He holds the basketball in his hands and eyes the hoop. I write the physics practice question in my head, trying to calculate the potential energy of the ball. Roman puts the ball down on the edge of the booth and looks at me. “You’re doing it again, aren’t you?”
“What?” I cross my arms over my chest. The woman working at the booth raises her eyebrows at me. I can tell she’s one of those moms that gets off on teenage drama. Great.
“Your science nerd thing. You’re always thinking about physics.”
My cheeks burn. “How did you know?”
His face lights up with his familiar crooked smile. “You had the same face you made when you were taking photos at the zoo. Like you’re really concentrating on something.” He turns back to the basketball hoop and takes the shot. Swoosh. It goes through the net effortlessly. FrozenRobot has game.
The woman running the booth holds up one thin finger to indicate he scored a point. Thanks for that. We can count to one. We’re suicidal, not innumerate. I nod at her to let her know we understand.
Roman turns the ball over in his hands. “I like that thinking look, though. It’s cute.”
I can’t help but laugh. I don’t think anyone in the entire history of my life has ever referred to me as cute. Even when I was little, I was always “unique”—code for not looking like everyone else in Langston—or “sweet”—code for being quiet and unassuming—but never cute.
“What?” He crouches down slightly and thrusts the ball into the air again. It bounces against the rim, but ends up falling through the net. I hold two fingers up at the woman and she gives me a weak smile.
“Yup,” she says. Her southern accent is heavy and thick. “He’s made two and he has two more left.”
Roman studies the different stuffed animals. There are rows and rows of pink pandas and fluorescent-orange tigers. I even spot a few blue elephants. “What can I win?” he asks.
She bounces up, straightening her posture, and does her best game show host impression as she stretches her arm out in front of her, making a sweeping motion in the direction of the stuffed elephants and pandas and tigers. “If you make all four shots, you can pick whatever one you want.”
“Even that huge lion?” Roman asks, craning his neck so he can get a better look at the giant lion that sits at the very top. Its mane looks like it’d be really itchy if you pressed your face to it, but it’s impressive looking nonetheless.
She smiles wide at me. “Including the lion. Is that the one you want?”
“Me?” I blink at her.
“Yeah. He’s winning the prize for you, sweetheart. Isn’t he?” She makes a clucking sound. I’ve never understood why women from Langston love to do that. I guess they feel some kind of strange affinity with the chicken population.
“I don’t think so.” I slip my hands into the pockets of my black jeans and shift my weight from my right foot to my left.
Roman pretends like he didn’t hear her comment. He prepares to make his next shot. As I watch Roman—his face pulled in concentration, his deep-set eyes wide and eager, his ropy arm muscles tensed—I wonder if he sees something similar to that when he watches me think about physics. Sure, he still looks pretty miserable, pretty FrozenRobot-ish. But yet, there’s something there, like the shadows that sometimes sneak their way into the frame of a picture. Part of me wants to reach out and grab it, bring it into focus.
All of a sudden, I realize what that shadowy something is. It’s joy. FrozenRobot loves basketball. He loves playing it. No matter how hard he tries to push that joy away, it’s there. I wonder if joy has potential energy. Or if there is potential energy that leads to joy, like a happiness serum that lingers in people’s stomachs and slowly bubbles up to create the sensation we know as happiness.
If that’s true, my black slug eats all of mine. Scratch that. Most of mine. Watching FrozenRobot play basketball has almost made me smile. Key word: almost.
He nails the third shot and the fourth shot. I’ve hardly been paying attention to the actual shots. I like his process of preparing for them more than the actual moment. The moment goes by too fast; it’s almost impossible to catch.
“So what will it be?” the woman asks. I notice she has mulberry-colored lipstick smudged on her front tooth.
“Whatever the lady wants,” Roman says, and I’m completely caught off guard.
The woman with the lipstick-stained tooth turns to me. “The lion, then?”
Any words I had are all jumbled in my throat. FrozenRobot should not be winning me prizes at the carnival. The last thing I need is more stuff to leave behind. The last thing I need is to feel more confused. I shake my head at the lady. “I don’t want anything.”
She frowns, and Roman nudges his shoulder up against mine. “C’mon, Aysel. You have to choose one. I won.”
“I know,” I sputter. “It’s just I want something else.”
The woman’s frown deepens. “These are the only prizes we have available, hon.”
I shake my head again, harder this time. “No, no. I don’t want a different prize, I just want you to give the prize he won to someone else.”
The woman raises her eyebrows in confusion.
I try my best to explain. “Like if another kid comes to play but doesn’t make any shots. Can you let them have a prize anyway?” I bite my bottom lip.
The woman puts her hands on her hips. “But how will I know what kid to give it to?”
I shrug. “Give it to the one who looks like they need it the most, whoever looks like the loneliest.”
Her nose twitches as she considers this, and then she gives me a small smile. “Okay, darling. Whatever you want. You’re going to make some little kid’s day.”
“That giant lion is going to make someone’s day,” I say, and then whisper to myself, “At least I hope so.”
As we walk away from the game booth, Roman holds out his hand. I grab it and he laces his fingers with mine. I don’t say anything. I know it’s not like that. It’s a different kind of hand-holding. It’s the way we’ll probably hold hands on April 7.
But as much as my mind knows that, a warmth still spreads over my skin. I hope he doesn’t notice. Maybe he’ll just think I have naturally sweaty palms.
“That was really cool,” he says, swinging our hands up in the air and then back down. I let him move my hand like we’re one entity. “Were you a lonely kid?”
I contemplate this for a moment. “Not always.”
He tilts his chin down so he can look me in the eye. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. I know he’s asking for me to explain.
“After what happened with my dad, I lost all my friends. Some of them distanced themselves immediately, but some of them I pushed away. It was too scary to let anyone be close to me.” I sigh. “I don’t know how to explain it.”
Roman nods. In the outside light, his eyes are a golden green, like grass that’s been stained by summer sunshine. “No, I understand. It’s like your sadness is so deep and overwhelming that you’re worried it will drown everyone else in your life if you let them too close to it.”
He gets it. “Exactly.”
He reaches out with his other hand and brushes a strand of hair away from my face. “I did the same thing, you know? I pushed my friends away. But it’s what you have to do, I think. It’s the only way.”
He’s still holding my hand, his fingers entangled with my mine, and I wonder how quickly he’d drop my hand if he knew what my dad did to Timothy Jackson. “Tell me more about it, your sadness,” he presses.
“Why?”
“I want to understand. I like understanding you. It’s been a long time since I related to someone else, but I think I get you.”
My black hole of a heart stalls, sucking all the air out of my lungs. It can’t be like this. It will only make April 7 harder. A crowd of middle school boys rushes by us and makes “oooh” and “ahhh” noises. Roman’s cheeks flush red, but he still doesn’t let go of my
hand. I feel myself blushing, too.
We stand still for a few moments, and then he lightly tugs on my hand to encourage me to keep walking and we wander the fairground in silence, our sneakers crunching the straw they’ve laid on the ground to soak up the mud.
As we approach the twirling teacups ride, Roman starts talking again. “Sometimes, for me, it feels like my grief is eating me alive. I always thought that the hardest moments would be when I remember things about her, but that’s not true. The hardest moments are when I miss her in the future. Sure, holidays are hard, but I’m talking about small things, like when we’re at the grocery store and I pass by the frozen section and imagine Madison begging Mom to buy a large pack of Popsicles.” He stops talking for a moment and lets out a low choke of a laugh. “Yeah, for six months, my mom never let me out of her sight. So she forced me to go to the grocery store with her.” He hangs his head, staring at his mud-stained shoes. “The worst part is that I know I’m the reason she’s not there to beg for Popsicles. What I wouldn’t give to see her one more time, to switch places with her.”
I tighten my grip on his hand like I’m scared that he’s going to disappear, that his grief will devour him right here on the spot.
“That’s why I draw,” he confesses. “Before Madison died, I used to sketch, but I hid it from everyone. It wasn’t something I did seriously. And let’s be real, my basketball buddies would’ve given me so much shit about it. But now I draw because sometimes it feels impossible to talk. It’s like I’m trapped in this deep hole that I can’t get out of. I draw to try to escape it, even though I know I’ll never be able to.”
I swallow the heavy lump in my throat and process everything he just confessed; I’m not sure I’ve ever heard FrozenRobot say so many words in a row before. My body aches for him and I wish there was something I could do, but I know enough to know there isn’t. There’s no saving him from his deep hole. There’s no saving me from my black slug.
“But at least you have a right to miss Madison,” I say softly.
He must understand what I’m trying to say because he asks, “Do you miss him? Your dad?”
“Yeah,” I say without hesitation. “Yeah, I do. And that’s how I know I’m crazy.”
He stops moving and turns to face me, closing the distance between our bodies. We stand chest to chest, or rather, my chin to his chest. He keeps holding my one hand and puts his other on the back of my neck. His palm is warm and clammy. Maybe, just maybe, he’s a little nervous and confused, too.
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” he whispers. “But I understand why it’s confusing. I wish it wasn’t like that for you. That none of it had happened.”
“Me too,” I breathe, my voice barely audible.
He pushes on my shoulders with his right hand to make the space between us a little wider so he can look at me. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“As a science nerd, do you believe in other universes? Do you think there’s another dimension where we’re happy? Where you still have your dad and I still have Maddie? Where we’re just a normal boy and a normal girl at the carnival?”
I drop his hand and shrug away from him. “I can’t think about that.”
He scrunches his face up and rubs the back of his neck. “How come?”
“It’s confusing.”
“And all your shit about potential energy isn’t?”
My face burns. “I don’t know. That feels different. Less hypothetical, I guess.”
I’m trying to come up with something smart to say. Something to make him understand why my jabbering about potential energy is more hard science and less science fiction, but before I can come up with anything, he says, “You know what’s confusing?”
I nod to let him know to go on.
“Watching you be so happy when you think about science. It makes me kind of . . . happy.” He slouches his shoulders and shuffles his feet. “And that’s confusing.”
I feel pressure build in the back of my throat and I know I should say something about what I saw when he was shooting hoops, but I don’t. I think of my black slug, slithering around, slurping up my potential energy for joy. I press my hand to my stomach and desperately wish that it didn’t exist, that there was a way to fix me, to fix him. I dig my nails into the flesh of my stomach and wince.
Roman reaches out and puts his hand on top of mine. “But the most confusing thing is that me being confused about seeing you happy doesn’t change anything.” He lowers his voice so only I can hear him. “I still want to die on April seventh. And I still need you to do it with me.”
All of a sudden, the carnival seems too loud. I hear the clunking of the metal Ferris wheel and the swirling of the teacups and the screams of delighted kids. I move to touch my hand to my head, but he grabs it, interlocking his fingers with mine and pulling it down to his side.
“I get it,” I say in a strained whisper. “I won’t flake on you.”
He squeezes my hand so tight, I can’t feel it anymore. I wish someone would do that to my heart.
FRIDAY, MARCH 29
9 days left
I slide into my seat just as the bell rings and toss my backpack down under my desk. Tyler nods at me. He’s been doing that recently, like he thinks that ever since we went to the zoo we’re close friends or something. I imagine the whispers this will ignite among my classmates.
Mr. Scott has written “Einstein” in sloppy blue letters on the whiteboard. He’s tapping the cap of the dry-erase marker against the board, waiting for everyone to quiet down. “Good morning, good morning.”
Some people mumble a response back to him. I stay quiet.
“Today, I want to take a break from all the math and equations and take some time to talk about theory. We’ll call it a fun Friday.” The class groans and Mr. Scott turns to the board and scribbles: “The Special Theory of Relativity.”
“Raise your hand if you’ve heard of this theory before.” He taps the board again as some people in the class raise their hands.
I’ve obviously heard of it before. Everyone knows Einstein. I bet even Mike could pick Einstein out of a lineup. And I’m sort of familiar with the theory, but it’s not like I’m going to volunteer; I hate speaking in class.
He points at Melanie Taylor. I don’t think she even raised her hand. “Want to explain it to everyone?”
Her round cheeks flush pink. “Um, I don’t know, like, that much about it.” She fiddles with one of the gaudy brass buttons on her cardigan. “But I’ve heard of Einstein. Hasn’t everyone? He’s that genius guy with crazy hair.”
See? Everyone knows Einstein. Even Melanie Taylor.
“Okay,” Mr. Scott says slowly. “Anyone else?” He surveys the room and then points at me. I’m not raising my hand. I don’t know what he’s trying to pull.
“Aysel,” he says. “Do you know anything about the theory?”
I shrug and shake my head. It’s a combination of moves that make me vaguely look like I’m doing some kind of dance—the dance of I-don’t-know and Please-please-please-don’t-force-me-to-answer.
“Come on now. I’m sure you know something. Given your last test score, physics seems to be an area of natural interest for you.”
Some people in the class whistle and make stupid howling noises.
I never understand why teachers think shouting out that someone got a good score on a test will help their social standing. Besides, my score on the last test only proves I was able to learn what Mr. Scott taught me, not that I know anything beyond that. “Come on, Aysel,” he prompts. “Take a stab at it.”
I want to take a stab at you, I think bitterly, and tap my fingers on the top of my desk. It’s a good thing I didn’t say that aloud. Stacy Jenkins and her posse would have gone nuts. The thought even scares me a bit and I wish I could take it back, erase it.
“Aysel,” he urges, and there’s a desperation in his voice. I almost feel sorry for Mr. Scott. His life must be pretty terr
ible if I’m the student he’s depending on. I wish I could tell him he needs to place his bets elsewhere, that I’m a losing ticket. I wonder what the physics term for that is. Sure, there are dead stars. But at least before they died, they were stars.
And their death was a supernova—their death demanded attention. I’m pretty sure my death won’t qualify as a supernova. No one is going to be around to see my energy go out. Except maybe Roman, but I doubt he’ll be paying much attention.
“Aysel,” he repeats. It’s as if he thinks it’s some magic word that is suddenly going to jump-start my brain and turn me into the type of girl who would know the answer.
Mr. Scott and I engage in a staring contest. He doesn’t blink.
Finally I give up and I say, “Doesn’t it have to do with how our perception of things can’t always be trusted? Like our human mind is too slow to be able to fully comprehend things that are fast.”
“Things that are fast?” He rolls his wrist in the air, urging me to go on.
“Like the speed of light. Doesn’t it have to do with the speed of light? I think the special theory of relativity has to do with light and then there’s the other theory he came up with.”
“The general theory of relativity,” Mr. Scott adds.
“Yeah. And that one mixes gravity in the equation.”
“Perfect.” Mr. Scott gives me the cheesiest thumbs-up and I want to fade into the ether. In these moments, it always feels like my skin is too thin, like everyone can see right inside me, can see my empty and dark insides.
“You’re exactly right, Aysel. Bravo.” He grins like he has no idea how uncomfortable this situation is.
I pull at the sleeve of my striped shirt and stare straight ahead at the board. Mr. Scott goes on to explain that Einstein transformed the whole field of physics with this theory. He gives us the most basic explanation of the special theory of relativity. He explains that nothing travels faster than light and that light is always measured at the same speed, no matter how fast you move or in what direction you move. Basically, the speed of light is constant. We can’t ever travel faster than light and we have no way of slowing it down.