The days at the station were getting longer and longer. I would sit in a state of catatonia wondering if my life would ever change. I was in a state of stasis. Forever trapped in what had become a boring, uneventful purgatory. Long gone were the days of tripping on acid and being tormented by retards. Gone were the days of looking down cute girl’s tops. Gone were the days of battling brown recluses, wayward pigeons and crazy pixies. Now, it was just sitting around chain-smoking and watching “90210” reruns I’d already seen a million times before. It wasn’t even fun to make fun of “Thunder in Paradise” anymore—a show where Hulk Hogan played a Navy Seal who, with his brainy partner, commanded a high-tech boat called “Thunder.” That show used to be particularly fun to watch with Dustin. Whenever they showed the boat chasing after bad guys, the footage was sped up so the boat traveled impossibly fast. We’d always add our own dialogue, usually borrowing from “Star Wars”: “Piloting Thunder isn’t like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations you could bounce into the coast of Africa and slam into Australia and that’d end your trip real quick, wouldn’t it?!”

As certain as I was I had gotten the job at Cerner, I had pretty much given up after not hearing from them for a couple of months. Susan reassured me that they were usually glacially slow in their hiring process. Sure enough, I received a phone call at the station one boring day. It was the “enabler” who had given me the itinerary prior to my interview! They were offering me a position as a programmer! I was in shock as I hung up the phone. This was a major coup for me. Cerner never hired anyone without a college degree, let alone high school dropouts.

Suddenly the gas station and all the little concerns about it seemed completely meaningless. I called Toad and gave him my two weeks notice. His response was somewhat pathetic. He was so used to employees just up and leaving without notice. I almost felt bad as he thanked me over and over for “doing it right.”

I had more fun my final week at the station than I’d had since the days of doing acid while waiting on cars. I took the opportunity to put certain customers in their place. One day, a young man came in driving a pickup. He parked next to the pumps like he wanted gas, so I went out to take care of him.

“Hey, watcha need?”

“Check the oil.”

“What?”

“Check the oil.”

“Are you getting gas?”

It irritated me to no end when people did that. Our station charged nothing extra for full service and some shameless individuals didn’t mind taking advantage of the fact. Now, Tom and Lee couldn’t have cared less if we’d just told the deadbeats to get lost. But the gas station was Toad’s life and he demanded everyone be treated with the utmost respect.

“Do I have to get gas to get you to check the oil?”

“That’s usually how it works.”

“Nevermind. I’ll check it myself.”

“Okay.”

I went back inside and sat down at the desk. A few minutes later, the man came inside.

“I need a quart of oil. Do you sell that?”

I turned to the rows of oil sitting on shelves behind me, “What does it look like?”

“You know what. Fuck it. I’ll go across the street. Asshole.”

“Bye. Come back, now!” I called after him.

* * *

The gas station held one final surprise for me. I should have known I wouldn’t be able to get away so easily.

The day started innocently enough, with Toad and Pedro leaving me to work alone until Poopie arrived. It wasn’t like there was any business anymore. I probably could have handled the entire shift by myself.

Poopie arrived five minutes late with a wide grin on his face, “Poop!”

“Hey Poopie.”

“Guess what!”

“I give up.”

“I made a little Poopie!”

I pondered a moment. Did he mean he just shit himself? “A what?”

“Vanessa’s pregnant! We’re going to have a little Poopie!”

The mental picture burned itself into my mind’s eye. I could envision Vanessa lying on a table like a lump of dough, shooting a little brown mound out of some unmentionable orifice.

“That’s… disturbing.”

“Darren?! Aren’t you happy for us?”

“Sure, man. I’m certain you three will be happy living off of my tax money.”

“You’re just jealous!”

“My God.”

Poopie ended up moving in with Vanessa Poopie, after I’d left the station, and they lived in bliss with their little Poopie for several months. Poopie collected disability for some mental disturbance from which he suffered while Vanessa collected all sorts of government benefits. It almost made me wish I was a single mother. Their relationship lasted all of three months before Vanessa kicked Poopie out for being a “lazy good-for-nothing.” Not that she needed him around for income or anything. My tax dollars saw to that. Hell, she could have even gone to college for free. What a racket.

* * *

And so, the final night came. I counted my money and read the pumps and punched the codes on the credit card machine to spit out the printout of the night’s receipts. I tore the day’s page off the calendar and took a Polaroid Josh had taken of Tracy, Toad, Roy and me in the office and tucked it somewhere in the middle of the calendar so Toad would get it as a surprise some day in the future. I brought everything inside, locked the pumps and turned the “Closed” sign one last time. I left the station for the last time, locking the door behind me.

Roughly five billion years ago, a swirling ball of gas and dust condensed into a brand new star. It was a stable star, in hydrostatic balance—the force of thermal pressure generated by nuclear reactions perfectly counteracting the enormous gravity trying to collapse it. Other swirling clouds around the star became planets, the third one out gradually turning blue and warm.

Myriad life forms came and went, ultimately giving rise to homo sapiens. We’ve thrived on this planet, warmed by the sun, for about two hundred thousand years. A tiny fragment of the sun’s life, but just as incomprehensible.

In another five billion years, the sun will swell into a red giant. If the Earth isn’t swallowed completely, its atmosphere and oceans will boil away leaving a barren rock. The sun itself will eventually eject its own atmosphere and become a white dwarf, slowly radiating the last of its heat until it is cold and desolate. Ultimately, the universe itself will be nothing more than a collection of super-massive black holes made of countless galaxies compressed into a one-dimensional point. These will slowly evaporate into a weak soup of useless particles over a period of time so vast that it is meaningless. Everything dies.

* * *

Contrary to my better judgment, Tracy and I ended up at Sam’s Bar and Grill again for Sky’s birthday celebration. We sat at one of three tables butted together for the large group of people who attended. I drank Dr. Pepper while Tracy alternated between mugs of beer and shots of whiskey. I sat silently watching the people around me descend into drunken stupor. I felt like my skin was being peeled off a layer at a time to expose raw nerves for everyone to grate on.

A couple of hours passed and everyone was drunk. Except me. A girl sitting across from me whose name I forgot as soon as we were introduced, eyed Tracy and me, smiling drunkenly.

“You two make a cute couple.”

Tracy turned her head in a sloppy arc to look at me. I smiled at her warmly.

“You suck. I hate you.”

I could feel my heart shrinking upon hearing those words. Within moments, it was a tiny core, slowly radiating agony.

“How can you say that to me?”

“Fuck you!”

Her voice was dripping with a hatred I hadn’t heard from anyone but Shafto.

“I think we better leave.”

“Fine.”

I held Tracy upright as we walked out to the car. I put her in the passenger seat then drove us in silence to her place, parking in the driveway. Tracy fumbled, looking for the door handle. I reached across her and opened the door.

“No, you can’t come in or hang out in my driveway.”

“Huh?”

“Fuck you!”

She fell out of the car, landing on the pavement, and I shut the door. The headlights were still on and, as Tracy went inside, she gave me the finger with both hands. Her hair was disheveled and her skirt torn with alcohol spilled all over it.

I drove home in the silence of the night, the small core in my chest still slowly radiating. The next morning, I was awakened by the phone.

“Hey, sweetie.”

The core in my chest flickered, “Hey.”

“How are you this morning?”

“Do you remember anything at all about last night?”

“No. What happened?”

“How convenient. I’m not going to repeat what you said to me. I can’t repeat it.”

“What happened? What’s wrong?”

“I give up Tracy. It’s over.”

“What?! No. Sweetie…”

“I’m sorry. You won’t stop drinking. I’m not going to take that shit from you, of all people. I opened myself completely to you and you just shit all over me.”

The core radiated.

“No, Darren. Can’t we talk about this?”

“No.”

“Can I see you?”

“No.”

I hung up the phone, a stream of despair steadily evaporating from my chest until it was cold and desolate. Everything dies.

Eventually, I found a new girlfriend. We lived together for a while in the city. One night we went to a Halloween party attended by several mutual friends. I wasn’t exactly in the mood to go out that night, but I did anyway.

We walked in the brisk autumn air down the path leading into the community center of an apartment complex. The sky was saturated with deep blue night and the trees were bare. The light of the stars seemed sharpened by the cold air. I opened the door for Jessica and walked in behind her. The first thing I saw was Tracy sitting against the wall. She was dressed as Bonnie, but there was no Clyde.

Tracy spotted me immediately and waved, smiling faintly. I couldn’t help but to smile back. She had cut her hair to shoulder length and it slightly flared out at the ends. She was as beautiful as ever. She walked up to me, glaring at Jessica, who was cute with blonde hair and blue eyes, but no match for Tracy and she knew it. Jessica turned away and Tracy fell against me, hugging me tightly and resting her cheek against my chest. I hugged her back, resting my cheek on her head, which was cradled in my hand.

I hadn’t realized how much I missed her until that moment. I suddenly felt like I had returned home after having been away countless years. That hug was as deep as the first one, the night we had gone to the Art Institute, but for different reasons—and this time it wouldn’t end with a kiss.

My tears dampened her hair and hers dampened my shirt as we stood there clinging to each other. If I had known then that Jessica would eventually run off with her boss, I would never have let that hug end.

That was the last time I ever saw Tracy.

* * *

Years later, I had a job working from 7am to 3pm, repairing electronics. Every day after work, I would stop at a convenience store to grab a chocolate milk and a couple of candy bars before I headed home to sit mindlessly in front of the television, fighting off the chronic anxiety with which LSD overuse had left me. One night I was a few hours later than usual and I ran into Sky at the store. She hadn’t changed much. She still had long straight hair and looked like she was still against shaving.

“Oh my God, Sky!”

“Hey Darren!”

“Do you live around here?”

“Yeah, I live just down that way,” She pointed to the East.

“Cool. I live a bit North.”

“What are you doing with yourself these days?”

“I’m working in a cave repairing computer equipment.”

“Ever hear from anyone?”

“Yeah. I guess they shut down the station a few months after I left. The people who bought it turned it into a car rental. The first thing they did was put a fucking air conditioner in that small window next to the Coke machine.”

Sky laughed, she knew how much we all had hated Summers there.

“I guess Toad went and worked next door at Amoco for a couple months. He’s doing tech support for some internet company now.”

“That’s cool. That fits him.”

“Yeah,” I struggled with how to word it,. “Josh called me a couple months ago. He was all pixied up. I couldn’t understand a fucking thing he was saying.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. He shot himself in the head and died about a month after that. Toad sent me the obituary.”

“Whoa.” Sky looked down, “Shit.”

“In better news, Dustin moved back south and kicked pixie dust. He hooked up with some chick he met in AA and they have a kid now. And I heard Roy went to Pittsburgh to take up music production.”

“Yeah, I heard that too.”

There was an awkward pause in our conversation. I knew what Sky had on her mind and she probably knew what was on mine. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to broach the subject, but I was still bound to the most precious girl I’d ever known, like binary stars spinning around each other on a course of mutual annihilation, “Have you heard from Tracy?”

Sky nodded with her lips pursed, “Yeah. She married a guy in the Air Force. They have a son now.”

I turned cold inside as if a weak flame had suddenly flickered out. That should have been my son, “Is he good to her?”

“I think so. She quit drinking.”

“That’s good.”

I said my farewells to Sky and left the convenience store with my chocolate. When I got home I found the journal Tracy had given me for our birthday, still never used. I wrote the first words ever in it that night.

And these are the last.

So, I got a fire lit under my ass and set about to hire a professional editor to work with me on White Dwarf. I submitted the first fifty pages to five freelance editors. They all did a “developmental/line edit” on the first page.  All but one told me I’m retarded for using sentient the way I did in the first paragraph. So, the process of elimination was easy, since I’m pretty confident in my use of the word sentient.  The winning editor’s other suggestions were also good ones… they don’t change the overall feel and I think she gets where I was going with it all. She’s worked for big publishing houses, has a Master’s from Harvard and a Bachelor’s from Princeton, so I’m pretty stoked.

The first round of editing will be a thorough, overall critique. She will begin work on January 30th and complete it by February 20th. After that, I’ll make decisions about large-scale changes based on her feedback.

Once that’s completed, I’ll send it to her for a thorough developmental/line edit which will take a few months.  Then, I’ll look at implementing those changes.

Finally, I’m looking at a couple of self-publishing places. I have a while to decide on which one to go with, so I’ll do more research in the interim.