The Constellations

He looked like a monster now

HE lookEd likE a monsTEr noW.Poison ivy had caused the rash, and with help from Eric’s scratching hands it had spread everywhere. Scabs crusted pink with layers of calamine lotion covered half his forehead, hooked around his left eye across his cheek and down to the corner of his mouth.Aunt Deb had already predicted that his eyebrows might be pulled out when the scabs finally fell away. Scabs also covered his nostrils, meaning that in addition to the constant itching all over his body he always had to flick flakes of dead skin out of his nose. The least amount of sweat irritated the rash on his neck and arms. The past few nights he awakened numerous times and tried to quell the itch by rubbing the areas through his sheets. Every time he pulled off a loose scab in the hopes the skin had healed underneath he instead saw bright blotches. If it did not heal in the next few days he would have to go to the doctor. The thought of showing up for a baseball game in the medicinal clown paint made Eric’s stomach burn. He hopped down from the sink, let out Mr. Johnson, and then followed him into the yard. Tossing the ball in the hot sun would bring on more sweat-induced torment, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do. The garden looked okay. He was stuck on which constellation to do next. When Deb was leaving for the store, he promised to stick to a list of agreed-upon activities, one of which was playing ball. Veering from the list might jeopardize the privilege of staying home alone. A lot of kids his age—older, even—were not allowed to do so and suffered through all the parental errands. Johnny Garland was in sixth grade, yet never stayed home alone. The Garlands had tried that experiment with him the previous summer. Eric remembered overhearing Mrs. Garland tell his mother that Johnny stuffed the oven with fireworks. “I guess he’s just a boy,” she had added, with her ever-present smile. 108 The Constellations Sweat ran down Eric’s face, despite his standing in the shade. The sunlight heating him was about seven minutes old. Thousands of years from now, that same light would reach distant planets at 186,000 miles per second. It was the law. According to Fergus, many scientists believed that everything happened at once at the speed of light—past, present, and future. This was a theory, an idea, in this case Einstein’s, about how space and time worked. As yet no one could prove it true except using the math that next to no one understood, one reason being that human beings, as yet, had no machines capable of light speed. Eric tried to imagine standing on a beam of light.“It’s kind of hard to understand ,” Fergus had warned,“but you’d be all stretched out, one long Eric,like a freight train,the baby Eric on one end,the elderly Eric on the other. Every moment that happened to you would be happening to you, all at once.” “Again?” Eric had asked. Not exactly again, Fergus had said. That implied a past and present. At the speed of light, the past and present happened at the same time. You stood in every place you had ever stood, and at every time, too.“Including the time you’re standing at the speed of light?” Eric had wondered. “Now you’re blowing my mind again,” Fergus had answered. Eric, though unclear on the particulars, thought the speed of light sounded pretty nice. There were several moments he wanted to see again. Or not again, exactly. Anyway, whatever Fergus meant. Often he forgot what he read and had to look it up again. At the speed of light he could remember it all. And he would pay money for a replay of his cousins setting off that pile of fireworks . Of course if he knew everything from all times in his life, he could use his seven-year-old self to warn Mom to visit the doctor in time to catch the cancer.Maybe he could get back some lost memories, too. Ever since the funeral it had become harder to remember more than a dozen or so specific times with her. The baseball game when he was beaned in the head. The time she missed Dad with a thrown...