We All Looked Up (31 page)

E
liza

ELIZA SAT ON THE EDGE
of the bed, fingering the pointy end of the bowie knife and wondering what it might feel like to stab someone with it. Like testing the temperature of a cooked turkey? Cracking the shell of an egg? Slicing the forgiving red flesh of a watermelon? Peter had given it to her this morning, just before they left the house.
Just in case,
he'd said. Light from Ardor glittered prettily on the blade. Eliza glanced out the window, to the wide, star-drenched sky. The asteroid looked as insignificant as it ever had—a tiny twinkle in the eye of a righteous god, the celestial equivalent of a sucker punch, practically invisible until the moment it smashed you in the face. A lot of things in life were like that: apocalyptic asteroids, late-stage cancer, love.

There was the sound of clumping feet out in the hallway.

“Peter!” Eliza said, running for the door.

“Hold up,” Anita said.

Eliza opened the door, but it was so dark she couldn't make out who was there. “Hello?”

“Eliza?”

It was Bobo, and behind him stood a short, thick-limbed silhouette, dense as a neutron star: Golden, with a gun ostentatiously tucked into the front of his jeans.

Eliza improvised. “I came here to find Andy.”

“He's downstairs. I can take you.”

“Thanks.”

She tried to slip out the door without opening it too widely, but some movement behind her must have given the game away.

“There's somebody else in there,” Golden said.

“Run!” Eliza shouted, grabbing Golden's gun and chucking it as hard as she could down the hall. He took a wild swing at her, clipping her shoulder, but then Anita and Misery were there too, and everything got confused. Eliza bounced one way and another and ended up spinning back into the bedroom. There was the sound of a struggle in the doorway, then the door slammed shut. People running outside in the hallway, and somewhere much closer, a human sound, wet and whistly.

“Bobo?”

“It's all gone to shit,” he said.

Eliza quietly slid the knife out of her waistband. “What has?”

“She hates me now.”

“Misery? Did you lock her up, Bobo?”

“Only because she wouldn't talk to me. I just wanted her to talk to me, like a human being!”

In spite of herself, Eliza felt a little sorry for him. She'd heard his whole history from Andy—the alcoholic parents, the suicide pact, the antidepressants with their grab bag of side effects.

“You shouldn't have done that,” she said.

“I know.”

“But it doesn't make you a bad person.”

“It does, though. We both know that. I'm just shit now.”

The whimpering grew louder, closer, and then Bobo was hugging her, sniveling into her shoulder. His clothes smelled like gasoline, and his cheek was rough against the skin of her neck. He squeezed her uncomfortably hard, pinning her arms to her sides, and she realized too late that he was putting his weight into her, forcing her backward onto the bed. She had to let go of the knife to avoid plunging it into her own back.

“Stop it, Bobo.”

“I always wanted you,” he said. His voice had that thickness that Eliza knew so well, the voice of a man who was past the point of reason.

“You don't want to do this.”

His hands were at her waist, unhooking the top button of her jeans. Of Misery's jeans. “You're so fucking beautiful,” he said.

Eliza thought about the stranger who'd climbed into her bed at the navy base barracks. He'd been a thousand times sweeter and gentler than Bobo, but were they really so different? A couple of sad ­little boys, both desperate for love, both trying to get it any way they could. And it wouldn't have been that hard to let it happen. If she just lay back and went still as a corpse and thought about something else, she'd survive it. How much worse could it really be than getting plastered and sleeping with some guy she'd just met in a bar? A few numb minutes and everything would be over.

But then her free right hand, scrabbling wildly at the sheets, happened on the warm wooden handle of Peter's knife. And it seemed the culmination of his love for her, that it should be right there when she reached for it, like a miracle. All the time they'd spent together came to her in a single bright burst of memory—not just the last few days, but the whole year of silence, when she pretended not to see him even though his very presence in a room was like a highlighted sentence in a textbook or an overexposed section of a photograph.
You don't need to sleep with a guy to make him sublimely happy
, Anita had said. And it was true. After all, Peter had loved her after a single kiss. Maybe she'd loved him since then too. Maybe she'd been put on this Earth to love him, and their love would be the only thing in their short, stupid lives that mattered at all.

Bobo pulled her shirt up over her head; the knife caught on the fabric and tore it. “For the last time,” she said, “don't do this.”

He unzipped his pants. She could feel the skin of his belly on hers, and his breath was like a lit match in her ear. “We're all doomed anyway,” he said.

It wasn't like she'd expected, hardly any resistance at all, and from the darkness came one small human noise, just a quiet moan—
ohhhh
—like a last-minute revelation. He slid off her, onto the floor, and she jumped on top of him, preparing for the next assault. But he didn't move. She'd aimed for the heart and she'd found it.

A moment of silence, then a gunshot sounded just outside the apartment. Eliza leaped up and flattened herself against the wall. She wasn't about to pull that knife out of Bobo, but she still had her nails and her teeth. She'd tear Golden's throat out with her bare hands if she had to.

“Eliza! Eliza!”

A chorus of voices: her friends. She rushed out into the hall. Andy was the first to see her. His gaze dropped to the red stain on her stomach.

“What happened, Eliza?”

“I'm sorry,” she said, “but I had to.”

“Had to what?”

“I had to!”

Andy ran past her, into the apartment. The others were standing close behind him—Anita, Misery, and a stranger. Even in the weak light, Eliza could see that his face was disfigured somehow. He was coming toward her now, a travesty of a smile twisting his mouth.

And she forgot about everything else as she recognized him, falling into his battered arms, sobbing.

In the echoey silence of the stairwell, Peter's breathing was painfully loud. It rasped and stuttered and gasped. They had to get him to a hospital, only there were no hospitals left open. Maybe the day after tomorrow there'd be hospitals again. It was possible. Anything was possible.

“What happened to Golden?” Peter asked.

“I shot him,” Anita said, and there was no remorse in her voice.

They saw him for just a second outside the Independent, lurching around a corner. Maybe he'd survive, and maybe he wouldn't. It hardly mattered now.

“He'll be sad if there's no one there to catch his last words,” Andy said. “He always loved to hear himself talk.”

“That's not how people go,” Peter said. “Most of us don't get last words.”

Eliza wondered if he was thinking about his older brother, who'd died in that car accident. Or maybe he was talking about all of them. How quickly would the end come when it came? Would it hurt? Now that they were all together again, the fog lifted. Nothing stood between them and Ardor anymore but a few million miles of vacuum.

Andy climbed into the driver's seat of the station wagon. “Should we try and find a hospital?” he asked.

“Just take me home,” Peter said.

They drove in silence through the dark, deserted Seattle streets. Peter was growing paler by the minute. Long coughing fits left his palm spritzed with blood, but he was still conscious when they pulled into his driveway.

Eliza squeezed his shoulder. “You ready to get up?”

“Can I rest a little first? Mom and Dad are going to freak out when they see me.”

“Of course.” She looked around the car, at the worried faces of her friends. “Do you guys mind going in without us? Say we're on our way.”

“Do you want me to stay too?” Misery asked.

Peter shook his head. “Thanks, though. I love you, Samantha.”

“I love you, too.”

Eliza watched them go. Then she lifted up Peter's head and placed it gently on her lap. She waited for the coughing to stop.

“I wish we had more time,” he finally said.

P
eter

“MORE TIME? DON'T BE GREEDY
, Peter. What would we do with it?”

“I'm serious.”

“I know. But don't be. I'll lose my shit.”

“I'm not saying decades or anything. Just a year, maybe. Enough to give us a history.”

“We have a history! Remember making out in the photo lab? Remember how we were at that riot together? Remember our first pancake breakfast with your family?”

“I mean real history. Like a language that nobody but us knew. My parents have that. I bet yours did too.”

“You and I have a language.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Then say something to me in it.”

“You have pretty eyes.”

“That's just English.”

“Most of the words in our language are pronounced exactly the same as normal English words. That's so people won't notice when we're speaking it.”

“Are there any differences?”

“A few. Like
carrot
.”

“What's that mean?”

“Pumpkin.”

“What else?”

“I love you.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means ‘I hate you.' ”

“Aha. And what does
I hate you
mean?”

“Same thing as English. That one's not different.”

“I see.”

“Do you want to know how to say ‘I love you'?”

“Sure.”

Eliza leaned down. Her hair made a little bower around his face, and for a second he could ignore the pain that lanced through his chest every time he inhaled. Quickly, like a cat lapping milk, she licked the tip of his nose.

“Like that.”

“That's not words.”

“Our language is half sign language, half actual words. It's very complicated. That's why we're the only ones who speak it.”

He heard the catch in her voice; somehow it seemed incredibly important that he keep her from crying for as long as possible.

“Remind me. That philosophy you've got, about events? How does that work again?”

Eliza shook her head. “I don't have a philosophy anymore.”

“So make up a new one.”

“Make up a philosophy?”

“Yeah. Like a bedtime story. Only it has to be true.”

“Oh, okay. A true philosophy, invented on the spot. That's all.”

“Yeah.”

He waited. The pain in his chest was diffusing out to his whole torso now, weighing him down a little bit more with each exhalation, like the slow squeeze of a boa constrictor. He let his eyes close. It was all right. He'd protected them—his friends, his family, his karass. Even if it was only for a few extra hours, he'd kept them safe. No Pyrrhic victory, then, whatever happened. A real victory.

An infinity seemed to pass before Eliza spoke again. Peter was beginning to wonder if she'd given up, or else fallen asleep.

“So a really long time ago,” she said, “this really advanced civilization had a science lab, right? And this guy who worked in the lab, we'll call him Todd, he was just an okay worker. Like, not totally moronic, but no genius, either. The specialty of this lab, I forgot to say, was making worlds. So Todd chose to make this world that was mostly water, which hadn't been tried before because everyone knew that water destroyed everything it touched, if you gave it enough time, and this lab believed in making things that were more ­permanent—like out of rocks and stuff. And at first, nothing really happened in the water world, except a lot of erosion and rust and stuff being damp all the time, and Todd's boss wasn't very happy. But Todd kept working away at it, and after a while, something amazing happened. There was life. Just a little bit at first, then more. Like, a lot more. And it started evolving. And then these little monkey things started learning new stuff and getting smarter, and everything was looking pretty good for Todd. But then, over just a few thousand years, the whole thing got totally fucked up again. There were these wars and terrorists and nuclear weapons all over the place. Todd couldn't understand it. It was like he'd built this really nice house for people to live in, but they'd decided to tear it down from the inside. And Todd's company, which was all about the bottom line, decided to pull the plug. Not every world could be a winner.”

Peter felt a drop of cold land on his cheek, but he was too tired to wipe it away. It slid slowly down his face, tickling a little as it went. Every breath now was a victory. Eliza had gone quiet. Fear swept in to fill the silence. Fear of disappearing, of the dark, of the unknown. Fear of being somewhere without this love to define him.
Don't stop talking
, he tried to say.

And as if she'd heard him, Eliza continued her story. “So Todd brought the world home and tossed it in the garbage, just like he said he would. But then his son, who's called Chris, in a nod to your traditional Christian values, happened to find it. And right away, he fell in love with the little monkeys. So he pulled the world out of the trash and dusted it off and took it into his father's office. ‘You can't just give up on these little monkeys!' he said. And his dad tried to explain about business and capitalism and everything, but Chris was having none of it. And here's the really miraculous part, because I know how much you religious nuts love miracles—he'd
just
learned about mercy that week in school. So he begged his dad to give the world one more chance to get better. He even came up with an idea for how they could make it happen. ‘Let's scare them,' he said. ‘Let's make them think it's all over.' And his dad was like, ‘You mean with some kind of flood?' And Chris said, ‘Floods are so old school, Dad. Let's do it with an asteroid. We'll tell them they're all about to die, but then, at the last second, we'll save them.' Then Chris's dad listed every horrible thing that the little monkeys had done throughout history. ‘They don't really deserve a second chance,' he said. And Chris was like, ‘Well, it wouldn't really count as mercy if they deserved it.' And once he heard that, his dad totally folded, and they went ahead with the plan. And at first it didn't seem like it was working. Actually, it seemed like things were getting even
more
horrible and ugly with every passing day. But Chris told his dad not to worry about the little monkeys. He said this amazing moment was going to come, when they all looked up from their tiny little lives at once, to see if that big fireball in the sky was really going to crush them. And maybe when they watched it pass them over, maybe when they felt that mercy, it would be just enough to convince them to change. Maybe . . .”

The droplets were falling every few seconds now, though Peter felt each one a little more distantly, as if he were falling along with them. Eliza didn't seem to know what else to say, so she just repeated herself, over and over, kissing him after each word, more and more lightly: “Maybe . . . maybe . . . maybe . . .”

He didn't feel anything when she licked her own tears off the bridge of his nose.