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  For Julian

  MOTION

  BEFORE YOU HEAR any words, you can hear the panic.

  It surfaces as an irregularity of breath, a strain of vocal cords, a cry, a gasp. Panic exists on a frequency entirely its own. Air into air, particle by particle, panic vibrates through the elastic atmosphere faster than the speed of sound. It’s the most sudden and terrible thing, piercing the calm and propelling us toward the worst places. Before the words come out the anxiety is there, roaring on the other side of silence. Before your brain can register what you’re being told, you know that something is wrong. And before you can respond it’s already too late. Because once you’ve heard those words, an event is set in motion and everything will change.

  “Help,” he said. “He’s not breathing.”

  TIME

  ETHAN TOOK HIS MUM by the hand and led her into the tunnel. Graffiti covered the walls—veins of green and silver—with patterns and symbols sprayed into stories like sacred paintings in a cave. Cryptic characters spelled strange words; the mismatched letters reminded Ethan of formulas and equations. Aerosol fumes lingered, but nobody else was there.

  “Come on, Mum!” The tunnel threw Ethan’s voice further ahead. “Hurry up! We’ll miss it.”

  They emerged in the darkness, rushing under the brick archway of the golden viaducts and into Jubilee Park. Along the footpath by the mangrove habitat, past the oval and cricket pavilion, over the mossy bridge, they ran toward Blackwattle Bay. It was low tide: empty stormwater drains, shallow creek, a bank of exposed mud where water lapped at the shoreline walls. Across the bay was the Anzac Bridge, its cables stretching from the pylons like strings of a harp. Streetlamps dotted along the bridge reflected in the dark water, staining it with orange stripes.

  Ethan frowned. “There’s too much light. We should’ve gone to the country.”

  His mum gave him a weary smile. “You’re lucky we’re even here; it’s two o’clock in the morning. You have school tomorrow, I have work. We live in the middle of the city. This’ll do.”

  She spread out a blanket and they sat by the promenade. Both of them were wearing their pajamas. The park was silent and empty; the air smelled like wet grass and salt. Ethan concentrated, letting his eyes adjust to the dark. It was a cloudless night and the moon hadn’t risen yet. Optimal conditions for seeing the meteor shower, and tonight was its peak. Behind them, the glare of Sydney’s skyline turned the horizon amber. He worried about light pollution, that the glowing metallic city would stifle the secrets in the sky.

  “There!” Ethan pointed. “See the row of three stars? That’s Orion’s belt. And there’s Rigel, the constellation’s brightest star. That means the Orionid meteor shower is happening over here. Look!”

  Mum kept her eyes on him. “How long until we go back to bed?”

  “Tonight there’ll be somewhere between twenty-five and fifty meteoroids per hour. They’re actually dust from Halley’s comet entering our atmosphere. Air friction makes them glow with heat and then swoosh! They vaporize.”

  His mum lay down on her back. “So I guess we wait then?”

  “Yeah, we wait.” Ethan nestled in beside her, resting his head on her arm. He looked up at the northwest corner of the sky and connected the dots of the constellation Orion. One of its bright stars—Betelgeuse, a red supergiant—floated near the belt. Red supergiants were the largest stars in the universe and Betelgeuse was so big that if it replaced the sun, it would spread all the way out to Jupiter.

  Ethan squinted, focusing on the vague pink spot. Betelgeuse was a dying star. Eventually, it would run out of fuel and collapse under its own weight. He imagined the red star exploding, the cosmic boom as it went supernova, shockwaves sweeping across the galaxy. Violent plasma bursting into the brightest ball of light. He could almost see it burning. But Betelgeuse wasn’t going to explode for hundreds of thousands of years, maybe not even a million.

  In a million years, Ethan thought, these constellations will break apart. People would need to make new maps and tell new myths for the changing patterns in the sky. Orion would be a different shape; the Southern Cross might become a square. Ethan watched the stars move, like a movie on a massive screen. He saw the cinematic trajectories of darkening dwarfs and brightening giants. Everything was slipping and unthreading, disappearing and beginning. Up in the celestial jungle, there were no static stars.

  In two billion years, the galaxy Andromeda would be so close to the Milky Way that every night sky would light up like fireworks. And in four billion years, the two galaxies would spin closer and closer together and finally collide, swirling and twisting, giving birth to new stars. Becoming one galactic knot. But all that was so far away. There were so many things in the distant future that Ethan would never see.

  He dragged his knees up to his chest. “Mum, do you ever think about the future?”

  “Right now I’m thinking about what we’re going to eat for dinner tomorrow night.”

  “No, not like that. I mean The Future. Like in a million years. Or a billion.”

  Mum smiled. “Not very often, sweetheart. I won’t be alive in a billion years.”

  Ethan turned to face his mum, propping himself up on his elbows. “But I don’t want you to die. What if I sent you away on a spaceship traveling at nearly the speed of light? Because of time dilation, it’d only feel like one year for you. But for me it would be twenty. So when you got back to Earth, we’d almost be the same age.”

  “I wouldn’t want to spend twenty years away from you, though.”

  “Me neither.” Ethan scratched his nose. “Okay, what if we were both on the spaceship together? We could travel close to the speed of light or through the deepest parts of the fabric of space-time where gravity makes it warp. By the time we got back home, millions of years would’ve passed. But we’d still be alive. We could see Betelgeuse go supernova, and the Milky Way collide with Andromeda. Maybe if we just fly around the universe for the rest of eternity, then we never have to die. Or maybe we could go faster than the speed of light. There must be some loophole in theoretical physics that makes living forever possible.”

  His mum studied his face, the hypnotized way people stared at paintings or sunsets. “Ethan, sometimes I have no idea where you came from.”

  “Yeah, you do. I came from inside you.”

  “As usual, you’re right,” she said, rolling onto her stomach.

  “Mum, want to know something crazy? Statistically, the probability that I exist is basically zero. Did you know you were born with two million eggs? But when you were thirty you’d lost 90 percent of them, and by the time you turn forty you’ll only have about fifty thousand left. So the chance that I was born was 0.008 percent. I’m one in two million eggs, plus I’m one in two hundred and fifty million sperm. That’s approximately how many sperm are in each male ejaculation.”

  Mum looked confused. “How do you know all this?”

  “We’re doing sex ed at school. Mr. Thompson even made us watch a video of a real birth. I saw an actual vagina and everything.” Ethan paused. “Mum, do you think they ever miss me?”

  “Who?”

  “The other eggs. My brothers and sisters inside your ovaries. So far, I’m the only one who’s successfully made it out.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, the other eggs would all be your sisters. Only men have the Y chromosome that makes baby boys. At the moment, all the eggs are girls
.”

  “So I used to be a girl?”

  “You also used to be an egg.”

  “It must be scary for them,” Ethan said. “Sending one egg down the fallopian tube every month, like a sacrifice. It’s like The Hunger Games in there. And you only have a few more years left before the whole system shuts down. What if the other eggs run out of time? Mum, what happens if all my sisters die before they get to exist?”

  Her hand found his. “Ethan, do you have survivor’s guilt?”

  “No,” he said in a clipped voice. She was making fun of him. But he’d been one of those eggs once, made of the same proteins, and they were still stuck. Trapped in an eternal moment before life could begin. Ethan couldn’t save his sisters, couldn’t let them know he didn’t mean to abandon them. He hunched his shoulders and sighed.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He wasn’t sure. He didn’t want her to have another baby. And besides, to make another baby she’d need a man to contribute another set of chromosomes. Mum wasn’t a Komodo dragon; she couldn’t reproduce by herself. But as Ethan thought of his thousands of sisters—squashed together in his mum’s ovaries, waiting—he suddenly felt very alone.

  He rubbed his eye. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  “You’re tired.” Mum kissed him on the forehead. “And I’m freezing.”

  “But the meteor shower!”

  “Ten more minutes. That’s it.”

  Ethan leaned forward and focused on Orion; it was high above the horizon now. The night sky was a gauze of symmetries and spirals, an ocean of darkness and light. Ultraviolet and infrared, filled with invisible radiation and empty vacuums. Ethan felt like he could split the yawning universe open with his eyes and see its boundless dimensions, look beyond the blueprint of space and time. He’d always had an aptitude for spotting patterns and finding the geometry in chaos.

  His mum looked out at the water; maybe she didn’t care about the meteor shower. She pulled the sleeves of her sweater over her hands and shivered. Ethan gave her a hug to help her molecules expand. In the dark, her pale skin and fair hair seemed blue; Ethan’s black hair never absorbed the color of the light. When he looked at his mum, Ethan saw another universe—a world intact, of soothing shapes and soft textures, of beautiful angles and the warmest light. His universe.

  Above them, three hundred sextillion stars rearranged themselves. Expanding, tightening, collapsing—new stars were born and old stars died. Quasars and pulsars, novae and nebulas, clusters of galaxies woven together like a spiderweb. Ethan watched the marbled universe dance over his head, ever-shifting and spinning toward its ultimate fate.

  A tiny flicker of light shot across the sky.

  Swoosh!

  The meteoroid vaporized. Flashing and fading in the same instant, like a phosphorescent memory.

  Ethan blinked. It was already gone. “I think I saw one.”

  “A shooting star?”

  “Meteoroid,” he said, correcting her. “It was really fast.”

  “Did you make a wish?”

  “Yeah. But if I tell you, it won’t come true.”

  Mum ruffled his hair. “Come on, pumpkin. Let’s go home.”

  Ω

  CLAIRE WATCHED ETHAN gaze at the stars. Wriggling with excitement, mouth slightly open, head tilted back as he scanned the sky. His spellbound expression made it impossible not to smile. She loved her son in unexpected ways, with the same sort of visceral obsession that one might have for the idiosyncrasies of a lover. Claire loved his physicality—the way Ethan laughed so hard he farted, how he picked at the dry scabs on his knees, the weight of his musty head resting on her shoulder as they sat together on buses or trains. She enjoyed that silent intimacy most of all.

  Ethan shuffled closer and pressed his face against her arm. He wasn’t self-conscious about adoring his mother yet, still needed her affection. Claire knew these easy days were numbered. Adolescence was sneaking into her son—faint whiffs of body odor, scatterings of hair growing on the back of his neck and down his legs, a tiny line of blackheads forming on his nose.

  “Mum,” he said, “look!”

  But on nights like this, when the dark sky was crisp and cloudless, Claire hated looking at the stars. After sunset, she’d taught herself to keep her eyes fixed on the ground. Star visibility wasn’t great in Sydney but sometimes they came out to shine, reminding the city they were still there. That night they were sharp, flaring, and Claire looked up. She still knew where to find her star—it was always there. It never seemed to wander the night sky.

  Ω

  THEIR WEDDING was fourteen years ago now, just family and a few close friends at the registry. Claire wore a vintage lace dress that had belonged to her mother. Instead of a reception, they invited friends to dinner at their favorite Indian restaurant and everyone drank champagne and chatted over butter chicken and rogan josh. Toasts were made to the happy couple and Claire and Mark held hands under the table, looking over at each other occasionally to exchange a smile. She got a bit drunk, spilled curry on her dress. It stained the lace and she remembered running her finger over the orange mark when—years later—she threw the dress in the trash.

  After dinner, Mark took Claire to Centennial Park. They lay together on the grass, looking up at the sky. It was a warm Sydney evening, the middle of January, and the balmy breeze cloaked Claire’s skin. She closed her eyes and sniffed the summer air, so thick with humidity that she could reach out and touch the night. The grass was freshly mowed and a chorus of cicadas chirped behind the trees.

  “Are you happy?” Mark’s fingers moved down her arm, his breath on her face.

  Claire kept her eyes closed but smiled. It was unusual for Mark to ask for reassurance and it made her feel drunk with confidence. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “This probably wasn’t the wedding you wanted. You deserved a big ceremony, hundreds of guests, a church, a gift registry. You must be disappointed.”

  She sat up and looked at him. Blades of grass were stuck in his black hair, and she picked them out with her fingers, noticing how thick and full his eyelashes were. It was peculiar to feel as though she owned him now, that she could say he was hers, that they were married. But he should’ve known that she didn’t care about the wedding. They were young and in love. The thing that mattered most of all was Mark.

  “I’m not disappointed,” Claire said. “Today was perfect.”

  Mark nodded but seemed unconvinced. Bats flapped overhead, flying into the park to feed on the nectar of the paperbark and gum trees. She knew him well enough to suspect that maybe it was Mark who was disappointed, who wanted things to be grander.

  “I have something for you,” he said.

  She hadn’t bought him anything. Sometimes Mark made her feel naïve, like she’d lived her life in a bubble, oblivious to the rest of the world. “You didn’t have to,” Claire insisted. “I have enough things.”

  Mark stood up and offered his hand. She pulled herself upright and brushed the grass off her dress.

  He kissed the back of her neck and pointed at the sky. “There. It’s for you.”

  Claire looked up. “I don’t understand.”

  Mark linked his fingers around hers. “Can you see that star, right here?”

  She stared out to beyond where her fingertip grazed the sky. “Maybe,” she said, closing one eye so the stars came into focus.

  “It’s yours. I bought it for you.”

  “You bought me a star?” She gave him a skeptical look.

  “Because you’re my light,” he said. “My constant.”

  Even though it was a hot night, Mark’s lips against her earlobe made her shiver.

  Much later, Claire removed every trace of Mark: letters, clothes, books, the wedding dress. She erased him completely. But Claire couldn’t throw away a star. She prayed that somehow up in space, her star would extinguish and disappear. This star didn’t though. It remained steadfast in the sky, and the further away Mark felt, the brighter the star
seemed to shine.

  Ω

  AFTER THE METEOR SHOWER, Claire peeked through Ethan’s bedroom door. When he was a baby, she’d stand over his cot and listen to him breathe, soothed by the perfect function of his lungs and steady heartbeat. Now Ethan was twelve years old and Claire still watched him sleep, still sending herself into a panic if she couldn’t see his ribs move. She’d survey the landscape of his face—the smiles and frowns of his dreams, the shadow his long eyelashes cast on his cheeks, the crease that ran through the middle of his nose. His long limbs were often a shock, caught in his rumpled bedding. Her son was always taller and older than she thought he was in her head. Claire could never picture him properly.

  But Ethan gave the vagueness of her life definition. And although Claire complained about his clothes and Legos scattered about the house, she needed them there to punctuate her existence. He made their house a home. They were similar in many ways, soft-spoken and prone to dreaming, half-listening to conversations and lost inside their heads. Echoes of her bone structure bloomed in the lines and angles of her son’s face. But something about Ethan was from another planet.

  Even when he was a baby, Claire knew he was unique. Her son saw the world with different eyes. Sensitive to light, he’d become entranced by prisms and patterns. Ethan lost hours watching shadows bend and flex, shrink and elongate against the carpets and walls. Amazing—that didn’t seem like normal behavior for a baby—but alarming too.

  Everyone was worried. Ethan didn’t meet his developmental milestones; it was frightening how late he was to walk and talk. He didn’t coo and babble, or respond to his name. Claire took him to specialists, tested his hearing, read him stories, sang him songs. She did everything in her power to draw her son out from his interior world and into hers. But Ethan was stuck, caught in the net of delay.

  Doctors warned her that he might never speak, but Claire refused to believe them. It took almost a year of speech therapy but Ethan’s first word was “Mama.” Behind those quiet eyes, she saw flashes of something brilliant hiding there. His second word was “moon.”