Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

noticing it before that I gave myself a little bruise. Dad's handwriting was weird. It looked sloppy, like he was writing in a hurry, or writing down the word while he was on the phone, or just thinking about something else. So what would he have been thinking about?
    I Googled around and found out that Black wasn't the name of a company that made lockboxes. I got a little disappointed, because it would have been a logical explanation, which is always the best kind, although fortunately it isn't the only kind. Then I found out that there was a place called Black in every state in the country, and actually in almost every country in the world. In France, for example, there is a place called Noir. So that wasn't very helpful. I did a few other searches, even though I knew they would only hurt me, because I couldn't help it. I printed out some of the pictures I found—a shark attacking a girl, someone walking on a tightrope between the Twin Towers, that actress getting a blowjob from her normal boyfriend, a soldier getting his head cut off in Iraq, the place on the wall where a famous stolen painting used to hang—and I put them in Stuff That Happened to Me, my scrap-book of everything that happened to me.
    The next morning I told Mom I couldn't go to school again. She asked what was wrong. I told her, “The same thing that's always wrong.” “You're sick?” “I'm sad.” “About Dad?” “About everything.” She sat down on the bed next to me, even though I knew she was in a hurry. “What's everything?” I started counting on my fingers: “The meat and dairy products in our refrigerator, fistfights, car accidents, Larry—” “Who's Larry?” “The homeless guy in front of the Museum of Natural History who always says 'I promise it's for food' after he asks for money.” She turned around and I zipped her dress while I kept counting. “How you don't know who Larry is, even though you probably see him all the time, how Buckminster just sleeps and eats and goes to the bathroom and has no raison d'être, the short ugly guy with no neck who takes tickets at the IMAX theater, how the sun is going to explode one day, how every birthday I always get at least one thing I already have, poor people who get fat because they eat junk food because it's cheaper...” That was when I ran out of fingers, but my list was just getting started, and I wanted it to be long, because I knew she wouldn't leave while I was still going. “... domesticated animals, how I have a domesticated animal, nightmares, Microsoft Windows, old people who sit around all day because no one remembers to spend time with them and they're embarrassed to ask people to spend time with them, secrets, dial phones, how Chinese waitresses smile even when there's nothing funny or happy, and also how Chinese people own Mexican restaurants but Mexican people never own Chinese restaurants, mirrors, tape decks, my unpopularity at school, Grandma's coupons, storage facilities, people who don't know what the Internet is, bad handwriting, beautiful songs, how there won't be humans in fifty years—” “Who said there won't be humans in fifty years?” I asked her, “Are you an optimist or a pessimist?” She looked at her watch and said, “I'm optimistic.” “Then I have some bad news for you, because humans are going to destroy each other as soon as it becomes easy enough to, which will be very soon.” “Why do beautiful songs make you sad?” “Because they aren't true.” “Never?” “Nothing is beautiful and true.” She smiled, but in a way that wasn't just happy, and said, “You sound just like Dad.”
    “What do you mean I sound just like Dad?” “He used to say things like that.” “Like what?” “Oh, like nothing is so-and-so. Or everything is so-and-so. Or obviously.” She laughed. “He was always very definitive.” “What's 'definitive'?” “It means certain. It comes from 'definite.'” “What's wrong with definitivity?” “Dad sometimes missed the forest for the trees.” “What forest?” “Nothing.”
    “Mom?” “Yes?” “It doesn't make me feel good when you say that something I do reminds you of Dad.” “Oh. I'm sorry. Do I do that a lot?” “You do it all the time.” “I can see why that wouldn't feel good.” “And Grandma always says that things I do remind her of Grandpa. It makes me feel weird, because they're gone. And it also makes me feel unspecial.” “That's the last thing that either