“Okay then, wait, wait. Before you say that.” I hold out a hand, waving it frantically. “I have to tell you something else, okay? Don’t freak out. You have to promise me you won’t freak out.”
His eyes widen at what must be my very disturbed expression. “What? What’s going on? You look terrified.”
“I have something, something that will change you back. You can look how you used to look. You don’t have to go to the portal. You don’t have to live isolated anymore. Your parents . . . your parents will . . .” I almost say love you again. But I know that it’s wrong. I know that the argument I’m making is faulty in its own right. And yet, there’s nothing else I can say.
Surely, he’ll listen to me. Surely, drugs to change him back to his old human form are more reasonable than portal jumping to another universe.
The tender, sore muscles in my throat constrict at the thought.
I can’t lose him.
I just caught him.
Mack shakes his head. “I already told you I won’t do the surgery. It’s not worth it, and I don’t want it.”
“Not the surgery. I have something else. Something more effective. And safe too. Pills.”
“Pills?”
I nod frantically, then stand, rushing to my phone, which has been discarded in my pants near the pool. “Hang on, I’ll show you.”
I return and sit, flipping through my pictures until I find the one of Joe. He sent it to me after we met. The before and after. “That’s Joe. I met him from the forums. He had the same transformation as you. And now look at him. Look! He’s totally back to who he used to be, not a gill or a fin in sight.”
Mack takes the phone from me and stares at the photos. His mouth opens and closes, as if he can’t get the words out. Then, he hands the phone back to me.
“There are more . . . I always thought there were more of us . . .” He stares off into the horizon, not looking at me, his head shaking absently, his eyes blank.
“See! You can do this. We can do this.”
But he shakes his head. “That’s not how this works.”
“B-but why the hell not? It’s the answer to all your problems. To all our problems.”
He grabs my hand and holds it in between us. “It’s not, though. It’s only the answer to one problem.”
“But we could stay together. Don’t you want that? You just told me you love me. How could you say that to me and then just . . . vanish.”
“I do love you.” He squeezes my hand hard and brings it to his lips. “And you’re better off without me. Because I can never go back to who I was. Even if the drugs turned me back, I’m already too far gone for this world. Something inside me has changed. Do you get that? Can you understand that I’m fundamentally not the person everyone expects me to be? Actually, I don’t even know if something inside me has changed. I think something inside me has just come out. Something inside that has always been there, no matter what else is on the outside. And I can’t just put it away like it never happened.”
I swallow the ache in my throat. Tears bite at the corner of my eyes. “That can’t be right though. The drugs work. I saw it with my own eyes. Maybe they’ll make you feel good in your old body. It could happen. At least think about it. Take them for a little while, see how you feel? You never know until you try it!” I’m pleading. Desperate.
He takes a breath. “You don’t understand. I don’t have much time. The portal doesn’t exist in location alone. It exists in time as well. It will only be open for a period of twenty seconds on an exact day. And after that, I’d have to write more code to figure out its next location. And I might never figure that out again. This is likely my only chance.”
The air between us now is stark and bare. I’m raw and ragged, the ripped-off edge of a rag. I’m scared I’ll lose Mack. And I can’t understand why he won’t just take the drugs. It’s the only reasonable solution. And reasonable solutions are always the best ones.
Instead, he wants me to hop dimensions with him. Instead, he wants to hop dimensions without me.
“What happens if you don’t make the portal in time?” I ask quietly.
“It turns into a temporary black hole right before closing back up. I’d probably die. But at least it’d be a quick death. A death of integrity means more to me than a life of cowardice.”
“And it matters so much to you that you’re willing to risk everything? Even being sucked up by a black hole just because your timing’s a little off? What kind of shitty portal is that anyway?” The burning intensifies. Tears are welling up. I sniff away the sting.
“I risk everything either way, Jules. I may as well give myself a chance at something or die trying.”
I nod to myself, and a tear overwhelms the bottom lid of my eye, fleeing down my face and splattering on my arm, a small, darkened, wet stain on an already black shirt.
I have to change his mind. I have to do whatever I can to change his mind.
He can’t leave, and I can’t go with him.
I could never go with him. Deep down, I’m a coward. And I’ve always been a coward. Just because he’s brave doesn’t mean I am too. And it’s time to come clean.
“I have to show you something,” I whisper.
He looks over at me, a frown on his face.
I unhook my thumb out of my sleeve and yank the material up, exposing the skin and scales on my arm. I stretch my arm in front of him, the green scales glistening beneath the light. “It’s happening to me too.”
He looks at my arm and then back up to me. He grabs my forearm and runs a finger along the glimmering dark green scales that freckle up its length. “I did this to you, didn’t I? I knew it. Fuck, Jules. You should’ve never touched me. You should’ve never let me . . . never let me touch you. I’m contagious. I’m a disease.”
I shake my head. “If I’m being honest about it, like if I’m totally one hundred percent being real with myself, this started even before we met. I just didn’t know what it was. But now, I guess . . . the process is beginning. And it didn’t start because of you, Mack. It started because of me.”
He lifts his gaze and catches my eye. His next words are hopeful. “Then come with! You can become whoever it is you’re supposed to be. We can leave together and find our very own universe. The one where we belong. Just imagine it, the ability to spend the rest of our lives together as we are. Whoever it is we are. Just as we are. Without worry.”
But I shake my head and pull my arm away. “You can’t promise any of that. We could die instead. You said so yourself. I don’t think sentient bodies react too well to black holes—it doesn’t take a theoretical physicist to understand that much. Besides, none of this is even provable. It all exists in someone’s imagination. It all exists in some code you wrote on your laptop.” And I know that because I’ve also been writing about it for the past several months.
Mack nods. “I know. I know it sounds crazy. But this is more than just science to me. Yeah, it’s just some theory. And sure, it’s just some code. But it’s code that came from my brain. And I believe that we’re all connected to the universe. If the universes are connected, then so are we.” He swallows hard. “Besides all that, I just feel it in my heart. I know I belong somewhere else. And that somewhere else is calling to me stronger than the moon calls to the tides.”
