Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

Down in the theater, he said to me, “I was trying to think of space movies you might like. This one is ridiculous, but also kind of awesome. If you don’t like it, you can pick the next ten movies we watch. Deal?”

“Sure,” I said. The movie was called Jupiter Ascending, and it was both ridiculous and kind of awesome. A few minutes in, I reached over to hold his hand, and it felt okay. Nice, even. I liked his hands and the way his fingers intertwined with mine, his thumb turning little circles in the soft skin between my thumb and forefinger.

As the movie reached one of its many climaxes, I giggled at something ridiculous and he said, “Are you enjoying this?”

And I said, “Yeah, it’s silly but great.”

I felt like he was still looking at me, so I glanced over at him. “I can’t tell if I’m misreading this situation,” he said, and the way he was smiling made me want to kiss him so much. Holding hands felt good when it often hadn’t before, so maybe this would be different now, too.

I leaned over the sizable armrest between us and kissed him quickly on the lips, and I liked the warmth of his mouth. I wanted more of it, and I raised my hand to his cheek and started really kissing him now, and I could feel his mouth opening, and I just wanted to be with him like a normal person would. I wanted to feel the brain-fuzzing intimacy I’d felt when texting with him, and I liked kissing him. He was a good kisser.

But then the thoughts came, and I could feel his spit alive in my mouth. I pulled away as subtly as I could manage.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, totally. Just want to . . .” I was trying to think of what a normal person would say, like maybe if I could just say and do whatever normal people say and do, then he would believe me to be one, or maybe that I could even become one.

“Take it slow?” he suggested.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, exactly.”

“Cool.” He nodded toward the movie. “I’ve been waiting for this scene. You’ll love it. It’s bonkers.”

There’s an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem that’s been rumbling around inside me ever since I first read it, and part of it goes, “Blown from the dark hill hither to my door / Three flakes, then four / Arrive, then many more.” You can count the first three flakes, and the fourth. Then language fails, and you have to settle in and try to survive the blizzard.

So it was with the tightening spiral of my thoughts: I thought about his bacteria being inside of me. I thought about the probability that some percentage of said bacteria were malicious. I thought about the E. coli and campylobacter and Clostridium difficile that were very likely an ongoing part of Davis’s microbiota.

A fourth thought arrived. Then many more.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

I emerged from the basement to find the dying light of the day shining through the windows, making the white walls look a little pink. Noah, playing a video game on the couch, said, “Aza?”

I spun around and entered a bathroom. I washed my face, stared at myself in the mirror, watching myself breathe. I watched myself for a long time, trying to figure a way to shut it off, trying to find my inner monologue’s mute button, trying.

And then I pulled the hand sanitizer out of my jacket and squeezed a glob of it into my mouth. I gagged a little as I swished the burning slime of it around my mouth, then swallowed.

—

“You watching Jupiter Ascending?” Noah asked as I left the bathroom.

“Yeah.”

“Dope.” I turned to leave, but then he said, “Aza?” I walked over to him and sat next to him on the couch.

“Nobody wants to find him.”

“Your dad, you mean?”

“It’s like I can’t think about anything else. I . . . it’s . . . Do you think, like, he would really disappear and not even text us? Do you think maybe he’s trying and we just haven’t figured out how to listen?”

I felt so bad for the kid. “Yeah, maybe,” I said. “Or maybe he’s just waiting until it’s safe.”

“Right,” Noah said. “Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks.” I was starting to stand up when he said, “But couldn’t he have sent an email? They can’t trace that stuff if you just use public Wi-Fi. Couldn’t he have texted us from a phone he picked up somewhere?”

“Maybe he’s scared,” I said. I was trying to help, but maybe there was no helping.

“Will you keep looking, though?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, sure, Noah.”

He reached over to pick up his video game controller, my sign to go back downstairs.

—

Davis had paused the movie in the midst of a starfighter battle, and the bright light from a suspended explosion was reflected in his glasses as he turned to me. I sat down next to him, and he asked, “You all right?”

“I’m really sorry,” I said.

“Is there something I should do differen—”

“No, it has nothing to do with you. It’s just, like, I just . . . I can’t talk about it right now.” My head was spinning, and I was trying to keep my mouth turned away from him so he wouldn’t smell the hand sanitizer on my breath.

“That’s fine,” he said. “I like us. I like that we’ve got our own way of doing things.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do.” I was staring at the frozen movie screen, waiting for him to un-pause it. “I overheard you talking to Noah.”