Elsewhere(26)

I was disappointed not to see you at the funeral as you were my favorite teacher even including middle and elementary school. Not to give you a hard time or anything, Dr. F :) Yours,

Elizabeth Marie Hall, 5th Period Biology

Liz puts postage on all six postcards. She places them in the mail, knowing full well that they will never arrive at their intended destination. Lacking a return address, at least the postcards won't come back to her either. Liz thinks it might be nice to write a postcard to someone who would actually have a chance of receiving it.

************************************

Back at the ODs, Liz is starting to be frustrated with viewing her life in five-minute chunks. As soon as she gets involved in watching one story, the binoculars click closed. She feels like she is always missing something. For example, the prom is coming up. Zooey recently decided she would go with John after all. And, as long as Zooey is going, Liz would really prefer to see the whole thing, uninterrupted. Maybe if she had forty-eight eternims instead of twentyfour, she could keep up better? She decides to ask Betty for more eternims.

"Betty, I could use a couple more eternims each day."

"How many did you have in mind?" Betty asks.

"I was thinking, maybe forty-eight a day."

"That's starting to be a lot, doll."

"I'll pay you back eventually," Liz promises.

"It's not the eternims. I just worry about you spending so much time at the Observation Decks."

"You're not my mother, you know."

"I know, Liz, but I still worry."

"God, I hate this!" Liz storms out of the room and throws herself on her bed. As she lies there, she decides to skip the ODs for three days in order to save up the eternims for the prom. This is a great sacrifice. Lacking friends or any other diversions, she spends the time in her room at Betty's house, worrying that she is falling behind with everyone back home. The three days seem endless, but she saves enough money to see the whole prom.

Liz also convinces Esther to let her stay after closing. Esther doesn't exactly agree, but she makes a point of showing Liz where the light switches are.

On prom night Liz watches Zooey eat strawberries dipped in chocolate, make photo key chains, and slow-dance to a schmaltzy ballad. Not long after, she sees Zooey lose her virginity in a fancy room at the same hotel where the dance was held. Out of respect for Zooey, Liz only watches for thirty seconds and covers her right eye with her hand. Liz pays special attention to Zooey's prom dress. The dress, the one Liz was meant to have helped her choose, is balled up in a corner of the room.

Liz leaves before her time runs out, two whole hours before the OD is even set to close. She doesn't want to face Betty at home, but she has nowhere else to go. Liz decides to sit in the park near Betty's house.

After a while, a white, fluffy bichon frise sits next to Liz on the bench. "Hello," the dog seems to say.

By way of greeting, Liz pats the dog on the head. It is the way it was with Lucy somehow, and Liz is even more homesick than she was before.

The dog cocks its head. "You seem a little blue."

"Maybe a little."

"What's bothering you?" the dog asks.

Liz thinks about the dog's question before she answers. "I'm lonely. Also, I hate it here."

The dog nods. "Would you mind scratching under my collar on the back of my neck? I can't reach there with my paws."

Liz obliges.

"Thank you. That feels much better." The dog snorts with pleasure. "So, you said you were lonely and you hate it here?"

Liz nods again.

"My advice to you is to stop being lonely and to stop hating it here. That always works for me,"

says the dog. "Oh, and be happy! It's easier to be happy than to be sad. Being sad takes a lot of work. It's exhausting."

A woman calls the dog from across the park: "ARNOLD!"

"Gotta go! That's my two-legger calling me!" The dog hops off the bench. "See you around!"

"See you," says Liz, but the dog is already gone.

Lucky Cab

Following the prom, Liz gives up watching Zooey or anyone else from school. Now she watches only her immediate family.

One night just as the OD is about to close, Liz asks Esther, "How do the binoculars even work?"

Esther makes a face. "You should know that by now. You put in your coin and then "

Liz interrupts. "I meant, how do they really work? I spend pretty much every waking hour here and I don't know a thing about them."

"Like any binoculars, I suppose. A series of convex lenses in two cylindrical tubes combine to form one image "

Liz interrupts again. "Yes, I know that part. I learned all that in, like, fifth grade."

"Seems like you know everything, Liz, so I don't see why you're bothering me."

Liz ignores Esther. "But Earth is so far, and these binoculars don't even seem particularly powerful. How could you possibly see all the way back to Earth?"

"Maybe that's the thing. Maybe Earth's not far at all."

Liz snorts. "That's a pretty thought, Esther."

"It is, isn't it?" Esther smiles. "I think of it like a tree, because every tree is really two trees. There's the tree with the branches that everyone sees, and then there's the upside-down root tree, growing the opposite way. So Earth is the branches, growing up to the sky, and Elsewhere is the roots, growing down in opposing but perfect symmetry. The branches don't think much about the roots, and maybe the roots don't think much about the branches, but all the time, they're connected by the trunk, you know? Even though it seems far from the roots to the branches, it isn't. You're always connected, you just don't think about "