Cure for the Common Universe (16 page)

Aurora bent over, lifted the hem of her long wool skirt, and pulled a smooshed dandelion puffball from her sock. I gave her a look like,
Where in the hell did you get a dandelion and how did it survive in your sock?
She didn't notice and held the puffball up against the night sky.

“The dandelion is the flower of the cosmos,” she said.
“The yellow flower represents the sun, the white blossom the moon, and the scattered seeds the stars.”

“Do they collapse and fall through the universe?” I asked sarcastically.

“Sorta.” Aurora handed me the dandelion. “Hold this up so the blossom covers the moon. It works better if the moon's full, but this should do.”

Why the hell not?
I could use a good fortune right then. I closed one eye and lifted the dandelion so its sphere of white seeds nearly fit inside the moon's light.

“Blow,” Aurora said.

I blew. The white seeds anticlimactically tumbled right over the roof's edge. Aurora looked upward, though, as if they were swirling among the stars. She stared into the sky so long, I swore I could see the Milky Way flow.

My knee started to jitter impatiently.

“Orion,” she finally said.

I looked at the only constellation I knew—three stars in a glittery belt. “What does that mean?”

I wanted her to say,
You are going to get out of here Thursday night, right in the nick of time, having earned one million points by being a badass in all events—physical, mental, and emotional alike—proving to your dad and G-man and Casey and all the girls in your high school that you have more talent in the real world than they ever could have imagined, and then you're going to go on your date with Gravity, and you are going to charm the pants off her. Only, not at the restaurant. That part will happen later.

“Orion is a warrior,” Aurora said.

“That sounds good,” I said, crossing my flabby arms.

“He slays beasts and has a huge ego.” She pinched her finger and thumb together. “But then he gets killed by a tiny little scorpion.”

“Oh.”

“In another version he tries to win over this girl, but her dad blinds him.”

“Ugh.”

I hadn't even thought about Gravity's parents. Having one terrifying dad was enough.

“The story
I
like,” Aurora said, “is the one where he's trying to catch these seven sisters, the Pleiades.” She pointed to a cluster of stars to the right of Orion's belt. Then she traced a few inches left to a triangle of stars between the two constellations. “But the sisters are protected by the bull, Taurus. Orion believes he's a hero, going after these girls.”

“Isn't he?” I asked.

Aurora shrugged. “He probably could have defeated the bull, but then there was the catasterism.”

I winced and crossed my legs. “He gets castrated?”

“No. ‘Catasterism' means the girls transformed into stars.”

Why was everyone transforming into stars and expanding away from me?

“Orion will be chasing those sisters for the rest of eternity,” Aurora said with a sigh, as if the idea brought her peace.

We fell silent. The star chart bent in the wind.

I don't know what made me say what I said next—Orion chasing something he could never catch, Aurora's trying to connect to a boyfriend who didn't care about her, the ever-expanding universe . . .

“My mom's an addict,” I said.

Aurora looked at me, attentive as the moon. I stared at my shoes.

“She used to wake me up in the middle of the night and we'd play
Dr. Mario
until four, five in the morning. I didn't know why she couldn't sleep. I was just excited because I got to stay up all night playing games.”

I scuffed my feet and remembered those late nights snuggling up by her side, flipping multicolored pills onto dancing viruses.

“My parents got divorced when I was eight, and I stayed with my dad,” I said. “When I was nine, he flew me out to see her, but . . . she didn't show up to the airport. I waited with the flight attendant for ten hours, staring at strangers' faces, hoping each face would be hers. She never came.” I got that burning sensation in my eyes and blinked it away. “When I got home, my dad told me why my mom acted the way she did. He told me horror stories about drugs and alcohol so that I would lead a more disciplined life like he had. And for a while it worked. I always studied, always read, always cleaned up my room. I never drank or smoked pot. I was afraid that whatever addiction had gotten my mom would get me too. So I played video games instead. Ha.” I kicked at the gravel on the roof.
“I think that's why he sent me here. He doesn't want me to become like her.”

“Do you want to become like her?” Aurora said.

I kept my eyes on my shoes. I was afraid if I looked up, I'd start crying. “My mom's the nicest person I know. In, like, a she's-my-best-buddy sort of way.” I cleared my throat. “There was this feeling . . . when I was eight. I loved my mom so much, it hurt. And that's the feeling she left me with. It's never gone away. I've only seen her three times since. My dad is the one who decides when that happens. And even then, yeah, sometimes she's too messed up to show.”

The stars wavered in unspilled tears. I felt like my insides were unspooling.

Aurora suddenly stomped on the roof between my legs. “Got it!”

I jumped. “Augh! What?”

She grew bashful. “I was pretending to step on a scorpion for you. Never mind. It was just pretend.”

“You're weird,” I said. I pinched my eyes and tried to lose that vulnerable feeling. “So.” I cleared my throat again. “What does Orion mean for my future?”

Aurora stared at the roof for a beat. Then she threw her head back with a sniff and examined the night sky again, her eyes shining.

“You're going to be here for a very long time, Miles Prower.”

I scratched my arm, annoyed. I had poured my heart out
to this girl; the least she could have done was give me a good fortune.

I tossed the empty dandelion stem off the roof. “I preferred the science where stars were being crushed to death.”

I walked over to the Silver Lady.

“Do constellations count for points?” I asked.

The Silver Lady gave me a teacherly look. “Constellations aren't science.”

“Yeah, I know.” I looked at the sky. “Sucks that space is trying to extinguish all those beautiful stars.”

“Actually,” she said, following my gaze, “it isn't space that does it. Stars are crushed by their own gravity. They're fighting against themselves. Sorry if I wasn't clear.”

Huh. Maybe I didn't sympathize with stars then.

I handed the Silver Lady my empty star chart. “We found zero.”

I got my scroll stamped and was on my way downstairs when Fezzik “casually” ambled up to the Silver Lady and set his giant frame on the end of a lawn chair. The whole thing tipped forward, and he instinctively grabbed her arm, practically ripping it out of its socket.

Smooth move, Emperor.

Still, I wished him luck. Someone had to get something out of star class.

T
he next morning I was on fucking
fire
: 3,000 points for running laps; 1,000 for unsarcastically high-fiving G-man; 2,000 for helping Cooking Mama make a kick-ass parfait; 1,000 for squeegeeing the Feed tables; and 3,000 for complimenting everyone's shitty art pieces while I cleaned their paintbrushes.

If my dad wanted me to be nice and do chores at home, all he had to do was establish a point system that awarded a date with a beautiful girl at the end—not in a prostitution way.

In the Feed, Meeki and Aurora discussed something in low voices. Aurora wiped tears from her cheeks. I ignored them and ate my tuna salad while Soup drove a green bean around his lunch tray, pulling tight turns around “mashed potato mountain” and making jumps off “drumstick ramp.”

“You gonna come in last place for me today, buddy?” I asked.

“So hard!” he said.

•  •  •

I stood on a dune overlooking Dry Dry Desert Track. It was shaped like a clamshell (or a kitten's paw print, according to Soup). Despite its adorable shape, racing on it seemed diabolical. From the starting line racers could gun it for a couple hundred feet, until they hit a sharp right turn, four wide wiggles, and finally another straight shot to the finish line.

My heart thumped in my throat. So much rode on this race. I
had
to walk away with the gold.

The sun beat down, making invisible snakes wave off the sand and cooking me in my black shirt. I waved my collar, getting some air onto my chest. At least in
Mario Kart
I never had to worry about sweat dripping into my eyeballs.

Something soft dabbed my forehead. Soup, topless, held out his shirt.

“You can use it as a bandana,” he said.

“Yeah, no thanks.”

We descended the dune and joined the other Fury Burds by the lumpy blue tarp. “The big Chocobo race!” Fezzik called, spraying Windex on the visors of our crash helmets. Soup grabbed a rag to help. Meeki cracked her knuckles. Aurora had one eye shut and was tracing the track with her finger.

The coach whistled, and the players gathered around the big blue lumpy tarp. He explained that each racer was to complete three laps around the track with minimal corner cutting. Then he yanked the tarp off six go-karts.

“Now
this
is kart racing!” Soup said. “Get it?” He poked
his finger into my side. “Miles? Did you get the
Star Wars
joke I just made?”

“I need you to stop talking immediately.”

“Okay.”

The karts' paint jobs had been sanded away, leaving the slight silhouette of the Happy Sun Summer Camp logo on the gray metal. That reminded me. The facility was still in beta. I would do whatever it took to win—switch tires, trade karts, even try to convince Soup to ride on the hood of my kart and spit gasoline into my carburetor.

Navi swirled to life around my shoulders. There had to be some way to take advantage of this.

“Players?” G-man clapped his hands. “Before you get out there and shred some rubber, I need to make a quick safety announcement.” He placed his hands together as if pleading with us. “This is not
Gran Turismo
, okay? This is not
Mario Kart
. So no bumping into each other, and no throwing banana peels. Ha-ha.”

No one laughed.

Behind his back, Scarecrow and I stared each other down. G-man had not said anything about
Twisted Metal
.

“I've put a bit of red tape on each of your speedometers,” G-man said. “You are not to go above twenty-five miles per hour, or else you'll be disqualified. Is that understood?”

“Yes!” Soup said.

“I need to hear everyone say it,” G-man said.

“Yes,” we all said.

Ugh. Why didn't he just have us race sloths instead? Navi wilted and vanished. Maybe there wouldn't be a way to cheat.

“Don't look glum, guys,” G-man said. “You get to ride in real go-karts! Not just steer one with a control paddle. This'll be a rush!” He gave us two thumbs-up. “I need to go do expense reports, but have fun!” He clapped again and then jogged back toward Video Horizons.

The coach cleared his throat. “Master Cheefs will get five seconds added to their final time, the Sefiroths will get minus five.”

Great. The blue shell of Video Horizons. Now I had to worry about the Sefiroths, too.

“Thirteen racers will compete in three separate races,” the coach said. “The gold, silver, and bronze medal winners will be determined by the fastest finish times. Here are your brackets.”

He tossed his clipboard onto the ground, and the players crowded around it.

I was in the third bracket:

Dryad

Soup

Sir Arturius

Me

Lion

Thank God Soup was there. At least I wouldn't come in last.

“Dude,” Lion said to Tin Man nearby. “I'm gonna be like that kid that ran over his dad after he took his copy of
Halo
away.” He snarled out an engine sound as he drove an invisible car over an imaginary body. “B-dump, b-dump. Ha-ha . . . What are
you
lookin' at?”

I quickly looked away.

“Yay! Miles, we're racing together!” Soup said, tugging on my sleeve. “I'm going to name my kart Dr. Vroom. What are you gonna name yours?”

“I don't name karts.”

The Gravitator,
I thought.

The first kart engine grumbled to life. The low, dirty sound awakened something in me. At first I thought it was the cold metal of fear. But as it spread from my chest and became a tap in my feet, a clench in my fists, mercury sloshing through my head, I realized that it was slightly more than fear. It was determination.