Hello, Universe: Chapters 1–7

Instead he walked through the front door like a defeated athlete—head low, shoulders hunched, a sack of disappointment sitting on his chest like an anvil.

Instead he walked through the front door like a defeated athlete—head low, shoulders hunched, a sack of disappointment sitting on his chest like an anvil.

“Hmm,” said Lola. She knew everything wasn’t fine. She noticed everything about him. They had a secret kinship.

She lifted her hands in the air to mimic splashing water, still holding the paring knife in one of them.

He was a French missionary who traveled to Canada.

Sometimes she is overprotective, overbearing, overeverything.

In the kitchen, Mom, Dad, and the J’s were drinking orange juice and letting their personalities bubble over, while Virgil tried to maneuver through all the excitement so he could get a piece of fruit or boil an egg.

“Good morning, Turtle,” said his parents, almost in unison.

Virgil grumbled something like hello.

Virgil had long suspected that his brothers were crafted out of a factory that made perfect, athletic, perpetually happy children, and he was made from
all the leftover parts.

“Maybe I’ll take lessons,” Virgil said, his voice garbled from the fruit.

She was already awake—she believed in waking up with the dawn whenever possible—when she heard the bells of a Buddhist monastery chime from her phone.

“This must be a matter of some urgency,” she said, from her bed.

After replying to the text, Kaori lit a stick of incense, walked across her zodiac circle rug, and stepped into the hallway.

After replying to the text, Kaori lit a stick of incense, walked across her zodiac circle rug, and stepped into the hallway.

Gen was a Cancer; morning wasn’t her best time of day. Cancers were notorious night owls.

“Knocking is fruitless,” Kaori said.

It was truly the room of a second grader, complete with teddy bears scattered all over the floor and plastic teacups and teapots toppled here and there.

She also had a tendency to run through hobbies. Gen was determined to become the champion of something one day.

There was a discarded recorder on the floor that she had once planned to master and a chapter book on Abraham Lincoln from the time she decided to become an amateur historian.

Virgil wished he’d never learned that, because now he was convinced that Gulliver suffered from debilitating depression.

The poor black-and-white rodent had been by himself for the past eighteen months, and Virgil couldn’t help but think he’d been pining the hours away in desperate loneliness.

The poor black-and-white rodent had been by himself for the past eighteen months, and Virgil couldn’t help but think he’d been pining the hours away in desperate loneliness.

Before his appointment with Kaori, Virgil unloaded everything from his backpack and stuffed it with fleece blankets that he secretly swiped from the linen closet.

Gulliver didn’t chirp once when Virgil lifted him out of his cage—another sign of his misery and resentment.

“The guy at the pet shop didn’t tell me guinea pigs were social creatures,” Virgil said, staring into Gulliver’s beady, round black eyes.

“If it makes you feel any better, I know what you’re going through,” he said. At the moment, Virgil’s Grand Failure made them kindred spirits.

So when he emerged from the woods facing Elm Street, he immediately veered left, even though he could’ve walked one block right, crossed the street, and been at the Tanakas’ in no time at all.

The turn-at-the-green-door plan wasn’t a fail-safe. Sometimes Chet wandered away from his house, thick hands still holding his basketball. It was inevitable.

Virgil imagined an alternate reality, one where he stopped—feet firmly planted on the ground—and looked Chet Bullens square in the eye.
“I don’t even have a sister, ignoramus,” Alternate Virgil would say.

Her room was spare. Other than her bed and rug, there was a table for incense, an enormous, complicated poster of constellations tacked to one of the walls, and books shoved in corners.

The rock he selected was nothing special, as far as he could tell. Gray, smooth, kind of shaped like a crescent moon.
Kaori studied it like an archaeologist.

“You have a very peculiar future ahead of you,” she said.

His second most confidential piece of information: he was afraid of the dark.

“The thing is…,” he continued, “...there’s this girl that I know—well, I mean, that I want to talk to, and uh—well, I’ve been kinda planning to talk to her since the beginning of the school year, but uh...the year is over now...and well, um...I never exactly introduced myself. But I, uh, kinda have this feeling that we were meant to be friends, you know, like—”
“Like a premonition!” said Kaori.

Kaori’s whole demeanor lit up as if she’d just sat on a hot plate.

“That’s fate! It’s like you were meant to be friends! There are no coincidences, Virgil Salinas.” Kaori was practically giddy.

He was almost too humiliated to admit it, but yes—he knew.

That night he Googled Jane Goodall and found out she was the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees.

Gen grabbed the ends of her jump rope and pulled them taut.