I help myself to a doughnut. It’s a Bismarck, my favorite. The frosting is melting in the sun a little, and it sticks to my fingers.

 

　Clare finishes her doughnut, rolls up the cuffs of her jeans and sits cross-legged. She scratches her neck and looks at me with annoyance. “Now you’re making me self-conscious. I feel like every time I blow my nose it’s a historic event.”

　“Well, it is.”

　She rolls her eyes. “What’s the opposite of determinism?”

　“Chaos.”

 

 

　“Oh. I don’t think I like that. Do you like that?”

　I take a big bite out of the Bismarck and consider chaos. “Well, I do and I don’t. Chaos is more freedom; in fact, total freedom. But no meaning. I want to be free to act, and I also want my actions to mean something.”

 

 

　“But, Henry, you’re forgetting about God—why can’t there be a God who makes it mean something?” Clare frowns earnestly, and looks away across the Meadow as she speaks.

　I pop the last of the Bismarck into my mouth and chew slowly to gain time. Whenever Clare mentions God my palms start to sweat and I have an urge to hide or run or vanish.

　“I don’t know, Clare. I mean, to me things seem too random and meaningless for there to be a God.”

 

  Clare clasps her arms around her knees. “But you just said before that everything seems like it’s all planned out beforehand.”

　“Hpmf,” I say. I grab Clare’s ankles, pull her feet onto my lap, and hold on. Clare laughs, and leans back on her elbows. Clare’s feet are cold in my hands; they are very pink and very clean. “Okay,” I say, “let’s see. The choices we’re working with here are a block universe, where past, present and future all coexist simultaneously and everything has already happened; chaos, where anything can happen and nothing can be predicted because we can’t know all the variables; and a Christian universe in which God made everything and it’s all here for a purpose but we have free will anyway. Right?”

　Clare wiggles her toes at me.