Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

I was trying to explain to him why this freaked me out so much but not really succeeding, and I recognized that I’d pulled the conversation very far away from the point where we’d held hands and been close to kissing, that now I was talking about parasite-infected bird feces, which was more or less the opposite of romance, but I couldn’t stop myself, because I wanted him to understand that I felt like the fish, like my whole story was written by someone else.

I even told him something I’d never actually said to Daisy or Dr. Singh or anybody—that the pressing of my thumbnail against my fingertip had started off as a way of convincing myself that I was real. As a kid, my mom had told me that if you pinch yourself and don’t wake up, you can be sure that you’re not dreaming; and so every time I thought maybe I wasn’t real, I would dig my nail into my fingertip, and I would feel the pain, and for a second I’d think, Of course I’m real. But the fish can feel pain, is the thing. You can’t know whether you’re doing the bidding of some parasite, not really.

After I said all that, we were quiet for a long time, until finally he said, “My mom was in the hospital for, like, six months after her aneurysm. Did you know that?” I shook my head. “I guess she was kind of in a coma or whatever—like, she couldn’t talk or anything, or feed herself, but sometimes if you put your hand in her hand, she would squeeze.

“Noah was too young to visit much, but I got to. Every single day after school, Rosa would take me to the hospital and I would lie in bed with her and we would watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the TV in her room.

“Her eyes were open and everything, and she could breathe by herself, and I would lie there next to her and watch TMNT, and I would always have the Iron Man in my hand, my fingers squeezed into a fist around it, and I would put my fist in her hand and wait, and sometimes she would squeeze, her fist around my fist, and when it happened, it made me feel . . . I don’t know . . . loved, I guess.

“Anyway, I remember once Dad came, and he stood against the wall at the edge of the room like she was contagious or something. At one point, she squeezed my hand, and I told him. I told him she was holding my hand, and he said, ‘It’s just a reflex,’ and I said, ‘She’s holding my hand, Dad, look.’ And he said, ‘She’s not in there, Davis. She’s not in there anymore.’

“But that’s not how it works, Aza. She was still real. She was still alive. She was as much a person as any other person; you’re real, but not because of your body or because of your thoughts.”

“Then what?” I said.

He sighed. “I don’t know.”

“Thanks for telling me that,” I said. I’d turned to him and was looking at his face in profile. Sometimes, Davis looked like a boy—pale skin, acne on his chin. But now he looked handsome. The silence between us grew uncomfortable until eventually I asked him the stupidest question, because I actually wanted to know its answer. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking it’s too good to be true,” he said.

“What is?”

“You.”

“Oh.” And then after a second, I added, “Nobody ever says anything is too bad to be true.”

“I know you saw the picture. The night-vision picture.” I didn’t answer, so he continued. “That’s the thing you know, that you want to tell the cops. Did they offer you a reward for it?”

“I’m not here looking for—” I said.

“But how can I ever know that, Aza? How will I ever know? With anyone? Did you give it to them yet?”

“No, we won’t. Daisy wants to, but I won’t let her. I promise.”

“I can’t know that,” he said. “I keep trying to forget it, but I can’t.”

“I don’t want the reward,” I said, but even I didn’t know if I meant it.

“Being vulnerable is asking to get used.”

“That’s true for anybody, though,” I said. “It’s not even important. It’s just a picture. It doesn’t say anything about where he is.”

“It gives them a time and a place. You’re right, though. They won’t find him. But they will ask me why I didn’t turn over that picture. And they’ll never believe me, because I don’t have a good reason. It’s just that I don’t want to deal with kids at school while he’s on trial. I don’t want Noah to have to deal with that. I want . . . for everything to be like it was. And him gone is closer to that than him in jail. The truth is, he didn’t tell me he was leaving. But if he had, I wouldn’t have stopped him.”

“Even if we gave them that picture, it’s not like they’re going to arrest you or anything.”

Suddenly, Davis stood up and took off across the golf course. “This is a completely solvable problem,” I heard him say to himself.

I followed him up the walkway to the cottage, and we went inside. It was a rustic cabin with wood paneling everywhere, high ceilings, and an astonishing variety of animal heads on the walls. A plaid, overstuffed couch and matching chairs formed a semicircle facing a massive fireplace.

Davis walked over to the bar area, opened the cabinet above the sink, pulled out a box of Honey Nut Cheerios, and started shaking out its contents. A few Cheerios poured out of the box into the sink, and then a bundle of bills banded with a strip of paper. I stepped forward and saw that the wrapping read “$10,000,” which seemed impossible, because the stack was so small—a quarter-inch high at the most. Another stack came out of the Cheerios box, and then another. He reached up for a box of shredded wheat puffs and repeated the process. “What—what are you doing?”