Page 104 of Everything All at Once

“I have something I need to talk to you about,” I said.

I watched them age a hundred years in front of me as all the possibilities that followed a statement like that ran through their minds. (Pregnant? Arrested? Addicted to drugs? Murdered someone?)

“You can tell us anything,” my mom said, leaning forward, putting her hand on my father’s knee to either give him strength or borrow strength from him or some combination of both.

“It’s about me. I think I need help.”

An eternity had passed between now and when Alvin Hatter had pushed open the door to the house in the middle of the woods, to when Margo had drunk the potion, to when the Overcoat Man had pushed her off a cliff, to when Alvin, in solidarity, had drunk the Everlife Formula so she wouldn’t have to be immortal alone.

An eternity, and yet, for Alvin and Margo, what was an eternity?

Time was endless, still, and meaningless.

Margo was still eleven and Alvin would be thirteen forever, until he was the last thirteen-year-old on the entire planet, until it was only him and Margo and whatever future-world was left to them.

They would not find their parents here, on this faraway island, just like they hadn’t found their parents in the countless other places they had looked.

Their parents were gone forever. Alvin wanted to give up. He was tired. For a forever boy, he could really do with some sleep.

But Margo was with him, and Margo showed no signs of slowing down.

Margo took his hand and led him off the ferry.

“Funny little place,” she said brightly.

And that was all it took to wake him up.

They kept looking.

—fromMargo Hatter Lives Forever

24

Ihad one letter left from Aunt Helen.

It was Sunday, graduation was tomorrow, and I felt adrift, lost, with no direction and no way to manage the grief that was bubbling up inside me. Like she had just died. Like I was only now figuring it out.

Once I read this letter, she would be gone completely.

No, not gone. She would never really be gone; in her own way, she would live on forever.

But I still couldn’t bring myself to read it right away.

There was something else I could do, though, something I’d been avoiding, putting off, stepping carefully around whenever I walked into my room.

My aunt’s things.

They were still there, waiting for me, still covered up with the blanket I’d thrown on them when I couldn’t bear to see them so brazenly holding my aunt’s possessions, boththe things she’d left for me and the things I had taken from her house.

I removed the blanket now, folding it and setting it in its proper place at the foot of my bed. I sat on the floor and pulled the smallest box toward me. It was her jewelry, packed carefully in tissue and surrounded by thin bubble wrap. I freed piece after piece. A small handwritten note was attached to every single piece. I picked up a slightly misshapen silver bangle and read its description:sterling silver, England, 1973.

I removed the note carefully and set it aside where I wouldn’t lose it, and then I slipped the bangle on my wrist.

Did I want to be immortal? I asked the bangle and Aunt Helen and myself.

Every old fear, every old anxiety seemed to rear up in my brain at once. Death! Illness! Loss! Pain!

It was like one of those marquees, recycling the same information in bright LED letters.