Jennifer Chan Is Not Alone: Chapters 25–38

“I didn’t realize not yelling required so much oxygen.” I don’t mean for it to sound so sassy, but it comes out that way.

Dad rubs a hand over his stubble.

He’s usually on my side, or at least neutral, but now it’s two against one and I have nobody.

At school, Ingrid texts, asking if I know a private place to meet during lunch, and though I’m wary of involving them more, I suggest the basement bathroom in the chapel.

My chest lurches, and without thinking, I rush over and sink to the floor beside her.

Then she looks at me, and her brows furrow.

“I’m trying to make amends. Yom Kippur is the Jewish Day of Atonement, so I’ve been thinking about the way we hurt others, on purpose or by accident or because we were trying to help and it totally backfired, and I’m figuring out how to make it right.”

“I’m trying to make amends. Yom Kippur is the Jewish Day of Atonement, so I’ve been thinking about the way we hurt others, on purpose or by accident or because we were trying to help and it totally backfired, and I’m figuring out how to make it right.”

The way she’d looked at me gave me heartburn—I could still feel all her negative thoughts about me, worming their way through my chest like maggots.

I hadn’t thought this far in advance. I had to improvise.

But she said, “Were the lights red or white? There’s been mixed messages in the alien community recently. Some people think there are actually two UAPs competing for our attention, but I think it’s just one. There are plenty of things to account for something looking different to different people. The clouds, for one, and the other lights in the sky. Not to mention confirmation bias, which—”

We’d made this vague plan, but we’d never discussed what would happen now. We thought of it as a hypothetical: What if we taught Jennifer a lesson?

Horror wrung my stomach.

Maybe people are afraid to believe because believing the wrong thing has devastating consequences.

Did you do something wrong? Yes. But you’re trying to make amends.

We learn to do better when we face our shortcomings.

I stare at the table, studying the grooves of the worn wood.

After Reagan and Tess left the bathroom, I stayed behind and salvaged what I could of Jennifer’s journal, and now, as I dump the contents onto my floor, the universe seems to tilt.

Wincing, I reach for the ripped pages, then spread them out like a mosaic of all Jennifer’s hopes and dreams and secrets and discoveries.

My words tumble over each other, and when I finish, there’s a rustling sound before Kath speaks.

“I can drive. I’m just a little rusty.”

I hoist myself into the back seat as Reagan flips on her blinker. She glances out the back window to reverse, shifts the van out of park, and then slams her foot on the pedal.

We stare at my mailbox—or at least, the mangled remains of my mailbox.

We hear her in the other room, pacing back and forth, and we catch bits of her conversations: “They seem convinced”; “Wishful thinking, I’m sure, but maybe this is what they need”; and “Some kind of closure.”

Kath nods gravely.

I barely breathe as we move through the outskirts of town, lined with car dealerships and thirsty palm trees—and then we’re out of Norwell completely, surrounded by open fields.

Way up there, on the side of a radio tower, my Ferris wheel epiphany comes back to me. That night, I thought the world was fragile, that we couldn’t live in it without knocking things down and hurting people.

Wisps of her hair float above her shoulders, and it’s like she’s held by an invisible, unknowable force, a force even stronger than gravity.

The world feels out of proportion. Something grows in my chest, and at first it feels like that familiar anxiety. But it’s not—it’s something bigger, and more hopeful, like an infinite expanse of possibility.

I think these forces were always meant to work together—not to create the end of everything, a Big Crunch or a Big Rip, but to maintain an ebb and flow.