The Infinite Lives of Maisie Day

by Christopher Edge

  Inside the kitchen, Mum’s busy icing my birthday cake. I think that’s what she’s doing anyway – she wouldn’t let me see, just shooed me out of the kitchen when I tried to take a look.

  “Go and give your dad this cup of tea,” she said, handing me a steaming mug. “He looks like he could do with one.”

  Standing at the top of the patio steps, Dad’s scratching his head as he studies the piece of paper in his hand. On the lawn, the plastic sheeting has now been peeled back, trapped droplets of dew still sparkling beneath it as the white canvas canopy of the gazebo is laid out in a neatly folded square. Next to this, a jumble of poles and plastic struts has been emptied across the grass. It doesn’t look like Dad has made much progress putting it up yet.

  Hearing my footsteps, Dad looks up from his sheet of paper and greets me with a rueful smile.

  “Cup of tea – lovely,” he says, reaching out to take the mug from my hand. “I think my brain needs a caffeine injection to help me make sense of these blinking instructions.”

  “Can I have a look?” I ask.

  Dad nods, relieved to hand over the responsibility as he takes a slurp of tea.

  “I’m afraid we might have to have your birthday party inside if I can’t sort this, Maisie. I think there’s an important piece missing. I told your mum we shouldn’t have gone for a budget gazebo.”

  Shading my eyes from the Sun, I take a closer look at the instructions. There are no words anywhere on the page, just a sequence of diagrams laying out the different parts for the gazebo and showing how they fit together. Dad’s still stuck on the first diagram, a spider’s web of poles and joints that slot together to make a frame for the roof.

  “I can’t seem to find that stupid connector,” Dad says, leaning forward to tap the centre of the diagram. Dad’s pointing at the central joint, an octopus-like piece of plastic that the roof poles are supposed to fit into, the plastic rods radiating off it like bicycle spokes from the hub of a wheel.

  Glancing up from the instructions, I look again at the jigsaw of pieces laid out on the lawn. In among the maze of poles, joints and struts, I notice a couple of parts that look different to the picture – two white plastic joints shaped like stubby crosses.

  Reaching down to pick up these pieces, I turn them over in my hand, noticing how they match each other exactly. Then, with a satisfying click, I slot the two pieces together, the crosses now transformed into the eight-way connector that Dad has been searching for.

  I hold up this stubby white octopus of plastic.

  “I think this is it.”

  Dad grins.

  “Thanks, Maisie,” he says, setting down his mug of tea and then taking the piece from me. “I couldn’t see that for looking.” Grabbing hold of the nearest of the poles, he slides this into the connecting joint, twisting it with a click to secure it into position. “How about you help me with the rest of this? We’ll get this gazebo up much faster if we work together.”

  Even though I’m itching to head back inside to open my presents, I nod my head, not wanting to miss out on this chance to spend some time with Dad. He’s not been around much lately because of work and there’s something I really want to ask him.

  Dad’s a videogame designer. If you’ve ever played Fun Kart Fury or The Legend of Zombie Tower, then you’ve played one of my dad’s videogames. He didn’t make them on his own, of course. There’s a whole team of animators, programmers, artists and writers who work with him too. But Dad’s the person who’s in charge of making the game a reality.

  At the moment, he’s working flat out to get this new game he’s designed finished in time for Christmas. That means he’s working most weekends and hasn’t been getting home until late at night. Mum calls this the Crunch, but she still made sure that Dad took today off for my birthday.

  Lily and I used to have so much fun testing out demos of the latest games that Dad was working on. We’d race around in Fun Kart Fury throwing bombs to knock each other off the track and then collapse in a giggling heap when a glitch in the game made our avatars start farting whenever we tried to accelerate. That’s what it sounded like anyway. Dad used to give us 50p for every bug we found, so that game gave me a big pocket-money bonus.

  Lily doesn’t play videogames with me any more. She says she’s too busy with her revision. I miss the old Lily.

  “Dad,” I say, holding the next pole steady as he slides it into the central joint of the roof frame. “Why’s Lily so angry about my birthday party?”

  Twisting the pole to lock it into place, Dad shakes his head.

  “She’s not angry about your party, Maisie. Lily’s a teenager. She’s angry about everything. You see, when you hit puberty—”

  I cut Dad off before he starts embarrassing the both of us.

  “I know all about puberty, Dad,” I tell him. “I did it in GCSE biology. And Mum has explained all the annoying bits about being a girl.”

  “Right,” Dad says, his Saturday-morning stubble unable to disguise the blush that’s now creeping across his cheeks. “Well, you know that when you’re a teenager you’ve got a lot of changes going on. Not just your body, but your emotions too. Lily’s not angry at you or me. She’s just got out of the wrong side of bed today.”

  I wish that this was true, but the truth is Lily’s been mad at me for longer than this. I think it all began when I started school.

  That’s when people first began to realise that I was “academically gifted”. Mum had already taught me how to read and write at home, so I thought that when I got to school I’d be able to get started on the interesting stuff like, is the universe we live in really infinite? But my Early Years teacher Mrs Smith didn’t know the answer to this. She just wanted me to do phonics all the time, even though I already knew how to read. And when I corrected the answers to the sums she’d left on the board at lunchtime for the Year 6 Maths Club, the headteacher told Mum and Dad that I needed to move to another class.

  That’s how I ended up in Lily’s Year 6 class when I was only six years old. Everyone else in the class was ten or eleven and they all looked so big to me. The class teacher, Mrs James, sat me next to Lily so I wouldn’t be scared, but I had to take my own cushion to sit on to help me reach the desk.

  At first the other kids thought it was funny to have Lily’s little sister show up in their class to do science and maths. Some of them even called me Baby Brains. I learned about algebra and geometry, evolution and the theory of gravity.

  At first, it was really fun getting to do all these experiments like making rainbows and building shadow clocks. But then I kept on coming top in the class tests and the names that they called me started to change. Geek. Robot. Freak. And they’re just the ones I can tell you about. Never in front of the teacher, but loud enough for me to hear.

  I thought Lily would stick up for me, but she didn’t say a word. She just sat there with a scowl on her face as I tried my hardest not to cry.

  In the end, I couldn’t keep it a secret. I told Mum and Dad all about what was happening and said I didn’t want to go to school any more. At first Dad shouted at Lily for not looking after me, but then Lily burst into tears too and said I was ruining her life.

  So that’s why Mum and Dad decided to teach me at home.

  With help from this charity for academically gifted children, they got me this amazing tutor called Mrs Bradbury. Mrs Bradbury’s really ancient – I think she’s over sixty now, but she knows so much about maths and science. Before she retired and became my tutor, Mrs Bradbury used to work for the European Space Agency. She was in charge of designing their space probes and satellites, so she had answers to all my questions about how the universe works. Well, most of them anyway.

  When I asked Mrs Bradbury if the universe was infinite, she told me that scientists just don’t know. She explained that we can only see the part of the universe whose light has had the chance to reach us in the fourteen billion years since the Big Bang. This bit of the universe measures 93 bill
ion light years across and contains trillions of galaxies, but the whole universe is much, much bigger than this.

  Mrs Bradbury said that some scientists think we live in an infinite universe that stretches on forever in every direction, but other scientists believe that the universe might be shaped like a weird four-dimensional doughnut and this just makes it look like it’s infinite.

  With the final pole slotted into place, Dad now starts to drag the white canvas material across the roof of the gazebo. As I help him, I catch sight of a tiny ant crawling across the canvas. This ant is scurrying in a straight line, desperately trying to find the edge of the material so it can escape safely on to the grass, but as the canvas is stretched tight into position around the raised centre pole, the ant’s path starts to circle back on itself.

  I watch as the ant crawls blindly on. The roof of the gazebo is curved so if it carries on scurrying in the same direction the ant will never reach the edge, just eventually end up back at the same point where it started from. For this ant, the gazebo will seem infinitely big even though it only cost £9.99 from Tesco.

  “What do you reckon?” Dad asks, stepping back to admire our handiwork.

  The gazebo roof rests proudly on the lawn. Reaching across the canvas, I let the ant crawl on to my hand before transporting it safely back on to the grass. As it scurries off into the flower bed, I climb back to my feet.

  “It’s perfect,” I say. “Especially if you’re only a few centimetres tall.”

  Dad laughs.

  “Don’t be cheeky,” he says with a grin. “Let’s get the legs attached so we can all fit underneath.”

  But before I can reach for the instructions again I hear Mum’s voice calling me from the kitchen.

  “Maisie, phone!”

  5

  Breathing hard, I slump with my back against the door, praying that it stays slammed shut.

  The air buzzes with silence.

  I’ve still got my eyes tightly closed. I don’t even know what I’ll see when I open them again. I’m almost too scared to find out.

  But a sharp jabbing pain in the palm of my hand forces them open anyway.

  The first thing I see is the flat-screen TV in the corner of the room. It looks like it’s switched off – there’s no picture on the screen, just a faint reflection of the sofa on the other side of the living room. But my gaze instantly drops to focus instead on the source of the pain.

  My left hand is clenched into a fist, but as I open it I see the birthday badge, its safety pin sticking hard into my skin.

  Wincing, I pull the badge free. A fresh tear of blood wells up from the tiny hole it leaves behind.

  My reality check is still working.

  Wiping the blood away with shaking fingers, I pin the badge to my pyjama top.

  If things keep getting strange, I’m going to need this again.

  Climbing to my feet, I cautiously look around the room, my heart still thudding in my chest.

  The door behind me that leads to the kitchen is closed, but I don’t even know if the kitchen is on the other side of this any more. I saw those blobs of impossible blackness devour everything, a relentless tide of darkness peeling the kitchen inside out as it stretched to fill the universe. My stomach twists as I remember teetering on the edge of this endless void. It was like I was trapped at the beginning and end of everything.

  A shudder runs through me. I still don’t know how I escaped.

  Around the door frame there’s no crack to let the darkness through. It looks like I’m safe – for now. But I need to find out what’s happening, fast.

  My gaze roams around the living room, desperately searching for any kind of clue. I can see the L-shaped sofa crammed against the wall, the worn leather now more light grey than off-white. Mum’s ornaments and photos on the mantelpiece, the bookcase in the corner – a shelf each for Mum, Dad, Lily and me. Everything seems normal. But when I look through the window, I know this is a lie.

  Through the net curtains I can see the Sun shining down on the street outside, cars parked in front of the terraced houses and above them a clear blue sky. But then my brain fills in what’s missing. No people walking past. No Mr Ferguson next door giving his car its usual Saturday-morning shine. Nobody at all. Everyone’s gone. Just like here.

  What’s on the other side of that window isn’t my street. It’s an abyss.

  I can’t stop myself from crying, the tears coming in juddering gasps that make my whole body shake.

  Where’s Mum? Where’s Dad? Where’s Lily?

  Where on earth is the world?

  The observable universe is supposed to be 93 billion light years wide, but mine has shrunk to the size of this house. And it’s getting smaller all the time.

  Wiping my eyes with the sleeve of my dressing gown, I try to pull myself together.

  Mrs Bradbury once told me that a good scientist only needs to ask two questions about the universe. What exists and what does it do? She said if you can answer these questions, you have the chance of understanding everything.

  That’s what I’ve got to do now.

  At the moment, my universe is everything in this room. So what exists and what does it do?

  Picking up the remote control from the corner of the sofa, I switch on the TV. A zero and a one appear in the top right corner of the display, but instead of BBC One all I see is the same blank screen as when the TV was turned off. Frustrated, I flick through the channels, but every one’s the same. No Saturday-morning cartoons, no celebrity chefs. No picture. No sound. Wherever I am in the universe, there’s no signal coming through.

  Then the TV crackles, a sudden burst of static that makes me jump in surprise. As the white snow clears from the screen, I see the picture has changed from black to a deep sky blue. My eyes stayed glued to the screen as I watch a red balloon float up into this clear blue sky.

  Inside my head, I feel a strange sensation, like that feeling you get when you think you’ve seen something before.

  The helium balloon is getting smaller now, dwindling to a red teardrop as it rises higher in the sky.

  This is important, but I don’t know why.

  Then the picture on the TV flickers, the blue sky suddenly fading to black. I press the button on the remote to try to get the picture back, but the screen stays blank. I jab it again, then start pressing every button on the remote, but none of them seem to work any more. All I can see now is my own reflection on the screen, its shiny blackness reminding me with a shiver of the impossible darkness next door.

  Deflated, I sink into the sofa, feeling the leather squeak as gravity pulls me down.

  I know that I’ve seen that red balloon before. I remember watching it floating up into the same blue sky. It was like a scene from my memory was playing on the TV, but as I try to remember when this happened my mind goes blank, just like the TV screen.

  On the mantelpiece there’s a photo of Mum, Dad, Lily and me. It was taken a couple of years ago when we went camping on the Isle of Man. It poured down for the whole week we were there, but this picture was taken in the five minutes of sunshine that we had. In the photo, we’re all wearing our raincoats, the camera propped up on the harbour wall as we huddled together for warmth. It was the worst holiday ever, but in the picture we’re all laughing, even Lily, because Dad shouted out, “Say freeze!” just before the camera clicked.

  This is my family and I want them back.

  I can feel my eyes starting to leak again. Looking around for a box of tissues, I notice instead the phone sitting in its stand on the corner table. As I stare at it, Mrs Bradbury’s questions echo again in my mind. What exists and what does it do? The TV might just be showing me weird pictures of a red balloon before turning blank, but with this phone I might be able to talk to someone.

  Reaching past the figurine of the blue-glass cat that stands guard on the table, I pick up the handset. I’m praying that it’s not going to be dead just like the TV is now, but when I hold the phone to my ear I hear
a dial tone that tells me it’s connected.

  The only question is, who do I call?

  My first thought is to call 999. I mean, this is an emergency, isn’t it?

  But then I think about what I would say if anyone answered the call. My name is Maisie Day and I live at 12 Station Road. My family has disappeared and my house is floating in an endless void that has just erased the kitchen. Which of the emergency services is going to be able to deal with that?

  If I want to find out where my family have gone, that’s who I’m going to have to call. My family.

  Pushing down the call button, I quickly tap out the number of Mum’s mobile.

  “Come on, come on,” I mutter as I wait for the call to connect.

  But instead of a ringing tone, I just hear the sound of a click and then an automated voice says, “The person you have called is not available at the moment. Please leave a message after the tone.”

  BEEP.

  “Mum, it’s me – Maisie,” I splutter, unable to stop myself from crying as the words come tumbling out. “Where are you? Where’s everyone? I need you to come and get—”

  But before I can finish speaking the phone cuts off with a dead dial tone.

  Pressing the call button again, I now frantically tap out Dad’s mobile number only to be greeted by the same automated voice.

  “The person you have called is not available at the moment. Please leave a message after the tone.”

  I can’t stop myself from screaming.

  Nobody’s going to answer my call. Nobody’s coming to rescue me. I’m trapped here – wherever here is – with no way out.

  There’s only one person left to try. With shaking fingers I tap out the last number that I know off by heart.

  As the tears run down my face I wait for the same voicemail message to kick in again, but instead I hear a ringing tone.

  I can’t believe it. I cradle the phone against my ear, praying that someone will pick up the call.

  Then the ringing tone stops and I hear my sister’s voice on the other end of the line.