Only You By Laura J. Oliver

During summers at Barnstead—before I turned 12 and my parents sold it — we were a lanky tribe of kids at loose ends. No one had a basketball hoop, or a blacktop; no one took tennis, sailing, or swimming lessons. Instead, we played competitive games like Pompom-Pullaway, Red Rover, and Spud. We had the rope swing over Scott’s ravine and bikes. Freeze tag and swinging statues. Hide and Seek.

Honestly, we were the original characters in Lord of the Flies including a personalized and quite popular game of which I am not proud called, “Let’s run away from Georgie.” He was the youngest among us and built like a very short Michelin man. When his younger brother Billy was born, Billy should have become the object of our ostracism, but because he was a baby, running away from him was about as entertaining as running from a backpack or flowerpot. Sorry George. I understand you live in Florida now and have a beautiful daughter.

Because it was cooler, we spent most of our days making forts in the woods–a village of residences that were outlines dug in the soft dirt and pine needles, cleared of debris, then reinforced with logs or branches, of course leaving a “door” to walk through. Forts were built adjacent to each other, so we had a kind of village— Lord of the Flies became Habit for Humanity.

As kids you agree to abide by the same reality so there was no rude stepping over or walking through walls to enter someone’s fort. Enter through the front door only. That was the rule. The kid rule. There were others like, “Never ask for candy at someone else’s house.” Oh, and “If you see Georgie, run for it.”

But what made a fort a home was the acquisition of seats–planks of wood left over from construction projects and thrown out in the woodpile. Inviting someone into your fort and offering them a seat was high-rent-district protocol.

When war broke out in the woods between different factions of fort builders (boys against girls) or the settlers on one side of the pasture versus the other, finding that your seats had been stolen was worse than finding that your walls had been scuttled. But I was more than a homeowner. I had a humanitarian project.

I made shoes from giant tulip tree leaves. I poked the stem of one through the top of another and then tied them around hot bare feet. My shoes were as soft as silk though they only came in one color. They also only lasted for several steps unless one employed a kind of flat-footed zombie walk that didn’t put a lot of stress on the stem ties. I’m demonstrating this, you just can’t see me.

Like not walking through walls, in some ways we agree to the same rules of reality now. We agree that we are born into this world, age and die. We agree that green is green and yellow is yellow, although we really don’t know if what we are seeing is exactly the same. We share a tendency to go through life two by two when we can, in whatever manner we can. We agree that a birth is a miracle, that all dogs go to heaven (where like the good boys and good girls that they were, they’re waiting to greet us even now). We agree to stop at red lights and wear seatbelts.

We used to agree that the sun revolved around the earth, that the universe was static, eternal, and there was only one. Now we agree the universe is expanding and at an accelerating rate. We are asking each other whether there may not be many universes, whether in fact, we live in a multiverse. The idea is in part, that there are an infinite number of versions of you—there is the you that became who you are, and a you that dropped out of school and became a rockstar, a you that never married, a you that lives on a planet where it rains diamonds.

But I hope this is not true. I really want there to be only one universe. One beautiful, eternal, evolving, galaxy-studded universe, where kids still make forts in the woods, where forests still stand lush and alive with birdsong, where raindrops are not made of jewels but do create tiny crowns when they splash into the river—a universe in which the big bang was the first beat in the heart of God.

And there is only one you.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.