Tomorrow

Fayrouz Mishak

Wherever he went, Oliver Hayes carried a penny in his pocket. The penny had no worth, no weight, except for the weight it took off of Oliver’s shoulders. People knew Oliver as a maverick. He seemed to go through life without a care in the world. He didn’t care about school, didn’t care for most people, and certainly didn’t care about the success of his future. He didn’t even care enough about himself to make his own decisions. That’s what the penny was for. Faced with a decision—arbitrary or critical, it didn’t make a difference—he would pluck the penny out of his pocket, give it a good flick, and watch it dance through the air. Of course, he had a justification. In a week, a month, a year, ten years, would it really matter what he had for breakfast? What haircut he had? If he did his math homework or not? Some of the greatest minds in the world—like, say, Albert Einstein—wear the same outfit every day to avoid decision fatigue, don’t they? They conserve that valuable energy for consequential decisions. Like being revolutionaries. Oliver has one important decision to make every night, too: to wake up the next morning, still breathing. There was only one decision he cared to make because there was only one exception to his rule about not caring for people. 

Alexander Hart only responded to his full first name, all four syllables. He carried a niche collection of fears—being forgotten, having no mark on the world, being alone, being lonely, how time never stops, to name a few—and a Canon camera. One of those small ones, a comforting five ounces. It was the only way he could get anywhere close to having the one superpower he would choose to have: to freeze time, even just for a moment. He took a philosophy class one summer and learned about Solipsism, how you can’t prove anything exists outside your perception of it. But the photos he took existed even outside of the experience, and if he always had the camera on him, then he was always perceiving those experiences, therefore they must always exist. He didn’t know if he was right, but he didn’t care to know if he was wrong. He regretted taking that class, but he took the pictures anyway. He took pictures of a flower he liked, a filling meal, a pretty sunset, and a lot of Oliver—if he was right, then Oliver would always exist and Alexander would never truly be alone, right? Right? 

Oliver and Alexander had been friends for years, yet somehow hadn’t shared a single class since first grade; now it was their junior year of high school, and they finally had one: Calculus. Every day, they would walk into class first period and go through this little routine they’d developed. 

Alexander would sit down, and a little smile would tug on Oliver’s lips. Alexander would ask, “Hey, did you do the homework from last night? I couldn’t figure out one of the problems.”

Half the time, Oliver would respond with, “It was tails last night.”

The other half of the time, the half that the coin toss was heads and he had done the work, he could walk Alexander through the problem with no difficulty. It wasn’t that he didn’t do the homework out of spite, or because he was dumb—which was a mistaken assumption that people would sometimes make. He didn’t do it because he truly could not care less. 

Every day, a minute before the bell rang, Alexander would take out his camera, turn to Oliver and say, “Smile!” 

Every day, Oliver would throw up a peace sign and don his signature soft smile and pose for the picture, if only for the sake of seeing the toothy grin on his friend’s face after having collected yet another frozen Oliver, immortalized in pixels, one he could carry with him no matter how far he was. 

Deep in their hearts, they both carried a fear for the future. It would come no matter what, they knew this with great certainty—there was nothing they could do about it to Alexander’s great displeasure. But if nothing really existed and if Oliver was right in his view of the world, if Oliver was here today and if Alexander could get one more picture of him today, then did it really matter if there would be a tomorrow? 

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Fayrouz Mishak, a Muslim senior at Campolindo High School in Moraga, California, is always mentally wandering into a far off fantasy world. Originally born in Egypt, they immigrated to the USA in 2017. She is always down for boba and a good book.