All the while the divide between reality and fantasy grew, but which was which?
Sometimes Simon wonders if it is his own kingdom that is living in a dream. The Kingdom of Wall Street, where educated men and women believe that if the residents of Main Street just had all the facts, they would see the world as we do. The delusion that science and reason are real, and, more important, that they matter. Perhaps this is the true definition of insanity. Not belief in an all-powerful God who created the universe in six days, not the unwavering superstition of a conspiratorial citizenry. No. Perhaps the Enlightenment itself was a psychotic break. The belief that all things could be measured. Maybe Galileo was the lunatic, Einstein.
In the Kingdom of Wall Street, a fourteen-year-old boy turned fifteen. His father took him to Switzerland to ski. All evidence of Claire had been removed from their home, her room converted to a gift wrapping station and decorated for the holidays. Her photos were drawered. Her name was verboten, as if her very existence before was a humiliation to her parents that must never be mentioned. Simon, too, was expected to hold his tongue, to banish her from his thoughts, the older sister who had held him in the night when he was afraid, who had taught him pig latin so they could share their own language.
One night in the living room at the ski lodge he found a book filled with facts. Not about Wall Street or Main Street, but about the Earth. Simon stayed up late reading.
This is what he learned:
The extra heat from all the carbon dioxide we’ve put into our atmosphere in the last one hundred years through the burning of fossil fuels is equivalent to four hundred thousand Hiroshima-size bombs exploding every day.
Combined it would create a column of solid carbon eighty-two feet in circumference that would rise all the way to the moon.
By 2050 the ocean will contain more plastic than fish by weight.
Endocrine disruptors in said plastics, shampoos, cosmetics, pesticides, canned foods, and ATM receipts have caused sperm counts to drop and women to suffer declining egg quality and more miscarriages.
In certain Chinese cities, the air is so thick with pollution that officials have installed giant video screens to show the sun rise.
In 2020 the weight of “human-made mass”—everything we’ve built and accumulated from cars to buildings to hairbrushes—exceeded the weight of biomass on the planet for the first time.
For example, there are nine gigatons of plastic on Earth and four gigatons of animals.
Eighty years from now the world’s oceans will be so hot they will stop producing oxygen. Considering that two-thirds of all oxygen in our atmosphere is produced by phytoplankton in our oceans, this will signal the end of all life on Earth.
The end
of
all
life.
In the beginning there was Claire’s death. Now, here in black-and-white, was the death of everyone and everything else. The Ur death. The death of a planet. And with it Simon’s own death, suffocating on a molten, boiling ball of misery.
Did grown-ups know this? Had they read this book? Surely the whole planet was uniting to address the issue and undo the damage. Wall Street and Main Street were settling their differences to join forces against the death of all living things. And yet, back in New York, Simon wasn’t so sure. He watched as his parents replaced his sister with clothes and technology, with the false comfort of things. As they continued to deny both her death and her life, even in the face of all evidence. And like a plant without water, Simon began to wither and die. The stress of keeping up appearances, of pretending, settled in his bones, and a great anxiety was born. He became The Boy Who Has Panic Attacks, terrified of everything, paralyzed by doubt. Life for him was a microphone left too close to a speaker, high tones rising, his posture stuck in constant cringe, anticipating the feedback screech.
One day Simon stopped getting out of bed. His parents sent him here, to the Spa of Ultimate Indulgence, in Wall Street’s neighboring kingdom, the Land of Self-Help.
In the cafeteria he grabs a tray and a plate and studies the options. A saffron risotto, some kind of grilled fish. Snap peas are in season. Simon picked some himself just this morning, pushing his hand through leafy vines to find the green pods within. The dining hall is an atrium connected to a set of sliding glass garage doors, creating the illusion of a modern Italian villa.
He finds a seat at a courtyard table next to Louise. She’s fifteen, Black, with no eyebrows. Her race makes her a rarity at Float, where the clientele resembles a string of pearls formed in tight spaces under intense pressure. So too does her moderate economic status, which sets her apart from Simon and all the other wan sufferers of affluenza whose summer-home-parents send care packages filled with French face creams and exotic vitamin supplements.
As Simon sits, she is holding a snap pea pod up to the light, studying the peas inside.
“I picked that,” says Simon, “probably.”
Louise lays it carefully back on the plate, all the pods aligned at a right angle from the carrot sticks. She wipes her silverware clean with her napkin. Order is priority number one for her, immaculacy. Her plate is a kind of culinary Mondrian.
“What do you think all the normal kids are doing right now?” she asks him.
“Moving their thumbs.”
He pokes at his food, trying not to think too much about what will happen inside his body when he eats. The fluids excreted, the masticated morsels shrugging their way down into his filthy inner core.