Peter Petrawicki was bad weather. He wasn’t even a person to me. But Altus made him real, not only because he’d just knocked on my door before coyly walking away, but also because he was tromping all over my vision of my future. And as much as I wanted to think that industrial espionage was the only reason I was at Altus, I was also there because this was supposed to be my story, and the only reason it wasn’t going to be was because, out of billions of humans, Altus was being led by that one.

Eventually I convinced the guys that I was fine, and that I still had a lab waiting for me at Berkeley, and thanked them for being with me during my meltdown. We had a hug and then I shuffled them out of the room. In the few moments before I fell completely unconscious, I thought to fish the prepaid phone out of my bag. I wanted to text an update to Professor Lundgren. Maybe I could even call her. It turned out I couldn’t do either. There was no cell signal in middle-of-nowhere Val Verde.

Corporate Defaults Surge to Record High

Associated Press

Defaults on corporate bonds rose to a record high this year, leaving regulators struggling to assess how to manage what are coming to be seen as the early warning signs of a recession. “Issuance of corporate debt has risen in the past ten years as low interest rates and pressure to raise stock prices have resulted in unprecedented share buybacks,” said Susan Gordan, senior economist at Goldman Sachs. “That has been healthy for many companies, but for others, those bills are coming due.”

Fed chair Arthur Pai has indicated that rate cuts were likely in the face of lower consumer confidence and a slowing economy.

MAYA

How did I spend the longest three weeks of my life?

Well, I tried to take the book’s advice and bring my nose up from off the ground, but I mostly failed. I did have dinner with Derek’s family. Their house was a beautiful split-level from the fifties. His wife and daughter were perfect and made me ache for family, and for a future in which I might have a family.

I’d like to tell you I spent the time off doing sit-ups and reading novels, but I mostly spent it on the Som and researching Fish. The book had said I was safe now, and I had decided to trust the book, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t still terrified by my Cowtown experience. None of my Som friends wanted to talk to me about Fish, though. The Som was still trying to track down where April was, and that’s all people wanted to discuss. That made sense. Before I had solid leads, that’s basically all I talked about with my Som friends. But I was absolutely not going to start sharing now that I had concrete information.

The economy was skidding, and that seemed like a pressing problem to the world at large, but it felt distant to me. I asked my dad about it and he said, “Sometimes the economy needs a correction, I wouldn’t worry too much about it,” but I could tell he was stressed.

I spent a lot of time staring at the rocks I’d kept, sometimes just holding one in my hand, feeling it pull the heat out of my skin. Eventually it would warm up, and then it would stay warm for hours.

Then I got a call from Andy, which was suspect because he never called. I’d stopped reaching out to him because it seemed like it just stressed him out to talk to me. It didn’t hurt my feelings. Too much, anyway. He had obviously picked April in the breakup, but it did feel like I’d lost him as well as April, and it also seemed like no one had ever considered how that might make me feel.

But lord, it was actually really nice to talk to him. Our conversation relaxed me, and also gave me a chance to be strong for someone, and to think about what I might say to April if I got the chance. Andy believing April was alive meant a great deal. It had taken a lot of energy to not tell him about the book. I wanted him to know everything I knew. Then again, I didn’t want him to have too much false hope. Knowing what I know now, this is hilarious.

All of these things were only temporary distractions, though. I waited. I watched trashy TV and spent too much time in bed. And it turns out, time does eventually pass no matter how anxious you are.

On the anointed day, I put all of my supplies into the bed of my rented Nissan Frontier and drove the truck to the Wolton Motor Inn at dawn. I pulled around the back and waited.

Time crawled by. I listened to The Thread’s podcast—a new project for him/her/them. You know how sometimes the news reports on itself? Like, CNN will show clips of Fox News and vice versa to explain what their rival did wrong? Well, I had actually heard a mention of this Thread podcast on NPR. The Thread itself was becoming important enough for the news media to report on it. The podcast I was listening to that day, their second episode, was about both the history and the present of housing in the US and how the system did a great job of increasing inequality, especially along racial lines, as power structures encouraged both segregation and the fears that perpetuate it.

But the reason it got on the news was that they had broken another story. Local government in a suburb of Houston had enacted a number of policies that, people argued, were making it harder for people of color to move into particular neighborhoods. The politicians insisted it was just normal zoning, but The Thread somehow got ahold of recorded telephone conversations in which those same politicians literally celebrated keeping Black citizens out, and they didn’t use the word “Blacks.” Six people had already resigned.

It was, in the old-school sense, pretty righteous.

There was no way this guy was one guy—he knew too much. I had to pee, but there was no way I was leaving. I crept into the bushes.

When the podcast was over, I switched to an Octavia Butler audiobook and played Candy Crush, making my way through the energy bars and Gatorade …

The sun went down. I had to pee again, so I slipped out of the truck once more and into the now substantially creepier shrubs.

The moment my pants were past my knees, I heard a bang, like a hammer on a piece of metal. I yanked my pants back up, and my heart kicked into overdrive. I ran back around the truck just in time to see the back door of the Wolton Motor Inn bend outward as another slam sounded across the empty space. Bright white light leaked through the seam between the door and the frame.

I stood silent, motionless, without any idea what I should be doing.

A final slam and the door swung open, taking part of the frame with it. The light now poured out of the doorway along with the final words of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” In that door stood a small person, just over five feet tall and so full of “fuck the world” energy that there was absolutely no one else it could possibly have been.

APRIL

Finally.

I hope you appreciate how hard it was for me to have these people tell their stories for so long before getting to mine. By this point you’re probably all comfortable with my friends and are loath to go back to my voicey prose and tendency toward overcapitalization, but, ahem, DEAL. Also, we’re going to get started here and it’s going to be a little upsetting. I was not in great shape when my story starts back up, but there’s no getting around it, so …

There’s something about the mouth … Any change feels disturbingly foreign. Like that moment when you’re a kid, and suddenly there’s one fewer tooth in there and you can’t keep your tongue from repeatedly shooting out to sense the change. That marvelous, nerve-packed face-tentacle spends years getting used to every curve and lump of the inside of your mouth, so when you chip a tooth or get your braces off, it stands out like a rocket launch.