I'll Stop the World, page 16
He nodded slowly, running a hand through his hair. “That’s pretty intense.”
“I’ve thought about it a lot.”
“I can tell. So where does my whole . . . situation place on the meaning-reason spectrum?”
She sighed. The truth was, she hadn’t completely figured that out yet. Time travel hadn’t factored into her existential calculus until a couple of days ago. “I think there’s definitely meaning in it,” she started slowly. “And the rules of cause and effect mean that there has to be some sort of reason why it happened.”
“And you think that’s to save my grandparents.”
“Yeah.”
“So not everything happens for a reason . . . except for me being here, right now, with you, which definitely did happen for a reason.”
Rose shrugged, spreading her hands. “Maybe? It feels like time travel is an exception to a lot of things. So maybe it makes sense that there would be a reason for this, even if there doesn’t have to be one for everything else.”
“Huh. Interesting,” Justin said. He was quiet for a moment, his forehead crinkled. “But what about—”
“Ooh, I love this song,” Rose interrupted, leaning over him to turn up the radio volume. She bobbed her head to the energetic beat as the British singer promised his love that she was never second best. Must be nice, Rose thought, to know you were someone’s first choice.
Justin listened for a second; then his eyes widened in recognition. “Oh, I’ve heard this one,” he exclaimed, sounding surprised. “They did a COVID cover of it. I watched it on YouTube during lockdown.”
“They did a . . . what?” Rose said. Most of the words that had just come out of his mouth sounded like total gibberish.
“Um, you know what?” he said, his forehead creasing slightly. “Let’s just say the band re-recorded it a couple years ago—in my time—and I watched a video of it.”
“Which one of those words meant that?”
“All of them. Sort of.”
Rose shook her head, wondering if she’d ever get used to all the ways his world was different from hers. “You know, it’s been forever since I’ve heard this song,” she said thoughtfully. The last time had probably been when she and Lisa were on their Valley Girl kick last year and nearly wore out the library’s VHS copy of the film. “They played it a lot on the radio when it first came out, but that was a couple years ago. Maybe it’s a sign.”
Justin raised an eyebrow. “A sign of what?”
“That we’re going to succeed. I mean, a song about two people taking on the world together and changing the future? That’s gotta mean something, right?”
“Okay, first of all, I didn’t think you believed in signs. Whatever happened to ‘not everything happens for a reason’?”
“Well, yeah, not everything. But a song on the radio is just one tiny thing. It could be a little nod that we’re on the right track.”
“You are seriously moving the goalposts, but fine. Second of all, that is not what this song is about.”
Rose listened for a few more seconds as the singer repeated the chorus. “Yes, it is. He’s talking about things getting better when he’s with her. And how the world stops when they’re together.”
“No, he’s talking about how the world is about to actually stop. It’s about a nuclear apocalypse. Like, the chorus is about them physically fusing together.”
“With love.”
“Nope. With radiation.”
“No. No way.” Rose ran back through the lyrics in her head as the song faded to an end, wishing she had it on cassette so she could rewind it. It was a love song. Wasn’t it? That was definitely how it had been used in Valley Girl.
“I’m telling you, I looked it up when they did the cover, and that’s totally what it’s about,” Justin insisted.
“There’s a book about this song?”
“No, it’s just on the internet. I told you about—”
“Oh right, I remember.” He’d described the “internet” as an infinite library that everyone had access to through their computers, a concept she still couldn’t quite wrap her brain around. “So they die?”
“I mean, maybe not during the song, but death is definitely imminent.”
“But . . . but he says things are changing! And that the future—”
“It’s supposed to be ironic. They’re totally dead. He literally says they melt.”
Rose dropped her head into her hands. “You just ruined this song for me.”
“It’s not my fault some British dude decided to write a super-peppy song about having sex during a nuclear blast. That’s for him and his therapist to work out.”
She groaned, then cut her eyes to the radio, which had moved on to the next song. “What about this one? You going to tell me it’s really about running someone over with your car or something?”
Justin shrugged, reaching over to turn down the volume. “I mean, I think it’s just about the power of love, but if you want to get all morbid about it—”
She smacked him with a pillow, sending him tumbling off the bed, even though she definitely hadn’t hit him hard enough for that.
He didn’t bother climbing back up, just propped his arms on the edge of the mattress and rested his chin on his hand. “So my point is, if that song was a sign, it probably means we’re doomed.”
“Or maybe it’s just a sign that it’s good we found each other,” Rose said. “Those people seemed pretty happy not to be alone, even if the world was about to end.”
“Well, yeah, I mean, if you’re gonna die, that’s probably the way to go.”
“Not just that,” Rose said, fighting the blush she could feel rising in her cheeks. “But even if it is about dying—”
“It is.”
“—isn’t it also about the importance of having someone with you when things feel impossible? That maybe sometimes, even if you can’t change anything, it’s good to be with someone who makes you believe that you can?”
“So now you’re saying it’s a sign that we’re delusional and this whole plan is a waste?”
“Are you trying to be irritating?”
“Just comes naturally.”
Rose gave a frustrated sigh, although the corners of her mouth kept insisting on tugging upward. As irritating as he could be, there was something energizing about him. Like she had to remain alert in case he changed direction without warning. Most of the time, it was kind of fun. “I’m saying that maybe it’s good to have someone in your corner who can push you to keep hoping when it would be easier to give up.”
Justin thought for a second, then nodded slowly. “Yeah, I can get behind that. You can be my motivational apocalypse buddy.”
“Maybe without the apocalypse part.”
“We’ll see.”
She tapped her eraser against the legal pad. “So let’s make a plan and hopefully we can avoid that?”
“Sure thing,” he said, hauling himself back up onto the bed. “But first, subject change. Tell me something about your mom.”
That was not what she was expecting. “Why do you want to know about my mom?”
“Because it feels like she’s a big part of why you’re helping me, and why we’re even making this whole stop-the-fire plan.” He shrugged. “Plus, it just seems like you think about her a lot. So I thought you might want to talk about her.”
“Um,” she said, flustered. “I mean, I was only five when she died . . .”
“But you still have some memories of her, right? Or stories your dad told you?” He scratched the side of his head, giving her a crooked smile. “Sorry, am I being too much? Alyssa says I can be a lot.”
“Is Alyssa your sister?”
“My friend,” he said, his cheeks turning slightly pink, making her wonder if this Alyssa was his “friend” in the same way that Noah was hers. “I, uh, don’t have much of a filter. I just say whatever stuff comes into my brain. ADHD thing.”
“What’s ADHD?”
“Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Do you not know what that is here?”
She shook her head. “I know what ADD is.”
“Oh, weird. Okay, well, yeah, it’s basically the same thing. It’s what doctors call an executive function disorder. So it’s like the ringleader in my brain is asleep most of the time, so whatever monkeys or clowns or contortionists feel like performing, they just run onstage and shove out whoever’s already there, since there’s no one to keep everything in order. Or sometimes they perform at the same time. Or maybe they merge into a single act. Just a free-for-all circus.” His arms waved around his head, pantomiming the internal chaos. “No one driving the ship, icebergs everywhere. Fun times.”
Rose laughed. “So your brain is an out-of-control three-ring circus . . . on the Titanic?”
“I’m honestly not entirely sure where I was going with the circus metaphor or the ship metaphor. Both just seemed to work at the time.” He shrugged. “Welcome to my brain.”
“It seems fun.”
“Tell that to my teachers.” He straightened abruptly. “But you were going to tell me something about your mom.”
“Was I? I don’t remember agreeing to that.” Rose couldn’t keep the smile from her face, though. As bizarre as their situation was, it was easy to talk to Justin. She didn’t second-guess everything that came out of her mouth with him. Maybe because he didn’t even first-guess what came out of his.
“Come on. I may never see my mom again either, but all my memories of her kind of suck. Give me a good one instead.”
“Okay, just a minute.” Rose closed her eyes, conjuring a memory. Most of her impressions of her mother were hazy wisps, barely more than a splash of color here, a whiff of scent there. But she had a couple that were solid enough to grab on to, worn soft from years of frequent handling.
“She used to put me on her lap when she played the piano,” she said, the memory spooling out against the backs of her eyelids. “I would put my hands on hers, and close my eyes and let her move my arms up and down the keyboard, and I’d listen to the music and pretend that I was her. That I was the one playing, in the future, all grown up.”
She opened her eyes to find Justin staring intently at her, a smile playing on his lips. Had he moved closer, or had she just gotten so caught up in the memory that she’d forgotten where she was? Slight warmth seeped up the sides of her neck, into her cheeks.
“Do you still play?” he asked.
She shook her head sadly. “I never learned. She had planned to teach me herself. After she died, Dad offered to find me a teacher, but I didn’t want to learn anymore. Dad sold the piano a couple years later.”
“Do you wish he hadn’t?”
She let out a surprised little laugh. She’d never known someone who asked questions the way he did, like they barely had a chance to skip off the surface of his brain before tumbling from his mouth. “Sometimes,” she admitted.
He nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, I think I would, too.”
“Do you believe in fate?” Rose asked, turning his original question back on him.
Justin flopped onto his back, setting the mattress bouncing slightly. Rose’s pencil rolled off her legal pad, onto the comforter. Justin picked it up, twirling it around his fingers. “I don’t know,” he said, staring at the slowly rotating pencil. “If you asked me a couple days ago, I would’ve said no. Now . . . I’m undecided.”
“Really?” Rose was surprised. She would’ve thought that time travel was a pretty compelling argument for believing that there were larger forces at work in the universe.
He looked at her, pointing with the pencil. “I mean, I take it you believe in God, right?”
She nodded. Her parents had attended church only sporadically before her mom died, and then her dad stopped going completely afterward. But later, Rose started attending Sunday school with Lisa, and eventually, when her father and Diane got together, he accompanied them to church, too. Yet faith in God wasn’t something she remembered deciding to have; faith simply felt like something that had always been inside her. She knew some people found it hard to believe in something they couldn’t see or prove, but for Rose, it was impossible not to.
“So, naturally, it makes sense to you that all of this would be part of some bigger thing, right, because you already believed there was a bigger thing,” Justin reasoned.
Rose considered, tapping her fingers on her notepad. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Whereas for me,” Justin continued, “I believed everything was random and pointless, and then this time-travel thing happened, and I can’t decide if that’s just the most random and pointless thing imaginable, or a sign that things actually aren’t random and pointless. Like, the evidence fits in both columns, you know?”
Rose reached over and grabbed her pencil from him, holding up the pad. “So then why are you going along with this whole fire theory anyway, if it’s all random and pointless?”
He shrugged. “Better than the alternative.” He grinned at her when she raised an eyebrow. “Throwing myself off a bridge,” he clarified.
“No, we wouldn’t want that,” Rose agreed.
“We?”
Rose gave him an incredulous look. “Are you seriously surprised that I don’t want you to throw yourself off a bridge?”
He dropped his eyes to the comforter, fiddling with a loose thread. “I’m just . . . not really used to people caring what happens to me,” he said quietly.
Rose’s heart sagged. Was he really that lonely, back in his time? “Well, I care,” she said, a little too brightly. She cleared her throat. “I’m in your corner, remember?”
“Right.” He gave her a small smile. “You and me versus the end of the world.”
“Exactly.” She nudged his leg with her foot. “C’mon. Get up, and let’s figure out what we’re doing tomorrow so you don’t melt.”
“Whatever you say, apocalypse buddy.”
TUESDAY
Chapter Thirty
VERONICA
“Ugh, no, thank you,” Veronica said, waving away the plate of slightly runny scrambled eggs her husband was trying to place in front of her. Her stomach turned at their glossy yellow sheen, the way they wobbled on the plate.
Bill frowned, examining the eggs. “Not a fan of eggs à la Bill anymore?” he said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “And here I thought I’d perfected my method.”
“It’s not that. It’s—can you put that thing out?” She didn’t normally mind Bill’s smoking habit, but this morning it was giving her a headache. She picked up the folded newspaper as he snubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray on the kitchen table. “Thanks,” she said. “I just feel . . . ugh.” She scanned the front page yet again, hoping that maybe this time, it wouldn’t make her want to throw up.
Nope, still terrible.
Bill tilted his head sideways so he could read the headline that accompanied the photo of Diane and her family at brunch. “Yikes. I thought it was supposed to be a friendly profile of Diane?”
“It was. They totally screwed us.” Veronica flipped the paper over so she couldn’t look at it anymore. Lewis-Yin’s Lavish Lifestyle: Living Large as Polling Plummets. The article was ridiculous, using barely any of the thoughtful quotes Diane had provided, and contorting the facts to make it seem as though she had given up on the idea of winning after the latest polls and was squandering her remaining campaign money on extravagant outings for her family.
“Emerson donated the use of the Tearoom for the photo shoot!” Veronica lamented, dropping her head into her arms. “And the polling numbers aren’t even down that much! A lousy point. Although it’s probably more after this. I swear, I could strangle Franklin Gibson with my bare hands.”
Bill gave her a sympathetic smile, scraping the eggs onto his own plate before dropping into the chair next to her and rubbing her back. “I’m really sorry, honey.” Beside him, Millie babbled in her high chair, happily rubbing eggs into her hair. “Millie, baby, we eat with our mouths, not our hair,” he said, tapping the messy plastic tray with his finger.
“Ha!” Millie exclaimed, offering her daddy a gummy grin.
Veronica smiled in spite of herself. “I think she’s trying to say hair.”
“Are you saying hair, Millie? Have you learned another new word? Are you a precious little genius? I think you are, yes I do,” Bill said in baby-speak, making his voice high and cartoonish.
“Ha, Daddy!” Millie squealed again, picking up another handful of eggs and smashing them into her ear.
Veronica watched Bill as he tried to convince Millie to eat her food instead of accessorize with it, exaggerating his own motions as he shoveled bites of his breakfast into his mouth. “See how Daddy eats with his mouth? See how my teeth go chomp chomp chomp? Can you go chomp chomp, Millie?”
“Bill?”
“Hmm?” he said absently, still focused on their daughter. “I’m going to have to give you another bath before school, aren’t I?” he muttered despairingly as Millie smeared eggs into her lap.
“Am I insane, to think we can still win?”
He shook his head. “You’re absolutely not insane. We’ve known since the beginning that coverage from the Gazette wasn’t going to be fair, considering how much money Gibson funnels into that business. I mean, I don’t think anyone was prepared for just how bad it would get, but we were never expecting them to be in our corner. Yet Diane’s numbers have been pretty good, all things considered.”
“He’s got more money, though. And it’s getting worse.”
“I know, but I just don’t think—” Bill distracted himself by looking at Millie, then groaned. “Baby girl, did you really just stuff eggs in your diaper?”
“Poop!” Millie hollered in glee.
“You just don’t think . . . ?” Veronica prompted.
