see you get hurt like this. I care about what happens to you."

  "Bullshit."

  "I do care about what happens to you. I am you."

  She's me.

  She's really me.

  Everyone is me. I'm everyone.

  I'm insane.

  "This world is so sad," Annwn says. "Seven billion strangers... Or was it one hundred and eight?"

  Kory said it was one hundred and eight. One hundred and eight billion unique individuals have walked this planet.

  He was not one of them.

  No. That's ridiculous. Of course he was one of them. How many times has he--how many times have I--

  "I can take you away," Annwn promises me. "Let's go right now. Let's run away. We'll go to a world much kinder than this one. You can have your parents, and your friends, and your brother, and Azel. You can be whole. That world is waiting for you. The whole wide world is at your fingertips. All you have to do is make it."

  Come away with me, Wendy, the Pied Piper says.

  "Come away with me."

  She wants to take me away.

  I don't like this. I don't like this world. It's too cold. It's too cruel. It took everything from me and gave me something in return--and then it took that away, too. Nothing is real. Nothing I love is real.

  Judas is real.

  I don't know. I don't know that Judas is real. I don't know that anything is real. Kory is real. Kory isn't real.

  Azel.

  Oh. Oh, God--

  Annwn stands. She's slow and lithe, a snake uncoiling itself from slumber. That's not fair to snakes. She's a Great White moving in on its prey. I am just a seal to her. She doesn't know the difference.

  She's me in my red pleather skirt and my warm black leggings. The skirt I bought two years ago. The leggings I bought last year. She's me with my thick gold hair, chin-length, the smattering of freckles on my face, the discoloration on my throat and the jagged burn scar on my cheek. Her eyes are my eyes, gray and glistening like a storm-tossed sea. Her left wrist is wrapped in a chain bracelet. A gilded swan with spread wings is its solitary, jingling charm.

  She lifts her right hand. My hand. Her hand is balled in a fist. My fist. She points her index finger; she raises her thumb. A gun. That's stupid. We aren't children anymore. Children grow up.

  She'll never grow up. Never.

  Come away with me.

  Wendy brings the gun to her temple. Wendy cocks the hammer--her thumb.

  Wendy's head blasts open. Her eyes--her skull--ribbons of blood streaming through the air--azure ribbon hitting the floor with a slab of her pierced ear. Her body sways off kilter, knees buckling.

  My head shatters and screams with pain.

  From her head emerges the whole entire universe. Streaming cosmos tear down the walls of my bedroom. Blue lights dance between black matter and bright quasars and black holes. I can feel the shuddering vibrations in my skin and bones. The blue lights wrap together and wind themselves into galaxies. I watch them twist and spiral into ornate pinwheels. I watch them lose their color and flare with gold. The hearts of the galaxies pulsate with green-white light where the stars are at their densest. I want to reach for them. I want to wrap myself in them. I want to hide there, safe, and never leave.

  From the center of a spinning galaxy emerges a watercolor nebula, pearly with its white, iridescent sheen. It unfolds its wings. It flies toward me until I can't see anything else, until there's nothing else, until it's all around me. It submerges me in cool white.

  Mom.

  I can't hear Mom's song.

  I hear one hundred--two hundred--three hundred magicians calling out for something they can't see. I see hunched shoulders, guarded eyes, an unguarded smile.

  I see nothing.

  * * * * *

  I wake up with my cheek pressed against the hardwood floor. I don't know what time it is. I don't have a window, or a clock. I don't smell vomit. I don't smell blood. I'm positive I'm alone.

  Alone. What's wrong with alone? We're alone and screaming when we come into the world. We don't know who that strange woman is who keeps putting her arms around us. That strange woman isn't here anymore to put her arms around me. Her song has left me for good.

  Judas--

  I don't want to see Judas. Not now. He took something away from me. It's childish of me to think so. I'm so childish. I'm the Lost Boy in Kensington Gardens. I never did manage to grow up.

  The door creaks open.

  Judas--

  "Wendy?"

  It's funny. I want to lift my head, but at the same time, I don't. I'm not even sure I can move. For all that I've talked about out-of-body experiences, it finally feels like I've left my own behind.

  A pair of shoes scuffs its way across the bare floor. The shoelaces are untied. The shoes stop right in front of me. Their owner crouches down.

  Kory jostles my shoulder.

  I snap to my senses. "What are you--"

  "What are you doing?" Kory asks, indignant. "You're a mess! I thought we were going to hang out today, but you'd rather come back here and shoot up without me, is that it?"

  I stir. I push myself off the floor. My hands feel feeble, my shoulders weak. Cold numbness trickles down my spine.

  Kory peers at me, owlish behind his big round glasses. "I was only kidding," he says, contrite. "I don't mind if you shoot up without
me."

  "You're not real," I mumble.

  "Did you say something? Why do you sound as if you've got marbles in your mouth?"

  "Are you real?" I ask. He looks real. He sounds real. I don't know how I could possibly make him up, his hair a tawny, windy mess, his ears pierced with steel studs.

  Kory looks uncomfortable. "Look," he says, "I was just joking about the drugs, but if you're really on something..."

  What time is it? What day is it? I'm still in Christmas Eve clothes. I should change. I should take a shower. I should...

  I haven't been back to school since June.

  "I haven't been back to school since June."

  Kory surmises me, blank, like he's waiting for the joke I don't know how to tell.

  "It's December," Kory says slowly. "You know that, right?"

  "I haven't been going to school."

  "Right, because it's December."

  "Kory."

  Kory takes off his eyeglasses. He rubs them on his shirt.

  "Kory, Jude says I haven't been back to school all year."

  Kory slides his glasses over his eyes. He gapes at me. "Have you been cutting classes?"

  "Stop it," I beg. He isn't real.

  "Stop what? Did you forget your--oh, God, you forgot to take your meds, didn't you? Hang on, I can figure out the dosage if I read the labels--"

  "Are you even here?" I ask. "Are you even real?" I want to cry. I want to cry, but I can't--

  "Hang tight," Kory says, scrambling to stand. "I'll get you your medicines."

  Through glassy eyes, I watch him. I watch him dart this way, then that. I watch him scoop up the plastic orange pill bottles on the nighttable--the propranalol, the ativana--and slide his glasses up the bridge of his nose and read the labels intently, like the fate of the world rests in those tiny letters. The fate of my world does, I guess. He counts on his fingers--but I don't know what he's counting. He tips a few of the pills onto the nighttable. He fishes a water bottle out from under the bed and twists the cap off the top.

  "Here," Kory says, surprisingly gentle. He kneels in front of me, water in one hand, pills in the other.

  I take my meds--mostly, I suspect, to give myself something to do. Thinking is too much of a labor right now. I watch Kory carefully while I swallow propranalol, risperdal, sertraline. I half expect him to change form in front of my eyes.

  He doesn't. If anything, my vision clears. The milky haze leaves my eyes. I feel myself awakening.

  "Kory," I say.

  "Did your brother seriously go to work and just leave you here? I ought to sock him one, I swear..."

  I almost smile, because Kory's so skinny, so frail, I can't see him socking anyone. I almost smile. I don't smile.

  "My brother says I haven't been to school since June."

  Kory invites himself to sit on my bed. He raises his eyebrows at me.

  "Kory."

  "Are you sure he said that?"

  "When we were walking home from mass. I remember..."

  I remember things that didn't really happen. Like leaving my body and traveling the universe. Like--

  How many of the things that I remember happening actually ever happened?

  "Wendy," Kory says. I can tell he's struggling to stay tactful. "When I found you, you were lying face-down in your own spit. You hadn't taken your medicine. It's ten o'clock in the morning, you know that, right?"

  "I..." Where have I been going if I haven't been going to school?

  "Do you want me to call Azel?"

  Azel. Oh, no. No, he's--

  "Wendy."

  Kory kneels in front of me. His hands are lightweight on my shoulders. They're solid. I can feel him. I can see every ink-black marking in his pale brown eyes, magnified by a thousand through his giant spectacles. I count them. Seven. I count them again. Seven. I can see the cross-stitches in his cotton shirt, a white button-down splotched at the hem with--I hope--grape Koolaid.

  I don't know that I could fake those details on my own. I don't know that my imagination is good enough.

  I have imagined the entire universe. It must be pretty good.

  "Wendy," Kory says. "Of course you've been to school. I'll call Azel and he'll tell you so. I'll call Layla. I'll even call Martin."

  Layla. Martin. Are even they real? Is anyone real?

  "Judas says..." I can't finish. My voice loses its strength.

  "Wendy, are you sure Judas said that? Even if he did, are you sure you didn't misunderstand?"

  I'm not sure. I'm not sure of anything.

  I've said it before. From one moment to the next, I can't trust my own mind.

  "I've got an idea," Kory says. He sits next to me on the floor. "When Judas comes back from work, we'll ask him. Together. Alright?" He sounds just a little bit exasperated. "I can't very well be a figment of your imagination if your brother sees me, too."

  Why not? One Mind. One Mind split into billions and billions of bodies. A collective daydream. We could be dreaming together. Or we could be dreaming separately. You can't see the world through anybody's eyes but your own. One hundred and eight billion pairs of eyes. One hundred and eight billion universes.

  Annwn's a hallucination. She comes to me, tries to take me away. If I can imagine Annwn, I can imagine Kory.

  Unless I haven't imagined Annwn.

  I threw a pillow at her. She caught it.

  I...

  My head hurts. Dark, dipping, swimming pain.

  Universes. Headaches. They're the same.

  "Wendy," Kory says. The apology's on his face, in his voice, bleeding into me. It makes me feel sorry for him. "You're sick."

  I'm sick. I know I'm sick.

  I want to get away.

  "Maybe you shouldn't have come back to school this term," Kory murmurs.

  "No," I beg. No. I don't want him to say that. I don't want him to make it real.

  He--

  Kory spies something under my bed. He pulls it out, snatches it into his hands. That's always the way with him; he knows no boundaries, nothing except for his own impulses.

  It's a paper. He scans it thoroughly with his eyes. He scoffs.

  "Thank God we're still on winter break," he says. "The Battle of Alesia was in 52 BC, not 82 BC. Vercingetorix wasn't even alive in 82 BC!"

  My take-home test.

  The tears I can't shed--they freeze on my eyes. They don't fall. "Did I really write that?" What a stupid mistake...

  "See for yourself."

  Kory hands me the test. I take it in shaking hands. I read the paper.

  I smile. It hurts. Oh, I could cry.

  "It's not that bad," Kory amends quickly. I think he misjudges the look on my face. "I can help you fix it before the break ends."

  "Are you real, Kory?" Is this real?

  "I'm as real as you are," Kory assures me.

  That's not reassuring at all.

  * * * * *

  Kory convinces me to take a shower, on the grounds that I stink. If he knew subtlety, he wouldn't be Kory.

  When I make my way back to my room, in wet hair and pajamas, I find him sitting on my bed and playing with Maurice. The kitten mewls in annoyance as Kory captures her tail between his fingers.

  Azel. If Azel's not real, how could I have...

  Azel. He has to be real. He's the most real I've experienced since I lost the three people I loved.

  He has to be real. He has to be.

  I won't let him not be.

  "Why are you wearing pajamas?" Kory asks with disdain. "It's almost eleven o'clock."

  "I'm not going anywhere." I don't want to.

  "Oh," Kory says, sounding dubious. "I thought we could go to the game arcade or something."

  I want to die. I don't want to die.

  What does this world want?

  "Do you want to go to a movie?" Kory asks. "Do you want something to eat?"

  He's such a good friend. From the beginning, he's been such a good friend. It's almost as if he's actively t
rying to make sure I don't kill myself.

  He--

  I look at Kory while he's scratching Maurice behind her ears. His glasses rest low on the bridge of his nose. He looks unassuming. He looks like any other boy you might attend high school with.

  He--

  "Kory."

  Maurice curls up on the mattress for a nap. Kory lifts his head.

  Id. I want to live. Superego. I want to die.

  "Kory."

  Kory falters. He runs his hand through his hair. He stands from the bed.

  I don't know how I don't burst into tears.

  "Don't think of it like that," Kory says.

  "You're not--you're--oh, God--"

  "I'm right here, Wendy. I've been your friend all along."

  --real, he's not real, he's not--

  "What's changed? Is it that you can't prove I exist outside of your imagination? But that's true of everyone else you share the planet with. Every interaction you have with them takes place solely inside your head."

  Everything happens inside our heads. When you stand amid a scented garden, and you smell the gardenias, heavy, heady, like honey, that's just your olfactory receptors sending a combination of axons into your cranial nerve. When the boy you like kisses you on the cheek, and you feel his warm lips lingering on your skin, that's just your epithelia sending signals up your spinal cord and into your parietal lobe. Everything happens because your brain says it happens. If your brain doesn't say so, then it doesn't happen. Nothing exists outside of your head.

  Consciousness. Bioelectric pulses in your brain. I can validate my own consciousness. I can hear my thoughts as they flit in and out of my head. I can choose to verbalize them or not to verbalize them. I can't validate anyone else's consciousness. I can't see their thoughts before they turn into words. I can't prove those people exist when I'm not looking at them. The Scientific Method warns you not to believe in something you can't prove on your own. Isn't that the Anthropic Principle, too? That the universe exists in its Fine-Tuned state because we're looking at it? And what are we if not living components of the universe around us? Don't our atoms come from the stars? Don't the stars come from the Higgs boson?

  What are you if I am not looking at you?

  What am I if you are not looking at me?