Lifted by the Great Nothing: A Novel Read Free Page A

standing on her tiptoes, weaving to the left and then the right, until she found a gap to see through. She turned back, inviting Max to look between shoulders with her. His mouth spread wide at her thoughtfulness, and a long cord of apricot saliva poured to the white tiled floor. She slapped her mouth shut with two cupped hands to trap in her laughter. More people oohed at whatever the flower was doing. He inhaled violently out of mortification, and the ball of taffy got vacuumed into his windpipe.
    It was too big. Not enough space around the ball to even cough, and breathing stopped for him. His chest and head got hot, and he knew some kind of explosion was under way. He couldn’t make a sound, his insides throbbed in a death-panicked frenzy, but on the outside he was frozen still. The little woman’s face pulsated: electric blue, violet, red, yellow. Something about his expression transformed hers into terror, her brow slanting into a roof. His lungs convulsed, pleading for relief. Hecontemplated her lovely face, humiliated, wanting to apologize. He tried to smile. If only he could keep still, until the flower went through its short life, and not ruin Mr. Yang’s moment.
    And then— snap . He dropped to the floor and thrashed, tearing at his throat. Everything clenched and released, then clenched and released again. His vision blurred so that he saw the heads crowded over him in unusually proportioned blobs, wavy, like he’d been sunk in a bathtub. His father elbowed through the guests so hard that he knocked a woman to the ground. He pulled Max up to a sitting position and whacked at his back.
    A woman shouted, “I am a doctor!” but Rasheed wouldn’t entrust his son to her.
    Rasheed yelled at Max, “Come on! Come on!” He understood that the hitting didn’t do any good so he slid behind him on the floor, propping Max’s back up against his chest. The crowd took a uniform step back and someone stumbled over the woman on the ground and went down too, hitting the bottom of the stool, tipping the flower toward Max. He watched the pot fall over the two people on the ground, as his father taught himself the Heimlich on him. He saw it vividly. Its fresh bruise-colored stem looked too frail for that heavy head. It was about a quarter of the way blossomed to its pink insides, like tender gums or an uncovered organ. It bordered on grotesque. The flower eyed him until the pot crashed against the white tiles. Soil sprayed up to his feet. It began wilting instantaneously, turning gray and then charcoal. His eyes felt as if they were bulging out of his head.
    An overwhelming calm took him, and he went limp. Nothing left to fight. Rasheed said, “Calm it down, Max, please, breathe very slowly. Please.” His tears soaked Max’s temple. Time for Max to shut down, fireworks crackled off in his brain.
    Coach Tim’s furry, red, hulking fist swung in from nowhere, punching up into Max’s ribs. The ball of taffy popped out likea glistening planet, spinning away in a slow arc. It grazed a pant leg and then met with the floor, picking up a ring of dirt as it rolled past the stool and all the way to the opposite wall. At Max’s first goose-honking breath—announcing I am here. I am alive —he kept his eye on the orange ball and couldn’t believe how much smaller it was than he’d imagined.

TWO
    Back home, an hour after Coach Tim had saved Max’s life, Rasheed stayed glued to his son, staring with a frantic love that looked a lot like misery. He appeared drained, running off pure adrenaline, as though worry had caused his body to click over into survival mode, fighting for its life against the nightmare of losing his boy. He grabbed Max by the arm and rolled the muscles and tendons together like electrical cords, making sure his son was solid and animate. While Max poured a glass of OJ in the kitchen, Rasheed ripped him away from the counter, gripping him by the back of his neck, and plunged his nose into Max’s hair,