Page 90 of Everything All at Once

Her. Him. Sam.

Sam.

Her, my age.

Sam, his age.

Somehow.

Somehow his age. Then and now.

For a hundred million reasons, and not one of them one that I understood, I pushed the journal off the bed and crawled under my covers and burrowed down until every inch of my body was covered.

And then I unburrowed myself and I grabbed the journal again, carefully peeling the picture away from the page it was stuck to. I brought it as close to my face as I could, until it went all blurry, and then I held it at arm’s length. And then I smelled it. And then I licked a corner, I don’t know, because what else was I supposed to do?

This was Sam—my Sam! This was the Sam I had been going out with, spending time with, the Sam who had let me ride on the handlebars of his bike, who had split a pizza with me, who had taken me to seeThe Little Princeand the Glass House. That was Sam.

But this also was Sam. This photograph was Sam. There was 100 percent no way of denying that this photograph, this twenty-five-year-old Polaroid, showed two people with their arms around each other, laughing as they were frozen forever in faded sepia: Aunt Helen and Sam.

It did not feel immediately different, being immortal.

Alvin found that when he wanted to sleep, he could sleep. If he would rather stay up throughout the night reading, he could choose to do that too. Similarly, he ate because he liked to eat, but his stomach never rumbled with hunger, nor did his eyes ever close with fatigue.

He settled into a state of general contentment. He did not get sick. He did not feel out of sorts. Everything was very even, like a boat plunked in the middle of a calm, windless sea. Floating gently along, but with no sudden lurches to either side.

He had drunk the potion without a second thought, because Margo was so scared to be alone, to be the only one. He had drunk from a little bottle labeled Everlife Formula, and he had felt nothing at all, not even a chill as the liquid traveled down into his stomach and settled there.

“Is it supposed to do something?” he’d asked Margo, who was watching him, still dirty and blood-covered from her fall off the cliff.

“It’s already done it,” she said and shrugged, and then they’d gone home together and found that they could either sleep or stay awake. They’d chosen to sleep.

Now, after a little bit of time, Alvin wondered if he hadn’t made the stupidest decision of his relatively young life.

But how could he have done any differently?

He hadn’t had a choice, really.

He’d only been trying to be a good older brother.

—fromAlvin Hatter and the Overcoat Man

21

Istayed up all night, without changing my clothes or brushing my teeth or washing my face.

I hadn’t been able to read anything else in the red journal, but I had read the others, pored over them with an intensity that did not wane, not even at three in the morning, not even at four.

Sam’s name wasn’t mentioned in any of them. And they were filled with pictures, but he wasn’t in any of those either.

They were fascinating, despite that. My aunt grew up in front of my eyes. My aunt got the first sparks of inspiration for the Alvin books. My aunt wrote about Margo’s hair color, eye color.

But she hadn’t mentioned Sam at all.

Which was nice. I’d almost managed to convince myself that I’d made the entire thing up.

But then eventually there was nothing left to read except the red journal. It was lying innocently on the floor, just a few feet away from me.

Something in there would explain everything. It had to.