Liam Perrin

It was raining in Upside-Down Land. Nose plugs were practical, but to wear them was to mark oneself for the kind of ridicule that is the special purview of children who no longer think of themselves as children. So he squished about the playground, sneezing when rain dripped up from the asphalt and found his nostrils despite – somehow – the umbrella shoes his mother insisted upon.

He found his way to the basketball court, picked up the wet and lonely ball, and dropped it through the hoop. “What goes up, goes,” he muttered as the ball disappeared into the sky.

“One day,” he said to himself, “I’m just going to jump and see what’s up there.”

He stepped off the freshly swept street onto the morning bus. He sat down across from her on seats scrubbed clean in the middle of the night. He unwrapped a breakfast sandwich prepared by a young man working his way through night school. As they jostled down streets paved by the previous generation and maintained by the present he chewed and watched her.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Your optimism. It’s irrational.”

She raised her eyebrows. “How’s that?”

“It’s called pronoia. It’s the delusion that the universe is conspiring to help you. But you’re on your own in this world. The sooner you come to terms with that, the better.”

She smiled. The bus stopped.

“Anyway, have a nice day. See you tomorrow.” He tossed his sandwich wrapper in a receptacle that would be emptied by a uniformed transit employee later and exited, whistling a tune he couldn’t quite place.