Young Writers Society

Particle Physics and the Circular Crash

The Large Hadron Collider is the largest particle accelerator in the world. It forces particles together, and because particles are mostly air, almost all the particles pass each other.

Asa had this date. She didn’t say it was a date, because that would be too much commitment, and she’ll call the date X—, because she doesn’t want you to think she doesn’t have a sense of privacy. When Asa tells you she wasn’t that into X—, she doesn’t mean X— was bad in any way. Really, X— was great, as far as Asa knew (and she didn’t know much), but she had a hard time getting excited about it anyway.

They were at the kind of party you needed to be two Solo cups of boxed wine deep to enjoy (or else be friends with the people there). Everyone— how many? They were all tangled — sprawled across the floor or crammed along the bed, feet hanging off, heads on shoulders, legs over legs over legs, and somehow the heat of all the bodies was less sweaty than serenely encompassing, a blanket of noise and weight. It was raining outside, and the plink of the rain on the roof melded with the music and the lazy chatter so that all the noise was underwater and far away.

Each time around the bend, two or four particles out of billions manage to crash into each other, and they form new particles, which have only existed elsewhere during the first few moments of the universe.

Asa was braiding X—’s hair, and X—tilted her head for better access, in that way that made a muscle in her jaw flash. Asa hoped she was doing well. She will clarify: Shemeant doing well because it definitely felt like a test. X—had written her number down in Bic pen on Asa’s arm and said, would you want to come to this thing Thursday night? because she liked her, right? In some sense of the word. And Asa didn’t not like X—. And just by thinking that this was a test, and not just getting lost in the fold and letting this whole foreplay thing get her turned on, she was already failing.

And everything seemed to be passing her by.

It was a year after—Asa will call them Fish so she can remind herself and remind you that they were only that. There are plenty of fish and Fish wasn’t special. Fish hummed while Asa was speaking. They chewed on the ends of their glasses. They couldn’t say exactly how they felt, even when she was crying, which Asa will declare now made them a coward. Asa will tell you that, and all of that was true.

The new particles that are made vanish in less than an instant. The only way to prove they existed is to trace their decay.

They were doing the spin-the-bottle thing now, but it wasn’t called spin-the-bottle because this was not a sixth-grade overnight class trip getting out of hand, and it had more rules and involved a cardboard box, and the bottle landed on somebody who wasn’t Asa, and the room did that little ooo sound because Oh Em Gee, X— was going to kiss some guy who wasn’t Asa. But X smirked and, getting on her knees to reach the bottle, moved the it a couple inches so it pointed to Asa. There was a cry of injustice, but when X— pulled Asa to her this dissipated in a syrupy cheer, and Asa thought, this is fine. It was a kiss. It was a good kiss, even. Not too much tongue or anything. She put a hand to X’s neck, brushed hair out of the way. It was okay. It was okay.

She won’t tell you how Fish got her up in the middle of the night to hear it raining, and when it wasn’t enough for them, just listening together in the dark, they tiptoed outside to hear it rain. In minutes they were drenched, water running into their mouths and between their toes. Fish was laughing and said something but the water was also in her ears, and it didn’t matter anyway. And even though they were underwater, they were on fire.

An even larger Hadron Collider is theorized to be able to prove the existence of other dimensions. When you try to prove it, you have a specific dimension in mind: The dimension when you didn’t say that thing to that person, where they still text you and you and them lasted forever.

When the party was over, (it went out like a candle, a slow burn and a flicker until it was gone), they peeled away and they walked along the sidewalk holding hands, bumping shoulders in a haze towards X—’s dorm. X— said, “You seem distracted.”

And Asa said, “I was. I was distracted by you.” And she turned to look at X—, and tried to examine her more closely. Her smile, gentle and studying, seemed to slide off her; everything was sliding like icing on a too-warm cake.

“Oh yeah?”

But our own dimension is a sheet of paper that we are not on, but in. and even if there are reams and reams of paper on top of our sheet, testudinately infinite reams all the way down, and even if we prove that, it wouldn’t even matter, except that now we know there is something out there that we can’t have. And we already knew that, didn’t we?

“Yeah.”

They were at the dorm entrance. It was only spitting now, a cool mist collecting on X—’s cheeks and nose. Asa remembered she was beautiful, and for a moment, she will admit, she was stunned by it.

She remembered the night they broke up, she and Fish. It was raining outside, and she was crying, and Fish didn’t know what to say, and so they just left, and went into the bathroom to change even though they had seen each other naked a hundred times at least. Asa slept on the floor but she wouldn’t call it sleeping.

And she won’t tell you about that first prehistoric crash, because the death of it is so, so much longer than the life was.

X— swung her hands lightly, expectantly, and her hands swinging lightly seemed like one of those intimate details Asa should notice, so she noticed it.

“Are you coming up?” X— asked.