by Melissa Keil
I’m tempted to happily forget this conversation ever took place, but then I catch another glimpse of Pagono’s face. Beneath the bravado and chip crumbs, he looks bashful, and maybe a bit hopeful. Damn it to hell. My karmic juju better be skyrocketing.
I close my eyes. ‘Okay, fine. But dude, you gotta stop texting me dodgy memes. It’s not endearing. How did you even get my number?’
Damien taps the side of his nose. ‘Internet’s a magical place. Phone numbers, weird-as-shit fan art – I’ll send you a link for this site that’s nothing but pictures of the Hulk on the toilet.’
‘Fantastic,’ I say dryly. But Damien is looking at me like he’s pulled off his first Acrobatic Aces, and I can’t bring myself to sound completely sarcastic.
Mondays are usually pretty chill – Maths, which I normally snooze through, double English, which is tolerable, and History, which is really the only school-related reason for getting out of bed. But this Monday seems determined to chuck a whole box of metaphorical spanners right into the eyeball of my day.
In my rush to leave the house I forgot to bring my brulee torch and snow-in-a-can, which means my Sophia plan will be behind by a whole day. Halfway through recess I get a message from my sister that reads, Today has turned into a Joy Division song, which is Gilly-code for I will need Cartoon Network and tonnes of ice-cream when I get home. I text back a couple of poo emojis, cos I know not even my most charming patter will convince Mum to let Gillian loose with a bunch of strangers, and I can’t think of anything else helpful to say.
But yeah, my head is a bit elsewhere, and my lack of attention serves to bite me gigantically on the arse. I forget to take the long way past the Careers office as I head to my lunch hideout, and I’m promptly pounced upon by Ms Mehmet, the Careers counsellor, who appears from out of nowhere like she’s materialised from a Houdini box. I’ve managed to sidestep her all semester, but she’s clearly been on a mission to track me down. The upshot is, I get stuck in her office doing some inventive evasive talking to avoid her questions, my stomach growling.
Damien finds me as I’m rushing to my locker and helpfully chucks a mini-bag of cookies at me before he scarpers to Business Management. Judging by his expression when I accept them, I think this pretty much means we’re engaged.
I’m kinda bummed that my careful plans have fallen in a heap. I’m trying my best to stay optimistic, but it feels just a bit unfair, the way the real world keeps worming, inescapably, into my life. And to top it off, I barely catch a glimpse of Sophia all day.
I’m operating on Tiny Teddies and hope as I escape study group the second Mr Kilby closes his laptop. My contact lenses are itching like crazy from the overheated classrooms, and my stomach is pitching. I burst out of the building, casting a glance at my watch as I scramble across the carpark.
I know I’ve done nothing worthy of her attention today. Maybe the smidgen of curiosity I thought I sensed was just a figment of my imagination. Maybe she’s already bored? I’m not so delusional as to think our little conversations would set her world on fire. I need to think bigger. Way bigger. Or maybe … maybe I’m already disappointing.
I skid across the soggy carpark, tugging on my jacket and cap, and there she is.
She’s sitting right on the corner of the bench near the gate. Her long fingers are clasped in her lap, her eyes trained on the darkening street.
I force myself to slow, though my heart seems to be trying its best to climb up my oesophagus. I stop, for just a sec, behind Mr Kilby’s ancient MINI Cooper, and I call upon every internal resource, every public speaking tool and technique that I’ve forced myself to master over the years. I breathe, and then walk.
‘Hello,’ I say brightly.
Sophia glances up, no surprise showing on her face.
‘Hello.’
‘Missed your bus?’
‘Yes. That’s happened a bit lately.’
She’s bundled within her coat, but shows no reaction to the gusting bitter wind. In this light, her irises have a hue around them that’s not noticeable during the day, circles of russet lighter than the almost-black of her eyes.
She gestures, a little stiffly, to the seat beside her. ‘Are you going to sit?’
I’m kinda proud of the fact that I don’t bust out a happy dance. Instead, I pull myself up onto the backrest of the bench and plant my feet on the seat a safe few lengths away from her. When I lean forward with my forearms on my knees, I can just about see her profile. I wish I could sit close enough to see all of the subtle expressions that pass across her face, but I know she’s not comfortable with anyone in her space. She turns towards me, narrow-eyed and contemplative.
We sit in silence. Before I can muster up some patter, Sophia’s cheeks flush, the soft brown dusted with pink. She looks away quickly.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbles.
‘For what?’
‘I’m staring. It’s not polite. I’ve been told I can be a bit creepy.’
I laugh, pleased that even through the nerves it sounds almost normal. ‘And I’ve been told I could pass for the wooden-spoon winner of an Edward Cullen look-alike contest.’
She gapes up at me, her resolve to stop staring apparently forgotten. ‘Someone actually said that to you?’
I shrug. ‘Yeah, but to be fair, a giant dude in rollerblades had just kneed her in the head. I had to sit with her in the emergency room. I might have been dressed in a Kaonashi costume at the time. It’s a long story,’ I say, sheepishly.
Sophia still looks mortified. I scramble for something else to say, cos I can’t stand the thought that that is how she sees herself. ‘And, y’know, as someone who spent most of his childhood impersonating a horror movie extra from a German silent film – and yes, that is also something someone recently said to me – I can say with authority that you are not creepy.’
She waves a dismissive hand. ‘Right. And the fact that you’re sitting way over there like I’m going to implode if you get closer?’
I baulk. I drop onto the seat beside her, careful to not let our shoulders bump. ‘You don’t like people in your space. That isn’t a crime.’
She shakes her head with a sigh. ‘So it’s obvious even to a casual observer? Excellent.’ She peeks hesitantly at me. ‘It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s just … I’m not good with people. I’m hopeless at figuring out what they want or expect. Sometimes it’s just too much to unravel, and it’s not always … comfortable. The not knowing, I mean. Other people can be very … intense.’ She shakes her head, like she’s being thwarted by the words themselves.
I stare out over the road. The last of the school pick-ups is pulling out of the gate, red tail-lights bouncing off the drizzly bitumen. It’s not like I hadn’t guessed that she has some – well, issues with social stuff. But even though my observations have been slightly more concerted than casual, I’m starting to wonder just how much I’ve actually been allowed to see.
‘Then I really don’t understand why they stuck you in Drama,’ I blurt. ‘It’s not completely bizarre to want to keep to yourself, to not want other people in your face. It seems kind of mean that they’d put you through that.’
‘It’s my own fault,’ she says with a shrug. ‘It was just a suggestion. For a moment there I actually thought it mightn’t be a totally bad idea.’ She shrugs again. ‘It’s not like I protested.’
I swallow down my words, caught by the blank tone in her voice. ‘Your parents must have, like, crazy high expectations?’ I say carefully.
She looks at me incredulously. ‘What? No, not at all. I mean, it’s not like they wanted me to get a PhD at twelve. They didn’t even want me to skip grades, no matter how many times it was suggested.’ She looks out over the grey road. ‘I don’t think my mum and dad ever really knew what to do with me,’ she says, almost as if she’s talking to herself. ‘I remember lots of closed-door conversations when I was a kid, always right before I ended up enrolled in junior softball or Girl Guides or something.’
‘Briefly. When I was seven.’ The corners of her lips turn up as she peers at me again. I’m startled by this new smile, enigmatic and verging on cheeky. ‘I might have used some ping-pong balls and, ah, unsupervised cleaning supplies to build a few … concussion grenades at winter jamboree. It’s not like I blew anything up. Well, a couple of sleeping bags, but that was an accident. I wasn’t invited back, though.’
I burst out laughing. ‘Wow. I may have a totally wrong picture of you in my head.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah, I have this image of little you, y’know, sketching formulas on your windows with crayons – I never pictured you taking inspiration from the Anarchist Cookbook.’
She crosses her arms, but doesn’t look displeased. ‘Any idiot can make napalm in a toilet. It doesn’t exactly qualify you for a Nobel.’
Bloody hell, what was I doing at seven? Probably trying to master a shoddy overhand shuffle, and stockpiling my words for what would soon become an ambitious bout of silence.
I’m treated to another one of those brief, shrewd glances. ‘It’s not that impressive. And … I believe I’m talking to the guy who can make his own spontaneously igniting flash paper. Right?’
It’s my turn to blush. For some reason it’s not something we’ve talked about, not directly, anyway. I dunno why. Suddenly, I’m struck with this awful realisation – like I’ve dangled my heart on a parlour rope, and she hasn’t even noticed that it’s out there swinging. Why won’t she acknowledge it? Maybe cos she sees my stupid feats for what they are: harebrained and insignificant.
Luckily it’s almost fully dark now, and I doubt she can see my flaming skin. The dark makes it harder to see what her face is doing, too, though she’s still pondering me closely.
Sophia averts her eyes. ‘Anyway. The other kids seemed to think it was cool. And my Den Mother said I wasn’t going to win friends with my “sparkling personality”, so I worked with what I had.’ She seems to shake herself out of nostalgia-mode. ‘After that my parents stopped trying to enforce the social stuff as much. But I still think they wish I’d just try and be normal.’
‘Normal?’
She shrugs. ‘Sure – a regular paste-eating, Drama-class attending, party-going kid. You know. Normal.’
‘No. I don’t know what that means,’ I say flatly.
She looks at me quizzically. And then she chuckles. ‘Well if that’s true, you’re the only person I know who doesn’t have a definition for it.’
She stands up. The drizzle has started again, so light I can barely feel it, but I can see it tumbling in the streetlights behind her. The damp has made her hair look impossibly thicker, raven pieces curling around her face. Sophia pulls her jacket hood over her head. ‘I have to go. Sorry for … sorry.’ She gives me a wave and walks away before I can unglue my stupid, worthless tongue.
I shove my hands into my jacket pockets, realising through my clearing brain-haze that I’ve been drumming them like crazy on my thighs.
I wonder if she can feel my eyes on her as she disappears into the dark, if my longing is transmitting in waves through the dank carpark. It’s an effort to keep my legs still, but I force myself to lock every muscle and sinew in place to avoid running after her. It wouldn’t do any good, I’ve got nothing useful to do or say. I need to think. I need to plan. I need to do … something. But I can still see her face, gloomy and defeated, and nothing, no matter how big, feels like it could possibly be enough.
CHAPTER TEN
The causality principle
I think I’m coming down with something. I seem to have amassed a collection of physiological symptoms, which some frantic googling indicates could be either a mitral valve prolapse, or the early stages of dysentery. My skin is clammy all the time, my stomach permanently in knots. The glimpses I catch of my brother as he skulks around our house send my insides plummeting. Being stuck in the Biology lab beside a silent Elsie makes my chest constrict. And even approaching the Visual and Performing Arts Centre is enough to make swallowing difficult. Maybe I have developed an ulcer? Trust my body to inflict some old-man ailment upon me, on top of everything else.
Nothing out of the ordinary happens this week. There are no surprises, no disruptions, nothing other than a brief flurry when Mr Grayson rear-ends the principal’s car on parent-teacher night.
Joshua smiles when he sees me, but it seems oddly unnatural on him. It’s like he’s constantly on the verge of saying something, but keeps changing his mind at the last moment. I don’t know what I was thinking. Why wouldn’t he think that I’m a huge, intractable freak? Obviously, whatever brief … whatever it was has passed now. It’s fine. Though I do feel like a bit of a dipshit, because I still haven’t been able to discuss any of this with Elsie. It’s like part of me is holding back, hoping that … well, hoping. It’s an uncomfortable, alien feeling.
I don’t think my lack of focus is apparent in class, though. Elsie does give me a few odd looks, but it wouldn’t cross her mind to wonder what I’ve been up to. Her school diary is filled with flyers about America, and once, when I tracked her down at recess, I found her sitting with Marcus and Nina and their friends, poring over the Atlanta Lonely Planet on Marcus’s iPad.
I want to talk to her. I feel guilty, like I am responsible for this growing distance between us. But every time I open my mouth, something in the back of my brain tells me to stop.
After intense analysis, I conclude that I am either experiencing the world’s slowest stroke, or that some part of me is reassured by the fact that the person who knows me best doesn’t know about this one thing. And though I poke and prod at this mystery, throwing multiple theories against my mental walls, I have no idea why that might be.
I clock with interest that Joshua and Damien appear to have become friends. I see them in Biology, Damien nattering in Joshua’s ear; I have no idea what’s happened there. But on Friday they seem to be having a heated discussion, Damien whispering animatedly while Joshua shakes his head, a flush staining his cheeks. When Damien waves his hand in my direction, I decide to stop snooping and focus hastily on my books.
Elsie cancels our Friday night study session, telling me that she has a ‘family thing’ as she rushes off to band practice. She doesn’t look me in the eye. I have no clue how to process her evasiveness.
Turns out, I don’t have much of a chance to try. Because on Friday evening, another first happens.
A boy calls me on the phone.
I answer the unknown number after pondering my screen uncertainly. There is a pause on the other end. I hear distant music, and the sound of someone clearing their throat. My heartbeat seems to amplify in the quiet.
‘Sophia? Um, hi. It’s Josh. Joshua Bailey? I hope you don’t mind me calling? I just wanted to … check in and … say hey.’ He clears his throat again. That hitch in his speech is more apparent over the phone, the muffling of his Ss and Ts that is, in an inexplicable way, interesting. ‘Are you busy?’ he says.
I sit down on the edge of my bed. ‘No. I’m trying to learn Russian,’ I say, and immediately feel ridiculous. I don’t know what normal people do with their Friday nights, but flicking through the online Transactions of the Moscow Mathematical Society probably isn’t it.
‘Russian? Whoa, that’s cool. Ivan the Terrible, Rasputin – the Revolution, although, you know, probably not so cool if you were a Romanov. The whole execution by firing squad thing would’ve tanked. So how many other languages do you speak?’
And even though this week has sucked donkey balls, I can’t help but smile a little as he launches into conversation as if no time has passed since the last time we spoke. ‘Three. Well, sort of. My French and German are okay. The Russian is adequate. For now.’
He whistles. ‘I never had the patience for languages. Only thing I remember from year-seven Chinese is how to ask for directions to the mausoleum o
f Chairman Mao.’
‘Really? Strange, since you’ve obviously spent hours perfecting, what – disappearing a pencil into your ear?’
I feel like I can hear him grinning. ‘What can I say? My focus has always been pretty specific. So why Russian?’
I glance at my desk. My last email to the Steklov Institute remains unanswered; the picture of Perelman is curling at the edges now. I realise that my obsession is bordering on unhealthy, but I can’t stop thinking about him. Lately I’ve been wondering when exactly his downward spiral began. Was it one thing, one event, one catastrophe that tipped him over the cliff edge he’d been teetering on? Who was he when he was young? Was he optimistic, confident in the limitlessness of own abilities, or did he already feel the panic of impending disappointments pressing down on him? Christ – was he hiding out in his bedroom on a Friday night while reading obscure geometrical theories in Latvian or something? Probably. This thought does not make me feel any cheerier.
I’ve think I’ve been silent for a few beats too long. I think about the parameters of the standard conversational topics that I know. But when I open my mouth, I find myself launching into a diatribe about Grigori Perelman, about the Poincaré proof, and topological spaces, and his mystifying vanishing act. My hands are shaky when I finish, and as soon as I fall silent, the heat rises, blistering, in my face. I can’t believe I have just unloaded all of that, without so much as a pause for breath. What must be going through his mind –
‘Whoa. That’s intense. He turned down a million bucks? Dude must’ve really wanted to stick it to the establishment. But bloody hell, what a grand finale.’ The sound of genial tapping echoes through the line. I can just imagine him drumming his ceaseless hands on his desk or something. ‘Though I suppose it would suck to have the highlight of your life happen when you’ve still got tonnes of it left to live,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘You think he maxed out too soon?’