For Those Who Don't Believe in Love Songs

Chapter 14 - Belly of the Whale

WARNING:  This chapter deals with suicidal thoughts and actions.  Feel free to read or pass at your discretion.  If you are, in fact, struggling with thoughts of suicide, please reach out to those close to you or professionals in your community.  And if neither of those feel like an option, message me.  I promise to listen.

April 13, 1996

"Yes, yes, that was the bell," Mr Prince pleaded. The students ignored him. It was the final class on a Friday, and their minds were already in the weekend. "After the bell rings," he continued over the chatter, "we all need to quiet down. Just like yesterday. Just like it will be on Monday. I shouldn't have to remind you."

Martha pitied him. James' prediction had been predictably correct. Short and skinny with curly hair and a nasal voice, Mr Prince had started the year on a mission. He would make physics fun and in his students, inspire a love of science. But like a rocket without sufficient thrust, gravity rendered his ambitions to rubble. And each day saved the worst for last. Martha's class was full of seniors – defiant, brash, and mentally done.

"Okay, okay," Mr Prince continued.

"Aw, sorry Fresh Prince," a boy in the back of the class said. "Come on, guys! Shut up! The Fresh Prince has some really important stuff to teach us." The boy's name was Jeffrey and his help was insincere. He was charismatic, sadistic, and just smart enough to be dangerous. In the great assault on Mr Prince's will, Jeffrey had led the charge.

Martha found him annoying. But as with everything in her senior year, she was mostly indifferent. After the initial misery of the fall, she'd settled into a functioning melancholy. Days without James came and went. His absence, it turned out, didn't actually kill her. It now appeared as though she might survive.

Mr Prince wrote on the chalkboard as he spoke. "So, today we're going to take a look at Richard Feynman's Sum Over Histories theory."

"Yes!" Jeffrey enthused from the back, much to his lackeys' amusement.

Without turning, Mr Prince retorted feebly, "It's actually quite interesting."

Martha didn't need convincing, however. This was the lesson James had recommended before he left for Berkeley. She hadn't given it a thought since, but hearing it brought the memory into sharp focus. Her heart quickened. It was as if he was in the room with her. She sat up straight and took out her notebook and pencil.

Martha stared at the stream of arrows running from a starting point to a finish, left to right across the page. One set ran straight across, but others arched up or down to varying degrees before converging at a single endpoint. While the version she spied in James' bedroom resembled a pair of cartoon lips, Mr Prince's was more of a halved red onion, but the similarity was unmistakable.

But what was the point? Why tip her off? Sure, it was an intriguing formulation. As a particle moves from one point to the next, it travels not only in a straight line from A to B, but in every possible path between the two points simultaneously. But... so?

She slipped the notebook back in her bag and stepped out of her father's car and into their garage. While at a conference in Austin this week, he'd left her the keys. She pondered the formulation as she pressed the button to close the garage door. Did the multiple paths of the single particle have something to do with James' multiple lives? But his lives didn't converge on the same endpoint as the particle would. He had died in a variety of ways and at a variety of ages. Maybe it was something else...