An Infinite Number of Parallel Universes by Randy Ribay Read Free Book Online Page B

know?”
    â€œWe’ve been writing each other for years.”
    â€œAnd you never told me?”
    â€œI’m sorry, Mar. It was part of the adoption agreement. I’ve had to provide her with annual updates, and she’s been free to communicate with me. But unless you request it on your own, she can’t contact you directly until you’re eighteen.”
    â€œWhy?” Mari asks.
    â€œI guess they—the adoption agency—thought you’d be mature enough to handle it by then.”
    â€œDo you think I’m ready now?”
    â€œI do.”
    Mari sighs. “So tell me something about her.”
    Mari’s mom opens her purse and pulls out a white envelope. She holds it out to Mari.
    â€œThe contact information’s in here. Along with a letter.”
    Mari takes it. She’s surprised by its lightness. Probably just a single page, Mari guesses. Nothing like the epic letter she had written and promptly burned.
    Her mom puts her arm around Mari, squeezes her, and kisses her on the head. “You’ll never know how grateful I am to have been the one to raise you.”
    Mari does not know if she believes in God, but she prays. She prays for light, a light so quiet and so clear, it will sweep over the world and heal everything and everyone.
    Still, though, she cannot cry.

This Will Not Turn Out Well for the Cat
Wednesday
    “What happens when we die?” Mari’s little brother asks. He sits cross-legged on the floor, two feet from the television, holding a bowl of soggy cereal. Macadamia is lying at his side, her head resting on her paws and her eyes also on the television.
    On the screen, a cartoon mouse has just used a cleaver to chop a cartoon cat into several pieces.
    Mari is on the couch wearing her mom’s old college T-shirt, its crest faded and cracking from a thousand washings. “I don’t know,” Mari says, because she doesn’t. Despite giving the question a lot of thought in the last day. “People think different things.”
    “Like what?”
    “Well, religious people think that you have a soul, kind of like a spirit inside of you that lives forever.”
    “Like a ghost?” her brother asks.
    “I don’t know. Maybe. Anyways, they think that after your body dies, your soul goes to an afterlife. If you’re good, it goes to heaven. If you’re bad, it goes to hell.” Mari’s mind flashes back to the one time she went to church with Dante years ago. She had thought it strange how the congregants held their palms to the sky and swayed while praying, as if in a trance. As if anyone could be that certain of anything.
    “What if you’re both?”
    Mari shrugs.
    “How do you know how to be good?”
    Mari shrugs. “Their religion tells them, I guess.”
    “Then it’s easy.”
    “Not necessarily.”
    “Why not?”
    Mari wonders the same. She wants to play the part of the wise elder, but she feels short on wisdom. She settles on an answer. “Sometimes things get confusing.”
    Andrew spoons cereal into his mouth, some milk from the spoon dripping back into the bowl as he continues staring at the TV. Mouth full, he asks, “Are we religious?”
    Mari shrugs. “Not really. But you can decide what to believe for yourself when you’re older.”
    He turns to Mari. He looks at her with the same sad blue eyes of their mom, so different from the green of Mari’s. “What do you think?”
    Mari considers his question for a moment. “It just kind of ends.”
    “Like closing your eyes?”
    “Maybe.” Mari closes her eyes, trying to imagine it. “Except you probably won’t be able to think or dream anymore.”
    Andrew’s face scrunches as he tries to comprehend nothingness. “So when I die, it’ll be like turning off the TV?”
    She opens her eyes. “Maybe. Nobody knows for sure.”
    “That makes me sad.”
    Mari’s afraid he’s going to cry, but then he turns back to the television and continues eating his cereal. The cartoon cat has come back to life