How High We Go in the Dark(25)

“Are you okay down there?” she asks.

“So much of their life was devoted to me,” I say. “My mother prayed for a child for so long. The doctors didn’t think it was possible. I was their fifth and last try with IVF. What are they going to do now?” The old woman doesn’t respond. She crouches beside me and holds me in her arms.

The felon is standing one or two people away and seems to be picking fights with the others, screaming so loudly I can barely hear myself think.

“Yeah, why don’t you come here and say that, asshole!” he yells. I can hear the commotion, feel the bodies around me writhe like disturbed bees in a hive. Someone pushes past me from behind. I hear what I think is a fight—clothes tearing, the successive cracks of punches, asshole bystanders who can’t actually see anything cheering in the darkness. But then I hear something else. Crying. Others hear it, too. The wailing seems to be growing more frantic. It’s so loud now that the hairs on my arms are standing on end. The fighting and waves of voices suddenly cease. I stand and what feels like the entire horde shuffles toward the cries. As the sound gets closer, the old woman and I crawl on all fours, feeling out in front of us, weaving through the labyrinth of legs. Nothing. I swear the crying is right in front of me. Hours might have passed. Nothing. Tiny toes. A foot. A chubby little head. “I have them,” I say. The poor thing. The kid didn’t even have a chance. Can you do something about that crying?

“The kid didn’t even stand a chance,” I repeat under my breath. I think about the unfairness of it all, the shit hand we’ve been dealt. “The kid didn’t even have a chance, but maybe we can give them one,” I say.

“Are you that pyramid guy?” someone asks.

“I am. And there are a lot more of us now.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“Maybe the baby’s better off here,” someone else shouts.

“Do you honestly believe that?” I say.

“What if we’re just sending the baby to get sucked into some cosmic ventilation system?” a woman asks.

“We don’t know,” I say, my frustration growing.

Chatter erupts again, and so do the baby’s cries.

Hell of a thing to be a baby in here.

You think the baby could tell people about this place?

Are you an idiot?

Wonder when the orbs are coming back. At least we had something to do then.

I walk through the crowd slowly, letting my void mates hear the child in my arms. Some reach out their hands, and I guide them to the baby’s tiny body, head, and doughy hands, grasping onto my shirt. Perhaps in the world, my parents are sitting beside me. The hospital room televisions are playing the local news—a school shooting, another extinct animal, new statistics about the plague, people migrating from the heat. But my parents are telling me stories about a simpler life that I never knew, the kind where you could go to the beach and not worry about the sand or the city beyond it being swallowed by the sea, one where an earthquake never took away my father’s job and we still woke up on a tiny street in a quiet neighborhood in a bustling metropolis where everyone grew old together. At night, my mother would read me folktales from Japan like the legend of the weaver and the cow herder, two lovers who abandoned their duties and were cast to opposite ends of the heavens, allowed to reunite for only one day a year—the day of the star festival, where I remember writing wishes on brightly colored chains of paper, hanging them on bamboo trees with my family— I wish to be a famous soccer player (or maybe a writer). I wish to change the world. I wish for a long, healthy life for my family.

“Okay,” the felon says, standing right in front of me. He’s touching the baby’s head with his gargantuan hands. He’s cooing and telling the baby to be brave. “Tell us what to do.”

We begin to assemble, and I quickly lose track of the many layers forming the new pyramid. From all the rustling and small talk buzzing around, there seems to be a sizable population awaiting placement.

“Aren’t we high enough?” someone shouts from above. “I think I feel what you were talking about before. My hair’s floating. The air is different up here.”

“I don’t know,” I shout. But perhaps it’s time for us to try.

“Does anybody have a shirt or a jacket? Something I can use to make a sling?” I say. Someone hands me what feels like a nylon windbreaker—light and sleek and at least an XXL judging from how the jacket overwhelms my torso.

“It’s the Charlotte Hornets jacket I had as a kid—bright turquoise, purple, and white. I loved that thing. Woke up here wearing it—perfect fit, even though I’m six-foot-seven now. I want it back when you’re done,” the man says.

I hand the baby to the old woman while I secure the jacket to my chest, tying the sleeves around my back, tucking the bottom into my pants, leaving a pocket for the child.

“Are you sure?” the old woman says. The baby gurgles in her arms as I reach for it.

“I’ve never been sure of anything,” I say. “I wish we could see how high we’ve gone. I bet it’s a sight, like something out of a Dr. Seuss book.”

“If my grandchildren were little like this one, I’d want them to have a real life,” the old woman says. “But part of me doesn’t want to let go. What if the baby gets sick after we send it back? What if this is our second chance? I’m afraid.”