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I don't know if I'd ever told Daisy about that--if she lay down at precisely that moment because she knew how much I loved seeing the sky cut up. I thought about how branches far from one another could still intersect in my line of vision, like how the stars of Cassiopeia were far from one another, but somehow near to me.
"I wish I understood it," she said.
"It's okay," I said. "Nobody gets anybody else, not really. We're all stuck inside ourselves."
"You just, like, hate yourself? You hate being yourself?"
"There's no self to hate. It's like, when I look into myself, there's no actual me--just a bunch of thoughts and behaviors and circumstances. And a lot of them just don't feel like they're mine. They're not things I want to think or do or whatever. And when I look for the, like, Real Me, I never find it. It's like those nesting dolls, you know? The ones that are hollow, and then when you open them up, there's a smaller doll inside, and you keep opening hollow dolls until eventually you get to the smallest one, and it's solid all the way through. But with me, I don't think there is one that's solid. They just keep getting smaller."
"That reminds me of a story my mom tells," Daisy said.
"What story?"
I could hear her teeth chattering when she talked but neither of us wanted to stop looking up at the latticed sky. "Okay, so there's this scientist, and he's giving a lecture to a huge audience about the history of the earth, and he explains that the earth was formed billions of years ago from a cloud of cosmic dust, and then for a while the earth was very hot, but then it cooled enough for oceans to form. And single-celled life emerged in the oceans, and then over billions of years, life got more abundant and complex, until two hundred fifty thousand or so years ago, humans evolved, and we started using more advanced tools, and then eventually built spaceships and everything.
"So he gives this whole presentation about the history of earth and life on it, and then at the end, he asks if there are any questions. An old woman in the back raises her hand, and says, 'That's all fine and good, Mr. Scientist, but the truth is, the earth is a flat plane resting on the back of a giant turtle.'
"The scientist decides to have a bit of fun with the woman and responds, 'Well, but if that's so, what is the giant turtle standing upon?'
"And the woman says, 'It is standing upon the shell of another giant turtle.'
"And now the scientist is frustrated, and he says, 'Well, then what is that turtle standing upon?'
"And the old woman says, 'Sir, you don't understand. It's turtles all the way down.'"
I laughed. "It's turtles all the way down."
"It's turtles all the way fucking down, Holmesy. You're trying to find the turtle at the bottom of the pile, but that's not how it works."
"Because it's turtles all the way down," I said again, feeling something akin to a spiritual revelation.
--
I stopped at Mom's classroom for the last few minutes of lunch. I closed the door behind me and sat down at a desk opposite her. I glanced up at the clock on the wall. 1:08. I had six minutes. I didn't want more.
"Hey," I said.
"First day back going well?" She blew her nose into a Kleenex. She had a cold, but she'd spent all her sick days on me being sick.
"Yeah," I said. "So listen, Davis gave me some money. A lot of money. About fifty thousand dollars. I haven't spent it or anything. I'm saving it for college." Her face tightened. "It was a gift," I said again.
"When?" she asked.
"Um, a couple months ago."
"That's not a gift. A necklace is a gift. Fifty thousand dollars is . . . not a gift. If I were you, I'd return that money to Davis," she said. "You don't want to feel indebted to him."
"But I'm not you," I said. "And I don't."
After a second, she said, "That's true. You're not." I waited for her to say something more, to tell me why I was wrong to keep the money.
At last, she said, "Your life is yours, Aza, but I think if you look at your mental health the last couple months . . ."
"The money didn't cause that. I've been sick for a long time."
"Not like this. I need you to be well, Aza. I can't lose--"
"God, Mom, please stop saying that. I know you're not trying to make me feel pressure, but it feels like I'm hurting you, like I'm committing assault or something, and it makes me feel ten thousand times worse. I'm doing my best, but I can't stay sane for you, okay?"
