Die a billion times
present day
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“What’s that?” Hazel asked, her voice trailing off as if the chime had rung from another world.
“It’s Peter at the door,” Lee said, flashing us the texts on his screen.
I skipped over to let our friend in. Peter unfolded into the room like a baby giraffe, hunching head and shoulders over me. He briefly filled the doorway, his long limbs awkwardly graceful. He held out two bulging fast-food bags. “I come bearing grease.”
I sized him up. “How can you eat so much and still weigh a couple of quarter-pounders less than me?”
“I’m tall,” he shrugged.
“That’s all you got? Why do tall people credit everything to height? It’s so one-dimensional.” I crossed my arms, miffed.
“It’s just what we do.” He looked down at me benevolently.
I jumped up and snatched the ratty turquoise beret off his head. “Nice lid,” I said, plopping it on before hip-checking him toward the kitchen. “Thrift score?”
“Nah, found it on the sidewalk just now.”
“Ewww!” I squeaked, tossing the hat back at him and wrinkling my nose in mock disgust.
The boys split a half-dozen burgers, and Hazel and I picked at a pile of french fries. Hazel dipped the soft ones in ketchup. I collected the crispiest and ate them straight up. Peter broke the silence.
“Don’t worry,” he said around a mouthful of burger. “Lee texted everything. Kiki’s a multiverse she-devil recruiting Hazel into her army of warrior princesses. Only, plot twist, she-devils are the good guys, and there’s this axe-murdering man-angel that we have to help Kiki defeat. And, I’m guessing here, if we don’t succeed, the multiverse is toast.” He snapped his fingers.
“That’s about right,” I said. “So, you’re in?”
“Totally. I hate angels. They’re always harmonizing. Pretentious show-offs. And they smite people, which I find hypocritical for holy beings.”
I inspected the angel’s wings screened across the back of his too-tight pink baby tee.
“They’re ironic,” he explained.
I slipped my jacket off my shoulders and turned my back to him, revealing my twin white-winged pink t-shirt, except mine was cropped well above my waist.
“My wings,” I declared, “are a purposefully subversive cultural misappropriation.”
Peter’s jaw dropped in astonishment. “No way. Did you warp reality and know I would wear this t-shirt?”
“No, you gave it to me yesterday, and I put it on this morning. Sometimes, a t-shirt is just a t-shirt.”
Peter saluted me with his cheeseburger.
“You know, they do make shirts larger than the ones Hazel and I wear,” I said, plucking at the dainty sleeve stretched over Peter’s scarecrow shoulder.
“Yeah, but they don’t suit my style,” he monotoned, reaching for another burger.
A thrift-store master, Peter’s style was a chaotic collage of upcycled jeans and baby-doll tees that barely fit his long, thin frame. He thrifted the shirts in pairs, cutting the bottom off one and sewing it to the other, extending the hems down his long frame like a tight skirt. “I don’t want this washboard to make people jealous,” he joked, rubbing his hollow stomach. “Plus, outie belly button discrimination is real. And you two only wear crop tops anyway. Win-win-win.”
The last of the fries vanished into Peter, leaving a lone ketchup smudge on his chin.
“OK, kids, let’s get to the nitty-gritty,” I clapped. Ignoring Lee’s glower, I continued, “Like I said, besides fulfilling my need for a cute best friend urban princess sidekick, Hazel seems to catalyze long, wide-reaching branches with waves of meaning that ripple across the multiverse.”
I flattened the grease-stained food bag, pulled a pencil from my backpack, and drew a wiggly line.
“In the ocean, waves start when tiny ripples catch the wind, building as they run before it.” My wiggles grew larger. “That run is called the fetch of the wave. Long fetch, big waves.
“As swells roll across the ocean, they interact with other waves, fish, whales, boats, raindrops, currents, tides. And each encounter shapes them, little by little. So they carry the stories of everything they touch. Every moment leaves its trace, ripples of the past shaping the present.” I doodled furiously.
“Eventually, the waves reach the end of their travels. They lift over reefs, rise toward beaches, and one by one, their stories arc into momentary curls, each with one ideal line to ride.”
I held up my drawing, eyes bright. Peter golf-clapped. Lee shrugged. Hazel smiled softly.
But I wasn’t done. There was more, so much more. My head buzzed with urgency. I had to share this, make them see.
“Waves of meaning start the same way, just a ripple, a bit of information, a small insight, the pebble of an idea. Then sharing and storytelling act like wind on swells. And they grow.
“Hazel’s universe branches have a long fetch, like open oceans. That’s why they matter. Meaning keeps growing, layering story on story, rolling outward.”
I couldn’t lose them. Not Hazel. Not this time. My voice tightened.
“But like all waves, these eventually close out. Barrels crash into sandy darkness, all churn and flecks of foam. Then they’re gone. The water recedes. The stories end. And one day, when the multiverse ends, and the last waves have crashed, all meaning ends, too.”
Their glazed eyes stared back at me. Without warning, I tore the drawing in half and crumpled it, frustrated with myself. Again.
“Dude, why’d you do that? I was gonna frame it,” Peter quipped.
Hazel watched me stalk across the kitchen and throw my drawing away. She was reminded of our surf sessions at the Marin headlands, how I caught waves with such easy fierceness, carving deep in the pocket, perfect lines drawn from millions of years of practice.
“You’re a surfer,” she said. “You surf those waves.”
“Yes. I’m a time surfer,” I said softly. “I surf waves of meaning.” Then, my enthusiasm surged, shouldering my doubt aside. “And I rip.”
Peter blinked, burger halfway to his mouth. Lee frowned, arms crossed. Hazel waited patiently.
“Surfing those waves isn’t physical, not exactly,” I continued. “When I time surf, I’m sensing currents of meaning that flow across many universes all at once. My individual brains can’t handle all the input, so they create a beautiful hallucination, like a psychedelic trip riding patterns of purpose across the multiverse.”
I carved the air with my hand, surfing an invisible wave.
“When I’m in the barrel, it’s a kaleidoscope, realities flickering, serendipities sparkling all around me. It feels like I’m riding meaning itself.”
My stoked feeling faltered. “Until it crashes. That part’s less fun. Getting caught inside on a big set? Never a good time, even if it’s all just an illusion.”
A confused silence settled over the kitchen. I flickered wide, testing the moment, then let the quiet endure.
The tension built until Hazel finally spoke. “And that other guy, the axe-murderer. He’s a time surfer, too?”
I mimed throwing a shaka to the ground and stomping on it. “His name is Paha. He’s the best there ever will be. He’s also an arrogant jackass. And, yeah, sometimes scary. Like, well, deadly scary.”
Hazel flinched, the spark of fear igniting a blaze of anger. She didn’t want to be afraid. I felt it echo in my own chest, something Paha had seen in me. I wasn’t done. And she wanted to matter.
Hazel took a breath and held it. “So you’re saying I make big, meaningful waves possible?”
“Glassy, monster waves,” I said, nodding.
“But you can’t surf them until they break, right?”
“Right,” I said, letting that sink in. “Paha has a saying. Surfing is an elegy for waves. We honor their ending.”
The room stilled.
Then, Peter slapped the table, shattering the moment. “Dude, that axe-murdering grom is totally snaking your waves,” he joked, unaware he’d just called the greatest big wave surfer in history a grom. “So uncool. But, like, shouldn’t we be talking about the murdering part?”
I stared daggers at him. Hazel settled for a moment, then kept going. “Kiki, what causes these waves to break?”
I wavered, then took a deep breath, careful now.
“Remember last year when you finally decided not to get a pet rabbit? You did all the research. Gave a presentation to your parents. Saved all your babysitting money. That rabbit story had meaning. And then you bought a sewing machine instead, and it just ended.”
My hand mimed a slow, curling wave crashing to shore. “Those rabbit waves were fun-sized… but, meh.”
“So, to catch a breaking wave,” Hazel said, “you have to wait for me to decide something.”
“Not just decisions. Any time meaning ends. But yeah, decisions are good examples. Like when Peter got all obsessed with clothes and traded his grandma’s old copper candy pot for his own sewing machine. That ended his candy-making.”
I turned to him. “Bruh. Those candy waves were blown out. Sugar is poison. Fabric is your medium.”
A niggling thought tugged at Hazel. “But my big waves… they make big sets when they break.”
I nodded.
She jerked with a new realization.
“Wait, what about that guy in the park, Paha? I feel like I’ve seen him before.” She hesitated. “He was trying to make a big break, right? He’s a big wave surfer. And you said surfing is an elegy.”
Her face paled as it clicked.
“Kiki… what happens if I die?”
Lee stiffened, eyes narrowing.
I steeled myself and dropped in.
“Sometimes, that creates massive breaks. Heavy, harsh walls. Gnarly hold-downs. Messy multiverse bombs. They’re almost unrideable. Way bigger than they should be.”
My avalanche of surfer slang nearly buried her. But not quite.
“How do you know that?” Hazel asked. “Do you mean theoretically?”
I hesitated, my throat tightening.
“No,” I said, my voice hollow. “I’ve seen you die a billion times.”
Hazel held my gaze, the remaining color draining from her face.
“No way,” Peter whispered, backing up.
Lee said nothing, just watched.
I stood still, facing Hazel.
She was shocked, but not how I’d have guessed. At fourteen, mortality still felt abstract, even hers. Whether it was one death or a billion.
A tear welled in the corner of her eye. It hung for a moment, catching the light before spilling over.
“That’s so sad,” she said quietly. “To lose so many friends.”
I nodded. “It is sad. So sad. Every time.”
Hazel stood and wrapped her arms around me. I let her hold me tight.
Lee cleared his throat and stood up with a puffed chest, raising his eyebrows at Peter, who shrugged nervously.
Lee’s curt voice cut through the silence. “Wait a minute. If you’ve seen her die a billion times, how can you know this Hazel is the right one?”
Frustration and fear harshened his tone. “Kiki, seriously, what’s happening here? Peter and I were okay going along. And I get that you guys like this play-acting nonsense. But this trippy flower-child death-cult talk is going too far. Did you dose us with something on that cliff?”
“And if you did drug them, I bet my dad would want in on whatever you’ve got,” Peter added with a nervous grin, trying to defuse the tension.
Hazel held me as I stared Lee down, but he didn’t look away.
“OK,” I said, a sharp edge in my voice. “Let’s do this. Time to go long.”
I stepped back from Hazel, squared my shoulders, and inhaled into my belly. “Hold your breath.”
Next Chapter: What Kiki’s really up to
present day
The world flickered.
The kitchen dissolved.
We floated just above the sloping floor of a blood-warm ocean. Blue sunlight shimmered far above, barely reaching us. Crushing pressure squeezed our ears and chests. A field of fluorescent sponges loomed around us, and a dragon-necked plesiosaur glided overhead, silhouetted against the surface. Peter’s scream died in his throat as he choked on seawater, coughing out a meager stream of bubbles.
The world flickered again.
Suddenly we were shivering on a mountainside, the cool autumn air a shock on our wet skin. Below us, a savannah teemed with life. The kids collapsed to the ground, their worlds spinning. Peter gagged on the saltwater in his throat.
I set down a giant snail-like creature, its tentacles writhing from a shell the size of a serving platter. “This is an ammonite from when most of California was underwater, about a hundred million years ago,” I said briskly, ignoring Peter’s retching. “That’s when we just were.”
Lee glared at me, his head pounding. Hazel gasped for breath, wiping her wet hair from her face and rubbing at her ears.
I swept my hand across the broad valley stretched out below us, ticking off the animals. “Those are mammoths, giant ground sloths, short-faced bears. Ice Age megafauna from just before the people you call Native Americans migrated from Siberia and hunted them to extinction.”
I hauled Peter to his feet and scooped the writhing ammonite from the dust. A deep growl rumbled from the brush behind us. “And that is an insufficiently fearful saber-toothed cat, also soon to be extinct on the pointy ends of thousands of spears. Time to go.”
The world flickered again…
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