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“I gotta get one …”
“Those chairs are a thousand miles away. There’s no possible way. You should give up and lay here with me.”
“No, no, no. We have a bet. And I have to test some things …”
“You’re the best scientist. They’re gonna give you a Nobel Prize.”
“They really should. But these things are so political.”
“It’s like whenSaving Private Ryanlost toShakespeare In Love. So unfair …”
His voice is drifting away behind me as I stumble out of the room and down the hallway. Everything I look at seems magnified. I’m suddenly aware of the wood grain in the floorboards, and the range of color in the dingy plastered walls—mauve and pink and dove gray mixed in what I thought was a simple cream.
When I come to the head of the stairs, I do the sensible thing and sit down on my butt, scooting down the steps one by one.
As I’m bumping along, Jasper comes up the other way, walking on two legs.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he says.
“These steps … are so tall … and so long. I think they were made for giants.”
“These are totally normal steps.”
“How would you know, Jasper?” I demand. “How many steps have you even seen?”
He squints at me. “Are you high?”
“I will ask the questions, comrade! And my question is … can you please get me a chair?”
He gives me another hard stare, then says, “What kind of chair?”
“Just like … a normal one.”
With a sigh, he turns around, descending the steps once more. I can’t tell if he’s gone for a long time or a short time, or if he’ll ever be back again.
In fact, I had a little bit forgotten what I was even waiting for when he returns with a folding chair.
“Thank you, Jasper,” I say, overflowing with gratitude. “Seriously. I don’t know how you did it.”
He sets the chair against the wall at the top of the stairs.
“You gonna make it back to your room?”
“Probably.”
Shaking his head, Jasper turns the other way down the hall.
I slowly drag the chair back to Adrik, which takes another hundred years.
He sits up on the bed, startled.
“Holy shit, I thought you died.”
“This is you grieving? You were staring at the clouds.”
“There’s so many of them.”
“Do you know they weigh a million pounds?”
