Excerpt: Twelve Visitors

Tina Cronan lived in a massive Nineteenth Century farmhouse on the road that goes out to I-95. She was the youngest of six, and the house had the feel of a motel, with room after room belonging to siblings who only occupied them for weekends and holidays. They were decorated with whatever was in style when the son or daughter in question left high school.

Tina and Una were studying physics in a room that seemed to double as a shrine to the late Kurt Kobain, although Una put forth the opinion that is was essentially a shrine to the death of the music recording industry in general.

"We can finally all listen to anything we want now. So everyone plugs in their Ipod and gets their own personal soundtrack. No music will ever be popular again. Well, except maybe to the tween crowd."

"That's really depressing, Una." Tina was stretched out on her sister's bed. "But not as depressing as physics homework."

Una had stopped by to help Tina with the physics assignment.

"Event horizon? Angular momentum? Singularities? Schwarzschild radius? Why can't these people speak English?" Tina tossed her notebook over to Una.

"Look, at least Mr. Taylor isn't making us do equations with this stuff. Just some vocabulary, right? Think of it as a foreign language. Aren't you getting an A in Spanish?"

"Si."

"Perfect. So you can help me when the it comes time for my first Spanish test."

"Wait a minute, Una. Aren't you, like, a native speaker." Tina asked.

"Yeah, and I was brought up with native bad grammar in San Salvador. So, we have a deal?"

Tina smiled. "Deal."

Una flipped the textbook open. "Event horizon."

"Bad horror movie. My dad netflixed it a month ago. He likes that stuff."

"What else?"

Tina paused to consider. "The point of no return."

"Right. Die is cast. Rubicon is crossed. Hell in a handbasket. Voted off the island."

"New Year's Eve." Tina said.

Una moved closer an put an arm across Tina's shoulder. "I'm sorry. I'm not the type to get all smug just because shit happens. There are consequences. I know that. Are you talking to him?"

Tina looked like it was the last question she could have expected.

Finally she answered. "Yes. No. I don't know. I mean he's talked to me. Asked me what the pizza-of-the-day at Luigo's was and asked how I did on the history quiz. Wished me good luck for the game tomorrow. But it's not like we're talking until, you know, we talk. About what happened."

"Will you?"

"I don't know. Maybe this really is it. Point of no return. Goddamn it, I like him. That's the problem. When he's not acting like a dick, he's… he's a good friend."

"If he acted like a dick all the time, then you wouldn't be with him. It would be easy."

"So what do I do?" Tina asked.

"Study your physics."

Tina sat up on the edge of her bed and pulled her cell phone out of her jacket pocket.

"What's even the point?" she asked.

"It makes a good metaphor. You've crossed the event horizon, Tina. Everything's different and no way to ever go back."

"But isn't that true of every decision we ever make?"

Una smiled. "Now you're getting it. The metaphor, anyway. I think we're getting away from homework."

"Then we better get back to the homework. What's a singularity."

Una smiled. "Infinite density in zero volume."

Tina laughed. "Okay, now I'm the one who feels infinitely dense."

"It's like this. If you stick enough matter into a small enough space that gravity collapses it into a point. From there on, from within the singularity it's like the singularity is the entire universe. Nothing escapes it and inside the singularity, time stands still."

"You made time stand still the other night."

Una held Tina's hand. "No, there was a power surge and some hardware crashed."

Tina shook her head. "I didn't mean the scoreboard. I'm not buying that you had nothing to do with that, but no. I meant what you said to us. How you go everyone to snap out of it and see what they were doing."

"We both did that." Una said. "And yeah, maybe the event horizon got crossed. I'd like to think so. If there's no way back to what I saw when I walked back behind the scoreboard, then I don't think that's such a bad thing."

"So now we're just falling toward a black hole?"

"Good metaphor for life, isn't it?"

Tina shook her head. "Depressing. But I think the singularity is a good metaphor for love. Everything in the universe in one place, frozen in one moment of time forever."

"Was that how it was when you and Nick got together?"

Tina shook her head. "No. I'm still waiting. What about you? Ever had a moment where the whole universe came down to a single point?'

"Yeah, I had mine. It's my reason for being here."

The lightbulb in the ceiling fixture sparked white hot and then flickered out.