Page 97 of Everything All at Once

I thought about it.

I packed a bag and hopped on a train and took myself to New York. I spent one week wanderingaround the city (it was my first time!), imagining what it would be like to pause, to stop, to remain consistent forever. I wondered if I could live alone forever, never see my family again (because I would have to leave them, you know, and so this was like a trial run).

But in the end, I returned to my family.

I wasn’t particularly kind to Sam when I told him my decision. The whole thing had thrown me for a loop, I guess (but I was also younger, more cruel, a little terrified).

We fought; Sam left. He wrote me many postcards over the years. I never attempted to find him.

I thought about him often after that, of course, especially in the past few weeks I’ve found it weighing heavier and heavier on my mind.

But then I figured out what was so different about him, about Sam, and it wasn’t a good thing anymore. It is something dark and sad and eternal.

We aren’t living some make-believe fantasy about immortality, are we? We’re just trying to live our lives and do the best we can in the time we’re given.

Anyway, that’s what I tried to do.

If I know anything, it’s that he wouldn’t have gone to Harry’s office and you would have.

And if that’s true... then please, Lottie, give it back to him.

Whatever the little voice is currently telling you...

Don’t drink it.

—H.

I put my letter back in my purse just as my new phone buzzed. A message from Sam:

Whenever you want! Let me know.

It would be the first thing my aunt asked me to do that I didn’t do blindly.

I wrote him back:

Can you really live forever?

His response took a long time. But when it came, I started the car and drove.

Margo did not know why she did it.

Alvin was just a few feet away from her, exploring an oversized, dusty book, not paying her any attention. She poked around the attic for a few minutes but grew quickly bored, uninterested by the grime and the dirt that time had settled over this place. There was a faint unease growing in her stomach; they weren’t supposed to be here. Why had the door opened for Alvin but not for her? What did the door have against girls? She’d strained against it with all her might, but Alvin had turned the handle easily and let them inside.

And what was this house even doing in the middle of the woods? It hadn’t been here before, right? Alvin and Margo had explored these woods a hundred times, a thousand times; surely they couldn’t have missed a house this big, sitting in the middle of a great clearing, looking a little like someone had just set it down out of nowhere.

No, there was something weird about this house, and there was something weird about this attic, and she was tired of exploring, tired of this particular adventure. She wanted to go home, to have something to eat, to know why she was suddenly holding this glass vial in her hands.

Why she was suddenly... What?

Where had this come from?

Margo brought the vial up to the light. It had liquid inside, clear, like water. The glass was dusty; she wiped it off against her shirt. There was a little tag around the neck ofthe bottle. It said:Everlife Formula. The bottle was corked.

Margo didn’t like that at all. She put the bottle back on the shelf.

Or... No, she didn’t. She had uncorked it.

But when had she done that?