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“I’m sorry I don’t have the answers,” Miles says, maybe interpreting my silence as frustration. “I wish I did. I’m trying.” Then he corrects himself: “We’re trying.”
Of course, that raises another question. “I’m still not sure why you want to help me, aside from the fact that we’re in this together. I’ve pepper-sprayed you multiple times, Miles. The librarian had to come check on us. It’s pretty clear we get on each other’s nerves.”
At that, his face relaxes into a new kind of expression, one that restores some of my hope in the universe that trapped us here together. “Because somehow, against all my better judgment… I like you.”
The words stun me, settling against my chest with an unexpected warmth, stealing any comeback I was about to make. I like you. He says it in a way that’s so straightforward. Uncomplicated. So few people say what they really mean, and even if I never doubted the way my fellow Islanders felt about me, plenty of times I’ve had to nudge my interview subjects for clear answers.
As much as I wish this weren’t true, and I’d never admit this to Miles, I can’t remember the last time someone said something that nice to me. There’s a loveliness in those three words, the simple fact of someone liking your company.
Of course, he has to follow it up by saying, “Not in that way.” He tilts his face away as it reddens again, and I’m going to guess that he hasn’t had much experience with people in that way. Then again, neither have I. “Just that I don’t find you completely miserable to be around. Only sixty percent or so.”
I roll my eyes. “Thanks for the clarification. I wasn’t thinking that, but I’m glad you set the record straight.”
He motions for me to follow him into the stacks, and after a few minutes of browsing, he passes me a book, that strange moment forgotten. Except in my mind, where it remains pressed against all the softest corners.
“This one might be promising,” he says. “It’s popular science, so it’s a bit more readable.”
The cover reads Black Holes and Baby Universes, by Stephen Hawking.
“Aw, baby universes,” I say, regarding the book like it’s a puppy. “So you want me to just… start? Now?”
“No time like the present,” he says with another one of those infuriating non-smiles, and so I crack the book and begin reading.
DAY ELEVEN
Chapter 15
WE’VE BEEN IN THE LIBRARY for three days. My brain is soup, a simmering mess of neurons stumbling their way around dimly lit pathways.
I drop my head to the table with a soft thunk, glancing sideways at Miles through crooked glasses. He’s stiff as always, perched on the edge of his chair, head bent at a ninety-degree angle, eyes flicking across pages at twice my usual speed. I’m not sure it would be physically possible for Miles to slouch or even sit cross-legged. I don’t think his body would allow him to. Meanwhile, I’ve draped myself over two chairs, legs propped on the second one, one of my shoes lost somewhere in between the FARADAY, MICHAEL and OPPENHEIMER, J. ROBERT shelves.
Miles reminds me of the kind of comic-book scientist who gets too absorbed in their work, then falls into a vat of acid or gets bitten by a genetically modified creature and becomes a supervillain. When I told him this either a few minutes or a few hours ago, he wanted to know what his powers would be, and I informed him that he’d be able to successfully complete boring tasks at an alarming rate.
“I want a better superpower.”
“Nope,” I said. “You don’t get to choose.”
Now I turn the page in a yellowed textbook that has seen better days. “It’s hopeless.” I haven’t processed anything for at least the past fifty pages. Stephen Hawking’s pop science? Parts of it were interesting, even if the baby universes were not quite as adorable as I’d hoped. This book, the collected lectures of some physicist I’ve never heard of? Impenetrable. “What are words? I don’t know what we’re even looking for anymore.”
“A way out,” he says, but as he swipes a hand through his disheveled hair, I can tell he’s fading too. The slightest amount, but it’s there. The scar beneath his left eye—now that I’ve spent so many hours sitting next to him, I know it’s shaped like a crescent moon.
“Your mom is a physics professor,” I say. “Maybe we should talk to her?”
“I’ve done it.” Miles points to the chalkboard, where he’s insisted on drawing up his loops every day.
“Because I’m supposed to know what all your little symbols mean.”
A sigh, which is the primary way Miles and I interact. I can categorize almost all his sighs at this point: there’s the that was a weird joke but okay sigh, the your mere presence exhausts me sigh, the frustrated but just going to ignore you sigh. This one is a the answer is obvious sigh.
“My mother is a scientist,” he says. “A natural skeptic. The few times I’ve told her, she didn’t believe me.”
“Did you try what you did with me, anticipating what’s going to happen around you?”
“I’m not sure how she’d react.” He flicks the cap of his pen, back and forth and back and forth. Maybe he’s always fiddling with something because his posture is otherwise so stiff, so rigid. His body is crying out for freedom, but he only allows it in the tiniest of doses. “There are some scientists who want to believe the extraordinary is possible. Some who dedicate their lives to it, even, for better or for worse. But others… they’re motivated by constant questioning. It’s not that they want to disprove every theory they come across—it’s that they’re going to need a hell of a lot of evidence to back anything up.”
“And I’m guessing Dr. Okamoto is the second type.”
He points a finger at me. “Yep.”
