I'll Stop the World

by Lauren Thoman

For my children. I’d bend the universe for you.

twenty bucks goes a long way in 1985.

“You and me versus the end of the world.”

“We talk about fate,” she said finally, hoping Lisa wouldn’t press her on the question of how they’d met. “You know, like whether there is a purpose for everything.”

It’s okay, I try to tell her with my eyes. It’s not your fault. This is why I’m here.

the girl the whole universe bent to save.

But her chest still clenched at the sight of him with his beautiful, young girlfriend, and she doubted that feeling would ever fully go away. She wondered if anyone ever, in the history of the world, had experienced this feeling, or if it was just her. Plenty of girls had loved boys who’d died. But as far as she knew, she was the only one whose boy had come back decades later, raised in a world that he’d helped create, even though he had no memory of it.

“I just think there’s so much we don’t know that we can’t rule it out. Right?”