A MOVING STORY ABOUT UNCONVENTIONAL LOVE, BULLYING AND BEING TRUE TO YOURSELF.
‘I wish I wasn’t the weirdest sixteen-year-old guy in the universe.’
Felix would love to have been a number. Numbers have superpowers and they’re safe — any problem they might throw up can be solved.
‘If I were a five, I’d be shaped like a pentagon … there’d be magic in my walls, safety in my angles.’
People are so much harder to cope with. At least that’s how it seems until Bailey Hunter arrives at school. Bailey has a stutter, but he can make friends and he’s good at judo. And Bailey seems to have noticed Felix:
‘Felix keeps to himself mostly, but there’s something about him that keeps drawing me in.’
Both boys find they’re living in a world where they can’t trust anyone, but might they be able to trust each other, with their secrets, their differences, themselves?
Contents
CHAPTER 1: FELIX: SOLITARY MOON
CHAPTER 2: BAILEY: DEAD END
CHAPTER 3: FELIX: WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
CHAPTER 4: BAILEY: MIDDLE EARTH
CHAPTER 5: FELIX: OIL ON WATER
CHAPTER 6: BAILEY: AN INFINITUDE OF PRIMES
CHAPTER 7: FELIX: CHAOS THEORY
CHAPTER 8: BAILEY: ZERO IS NOT A PRIME NUMBER
CHAPTER 9: FELIX: INFINITY IS AN UNBOUNDED NUMBER
CHAPTER 10: BAILEY: CHRYSALISM
CHAPTER 11: FELIX: NEMESIS
CHAPTER 12: BAILEY: LESS THAN ZERO
CHAPTER 13: FELIX: ONE STEP CLOSER
CHAPTER 14: BAILEY: A BIRD WITHOUT WINGS
CHAPTER 15: FELIX: A FINITE SINGULARITY
CHAPTER 16: BAILEY: SCAR TISSUE
CHAPTER 17: FELIX: OPPOSING PENDULUMS
CHAPTER 18: BAILEY: THE MELTING OF DREAMS
CHAPTER 19: FELIX: POLONIUM-210
CHAPTER 20: BAILEY: DAYLIGHT FALLS
CHAPTER 21: FELIX: RED RIVER
CHAPTER 22: BAILEY: DREAMLESS
CHAPTER 23: FELIX: THE FIRST PRIME NUMBER
CHAPTER 24: BAILEY: WOLF WIND
CHAPTER 25: FELIX: THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF BREATHING
CHAPTER 26: BAILEY: AMORE NIHIL MOLLIUS, NIHIL VIOLENTIUS
CHAPTER 27: LEARNING TO EXHALE
CHAPTER 28: SEE YOU IN THE INFINITUDE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FOLLOW PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
For Lachie: may all your dreams come true.
CHAPTER 1
FELIX: SOLITARY MOON
A prime number is divisible only by itself and by one. If I were a prime number, I’d want to be a five. Five is also a Catalan number, which is another sequence of numbers that can be used to solve certain counting problems. Being a Catalan number is perfect, because I like the idea of being part of a solution, but also because that’s my surname. When I looked up ‘five’ on the net, I learned it was also the first safe prime, the third Sophie Germain prime, and the third Mersenne prime exponent. If I said that out loud at school most people would call me a nerd or try to trip me up or something. But I like the way numbers can have secret superpowers.
If I were a five, I’d be shaped like a pentagon, with sharp, perfect edges and rules that can’t be changed. A solid two-pronged base, with a pointy roof that reached for the sky. There’d be magic in my walls, safety in my angles.
I wish I were a five. I wish I wasn’t the weirdest sixteen-year-old guy in the universe.
There are one thousand steps between my house and school if I stick to my normal stride. Taking my usual pace, especially if I listen to the right music, I can time it exactly to arrive at school just before the bell goes. Since I discovered Green Day, the most hard-core punk-rock band in the whole world, I haven’t really listened to anything else.
I can’t sing along when I’m walking to school, though, because I’m too busy counting. Usually I only sing when I’m alone in my room. I don’t sing in the shower, like my little brother Alfie. I can’t stand listening to the drumming of water and the music at the same time, a riot in my skull.
Today is the third week of February, the second week of the school year. I’m scuffing my shoes through the grass, watching how the sunlight refracts off the dew. I’m so taken with the dew-spheres that I don’t see them until they’re streaming around me, like tadpoles, or sperm. I flip my headphones off so they’re hanging around my neck, not because I want to hear what they’re saying, but so I can defend myself if I have to.
‘Hey, Catalan,’ Sam Birch drawls. ‘Whatcha listening to? The Wiggles?’ I want to punch his freckly face, but I got in major trouble when I did that last year, so I keep walking.
Henry Teoh, walking two steps behind him, emits a raspy laugh. I stick my headphones back on in a screw-you gesture, and let Billie Joe Armstrong sooth me with ‘Give Me Novacaine’. Sam, Henry and a couple of year-twelve girls are nothing I can’t handle. I start walking faster, knowing they’re calling me ‘Freak-out Felix’ and ‘punk’ behind my back.
Which is so unfair, because I haven’t freaked out since last year.
Punk isn’t an insult anyway. Over summer I dyed my hair black and grew it longer so I could wear it mussed-up and semi-spiky, like Billie Joe from Green Day. His poster hangs on the wall above my bed.
Just saying.
I try to start counting again, but I’ve lost track, and my thousand-steps-exactly is ruined. If I arrive at school and I’ve miscounted, my day is doomed to be crappy.
‘Damn it,’ I whisper. I’m going to be late, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
After looking left-right-left-right-left, I cross the road and walk back home fast, six hundred and three steps. When I reach our letterbox, I pause for a moment to look at the creek snaking along the bottom of our property, shiny like tinfoil, then our beige split-level house, the curtains flung open to the morning sun.
I take a deep breath, turn to face the street and start walking again.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five …
When I slide into my seat next to Bindi, it’s ten minutes after the second bell. Our physics teacher, Mr Campbell, barely looks at me before the words ‘Friday detention’ leave his mouth. It’s no more than I expect. Rules are rules, and if everyone just obeyed the same rules all the time, my life would be a whole lot easier. Sometimes I wish someone would tell me what the rules are for talking to people so I can learn them, like lyrics to Green Day songs and physics formulae.
Last week we learned about gravity. Gravity is what makes pieces of matter clump together to form planets, moons and stars. It’s also the force that attracts any objects with non-zero mass. I was hoping we were going to talk about the theory of relativity, which I read about over summer. Instead Mr Campbell told us about the boring basic stuff, like force equals mass times acceleration.
Bindi says, ‘How come you were late?’
I glance at her. Bindi Cheung is only about a metre and a half tall, and wears her glossy black hair in a bob. She reminds me of the Lego minifigures lined up on my bookshelf.
‘I had to go back for something.’ I don’t say, I went back to find the lost numbers. Bindi might be my only friend apart from Coke Anderson, who got sent to private school by his uptight parents this year, but even she isn’t above thinking I’m a nutcase.
‘Fair enough.’ Bindi offers me a stick of gum. ‘How was your weekend?’
I push the gum into my mouth. This is where I’m meant to say, ‘It was good’, just like you say ‘I’m fine’ when someone asks how you are. But that would be a lie.
‘My parents had a really big fight on Saturday night, and didn’t speak to each other for twenty hours.’
‘Oh.’ Bindi pulls the ends of her cardigan over her fingers. I ca
n see she doesn’t know what to say to that. That’s why I hate small talk. No one really wants to know how you are.
When I look up, Mr Campbell is standing right beside me, wafting his garlic breath all over me.
‘Felix,’ he drawls, stroking his sandy moustache, ‘perhaps you can tell us how you worked this problem out.’ He waves his hand at the whiteboard, where he’s copied one of the questions from our homework assignment. It’s about a stone falling into a well, and how to determine the well’s depth from how long the stone takes to hit the bottom.
Everyone in the class turns to look at me. My mouth feels as if all the saliva has been sucked out of it.
‘Didn’t do your homework either, huh?’ Mr Campbell asks. I hear a titter from the front of the room, Sam or one of his dickhead friends probably. It’s not as if I don’t know the answer to the question, which I could practically do in my sleep. But I’m scared if I open my mouth my voice will start shaking, that I’ll have another freak-out.
Best to pretend I don’t know. I shake my head at him. He sighs, and strides towards the front of the room.
‘Can anyone help Felix out? Bailey? Are you able to tell us how deep the well is?’
I let out my breath as the class turns to look at the guy down the end of the bench from me. Bailey Hunter runs a hand through his chocolate-brown hair, brushing long strands out of his eyes.
‘Um,’ he says, his eyes darting towards me. ‘One hundred and f-fourteen metres?’
‘F-fourteen,’ someone whispers. Bailey ducks his head, his cheeks scarlet. He’s new at our school this year, and this is probably only the second time I’ve heard him talk.
I shoot red-hot arrows at Sam’s head with my eyes, hoping for it to burst into flames. No such luck.
Mr Campbell’s hedge-like eyebrows draw together. ‘Not quite, Mr Hunter.’
I look at the exercise book in front of me, with the scribbled answer to the question, along with all my workings. I look at Bailey, whose cheeks are still slightly flushed, his eyes downcast. And I don’t know why, but I slide my book across to him. I stare straight ahead, my heart galloping.
What did you do that for? You don’t even know him.
Because I want him to see that if he’d multiplied the whole thing by 0.5, like he was supposed to, then he would have got the correct answer.
Mr Campbell spreads his hands. ‘Can anyone else enlighten me? Or did I waste my breath last Friday?’
I wait for Bailey to put his hand up. Of course he doesn’t, but while Jack Kirk stumbles his way to the right answer, Bailey slips my book back under my nose. I can feel Bindi giving me a look, but I don’t look at her, and I don’t look at Bailey.
It isn’t until halfway through the lesson that I see the tiny writing in the bottom left-hand corner of the page, so small I have to squint to make out the letters: thanks anyway
Bindi has drama club at lunchtime, so I’m left to hang out by myself. I walk around the perimeter of the school, reciting the Fibonacci sequence under my breath. Zero, one, one, two, three, five, eight … The numbers glow golden behind my eyes. That’s because if you square all the numbers, then the geometric representation approximates a golden spiral.
Maths is cool like that.
My feet are so hot they feel like they’re about to spontaneously combust, so I sit on the concrete to take off my shoes and socks. When I look across to the gym, I see a figure jumping high, his bare feet at least half a metre off the ground. It’s Bailey, slam-dunking a basketball through a hoop. He’s playing with three other guys from our year, guys who aren’t in the cool crowd but aren’t loners like me either.
See, even a guy with a stutter who’s been here for a week has more mates than you.
Bailey’s head swivels, and he smiles, raising his hand. I glance over my shoulder to see who he’s waving at, but there’s no one else within a few metres of me. When I look back, he’s dribbling the ball up to the hoop again, the other guys weaving around him. I pick up my shoes and start walking, trying not to peer back over my shoulder. But in my head I’m trying to make an anagram of Bailey Hunter. The best I can come up with is u breathe in visibly by inserting a bunch of letters that don’t belong, v-i-s-i-b. It’s kind of cheating, but I like the invisible bit.
I like breathe too. It’s a blue word, cool and soothing.
Next, I wander through the foyer of the administration block. It’s dark and deliciously cool, and smells like wood polish. Loitering by the noticeboard, I cast my eye over the pieces of paper pinned to it. Most of them are advertisements for activities I’m not interested in, like tennis and the school newspaper and cricket.
But today there’s something different up there. It’s an A5 piece of paper with a pair of figures in white suits and black belts, one figure throwing the other figure over its shoulder.
Judo. Wednesday lunchtimes, school hall. All welcome! Email expressions of interest to address below.
For a crazy moment, I consider going along. It’s not a team sport, so no one else is going to hassle me if I screw up. I glance around. There’s only one other kid in the foyer, a plump girl with braces who looks like she’s trying to escape lunchtime as well. I pull off one of the tabs at the bottom of the notice with the e-mail address, and stuff it into my pocket. Chances are I’ll never use it, but at least I’ve got the option.
The bell is ringing. Time for calculus, my favourite class; and only two hours until I get to count one thousand steps home, where I can be alone at last.
I’m the first one home, as usual. When Alfie isn’t playing water polo, which has been his obsession for the past three years, then he’s usually goofing around with one of his friends. Dad doesn’t get home until after six, because he works in the inner city. I don’t really get what he does, only that it’s something to do with health insurance.
On Saturday Mum told Dad that sometimes she thought he cared more about his job than his family. Dad said that her being a nurse didn’t make her job more worthwhile than his, and who paid the mortgage anyway? Their voices were so loud I went outside and sat on the swing, reciting prime numbers until I heard the car reversing out of the garage. Three hundred and seventy-three, three hundred and seventy-nine, three hundred and eighty-three …
I make myself a smoothie (two hundred ml of milk, one banana, a scoop of vanilla ice cream) and take it up to my room. After I’ve drained the glass, I push my chair against the door and apply the black eyeliner and mascara that I nicked out of Mum’s make-up bag last year. When I’ve finished I look almost exactly like Billie Joe Armstrong, except my eyes are grey rather than green. I stand in front of the mirror with my guitar and strum along to ‘Holiday’ and ‘Hitchin’ a Ride’ and ‘Brain Stew’.
This is when I’m happiest, when I get to act and look like the person I feel like inside, without worrying about being humiliated. If I lived in the world of punk rock, then no one would think I’m weird. But I’m stuck in boring-as-hell Lower Hutt. If anyone saw me like this I’d die.
Year seven was the year I realised I was different from everyone else — an alien, a changeling. That was when I realised I was going to be lonely for the rest of my life, a solitary moon orbiting a distant planet I’d never truly be able to call home.
CHAPTER 2
BAILEY: DEAD END
We moved before the summer really got going. It gets hot in Wellington, but it’s windy nearly all the time. There’s no beach nearby, just hills covered in gorse, and petrol fumes that make my eyes itch. The rental is really small, and smells like the previous occupants smoked a thousand cigarettes inside. I thought we were going to be able to afford something better than three bedrooms when we left Auckland, but apparently not. That’s what happens when you’re in debt.
The worst part of moving is knowing that even if I run for an hour, all I’ll get to is a grey body of water, the wind-rippled surface like corrugated iron scraping against an ugly gravelly shore.
That’s not a beach. It’s a dead end.<
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At least we kept the caravan. I think I’d go crazy if it weren’t for the caravan.
Being the new kid sucks, especially when everyone else has obviously known each other since primary school. I miss my old mates, Dog and Joe. I miss judo. I miss the billowy cumulus clouds that are always lurking on the horizon, the black-sand west coast beaches, the hot scent of rain on asphalt.
This morning I’m standing in front of the calendar hanging on the wardrobe in my caravan. My brother Jack gave it to me for Christmas. He drew a picture for every month, which must have taken him hours. He’s pretty good, though, just like my mum’s sister Rosina, who spends most of her time painting. Just another person we had to leave behind.
This month’s picture is of Lion Rock at Piha, wild waves crashing around its base, orange-red sky blazing behind it. Every time I look at it, my throat hurts. Lion Rock has memories for me, not all of them good. Mostly it makes me think of what Dog and I did just before I left. It’s one of the best and worst things I’ve ever done.
There are a lot of things in my life like that.
It’s day three of week two of the term, Wednesday. Last night I counted how many weeks of the school year I had left, and all the weeks left after that, and it was way too many. Two years until I get to go to uni. Two years until I get to return to my old life in Auckland.
Someone starts banging on the door so hard the whole caravan starts rocking.
‘Bail-ey, Bail-ey,’ my little sister chants.
Sighing, I turn away from Lion Rock and fling open the door. Libby falls up the steps, and lands sprawled on her face. She doesn’t cry, though. She’s tough like that. I pick her up anyway, because her bottom lip is trembling. Libby flings her arms around my neck and nestles her head into my shoulder.
‘I don’t want to go to school.’ She smells like Marmite.
‘You can’t stay home.’ I set her on my bed. ‘We’re all going to school, OK?’
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