Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

started writing lots of letters. I don't know why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter. One weird thing is that instead of using normal stamps, I used stamps from my collection, including valuable ones, which sometimes made me wonder if what I was really doing was trying to get rid of things. The first letter I wrote was to Stephen Hawking. I used a stamp of Alexander Graham Bell.
    Dear Stephen Hawking,
    Can I please be your protégé?
    Thanks,
    Oskar Schell
    I thought he wasn't going to respond, because he was such an amazing person and I was so normal. But then one day I came home from school and Stan handed me an envelope and said, “You've got mail!” in the AOL voice I taught him. I ran up the 105 stairs to our apartment, and ran to my laboratory, and went into my closet, and turned on my flashlight, and opened it. The letter inside was typed, obviously, because Stephen Hawking can't use his hands, because he has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which I know about, unfortunately.
    Thank you for your letter. Because of the large volume of mail I receive, I am unable to write personal responses. Nevertheless, know that I read and save every letter, with the hope of one day being able to give each the proper response it deserves. Until that day,
    Most sincerely,
    Stephen Hawking
    I called Mom's cell. “Oskar?” “You picked up before it rang.” “Is everything OK?” “I'm gonna need a laminator.” “A laminator?” “There's something incredibly wonderful that I want to preserve.”
    Dad always used to tuck me in, and he'd tell the greatest stories, and we'd read the New York Times together, and sometimes he'd whistle “I Am the Walrus,” because that was his favorite song, even though he couldn't explain what it meant, which frustrated me. One thing that was so great was how he could find a mistake in every single article we looked at. Sometimes they were grammar mistakes, sometimes they were mistakes with geography or facts, and sometimes the article just didn't tell the whole story. I loved having a dad who was smarter than the New York Times, and I loved how my cheek could feel the hairs on his chest through his T-shirt, and how he always smelled like shaving, even at the end of the day. Being with him made my brain quiet. I didn't have to invent a thing.
    When Dad was tucking me in that night, the night before the worst day, I asked if the world was a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise. “Excuse me?” “It's just that why does the earth stay in place instead of falling through the universe?” “Is this Oskar I'm tucking in? Has an alien stolen his brain for experimentation?” I said, “We don't believe in aliens.” He said, “The earth does fall through the universe. You know that, buddy. It's constantly falling toward the sun. That's what it means to orbit.” So I said, “Obviously, but why is there gravity?” He said, “What do you mean why is there gravity?” “What's the reason?” “Who said there had to be a reason?” “No one did, exactly.” “My question was rhetorical.” “What's that mean?” “It means I wasn't asking it for an answer, but to make a point.” “What point?” “That there doesn't have to be a reason.” “But if there isn't a reason, then why does the universe exist at all?” “Because of sympathetic conditions.” “So then why am I your son?” “Because Mom and I made love, and one of my sperm fertilized one of her eggs.” “Excuse me while I regurgitate.” “Don't act your age.” “Well, what I don't get is why do we exist? I don't mean how, but why.” I watched the fireflies of his thoughts orbit his head. He said, “We exist because we exist.” “What the?” “We could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened.”
    I understood what he meant, and I didn't disagree with him, but I didn't agree with him either. Just because you're an atheist, that doesn't mean you wouldn't love for things to have reasons for why they are.
    I turned on my shortwave radio, and with Dad's help I was able to pick up someone speaking Greek, which was nice. We couldn't understand what he was saying, but we lay there, looking at the glow-in-the-dark constellations on my ceiling, and listened for a while. “Your grandfather spoke Greek,” he said. “You mean he speaks Greek,” I said. “That's right. He just doesn't speak it here.” “Maybe that's him we're