Page 1 of Across the Universe (Across the Universe 1)

1

AMY

DADDY SAID, “LET MOM GO FIRST. ”

Mom wanted me to go first. I think it was because she was afraid that after they were contained and frozen, I’d walk away, return to life rather than consign myself to that cold, clear box. But Daddy insisted.

“Amy needs to see what it’s like. You go first, let her watch. Then she can go and I’ll be with her. I’ll go last. ”

“You go first,” Mom said. “I’ll go last. ”

But the long and the short of it is that you have to be naked, and neither of them wanted me to see either of them naked (not like I wanted to see them in all their nude glory, gross), but given the choice, it’d be best for Mom to go first, since we had the same parts and all.

She looked so skinny after she undressed. Her collarbone stood out more; her skin had that rice-paper-thin, over-moisturized consistency old people’s skin has. Her stomach—a part of her she always kept hidden under clothes—sagged in a wrinkly sort of way that made her look even more vulnerable and weak.

The men who worked in the lab seemed uninterested in my mother’s nudity, just as they were impartial to my and my father’s presence. They helped her lie down in the clear cryo box. It would have looked like a coffin, but coffins have pillows and look a lot more comfortable. This looked more like a shoebox.

“It’s cold,” Mom said. Her pale white skin pressed flat against the bottom of the box.

“You won’t feel it,” the first worker grunted. His nametag said ED.

I looked away as the other worker, Hassan, pierced Mom’s skin with the IV needles. One in her left arm, hooked up at the crease of her inner elbow; one in her right hand, protruding from that big vein below her knuckles.

“Relax,” Ed said. It was an order, not a kind suggestion.

Mom bit her lip.

The stuff in the IV bag did not flow like water. It rolled like honey. Hassan squeezed the bag, forcing it down the IV faster. It was sky blue, like the blue of the cornflowers Jason had given me at prom.

My mom hissed in pain. Ed removed a yellow plastic clamp on the empty IV in her elbow. A backflow of bright red blood shot through the IV, pouring into the bag. Mom’s eyes filled with water. The blue goo from the other IV glowed, a soft sparkle of sky shining through my mother’s veins as the goo traveled up her arm.

“Gotta wait for it to hit the heart,” Ed said, glancing at us. Daddy clenched his fists, his eyes boring into my mom. Her eyes were clamped shut, two hot tears dangling on her lashes.

Hassan squeezed the bag of blue goo again. A line of blood trickled from under Mom’s teeth where she was biting her lip.

“This stuff, it’s what makes the freezing work. ” Ed spoke in a conversational tone, like a baker talking about how yeast makes bread rise. “Without it, little ice crystals form in the cells and split open the cell walls. This stuff makes the cell walls stronger, see? Ice don’t break ’em. ” He glanced down at Mom. “Hurts like a bitch going in, though. ”

Her face was pale, and she was lying in that box, and she wasn’t moving at all, as if moving would break her. She already looked dead.

“I wanted you to see this,” Daddy whispered. He didn’t look at me—he was still staring at Mom. He didn’t even blink.

“Why?”

“So you knew before you did it. ”

Hassan kept kneading the bag of blue goo. Mom’s eyes rolled up into the back of her head for a minute, and I thought she’d pass out, but she didn’t.

“Almost there,” Ed said, looking at the bag of Mom’s blood. The flow had slowed down.

The only sound was Hassan’s heavy breathing as he rubbed the plastic sides of the bag of goo. And whimpering, soft, like a dying kitten, coming from Mom.

A faint blue glow sparkled in the IV leading from Mom’s elbow.

“Okay, stop,” Ed said. “It’s all in her blood now. ”

Hassan pulled the IVs out. Mom let out a crackling sigh.

Daddy pulled me forward. Looking down at Mom reminded me of looking down at Grandma last year at the church, when we all said goodbye and Mom said she was in a better place, but all she meant was that she was dead.