When My Heart Joins the Thousand(9)

I pick up my laptop and open my email. Sure enough, there’s a message from Stanley.

So, the cat in the box, the one that’s alive and dead . . . I mean, is that really how the world works? Like things don’t become real until we observe them? But what does that mean for us?

I sign on to Google Chat. He’s there, waiting. A funny, hollow feeling fills my stomach, like the swooping sensation of being on a roller coaster.

He asked me a question about physics. That’s something I can understand, something I can deal with.

Schr?dinger’s cat is just a thought experiment. Originally it was meant to illustrate the absurdity of the Copenhagen’s interpretation, but some people take it seriously.

Are you studying this stuff? I mean, are you a physics major, or something?

I’m not in college. I’m seventeen.

I bet you’re in AP courses. :)

I don’t go to school, I reply.

A brief pause. Homeschooled, then? My mom homeschooled me for a few years. Some people can be judgy about stuff like that, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with learning from your parents.

I don’t have parents.

Another pause. I’m sorry, he sends.

Why are you sorry?

No response. I shift my weight, wondering if I said something wrong. I don’t often talk about my situation with people—the fact that I have no living relatives, at least none close enough to take me in—that my mother died when I was eleven, that I never even knew my father. The few times I have mentioned this, it’s usually resulted in sudden silence followed by a rapid change of subject.

Then more text appears: I know how tough it is, being on your own.

My heart lurches. You lost your parents, too?

Kind of. I mean, my dad is still alive, but we don’t talk much. I’m nineteen, so I can live by myself now, anyway. I’m getting by. But still, it’s not easy. It must be even harder for you.

He’s alone. Like me.

My body rocks lightly back and forth. My hand drifts to my left braid and starts tugging. I recognize the anxiety mounting within myself; I need to steer the conversation to safer topics. I do all right, I send. Anyway. You don’t need a teacher to learn about physics. Anyone can look up the information if they take the time. And a library card is a lot less expensive than college.

Lol. Well, I am a college student, so I can vouch for that, he replies. I’m not studying physics, though. I’m kind of a humanities guy. I’m taking neurobiology for my science requirement because I thought it would be all about how we think and what makes us human, but it’s more like, “memorize these 50 different processes that are involved in eye movement.” Pretty boring stuff.

It doesn’t sound boring. I like reading about the brain. It helps me make sense of human behavior.

There’s a lot about the brain that we don’t understand, though, isn’t there?

I tell myself that I’m only going to stay online for a few more minutes.

We talk about perception and the nature of reality, which shifts to a discussion about truth and how much of what we believe is simply because other people have told us to believe it. That, in turn, transitions into a conversation about the lies adults tell to children.

We tell each other our respective childhood reactions to finding out that Santa Claus is just a story. He cried; I was indifferent because the idea of a magical, omniscient fat man breaking into my house every Christmas Eve never made much sense to me in the first place.

I tell him how, as a little girl, I was told that oatmeal sticks to your ribs—which is not exactly a lie but an expression, something you’re not meant to believe literally. As a child, it took me a while to understand the difference, and to this day I can’t eat oatmeal because I visualize all those sticky white clumps coagulating against my heart and lungs.

I learn how, when he was little, his mother told him that thunder means the angels are bowling, and that the crescent moon is God’s fingernail.

I reply that the moon is a ball of iron and rock, and that it’s getting farther and farther away from us all the time. It moves away from Earth by a distance of 3.8 centimeters each year. We are losing it.

You know, you’re kind of a pessimist, he remarks.

It’s just a fact, I reply.

But 3.8 centimeters is hardly anything. That won’t make any difference, will it?

Probably not for millions of years. The human race may not even be around then. But nonetheless, the things we think of as permanent are not. Eventually the sun will expand, engulf our entire solar system, and then die.

There’s a pause. It’s beautiful tonight, he sends. The moon, I mean. Can you see it from your window?

I look. It’s nearly full; there’s a misty ring of light around it. Yes.

If it’s going away, he says, we should enjoy it while it’s here.

Clouds glide slowly across the moon. The world goes dark, then bright again, bathed in a ghostly glow.

You don’t have to stay up with me, you know, he sends. I know it’s late. You probably have to get to bed.

I glance at the clock. 4:00 a.m. You’re an insomniac, aren’t you?

Lol, guess you found me out. Yeah, I’m not eager to go back to tossing and turning.

I know what he means. There’s no worse feeling than being alone and unable to sleep at four in the morning, with the tick-tick-tick of the clock echoing in your skull. I’ll stay up with you, if you want, I offer, surprising myself. But the truth is that I want to keep talking to him. It’s a curiously addictive experience.