“Why?”
“Because the idea of the butterfly effect is fundamentally flawed, because in the end, you will never know what the future would have been, so without seeing alternative timelines, how can you ever properly test the validity of the effect?”
Ari starts to laugh. It is somehow both the wrong and better answer. “But that’s not the question,” he says. “She just wants to know if you understand the concept.”
“But Idon’tunderstand the concept because it doesn’t make sense to begin with!” she argues.
“So? Just give her the answer she wants!”
“I don’t know how.” And Sam looks so genuinely at a loss that Ari takes pity on her.
“Oh, Sam.” He shakes his head and smiles. “You’re too good for this class.”
She laughs, and Ari glances at her, surprised and pleased. This is the first time he’s ever made her laugh, and he loves the sound. He wants to say more but doesn’t know what, and then it’s too late anyway, because they’ve reached the exit.
But as they prepare to separate for the afternoon, Sam hands Ari a folded piece of paper. “Here,” she says. “I wrote you something.” She turns away before he can react. “Bye, Ari.”
Ari looks down at the letter, then quickly up at her, but she is already heading down the steps and toward the bus. So he just waves, his heart thudding, until she’s out of sight. He unfolds the paper and starts to read.
Since we never get to hang out after school, I figured we could keep exchanging these? I’ll start us off this time.
It becomes their daily ritual.
Every morning, Ari gives her a letter, and every afternoon, Sam hands him one in return. He tucks it safely into a secret pocket of his backpack, anticipates it all throughout his alchemy lesson like a dessert he’s saving for later. He doesn’t dare read it until he’s alone in his apartment at night. There, in the silence and the glow of his bedside lamp, he can hear Sam’s voice in his head, as comforting as if she is right beside him.
And through her letters, he learns thousands of details about her—that she has a particular affinity for the color green, that she thinks pumpkins taste awful, that she finds it impossible for us to be alone in the universe, because then what is the point of all that empty space?
Maybe the point of the universe,he responds,is that there is no point. It simply happened, just like the Big Bang.
She writes back playfully:But the Big Bang was literally a point.
She draws a bunch of polka dots around the line, and it makes him laugh.All right, fair enough. But maybe the need for reason is just a human trait, so that we don’t feel so alone.
More seasons pass. The rains cool the land, the land greens, the green flowers, the flowers yellow, the yellow catches fire, and the cycle restarts. Ari and Sam transition into high school, grow older and taller and lankier, get their own phones and start texting each other. But the physicality of a letter makes them cherish it more, so they continue their habit. Ari channels all his pent-up grief over missing his family into messages for Sam. Their conversations spiral down wild tangents, sometimes rambling and hilariously nonsensical, sometimes full of deep questions. It doesn’t matter if they’re in the same classes that semester or not. They always find a way to get their letters to each other, whether stuffed into each other’s lockers or taped to the bottoms of their desks or tossed into the hoods of each other’s sweatshirts as they’re passing in the hall.
Still, there is a curious, unspoken rule between them where they share nothing personal about their lives. Perhaps he starts it, shying instinctively away from any mention of what he actually does every day after school. And perhaps she follows suit, understanding that there are secrets in their lives not meant to be shared. Whatever the reason, they stay on the surface of their friendship over the next two years, holding back even as they never run out of things to talk about, guarding their vulnerabilities even as they write each other hundreds of pages. Even as they each wonder what they’re missing in the other. Even as they each hope, quietly, that the other will ask.
Even when, one day, something terrible happens.
The fundamental flaw of science is believing that matter created life, when in truth, it is life that is the origin of matter, it is life—the source, the soul—that is the creator of material existence.
Keynote Address by Boudica, Oxford seminars, 1992
