Home > Dear Universe

Dear Universe
Author: Florence Gonsalves

Prologue


{OCTOBER}


Days ’til prom: Eons


YOU KNOW THAT MOMENT WHEN IT HAPPENS? AND YOUR LIFE goes from one long snore-fart to hell-freaking-yeah? That moment happens for me in, of all places, gym class.

It’s the second month of school and I’m running like a goddamn hero, flag in hand when, “GOTCHA!” someone shouts, ramming into me and tackling me to the ground. They follow up with “Oops, sorry.” It’s a two-hand touch.

“It’s okay,” I say, with a mouthful of grass and the weight of another person compressing my lungs. I roll over as the sun is rising over the portable classrooms that are so run-down a raccoon fell through the ceiling our freshman year. I’d just transferred to Gill School then, and all I knew about the place was it had uniforms. Plaid skirts and small mammals with hand-paws? No, thanks. But when you get kicked out of public school, you can’t really be choosy.

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” the boy asks, and that’s when I get a look at him. He’s wiry, with dark hair and a few pimples and these great bluish-gray eyes that I picture swimming across.

“No, I’m fine,” I say, and I am. I’m still clutching that triangle of highlighter-orange fabric, hardly able to breathe, but I’m better than fine because a boy is finally on top of me.

“Okay, good,” he says, jumping off quickly.

“Come on,” someone from my team calls as they run by. Everyone’s returning to their sides, which means the gym teacher must have blown the whistle, but I didn’t hear it.

“You’re a fast runner,” he says.

“Thanks.” I wipe my brow. “There’s a lot of stuff I can’t let catch up with me.”

He laughs and then we look at each other. You know. Look at each other. Our eyes are like BAM! You’re a body with sex-parts. Let’s get to know each other.

Abigail says she watched the whole thing from jail (she always makes a point to be captured first) and it was a meet-cute like no other.

“I’m Gene-short-for-Eugene Wolf,” he says. “You’re Chamomile, right?”

I nod. “Yep, like the tea, only not as hot.”

He laughs and we walk back to the center of the field, where the team with pinnies (his) is facing the team with stale, wrinkled gym shirts (mine).

“You’re funny,” he says, and I smile. Funny is a new thing for me. Until everything started happening with my dad a few years ago, I didn’t really have to be.

As we walk across the patchy field I try to envision what he sees when he looks at me: long hair that always borders on frizzy, two individually nice but asymmetrical eyebrows, a nose that’s never been pierced. “I was thinking you should come running with me sometime.” He looks over at me and I look back at him, our eyes pleasantly locked.

“I don’t really run,” I say, like the dolt that I am.

“Oh, you should try it.” Then he lists all the reasons: college scholarships, teammates, heart health (which may or may not be true, given that people croak during marathons all the time). “Plus, then we could see more of each other.”

Boom, bang, pop. Heart fireworks. I smile and he grins and Gene-short-for-Eugene Wolf has one of those melting grins that makes you heat up, then drip.

“Okay,” I say as the whistle blows and he puts his hands on his knees, facing me with faux competitiveness across the imaginary line we’re about to cross. “I guess I’ll come running with you.”


So we run. He picks me up outside my house before school, while it’s still dark and the birds are black shapes against a sky that’s very slowly starting to lighten. We run all over the place—through the woods, around the ice-cream place in town and the drive-in movie theater, and we stop at the playground for a drink of water, and then one time he kisses me there. Our mouths are still wet with water that tastes like a penny died in it.

“Race me?” I say after. I’m breathless because the closest thing I’ve had to being kissed before this was a gross encounter with a really friendly dog at Petco, but from then on we’re a threesome. Not me, Gene, and the dog, but me, Gene, and running. Running before the world even wakes up. Seeing the sun rise over the roofs, like someone making breakfast in the sky, the egg cracking and then light. Over the next few months he shows me something to love, and that’s why it’s so hard later to let him go.

But why do I have let him go, you ask? Because I’m about to be bitch-slapped by the universe.

 

 

1


SECOND HALF OF SENIOR YEAR

{JANUARY}


Days ’til prom: 103


I’VE GOT MY NOSE LODGED IN A RACK OF OTHER PEOPLE’S clothes when my best friend taps me on the shoulder frantically.

“How about this one?” Abigail asks, shoving a dead cat into my arms.

“Ew.” I jump back and nearly knock over a row of vintage dresses with yellowing sleeves and a certain old-lady smell to their armpits.

“Relax, Cham, it’s rabbit.” Abigail sniffs the collar and wrinkles her nose. “Or was rabbit.”

“You can’t wear a fur shawl to prom,” I say, throwing it back to her with a quick Hail Mary because I have a moral compass, thanks for asking.

“Why not? It’s basically a winter prom, given that the end of April is as cold as a dead guy’s ball sack.”

I cringe and Abigail laughs. She loves disgusting me with her taste in just about everything.

“Besides.” She pokes me in the ribs. “It’s our debut into society. The end of high school! The precipice of Real Personhood! I can wear whatever I damn well please.”

“Yeah, which is exactly why you don’t want to wear a dead animal as a shawl.” I continue browsing the racks of orphaned clothes just waiting to find the right home. “It could be the best night of our lives. You don’t want pictures of you with a carcass around your neck.”

She checks herself out in the mirror. “Fine, you’re right.”

“Does this make my neck look ostrich-y?” Hilary calls from a dressing room at the far end of the store. Sometimes I pretend Hilary isn’t there, and then I actually forget she’s there. There’s nothing wrong with Hilary, but it comes down to numbers. Two is perfect. Three is one-of-these-isn’t-like-the-others.

“Hilary, you have a slender neck that necklaces throw themselves at,” I call to the row of dressing rooms, each with a different mirror and feather boa decorating its door. “Please don’t make me strangle it.”

Behind Abigail, I spot a white lacy dress on one of the mannequins in the window. Because it’s on display, it’s probably a million dollars. Or a size impossible.

“All the pressure is going to be off once prom rolls around.” Abigail sighs as I slide past the woman who just walked in to check out the dead-grandma dresses. “Just about everyone who didn’t do early decision will know where they got into college, so we can finally all relax—”

My hand stiffens on the neck of the white lace (I swear I’m not trying to strangle a mannequin). Abigail looks at me skeptically. “You did start your applications, didn’t you?”

“Of course I started,” I say. “I’m almost done, but can’t we enjoy this glorious last leg of high school without obsessing about college?”

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