HOW OBJECTS BEHAVE ON THE EDGE OF A BLACK HOLE
Maggie sat on the end of her bed and aligned the x-rays—three ghost-white views of her sister’s spine, bruised dark with the cancer that had recurred after over a year of remission. A pink post-it note stuck to the topmost x-ray read: I’m tired. It wasn’t much by way of suicide notes, but there wasn’t much else to say.
Maggie slid the x-rays back into their envelope, keeping aside the business card mailed with them. Connor Barston, her sister’s boss, director at the South West American Nuclear Research Facility—SWAN. He’d found the x-rays in Jan’s office and sent them to Maggie as her next of kin.
Maggie hadn’t cried yet. She imagined Doctor Parsons telling her that was perfectly normal—everyone processes grief differently. As if Maggie didn’t know. She’d said goodbye to Jan a long time ago. The wound wasn’t fresh, only a pale, faded scar.
Even so, that scar twinged.
Maggie moved to her desk, scrolling through her email to the last message Jan had sent her. The first in nearly a year, but possibly one of the last emails Jan had sent. Period.
Not a cry for help. Not even a goodbye. Jan didn’t want to be talked out of her suicide. Once she’d made her mind up about something—whether it was her opinion of Maggie, or her decision to empty her bank account and book an appointment at an underground Death with Dignity clinic rather than face another round of chemo—she didn’t change it. Not that Maggie blamed her; after her first bout with cancer, after watching their mother die slowly of the same, it was a reasonable choice.
But between Jan’s death and her last email, it was the latter that interested Maggie more. A sound file and a single sentence: Thought you might find this interesting.
After a year of silence, after a lifetime of being strangers to each other, Jan had set aside her professional ego and reached out to Maggie.
That, more than Jan’s suicide, shocked Maggie.
Since their respective graduations, their careers had run parallel. Maggie had chosen engineering, things that could be touched, quantified, and explained. She’d even been part of the design team working on the collider at SWAN, where Jan worked, but Maggie had never been to the facility in person. Her career and Jan’s were truly parallel—never intersecting.
Jan had made her career in particle physics. Ghost science, as Maggie thought of it. Spending a lifetime studying what could only be observed indirectly by the effect it had on things around it.
So what Jan thought Maggie might ‘find interesting’, she couldn’t imagine. The sound file was labeled SWAN Recording - 10-14-31. Maggie hadn’t opened the file when Jan first sent it, but she played it now.
Her fingers crept to the back of her neck, tracing the patch that settled just below her hairline, covering the first few knobs of her spine. The patch that keep her dosages regular, her brain chemistry in check.
A slow, deep sound filled Maggie’s bedroom. It had a stretched quality. Thin. Just above where Maggie’s fingers skirted the edges of the patch, her skin puckered tight. A sound, a vibration, a note played directly into the bones of her skull—hauntingly familiar, and yet utterly strange.
The clip came to an end, and Maggie breathed out.
What the fuck had Jan meant by sending it? A problem she finally—at the end of her life—couldn’t solve, but thought Maggie could give her insight on, somehow? Her sister had never followed up with an explanation, and now it was too late for Maggie to reply and ask.
Before giving herself time to fully think it through, Maggie booked a flight to Arizona, then sent an email to Barston, Jan’s boss: I want to see where my sister worked. I was part of the design team on your collider. I can get security clearances if you need them. My flight arrives tomorrow morning.
Was this why Jan had sent the email, to intrigue Maggie enough that she’d cross the continent to see for herself what Jan had been working on? Or had she simply meant to needle Maggie one last time by sending her a puzzle without a solution? Maggie bit her lip, worrying chapped skin. Was there any chance sending Maggie the sound clip had been some sort of a strange peace offering? She’d never been particularly good at guessing Jan’s motives. For anything.
She pulled a spiral bound notebook from the bottom drawer of her desk. On the first available blank line she wrote: April 13, 2032: Twenty-one years, three months, and nineteen days. I am not being haunted by my sister’s ghost.
The same sentence filled every page, repeated daily, the date changing, but nothing else. There were notebooks before this one, an archeological record tracing Maggie’s handwriting from her eleven-year-old block print, to the back-sloping experiment with cursive, to now—a hybrid mix, barely legible, even to her.
Maggie ran her fingers over the indentations made by the ink, tracing the shape of each letter, blushing her skin pale blue. She tucked the program from Jan’s funeral between the pages, closed the notebook, and returned it to the drawer.
I am not being haunted by my sister’s ghost. For the first time in a very long time, an inkling of doubt crept through the walls she’d spent more than twenty-one years building. Had the words ever been true?
October 19, 2011
Maggie watched as the ghost placed her fingers precisely over indentations in the puzzle box that neither she nor Jan had been able to find. Real-Jan, at least. Ghost-Jan seemed to have no trouble. Because the ghost was Jan; Maggie had no doubt about that. Her sister slept peacefully in the bed beside hers, and her sister also sat cross-legged on the end of Maggie’s bed, not denting the covers. One Jan in two places, both equally real.
Which meant it was okay to open the puzzle box. When Gran had given it to them, they’d promised to open it together. Ghost-Jan withdrew her hands, tilting her head to say, now you try.
Maggie fit her fingers exactly where the ghost’s had been. A faint click, and the box slid open.
“What are you doing?” Jan sat up, glaring at her. “You opened the box. You promised you wouldn’t.”
“But you helped me.” The words slipped out before Maggie could stop them.
Her sister narrowed her eyes; Maggie recognized the look, but she wasn’t fast enough to explain—of course Jan had helped her, they’d opened the box together, couldn’t she see? Jan lunged. Maggie pulled the box back, trying to protect it. Jan grabbed the edge, a tug of war between them, then the box slipped, catching Maggie in the mouth.
The light snapped on; their mother stood in the bedroom door, weary gaze moving between them.
“She opened the box without me.” Jan spoke first, pointing an accusing finger.
Maggie opened her mouth to object, glancing over her shoulder so Ghost-Jan could back her up, but the end of the bed was empty. Panic gnawed at her. Her lip throbbed. She touched it, smearing her finger red.
“I’m bleeding.”
Jan whipped around to glare at her, the word tattletale burning in her gaze. Maggie clapped her hand over her mouth, ignoring the pain. She didn’t want to get Jan in trouble; it would only make things worse.
“Let me see.” Their mother tugged Maggie’s hand away from her mouth. “It’s not bad. We’ll put some ice on it.”
Jan’s cheeks flushed, her eyes bright—caught between anger and tears.
“I’m sorry.” Maggie pushed the box toward her sister as she slid off the bed, but Jan shoved it angrily away.
“I don’t want the stupid box.” Jan turned her attention to their mother. “You always take her side!”
“I’m not taking anyone’s side.”
Jan followed them as far as the bedroom door and then slammed it the moment they were in the hall.
“I hate you!”
The words were barely muffled by the wood. Maggie flinched; she had no doubt they were meant for her.
In the kitchen, her mother handed her ice cubes wrapped in a tea towel. “This will make you feel better.”
Maggie sat on a chair and dutifully pressed the ice to her sore lip, but if anything, it made her feel worse. Her eyes stung; Jan would never forgive her. She hadn’t meant to do anything wrong. It made perfect sense at the time. Jan had helped her open the box while Jan was asleep in bed. But now, in the bright light of the kitchen, it all jumbled up in her head, putting a tight feeling in her chest, hitching her breath.
“Want to tell me what happened?”
Maggie shook her head. She pressed the ice harder against her mouth, trying to distract herself with pain.
Her mother crouched, her face level with Maggie’s. “Maggie.” Her tone was soft, but there was an edge to it; her mother expected the truth.
Maggie couldn’t stop the tears this time. “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. Jan’s ghost helped me with the puzzle box, then Jan woke up and got mad.”
Maggie wanted to lean against her mother’s shoulder, but her mother held her at arm’s length.
“You were pretending there was a ghost?” Lines creased the corners of her mother’s mouth, and something flickered in her eyes that Maggie didn’t understand, but it frightened her.
“No.” Maggie shook her head hard enough to make her jaw hurt. “There was a ghost. Jan was sleeping, and she was a ghost at the same time.”
“Maggie.” Her mother kept the distance between them, instead of letting Maggie burrow against her, looking at her intently. Maggie wanted to squirm under the pressure of her gaze. “I need you to tell me the truth. No fibbing. No pretend. What did you see?”
“A ghost. I saw Jan’s ghost.” Maggie’s voice rose, her breath stuttering in uneven gasps. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make Jan mad. I didn’t mean to make you mad.”
She fought to get her breathing under control, which only made it worse.
“Oh, baby. I’m not mad. Come here.” Her mother’s expression softened and she pulled Maggie close, but not before Maggie saw her frown deepen, worry creasing her forehead. It made her mother’s next words sound even more like a lie. Maggie had seen Jan’s expression; she knew her mother’s words weren’t true. “It’s not your fault, baby. No one’s mad at you.”
April 14, 2032: Twenty-one years, three months, and twenty days. I am not being haunted by my sister’s ghost.
Maggie drummed pen against notebook as the plane whisked her to Arizona. Her free hand crept toward the back of her neck. Catching herself, she deliberately gripped the armrest instead.
The words she’d written were true. She knew they were true. But that didn’t mean Jan’s ghost wasn’t real. Real in the sense that her brain chemistry showed her things that weren’t objectively there. Or convinced her that her body didn’t belong to her; someone else was controlling her, and if she could just find that person, everything would be okay. Or gave her the feeling of a void opening up beneath her, threatening to swallow her whole, until pain allowed her to focus and make it stop.
The patch kept all those things at bay, regularly adjusted and fine-tuned, checked by Dr. Parsons at each appointment. Maggie trusted in her diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder. She knew what happened without her medication. She knew the ghost wasn’t—objectively—real.
But once upon a time, she’d known Jan lay asleep in the bed beside her at the same time as she showed Maggie how to open the box. And even now, twenty-one years, three months, and twenty days later, a tiny part of her still wanted both things to be true. Ghost-Jan had been kinder. She’d been patient. She hadn’t hated Maggie for no reason.
Maggie rubbed at a tension knot in her shoulder. Twenty-one years, three months, and twenty days—she was still crap at deciphering her sister’s motivations. Death hadn’t changed anything between them. Jan was as much of a stranger to her as she’d ever been.
Maggie tucked the notebook into her bag, slipping her feet into the shoes abandoned during the flight. They’d be landing soon.
Once she’d gathered her bags, Maggie took a cab straight to SWAN. Connor Barston met her in the lobby himself. Maggie still had his business card tucked in her pocket. The way he stepped forward, hand out, ready to shake, pushed her guard up. The tight expression around his mouth and eyes didn’t help him.
“I don’t need the full tour. Just show me where my sister worked.” Maggie ignored his out-stretched hand.
Barston faltered, but his smile came back too quickly. It was an effort for Maggie not to grin, watching the complicated contortions of Barston’s expression.
“Follow me.” Barston pivoted.
Maggie followed him to a hallway filled with identical doors. One bore Jan’s name, and Barston unlocked it without stepping out of the way.
“I’ll be fine from here. Thank you.” Maggie pasted on her sweetest smile, making sure to show teeth.
Barston actually stepped back a pace, and Maggie saved herself from laughing by stepping around him into the tiny office and pulling the door closed. Jan’s office was made smaller by book shelves lining two walls. An old-fashioned wooden desk dominated, topped by an old-fashioned computer surrounded by precarious stacks of paper.
At least they had one thing in common.
A corner of Maggie’s mouth lifted, but the familiarity didn’t last. Aside from physical paper, there was nothing else here to link her to Jan. No photographs on the walls, no personal effects at all, nothing to accidentally remind Jan she had a life outside this sterile building.
A sense of absence, of disassociation, haunted the whole room. But more than that, something felt specifically missing. Maggie’s gaze settled on the corner of Jan’s desk—a space conspicuously clear of paper.
The puzzle box.
Alone in the room, Maggie snorted a laugh. She had no evidence Jan had even kept the puzzle box, let alone brought it to work. Except the empty space at the corner of Jan’s desk seemed to call for it. The box belonged there, like a pulled tooth.
Maggie opened desk drawers. Old-fashioned paper files, no sign of their Gran’s gift. Supplies: pens, highlighters, paperclips. They both still liked to write by hand. Maggie quelled an impulse to reach for her bag and pull out the notebook. She quelled the urge to touch the back of her neck. Breathe. Stay calm. In and out.
She leaned against Jan’s desk. Her hand brushed the mouse, another old fashioned touch, waking the computer screen. It wasn’t even password locked. Maggie blinked, surprised. Maybe Barston had been in there before her, snooping around. Either way, the computer was open to her now. Maggie sat.
Sound files littered the desktop, all like the one Jan had sent her, but with different dates. Pulse tripping, Maggie chose one at random to play. Like the file Jan had sent her, it reminded Maggie of a whalesong, but less musical. Something bent and warped out of true. Something hauntingly familiar she couldn’t place.
She turned the computer’s speakers all the way up. The sound reverberated inside her skin, shivering her ribcage, pressing a hand to her lower back. Her jaw ached.
Maggie tapped the patch clinging to her skin—restless, tracing its edges. She played the next file, and the next. Her skin itched. There was something there, but she wasn’t sure what it was. Not yet. Why the hell had Jan sent her the file? What did she expect Maggie to understand?
Maggie clicked on the next file. A video popped up. She hadn’t even noticed the different file type, but Jan’s face filled the screen.
Tired. Shadows bruised Jan’s eyes—stubborn no matter how the light hit them—and lines etched the corners of her mouth. She looked like a woman who’d accepted death, but still walked, talked and breathed.
Jan’s ghost recurring—pale, washed out, and stretched thin somehow. But this ghost’s eyes weren’t as kind. They weren’t cruel, just weary. This Jan hurt, through and through, but rather than turning that pain against the world, she held it all inside.
A tremor started near Maggie’s feet. She leaned back in Jan’s chair, crossing her arms around her body, holding herself in, letting the video play.
“The sound showed up right after we fired up the collider for the first time.”
On screen, Jan was framed by her office, sitting in the same chair where Maggie sat now.
“I wish we could call it a result, but there isn’t anything conclusive to link the sound to the collider start-up.”
Jan leaned forward. Though the webcam didn’t show her arm, it was clear she’d opened one of the sound files. The sound washed through the speakers, doubly ghosted, a recording of a recording.
“We’ve captured three instances of the sound so far. There’s no clear pattern. It could be a glitch in the equipment. It could be a flaw in the structure of the collider itself.”
Maggie flinched. But Jan’s words weren’t directed at her. For once. They were simply the words of a frustrated scientist running out of time.
“So far, nothing we’ve done has predictably caused the sound to manifest. Maybe it has nothing to do with the collider. It could be pure coincidence. Fuck it. Maybe the goddamn building is haunted.”
The recording cut off. Maggie let out a breath. She counted the files labeled sequentially on Jan’s computer—thirteen in all. Plus one more video file.
Maggie played it. More of Jan’s frustration. She nearly closed the last video without letting it play out, but Jan’s words stopped her.
“The only theory I’ve been able to come up with . . .”
The recorded ghost of Jan paused, swallowing, then shook her head.
“I’m not going to rehash it. There’s no point.”
The video ended. Maggie stared at the screen. Rehash what? She spent the next few hours searching through Jan’s computer. There weren’t any other videos. If Jan had made other recordings, they weren’t here.
Maggie yanked open the desk drawers again, stacking Jan’s files atop the already dangerous piles. All that remained in the last drawer was a yellow legal pad and an old hand-held tape recorder. Jan definitely liked her antiques.
The recorder was empty. If Jan had used it to make other recordings, where were the tapes? A faint indentation remained on the notepad, words pressed into the paper before the top sheet was ripped off. Maggie traced her finger over the lines, thin as a scar. Holding the paper into the light and relying on touch, she could just make out the words—The Mythology of Black Holes.
Fuck. Another cryptic clue from Jan. More words, leading nowhere. If her sister could just make sense, for once.
Maggie tossed the legal pad. It skimmed over the precarious piles, taking several folders with it as it tumbled to the floor. Maggie’s head ached. The absence where the puzzle box should’ve been continued to glare.
Fuck it. Even now, even after death, Jan tormented her.
Maggie spoke aloud to the empty room. “What the hell did I ever do to you?”
September 7, 2017
Maggie lifted her hair away from the back of her neck. The electric razor buzzed in her other hand. She pressed it against her skin, made the buzz shiver through her skull. Honey-dark strands of hair hit the floor, curling like parentheses against the white tile.
Maggie set the razor down and ran fingers over the notch of stubble. The hair would grow back. The doctors would have to shave her again before the patch went in; Dr. Parsons had told her they’d treat the follicles in the spot to keep the hair from growing back. For now, she wanted to test the sensation, one tiny thing she could control on the cusp of everything changing.
The bristles felt strange and familiar at the same time. In another three weeks, the patch Dr. Parsons had prescribed would cover the spot—scarcely an inch wide, clever wires buried beneath her skin to monitor any changes and delivering a slow, steady release of chemicals. Schizoaffective—just like her mother before her, and her mother’s mother before that.
“You’re not special.”
Startled, Maggie turned, dropping her hair over the shaved spot. The razor clattered to the floor. Jan stood in the doorway, her arms crossed. Her sister’s eyes were hard. Maggie sorted responses, ticking them off like a mantra to bring her pulse back in line:
Shut up.
Fuck off.
Don’t tell mom.
I know.
Nothing she could say would help. Jan had already made up her mind. She’d decided Maggie’s silences, when she couldn’t figure out what to say that wouldn’t make Jan mad, meant she was stuck up. She’d decided Maggie trying to stay out of her way, avoiding conflict, sticking close to Mom and Gran, meant the three of them were part of a secret club that didn’t include Jan.
“Leave me alone.” Maggie kept her voice quiet, even. It didn’t matter what she said; Jan would hate her either way.
She stepped forward and Jan stepped back, flinching. As if Maggie had ever hurt her, or shown even the slightest inclination to violence. Maggie closed the bathroom door.
“What the fuck?” Jan slapped the wood as Maggie leaned against it, holding it closed.
Each blow shook the door, and Maggie’s body with it.
“Fuck you then.” Jan gave the door a final kick. Maggie heard their bedroom door slam across the hall.
Maggie sat on the closed toilet lid, legs shaking. After a moment, she reached for her backpack. The orange plastic pill bottle rattled as she pulled it out. Three more weeks and she’d never have to take a pill again. Last chance.
She tipped today’s dosage into her palm, then let it fall into the sink with a soft clatter, running water to wash it down the drain.
She waited, watching.
“Come on,” Maggie whispered. “Where are you?”
For the past week, she’d been throwing her pills down the sink and the toilet. But Jan’s ghost hadn’t returned. Maggie dug her nails into her skin. The space behind her eyes prickled.
Only the frantic, sick, panicky feeling had returned. Only the feeling of a void trying to open beneath her had returned. But not Jan’s ghost.
The unease picked at the edges, worsened by adrenaline. She hated it. Hated fucking with her medicine. But she had to. Because, what if Jan’s ghost was real? What if the doctor was wrong? Just because her mother and grandmother were sick, it didn’t mean Maggie was sick, too.
Maybe the ghost was real. Maybe opening the box hadn’t been her fault. A mistake. Jan hated her for no reason. Not because Maggie was a bad person.
She squeezed her eyes closed. She imagined shaving off the rest of her hair. She imagined taking one of the pink plastic safety razors from the bathtub and opening a thin line on her skin. Something to help her concentrate. Something to hold the panic at bay.
She opened her eyes. The bathroom shone back at her—scrubbed clean corners, gleaming white tiles. Empty. No ghost. Maggie slammed a fist into the towel rack, and it clattered to the floor.
Tears, not just from the hollow behind her eyes. A hole—lined like a geode with jagged crystalline growth—stood in place of her heart and lungs. Breath turned into a ragged sob. There wasn’t enough air.
Maggie reached into her bag again. Her vision smeared. She pulled out a battered notebook, writing on the first blank line: September 7, 2017—Six years, eight months, thirteen days. I am not being haunted by my sister’s ghost.
A wordless yell twisted through her. She flung the notebook across the floor, ink-lined pages fluttering.
A tentative footstep in the hall, but no knock followed. The sound didn’t come again.
Maggie crawled into the tub. She drew her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and pressed her spine against the ceramic.
Years passed. A moment passed. And a hand touched Maggie’s arm. She jerked, slamming her elbow against the side of the tub. Her mother’s face hovered, barely visible through the blur of tears.
“Are you okay?”
Maggie shook her head. She couldn’t manage words, sniffling and choking on a bitter laugh. Stupid question. Of course she wasn’t okay.
“What’s happening?” Her mother sat on the floor, leaning against the tub.
Maggie sat up, wiping tears with the back of her hand, smearing salt. Her gaze moved around the bathroom—razor, strands of hair on the floor, towel rack knocked from the wall, notebook.
Beyond the door, a floorboard creaked. Her mother had shut the door behind her. If Jan stood in the hall after sending her mother in, Maggie couldn’t tell. She breathed in and out, an exercise her doctor encouraged in any stressful situation. It didn’t work.
“I threw away my pills.” Maggie didn’t look at her mother, keeping her in her peripheral vision.
“How long?” Her mother’s lips flattened—the slightest tremor betraying her.
“Only a few days. I’m sorry. I wanted to . . .” But Maggie’s voice failed. How could she explain?
After a moment, strong fingers squeezed hers. Her mother didn’t push, or ask for an explanation, and Maggie was grateful.
“Can I tell you something?” Her mother still held Maggie’s hand.
Maggie glanced up through still-damp lashes. The thin-pressed line of her mother’s lips turned into a frown, but not directed at Maggie. Her gaze fixed on the cabinet beneath the sink, though clearly not seeing anything in the room.
“When your father and I were getting divorced, before everything was finalized, he still had house keys. When things got nasty between us, he tried to mess with my pills—hide them, steal them. With everything going on—work and school and lawyers— I didn’t notice right away. That was before the patch, or anything like that of course. It was the worst feeling in the world, going back to not knowing what was real, feeling like maybe I wanted to kill myself. I think that’s what a sick part of your father hoped would happen.”
The expression on her mother’s face was one Maggie had never seen before—lost and hopeful and sad all at once. Maggie had a vague memory of walking into the living room—she couldn’t have been older than five—and seeing her mother standing in front of the TV, ceaselessly flipping channels. She remembered wanting to watch cartoons, and being upset, then afraid. That memory had the quality of a nightmare now, the light from the TV making her mother look inhuman, and Maggie calling her and getting no response. Jan had taken Maggie’s hand, led her to their room, and read to her from a picture book to calm her down.
Jan must have phoned their grandmother, though Maggie didn’t remember that part. A year or two after Maggie had first been diagnosed, her mother told her how, before she was medicated, she used to think all the people on TV—in shows and commercials—would whisper terrible, awful things about her the moment she couldn’t see them. But if she kept flipping and flipping, keeping her eye on them, it would be all right.
“I can’t imagine ever making myself feel that way on purpose,” her mother said, giving Maggie’s fingers another squeeze before standing up. “So I understand whatever you’re going through right now must be really bad. I’ll make an appointment with Dr. Parsons tomorrow.”
Again, there was that look of sadness, mixed with hope. The faintest of smiles touched her mother’s lips as she paused at the bathroom door, a world of pain behind it. As her mother left, Maggie thought she caught a glimpse of Jan quickly closing her bedroom door across the hall.
Maggie didn’t bother to knock before barging into Connor Barston’s office. She’d bullied her way past the flustered receptionist, and no one else had tried to stop her.
“My sister had a puzzle box on her desk. What did you do with it?”
“You can’t be in here.” Barston rose, his face shading to red; Maggie cut him off.
“And you can’t take things that don’t belong to you. I have security footage showing you in Jan’s office.”
She held up a flash drive, her own, and blank, hoping Barston wouldn’t call her bluff.
“Your sister was keeping her research notes in there. That’s SWAN property.”
Maggie couldn’t help smirking. “You couldn’t figure out how to open it.”
The director flushed deeper.
“If there’s anything groundbreaking, I promise to share.” Maggie held out her hand.
Barston scowled, but after a moment, produced the box from the top drawer of his desk. He held it out, showing the corner that had chipped the last time Maggie had seen the box. Her pulse snagged. She snatched it, tucking it under her arm and pressing it close to her side to keep from trembling.
She pivoted on her heel, muttering, “Asshole,” under her breath as she walked away.
June 11, 2021
Maggie used the back of a kitchen chair for balance as she kicked off the stiff shoes her mother had insisted she wear to the church. A run laddered up the left leg of the stockings; her mother had insisted on those as well.
“Gran would have hated that service,” Maggie said. “She only joined the church for the choir.”
Jan stood by the counter, setting up to make coffee. She shot Maggie a look. Their mother only shook her head, looking weary. Another needling remark tried to rise to Maggie’s tongue, but she clamped it down. Today, of all days, why was she trying to pick a fight? “I’m going to change,” she said instead.
“Your grandmother’s friends will be here soon.” Her mother’s voice followed her, as tired as her pinched expression.
“It’s too hot.” Maggie kept walking.
If she turned around, the space inside her might open up and reveal that instead of being hollow, it was full of stored up pain. Or she would say something else awful—sarcasm, antagonism, a shield against the hurt inside. Her head ached, not just from the still air of the church, or the cloying scent of the ostentatious spray of flowers draped over her grandmother’s coffin.
The old bedroom looked the same. Her bed and Jan’s, neatly made, sitting side by side. No ghost version of Jan perched on the end of her bed, but Maggie smoothed the comforter nonetheless.
“You could at least try thinking about someone other than yourself for once.” Jan, Real-Jan, leaned in the doorway, arms crossed.
“Could you shut the door? I’m trying to change.” Maggie reached for the duffel bag she’d brought from home. Jan didn’t move, but something changed in her expression, catching Maggie off guard.
“I’m moving to Arizona. I’ve been offered a job.” She’d never heard Jan’s voice quite so hesitant before. Was Jan looking for approval? Looking for Maggie to tell her not to go?
“That’s . . . far.” Maggie swallowed, surprised to find a salty taste in her mouth.
To distract herself, Maggie unzipped her duffle bag. The puzzle box lay on top of the folded clothes.
“I guess I better give this to you now, then.”
Maggie had brought the box with her from her small apartment. Until this moment, she hadn’t decided whether to give the box to Jan.
“Why do you hate me so much?” Maggie hadn’t meant to say anything at all, but the words slipped out as Jan’s fingers closed on the box.
Jan’s mouth opened in surprise, and something inside Maggie recoiled, a sick part of herself pulling back the moment Jan revealed a crack in her armour.
“Never mind. Forget I said anything.” Maggie let go of the box.
Jan let go at the same moment and it crashed to the floor, a chip splintering off the edge.
“It’s because you always ruin everything.” Jan bent to retrieve the box, a quaver in her voice.
Jan straightened, holding the box against her chest, and Maggie was surprised at the brightness in her eyes, tears waiting to fall. Maggie opened her mouth, then snapped it closed. Something about Jan’s posture, her expression, made Maggie think of a dam, cracking finally after years of holding back a flood. “Before you came along, everything was fine. Mom and Dad loved each other, and me, and we were a family.”
Jan didn’t raise her tone; there was no animosity. It sounded like a rehearsed speech, Jan finally severing the last ties between them so she could move across the continent with a clear conscience.
Maggie wondered whether her sister even believed the words.
“Dad was an asshole.” Maggie’s jaw clenched, heat behind the words she hadn’t expected. “He tried to make mom sick during their divorce. He wanted her to kill herself.”
The slap came too quickly for Maggie to avoid it—the crack of palm against cheek—and it left her ears ringing.
“You always take her side.” Jan’s nostrils flared. “You, and mom, and Gran. You and your little secret club. There was never any room for me. Dad was all I had.”
Maggie gaped. Did Jan really think they’d tried to exclude her? A shared history of fucked up brain chemistry was just that, nothing more, nothing less.
The light in Jan’s eyes cracked. The same hand she’d used to slap Maggie flew to cover her mouth, and tears slipped from her eyes. “Maggie.” It was barely a whisper.
But it was too late. It had always been too late. They’d grown up in the same house, but they were strangers. The thought twisted inside Maggie’s stomach, sour and hard.
“I liked you better when you were a ghost.” Maggie snatched the duffle bag from the bed, slamming Jan’s shoulder and throwing her off balance as she reached for the door. “I’m going to stay in a hotel. You can explain that to Mom.”
Maggie sat behind Jan’s desk, the puzzle box in front of her. She had the door closed, a spare chair wedged under it in case Barston changed his mind and decided to intrude.
She stroked the polished wood, ran her fingers along the grain, thinking back. A Thanksgiving here and there, their mother’s funeral, of course—Maggie could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen Jan in person since giving her the puzzle box. She ran her finger along the edge, pausing at the chipped corner.
Maybe she did ruin things, but so did Jan. Something else they had in common. Was that why it was so hard, why they’d never been able to get along? Deep down, they were too much alike, too stubborn. On the rare occasions Jan reached out, Maggie pulled back, and vice versa. They could have worked together, Maggie’s designs informing Jan’s research; Jan’s research pushing Maggie’s designs. They could have done something great together, maybe changed the world.
Maggie closed her eyes, calling up the memory of Jan’s ghost, and placing her fingers against the puzzle box accordingly. There was a faint click. Maggie opened her eyes. Old-fashioned, half-sized cassette tapes filled the box. She slipped the first one into the recorder she’d found in Jan’s desk earlier and pressed Play.
“The mythology of black holes.” Jan’s voice filled the small office space.
This time, when Maggie’s hand wanted to creep to the back of her neck, she didn’t stop it.
“All black holes are metaphors,” Jan said.
Maggie glanced at the legal notepad, which she’d replaced on Jan’s desk, mentally tracing the words.
“For instance, if one could observe an object moving toward a black hole, to the observer, once the object reached the edge it would appear to slow down. At a certain point, it would seem to stop, caught infinitely on the point of crossing the event horizon. However, to the object itself, time would move normally. It would cross the event horizon, and from that point, there would be no escape.”
On the tape, Jan made a sound between a cough and a laugh. Maggie’s throat tightened. No wonder Jan had kept these recordings separate. They were more like a diary than her research notes.
“So here’s your metaphor. I’m falling toward the event horizon. That’s the cancer diagnosis, in this case. Once I cross over, once I get the test results back, there’s no escape. But from the outside, it appears there’s still hope. I haven’t fallen yet. From the outside, everything looks fine, and there’s still time to make things right.”
Jan paused. When her voice resumed, it was with a hitch.
“I always wanted to see a black hole. Stupid thing for a scientist to say, right? Right before we fired up the collider I was convinced, absolutely convinced, we would find evidence of a miniature black hole, something stable enough for our instruments to detect. But no dice. I guess I’ll just have to be content with metaphors.”
A click, and the audio ended. Maggie unclenched her fingers from her neck. Hands shaking, she slotted the next tape into the machine.
“Then, there’s the sound.” Jan’s voice, picking up a thread in the middle of her one-woman conversation. A rustling as she shifted the recorder closer to the computer and played one of the audio files.
It was the same as listening to it in the video on Jan’s computer—an eerie doubling between two recordings. An echo of an echo. Maggie’s skin puckered. Her sister’s ghost, finally talking to her now that it was too late. But talking nonetheless. Trying to tell her something.
“I don’t understand.” Maggie spoke aloud. On the tape, Jan continued.
“There’s a theory—an object on the edge of a black hole, once it crosses the event horizon, is destroyed. Except a perfect copy is created. Or an imperfect one. Nothing can ever be created or destroyed, so the energy is spread across the surface of the black hole and stuck there, a copy made out of light, and the original is gone, burned up completely. A black hole is a factory for ghosts.”
Maggie’s hand skittered across the desk, an involuntary movement knocking the puzzle box to the floor. The remaining tapes scattered.
“So if we don’t understand everything about black holes, if we in fact understand very little, which is the case, who’s to say metaphor couldn’t be reality? Maybe light and sound and time all bend out there in the deepness of space, and something comes back to us, unrecognizably changed. The original copy is destroyed, but something survives, different, but the same.
“I’d like to think that when I cross the event horizon, that maybe, just maybe the rules are malleable, and maybe some piece of me—the same, but kinder, more patient—will survive.”
Maggie’s hand went to her mouth. The tape clicked to an end, but the echo of it remained, Jan’s voice, coming back to her from the other side of death. Jan’s ghost, in audio form, bent and changed into something kinder, more patient. The same, but different. And what about Jan’s other ghost? What if what Maggie had hoped—even knowing it was impossible—actually wasn’t impossible at all? Both things could be true, her sister’s ghost, both a hallucination and real. Light and time bending, and some fragment, some imperfect and kinder copy of Jan coming back to her years before she died.
There was so little sound in space, only the radio waves that came from the deepest parts in a cosmic roar. No one knew how sound might behave around a black hole. But if a black hole could bend gravity, light, then why not warp sound? Why not form a strange, imperfect copy as Jan had hypothesized and send her voice back to her—stretched, changed, completely unrecognizable?
Maggie shook her head, tears slipping free. The mythology, the metaphor of black holes—that was what mattered. Ghost science. It’s how she had always thought of what Jan did—studying things that couldn’t be seen except for the effect they had on what was around them. Even if Maggie never unraveled the sound Jan had been studying—and she would keep trying, even if it meant staying in this miserable climate for a while longer, and even working with Barston—she had this. Jan’s ghost, real in a way Maggie had never suspected. Her sister’s final gift to her: her words, kinder, gentler, coming back to her from beyond the event horizon. In a way, Jan had bridged the gap. If Maggie kept searching, it would be like they were finally working together after all.
February 7, 2011
“When we grow up, we’ll be scientists. We’ll discover something no one else has discovered before.” Maggie kept her voice to a whisper, glancing over her shoulder occasionally.
On the bed beside hers, Jan didn’t stir. Maggie turned back to the ghost. Her solemn eyes were just like real-Jan’s eyes, but kinder; she waited patiently for Maggie’s next words.
“Maybe we’ll find a new planet. Or a cure for cancer. I bet we could do it together.”
It was a struggle to keep her voice low. She wanted to shake the real Jan awake. Wouldn’t she be excited to know she had a ghost-twin? Three brains were even better than two, after all.
Maggie glanced back at real-Jan and bit her lip, changing her mind. Real-Jan wouldn’t listen. She would roll her eyes at Maggie, or call her names. Ghost-Jan was safer. Maybe one day, Maggie would figure out how to talk to her real sister. But for now, she turned back to ghost-Jan, who continued to wait patiently for Maggie’s words.
“We could even build our own rocket ship,” Maggie said. “Like that movie about the farmer who built a rocket in his backyard. We could explore the farthest stars and find out what’s on the other side of a black hole. What do you think?”
The ghost remained silent. Maggie glanced over her shoulder one last time. It was hard to tell in the dark, but as the real Jan rolled over in her sleep, it looked as if she smiled.