Swansong (16 page)

“Huh?  No,” I realize.  “I should probably do that.”

It’ll be a watercolor, I decide.  I love watercolor paintings.  When you put watercolors on canvas, you can never be sure whether they’ll retain their original shape as they dry.  Water is unpredictable.  I think that makes it closer to reality than any other artform.

“What about you?” I ask.  “Are you going to submit your universal model?”

“Probably,” Kory says, but frowns.  “It’s certainly the best thing I’ve ever made.  As for whether or not Ms. Bertrand would agree…”

“How can she disagree?  It’s beautiful.”

“It’s a tad esoteric.  My calculations aside, what if it’s inaccurate?”

“But you seemed so sure…”

“For years, science said there was nothing smaller than the atom.  Then physicists discovered neutrinos and the Higgs boson.  Today I could be right.  Tomorrow I could be wrong.”

I want to console him, but I don’t know how.  I think about the macrocosmic snowflake, the snowglobe filled with galaxies.  I bite down on the inside of my lip.

“Kory?”

“Hm?”

“What’s at the center of the universe?”

Light.  Glowing and dimming.  Giving and dying.

Kory lifts his head.  He adjusts his glasses.  “I’m not sure I follow…”

“I mean—we know what’s at the core of the planet.  We know it’s an alloy, and it’s as hot as the sun.  Do we know what’s at the core of the universe, too?”

Kory wipes his glasses on his shirt.  He looks so strange without his glasses, his eyes small and unrecognizable.

“Thinking about the universe the way we think about Earth is fallacious,” Kory says.  He replaces his specs.  “To begin with, the planet is a solid ball.  You can conceptualize it as a baseball, or an orange.  Much of the universe, on the other hand, consists of empty voids.  Current information indicates that the universe is finite, but unbounded.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means if you start off at Point A, and you travel long enough, far enough across the universe—assuming you somehow don’t die first—you’ll eventually arrive back at Point A.  Asking ‘Where is the center of the universe?’ is like asking which country belongs at the center of a world map.  It all depends on your perspective.”

I try to take this in.

“In other words,” Kory says, “
you
are at the center of the universe.  Wherever you are, at any given moment.”

My fingers go numb.  Dizzy spots dance across my eyes.

“Say, Wendy…”

“Y-Yeah?”

“Why are you asking all these questions?  I didn’t think you had a mind for physics.”

I try to think up a lie.

I’m not fast enough.

“Wendy.”

“Why is Jupiter closer than Mars?” I blurt out.

Kory looks at me, slowly.

“In elementary school, they teach you the order of the planets.  Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter.  The next one over from Earth is Mars.  Then why does Jupiter look closer than Mars?  Jupiter’s the one with the clouds, right?  The big one?  With all the moons?”

Please help me.  Somebody, please help me.

Kory’s eyelashes are very long.  I never noticed before.  Tawny, they beat like butterfly wings when he blinks once; twice; when he reaches for his milk glass, but doesn’t pick it up.

“Mars moves twelve times faster than Jupiter does,” Kory says.

I stare at my knuckles.  They’ve gone white.

“Mars moves twelve times faster than Jupiter.  If Jupiter looks closer—it’s because—that’s—Mars is busy circling the sun at high speed.  Jupiter’s so slow, it’s almost standing still.”

A dull headache starts behind my ears.

“How could you have known that?  Wendy?”

“Something’s wrong with me, Kory.”

“I don’t understand.”

I never thought I’d hear him say that. 
I don’t understand.

* * * * *

“You’ve been seeing things?” Kory asks.  “Since your coma?”

I can barely bring myself to nod.

“That’s—well.”  Kory drinks the last of his milk.  “That happens.  Quite a bit, I should add.”

“Azel and I went to the library.”  Did I ever bring back the dictionary I borrowed?  “One of the neuroscience books—it—”  I can’t find the words.  “It said it was normal.”

“Hallucinations after brain damage?  Yes…”

“But it can’t be normal, Kory.  It’s so real, and it’s horrifying—it was beautiful—but then—”

“You retain knowledge a normal hallucination shouldn’t have imparted on you.”

“That’s—”  Yes.

“Still, s
uch a phenomenon is not unheard of.  Have you ever heard of xenoglossy?”

I shake my head.

“It’s when a coma patient wakes up speaking a language he previously couldn’t speak.  Or I should say she, because the only documented cases I’m familiar with were both young girls.  The more recent one was in 2010.  A Croatian girl woke up from a coma fluent in German.”

Geisteswissenschaft
.  Rudolf Steiner.

“The other one?” I ask.

“1931.  A British girl woke up speaking Ancient Egyptian.”

“God,” I murmur, stunned.

“We don’t know everything there is to know with regards to the brain.  Maybe we never will.  Maybe that’s not a bad thing.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Takes the mystery out of things, doesn’t it?  When you don’t have any questions left.”

I think I’m tired of mysteries.

Kory grasps my hand, shocking me.  “It’s going to be okay, you know.”

I smile.  “You don’t know that.”

“Excuse me?  Of course I know.  What do you think I’m here for?  I’m supposed to be your bodyguard, aren’t I?”

My vision blurs.  My eyes feel hot.  The hotness trickles wetly down my cheeks.

I’m crying.  When did that happen?

“Did I say something wrong?” Kory asks.  “I have Tourette’s,” he reminds me dubiously.

“No, you don’t.”

“Mom says I do.”

I wipe my face hastily.  I smile.  “I think you’re the best friend I have right now.”

Kory opens his mouth.  He closes it.  Maybe I’m the one who said something wrong.  I don’t want to push him away.

“I’ve never had one of those before,” Kory says starkly.

I want so badly to hug him.  Why don’t I stand up and hug him?

In the end, I’m a coward.  That’s the one truth I can always rely on.

* * * * *

Tuesday.  I still haven’t gone back to school.  I set up a canvas against my closet door and shake up a can of acrylic sealer.  I wet my sable brush with water and dip it in the paint can next to me, my legs folded, the floor my seat.  My bedroom doesn’t have any windows; painting in here might not be the smartest idea.  But I like the smell of the fumes.  They’re cleansing, somehow.  They make me feel alive.

My hand is still and unscarred.  I mix the watercolors on my palette.  I touch my paintbrush to the canvas.  The fabric stains and dribbles emerald green.

I hear somebody knocking on the front door.  I lay my paintbrush on my palette.  I lay my palette on the floor.  I get up—in pajamas still, in socks—and trail outside.

Mr. Tenner, my social worker, stands on the other side of the apartment door.  He’s as twitchy and fidgety as I remember, his hands flying continuously to the glasses on his face.  I let him inside.  He follows me into the kitchen.  I ask him if he wants a muffin.  He says he’s on a diet.  I don’t understand why he’s on a diet when he looks like he weighs less than I do.

“So no school today?” Mr. Tenner asks.  He puts his suitcase on the table.

“I’m not feeling well,” I tell him.

“Oh.”

“But I’m still doing my homework.”  Please don’t take me away from Judas.

“That’s very good.  Very responsible of you, very good.”

I haven’t eaten today.  I take a muffin for myself.

“So—school hard on you?”

“No,” I lie.  “It’s fine.  It’s nice.”

“Oh.”

I’m not hungry.  I wish I were.

“Everything good with your brother?”

“He’s the best,” I say.  I mean it.

“He’s not too hard on you, is he?”

Jude being hard on me is so unfathomable, I start to laugh.  I stop myself, worried that Mr. Tenner will interpret it the wrong way.

“He makes sure I don’t, you know,” I say, “crack my head open going down the stairs, things like that.  He’s good.  He sets guidelines.”

“And does it bother you when his parole officer drops by?”

“I—”  I pause.  I’ve never met Jude’s parole officer.

That I know of.

“Are you taking your medicines?” Mr. Tenner asks me.

What’s that got to do with—?  “Yes.  Is it okay for you to talk to me when my brother isn’t here?”

“Yes.”  Mr. Tenner jots something down on his notepad.  “That should be enough for today.  I’ll be in touch with your therapist.”

“Alright…”

Dazed, I watch him leave.  I leave my muffin half-eaten on the table.

Parole officer?

* * * * *

It doesn’t surprise me that I can’t remember Jude’s parole officer.  Every day I forget something seemingly small, seemingly trivial.  My mind is porous; unreliable.  I’m my own betrayer.

I sit at the kitchen table, my cell phone on my lap.  My fingers act of their own accord. 
Judas Rozas
, I type into the search bar.

Only a handful of results return to me.  Most of them are outdated articles from when Judas was nineteen. 
Boy Sentenced to Prison for Manslaughter
, the headlines read.  Opening them doesn’t give me the name of his parole officer—just old photographs of Jude as a teenager.  The photographs are heartbreaking.  He looks like a different person.  He looks like a little boy.  His shoulders are frail, his arms thin, his widow’s peak half-hidden under curtains of lank hair.  Widow’s peak.  That’s something we don’t have in common.  His eyes are mean gray slits on a freckled face.  He stares blankly into the camera as if he’s lost his soul.  I don’t want to believe that’s true.

The compulsion nags at the back of my mind.  I bring up the search engine a second time.  I open the Tillamook County news.  I search for the date of the car accident.

Ten different articles fill my cell phone screen.  Swallowing fear, I click on the third.

Four Killed in Motor Vehicle Accident
, the tagline reads.

I beg the words to stay with me.  It’s so difficult to read these days.  It’s the brain damage, it’s got to be.

A road collision at the intersection of Blue Spring and Broad Ridge claimed four lives this Thursday:  Ash Galloway, 27; Jocelyn Jordan, 16; Maria Rozas, 52; Hector Rozas, 55.  Wendy Rozas, 16, is in critical condition.

Investigators believe a corner crop obscured both drivers’ vantage points, causing Galloway to crash head-first with the passenger-side of the apposite vehicle.  Jordan, who sat in the passenger seat, was killed on impact.  Hector and Maria Rozas were ejected through the back window.

Authorities have not yet released the results of Galloway’s toxicology report.

County officials are calling for a traffic light installed at the junction.

Thrown out the back window.  Oh, God.  Mom.  Dad.  The pain they must have been in while they waited for help to arrive.  Oh, God, I can’t—I shouldn’t have read—

Back window.

Mom and Dad were in the back.  Joss was in the passenger seat.

Oh.

Oh, no.

My cell phone falls to the floor with a clatter.  It skitters somewhere under the kitchen cabinet.  My head splits wide open, pain devouring me, devouring my thoughts.  It burns me from the inside out.  It scorches my tears before they can fall.

* * * * *

Wednesday.  No school.  No leaving my bed.

It’s dark in my bedroom.  The paint fumes are faint in the air.  I wrap my blanket around me like a cocoon and pretend I can block out the rest of the world.  I pretend I exist on a plane where I wasn’t behind the steering wheel, where I didn’t kill my parents and my best friend.

My hair sticks to my face in patches of dry tears.  It’s funny.  My hair doesn’t even reach my chin.  I don’t look like me.  Maybe I’m not me.  Maybe I’m some other person.  Maybe some other person is responsible for all this heartache.

I killed my family and my best friend.  I killed an innocent stranger.

His family.  They must be so—they must be devastated.  As devastated as I’ve felt all these months.

I didn’t have the right to feel devastated.  I didn’t know.  All these months, I didn’t know.