"Betty, I could use a couple more eternims each day."
"How many did you have in mind?" Betty asks.
"I was thinking, maybe forty-eight a day."
"That's starting to be a lot, doll."
"I'll pay you back eventually," Liz promises.
"It's not the eternims. I just worry about you spending so much time at the Observation Decks."
"You're not my mother, you know."
"I know, Liz, but I still worry."
"God, I hate this!" Liz storms out of the room and throws herself on her bed. As she lies there, she decides to skip the ODs for three days in order to save up the eternims for the prom. This is a great sacrifice. Lacking friends or any other diversions, she spends the time in her room at Betty's house, worrying that she is falling behind with everyone back home. The three days seem endless, but she saves enough money to see the whole prom.
Liz also convinces Esther to let her stay after closing. Esther doesn't exactly agree, but she makes a point of showing Liz where the light switches are.
On prom night Liz watches Zooey eat strawberries dipped in chocolate, make photo key chains, and slow-dance to a schmaltzy ballad. Not long after, she sees Zooey lose her virginity in a fancy room at the same hotel where the dance was held. Out of respect for Zooey, Liz only watches for thirty seconds and covers her right eye with her hand. Liz pays special attention to Zooey's prom dress. The dress, the one Liz was meant to have helped her choose, is balled up in a corner of the room.
Liz leaves before her time runs out, two whole hours before the OD is even set to close. She doesn't want to face Betty at home, but she has nowhere else to go. Liz decides to sit in the park near Betty's house.
After a while, a white, fluffy bichon frise sits next to Liz on the bench. "Hello," the dog seems to say.
By way of greeting, Liz pats the dog on the head. It is the way it was with Lucy somehow, and Liz is even more homesick than she was before.
The dog cocks its head. "You seem a little blue."
"Maybe a little."
"What's bothering you?" the dog asks.
Liz thinks about the dog's question before she answers. "I'm lonely. Also, I hate it here."
The dog nods. "Would you mind scratching under my collar on the back of my neck? I can't reach there with my paws."
Liz obliges.
"Thank you. That feels much better." The dog snorts with pleasure. "So, you said you were lonely and you hate it here?"
Liz nods again.
"My advice to you is to stop being lonely and to stop hating it here. That always works for me,"
says the dog. "Oh, and be happy! It's easier to be happy than to be sad. Being sad takes a lot of work. It's exhausting."
A woman calls the dog from across the park: "ARNOLD!"
"Gotta go! That's my two-legger calling me!" The dog hops off the bench. "See you around!"
"See you," says Liz, but the dog is already gone.
Lucky Cab
Following the prom, Liz gives up watching Zooey or anyone else from school. Now she watches only her immediate family.
One night just as the OD is about to close, Liz asks Esther, "How do the binoculars even work?"
Esther makes a face. "You should know that by now. You put in your coin and then "
Liz interrupts. "I meant, how do they really work? I spend pretty much every waking hour here and I don't know a thing about them."
"Like any binoculars, I suppose. A series of convex lenses in two cylindrical tubes combine to form one image "
Liz interrupts again. "Yes, I know that part. I learned all that in, like, fifth grade."
"Seems like you know everything, Liz, so I don't see why you're bothering me."
Liz ignores Esther. "But Earth is so far, and these binoculars don't even seem particularly powerful. How could you possibly see all the way back to Earth?"
"Maybe that's the thing. Maybe Earth's not far at all."
Liz snorts. "That's a pretty thought, Esther."
"It is, isn't it?" Esther smiles. "I think of it like a tree, because every tree is really two trees. There's the tree with the branches that everyone sees, and then there's the upside-down root tree, growing the opposite way. So Earth is the branches, growing up to the sky, and Elsewhere is the roots, growing down in opposing but perfect symmetry. The branches don't think much about the roots, and maybe the roots don't think much about the branches, but all the time, they're connected by the trunk, you know? Even though it seems far from the roots to the branches, it isn't. You're always connected, you just don't think about "
"Esther!" Liz interrupts a third time. "But how do the binoculars work? How do they know what I want to see?"
"It's a secret," Esther replies. "I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you."
"That isn't at all funny." Liz starts to walk away.
"All right, Lizzie, I'll tell you. Come really close, and I'll whisper it in your ear."
Liz obeys.
"Ask me again," Esther says, "and say please."
"Esther, how do the binoculars work, please?"
Esther leans in toward Liz's ear and whispers, "It's" she pauses "magic." Esther laughs.
"I don't know why I even bother talking to you."
"You don't have any friends and you're profoundly lonely."
"Thanks." Liz storms out of the OD.
"See you tomorrow, Liz," Esther calls cheerily.
August 12, the day that would have been Liz's sixteenth birthday on Earth, arrives. Like every other day, Liz spends this one at the ODs.
"Lizzie would have been sixteen today," her mother says to her father.
"I know," he says.
"Do you think they'll ever find the man who did it?"
"I don't know," he answers. "I hope so," he adds.
"It was a cab!" Liz yells at the binoculars. "AN OLD YELLOW TAXICAB WITH A FOURLEAFCLOVER
AIR FRESHENER HANGING FROM THE REARVIEW MIRROR!"
"They can't hear you," a grandmotherly type tells Liz.
"I know that," Liz snaps. "Shush!"
"Why didn't he stop?" Liz's mother asks her father.
"I don't know. At least he called 911 from the pay phone, not that it mattered anyway."
"He still should have stopped." Liz's mother starts to cry. "I mean, you hit a fifteen-year-old kid, you stop, right? That's what a decent person does, right?"
"I don't know, Olivia. I used to think so," Liz's father says.
"And I refuse to believe no one saw anything! I mean someone must have seen; someone must know; someone must "
Liz's time runs out, and the lenses click shut. She doesn't move. She just stares into the closed lenses and lets her mind go black.
Liz is furious to learn that she was the victim of a hit-and-run. Whoever hit me should pay, she thinks. Whoever hit me should go to prison for a very long time, she thinks. At that moment, Liz resolves to find the cabbie and then to somehow find a way to tell her parents. She pops an eternim in the slot and begins to scour the Greater Boston area for old yellow taxicabs with fourleafclover air fresheners hanging from their rearview mirrors.
Liz systematically searches for the lucky cab (her name for it) by watching the parking lots and the dispatchers of all the cab companies that service the area near the Cambridgeside Galleria.
Although there are only four cab companies that drive this area, it still takes her an entire week and over five hundred eternims to locate the lucky cab. Liz raises the additional eternims by asking Betty for clothes money. Betty is happy to oblige her and doesn't ask too many questions.