“Don’t quit your real estate job, Bas,” Nate said with a chuckle. He walked into the hallway and turned to Andrea. “I had fun tonight.”
“Me, too.”
He reached for her hand.
Andrea’s dad stepped out of the music room. “Heading home, Nate?”
Nate dropped his hand to his side. “Yes, Mr. L.”
“Don’t be late for your cello lesson tomorrow.”
“I won’t. Promise.”
Andrew Louviere nodded and shut the music room’s door.
Andrea smirked. “Liar. You know you’re going to stand him up.”
“You know me too well.” He leaned over to kiss her. “Good night.”
Andrea tilted her head, diverting Nate’s lips to her cheek. “Good night.”
—
The face of Mr. Penelo, Andrea’s third-grade science teacher, popped into her head as she sat at her desk in her bedroom later that evening. He was a short man with stubby arms and gray hair that was pasted in a wispy spiral around his head, but from the way his voice boomed across the classroom, you would have sworn that he was at least six feet tall. Andrea had scraped by with a C in his fourth-period class but had paid enough attention to recall a lesson he had taught her class one muggy Monday afternoon.
“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Mr. Penelo sat on his chair and pushed against his desk, sending his chair rolling in the opposite direction. “Ta-dah. Isaac Newton’s third law of motion. Can anyone give me other examples?”
Nate raised his hand. “Hopping.”
“Bouncing balls,” said the wiry kid next to him.
“Rocket launches,” Laura Thomson volunteered from behind Andrea.
No one had mentioned receiving a love letter from a man who died more than three centuries ago. They should have, Andrea thought, as she stared out of her bedroom window. Isaac’s words sent her reeling harder than any brick wall. She locked her door at nine o’clock each night, clinging to the hope that if she read his letter just one more time, she would find answers somewhere between its minuscule handwritten lines. Her search led her in one direction: 1666.
Isaac had turned twenty-four that year and was waiting out the Great Plague in his home at Woolsthorpe. His time at the manor was dubbed his annus mirabilis, his “miracle year.” It was during this period that Isaac made the three mathematical and scientific discoveries that would forever change the way man understood the world: calculus, the composition of white light, and the universal law of gravity. But no matter how many times Andrea pored over Isaac’s equations and scientific laws, she did not get any closer to understanding their correspondence.
Textbooks and history told her nothing of the message he had sent across time and less of the crack that connected them. His letter remained her only clue. She fished it out from her desk drawer just as she did every evening. Tuna rubbed her head against Andrea’s leg. She turned to the letter’s last page, no longer needing to keep her eyes on it to know what was coming next.
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55
A quick Google search told her that they were Fibonacci numbers, an integer sequence, but it did not give any clue to their purpose. They still did not make any sense.
Andrea had come close to blurting everything to Nate, but she bit her lips until they bled each time she felt the urge to ask for his help. It wasn’t fair to pull him into the rabbit hole with her. She was feeling crazy enough for the both of them.
She kneaded the bridge of her nose and refolded Isaac’s letter. Bits of red wax fell over Tuna’s back. She brushed them off, savoring the softness of the cat’s orange fur against the swollen pads of her fingers. Playing the cello for hours every evening had left them red and raw. Failing to open her wall made them feel worse than they looked. But from the way her dad’s eyes lit up when he noticed the state of her hands, one might have thought they were the loveliest things he had ever seen. He pressed his fingers to his lips to keep his glee from slipping out. He was only partially successful. The corners of his mouth twitched whenever he tried to rein in a grin. Andrea guessed that he would not have been as happy about her sore fingers if he knew why she was playing her cello again.
Andrea unhooked a reusable shopping bag from the back of her chair and pulled out a tin of Bag Balm. Until she grew her calluses back, the ointment was going to be her fingers’ best friend. She was not going to get any answers if she bled out over her cello’s fingerboard. She slathered the thick salve over her fingertips, desperate to apply the same to her soul. Cradling her cello was at once like throwing her arms around a lost friend and searing them against white-hot coal. It was impossible to pry the pleasure from the blistering pain. For a few hours each night, she was whole again, and acutely aware of each passing second and note that brought her closer to the evening’s end. Holding on to something that she knew she could not keep taught Andrea a new kind of despair.
Wanting.
Waiting.
Having.
Losing.
This cycle was her heart’s clock, her sole sense of time.
She pulled out her next purchase, leaving greasy prints on its clear plastic box. She wiped away the excess balm on her jeans and read the instructions for her new mini audio recorder. The device was nowhere near as fancy as the one her father owned, but it had been on sale and was good enough for recording and reviewing her attempts to crack her wall open. She popped two AA batteries inside it and pushed the record button.
Andrea pressed the cello’s strings. Heat flared in her fingertips. She gritted her teeth, shut her eyes, and played on. Light glowed behind her eyelids. She kept them closed. Flashing cellphone screens had disappointed her before. The light grew brighter. “Please be there,” she whispered, parting her lids halfway.
A crack, no bigger than her backpack, broke through her wall. The glowing hole opened into a large room filled with rows of tall bookshelves. A lean, dark-haired man stood with his back to her, returning a book to a shelf. His broad shoulders tensed through his coarse black coat. He spun around. His hazel eyes darted over her face.
Andrea? he said without making a sound.
Andrea recognized the shape of her name on the young man’s lips. She nodded, wondering if she looked as different to him as he did to her. The three years that had passed since she’d last seen him on Carnegie Hall’s stage had polished his features into an assembly of handsome angles and lines that was difficult to tear her eyes from. “Isaac?” she asked, daring for the first time to say his name out loud. Its syllables tickled her tongue, effervescent and sweet like ginger ale.
His eyes widened. He strode toward the wall and waved, inviting her to come closer. Come, he said silently. Please.
Andrea glanced at her cello. She was less than three feet away from Isaac and answers, but her instrument kept her pinned to her seat. She pushed it away and lunged toward the crack, unsure how long it would remain open after the music stopped. Isaac thrust his hand through the shrinking hole. She sucked in a breath and pressed her palm against his.
A wave of warmth spread through Andrea’s fingers. History told her that she was standing in front of one of mankind’s greatest minds, but all she could see was the boy whom she had shared a secret with for more than half of her life. His long fingers closed around hers. Pieces of plaster appeared between their palms. She gripped his hand, digging her nails into him. A thick book materialized and pried their hands apart. The rest of the wall reappeared, sealing the crack.
Andrea staggered from the wall and knocked the audio recorder from her desk. Its tiny red light flashed from the carpet. She scooped up the recorder, her hand tingling from the heat of Isaac’s palm. She pressed the play button and waited for the song she had recorded to call the dark, beautiful, and magical creature behind her wall back.
What was before is left behind; what never was is now.
—OVID
Sri Lanka
Present Day
Andrea i
s eighteen.
Sweat dripped from Andrea’s scalp and stung her sunburned cheeks. She was almost convinced that she could hear her skin sizzle. She could not spare the time to listen closely and know for sure. It was her last day as a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity’s Global Village program in Sri Lanka and she had a house to finish building. Matt, her mother’s boyfriend, worked for the organization and had suggested the two-week trip as a way to celebrate her eighteenth birthday. Andrea leapt at the chance to get as far away as she could from her bedroom’s walls. She was tired of scouring them for cracks.
For a year, her walls had ignored the recording she had made of Isaac’s song and all her other attempts to see Isaac again. He had promised her another letter, but her hands were too raw from playing his song to hold on to hope.
“Earth to Dre. Earth to Dre.” Nate waved a muddied trowel in front of her face. “Back to work, slacker.”
“Remind me again why I agreed to let you come with me on this trip?” Andrea rubbed the sweat from her eyes.
“Hang on. If I recall correctly, it was your dad who suggested I tag along. His little girl needed a chaperone.”
She punched his arm. “Oh, shut up.”
Nate chuckled. “How are you holding up? Besides your lapses in memory, I mean.”
“I don’t think my armpits will ever be dry again.” Andrea laid a brick on her chin-high wall. She stepped back and admired the three-hundred-square-foot home she had helped build. “But I’m good.”
“Don’t worry. Eau de Sweat becomes you.”
“You don’t exactly smell like roses yourself, mister.” Working with his hands in a white T-shirt that was molded to his broad chest suited Nate, but Andrea decided to keep that thought to herself. He had more than enough fangirls to boost his ego back home, girls who slipped him their numbers whenever he played with his band.
He took a long sip of water from the plastic jug they shared. “But this is quite something, isn’t it? I’m glad I came.”
“Me, too.”
“You’re glad that I came, too?” He leaned closer to Andrea and flashed a dimpled grin that lit his face, transforming him the way fairy lights turned pine trees into Christmas memories.
Andrea’s breath caught midway in her throat. She coughed to clear it. “What? No….I…uh…meant that I’m glad I—” She took a quick step back and tripped on a brick.
Nate caught her by the wrist and laughed. His lucky disc-shaped pendant swung from his neck and sparkled in the sun. “I’m kidding,” he said without letting her go.
Andrea kept her eyes from his smile, refusing to lose her footing again. During their weeks in Sri Lanka, Nate’s smile had knocked her off-balance more often than she cared to admit. Tiny bolts of electricity prickled the spot where he held her. Without her cello and Isaac’s wax-sealed words, there was nothing to distract her from the current shooting up her arm.
“I know what you meant. I think I know you pretty well by now.” Nate slipped his hand from her wrist and held her hand.
Andrea’s fingers stiffened, ready to flee. The warmth of Nate’s palm fused them in place. Andrea met his eyes. With Nate there was no need to hurry. There was no song that was ending or plaster to push them apart.
“And you know me,” he said softly, resting his forehead on the top of her head.
Andrea tilted her face to catch the whisper. The tips of their noses touched. She inhaled sharply, drawing air from the sliver of space between their lips.
“Happy birthday, Dre.” He leaned closer.
Andrea closed her eyes, waiting to feel his lips. She had refused their sanctuary since she had received Isaac’s letter. Today, she longed to remember what it was like not to be ignored. Nate’s upper lip grazed hers. Andrea tiptoed to seek shelter in his kiss. A familiar sweet warmth welcomed her, but its flames grew quickly like rum set on fire. The last time their mouths had touched, Nate was more boy than man. This Nate was intoxicating. Andrea circled her arms around his smooth nape to claim more of him.
A man cleared his throat behind Nate.
Andrea jumped back. “Oh…uh…hi, Matt.”
Nate spun around. “Hey. We were just…um…”
“Taking a break?” Matt smirked.
Nate blushed and picked up his trowel. “Back to work.”
Matt took off his yellow hard hat. He wiped his shiny scalp with a towel. “How’s the birthday girl?”
“I wish I didn’t have to leave tomorrow,” Andrea said, willing the flush on her cheeks to fade. “The trip went by so fast.”
“Yeah,” Nate said. “This was a great experience, Matt. Thanks again for letting me come along.”
“We need all the help we can get,” Matt said. “You should tell your friends about this when you get back.”
“I will,” Nate said.
Matt pulled out a box wrapped in brown paper from his backpack and handed it to Andrea. “This is from Julia.”
“Thanks.” Andrea took the gift from him. She knew without unwrapping it that it was another journal. Her relationship with her mother was best when it was predictable and from a distance, and after Carnegie Hall, Andrea thought that Julia had even learned to love her a little bit more. She wasn’t as lucky as her mother thought she was.
“And this is from me.” Matt held out a crumpled paper bag. “Just a little something to help you remember this trip.”
Andrea peeked inside. A local handcrafted silver-and-glass-beaded bracelet caught the sun. “It’s beautiful. Thanks, Matt.”
“You’re welcome. We’ll celebrate with the rest of the team tonight.”
“You don’t need to go through the trouble. I’m sure everyone will be beat after work.”
“Nonsense. They’re all looking forward to it. It will be fun. Besides, I told your mother I’d look out for you, and I don’t think I’d be much of a guardian if I didn’t let you blow out a candle on your birthday. I can’t promise you a cake to go with that candle, but there’s a good chance we’ll be able to find some chapati.” A boyish smile creased his leathery cheek. “What do you say?”
“Throw in some beef curry and you have a deal.”
“Great. I’ll see you at quitting time.”
A truck, piled high with bags of cement, rumbled into the site. Matt waved at it, directing it to park on the far side of the construction area.
“Do you need help unloading, Matt?” Nate asked.
“Sure. Thanks.” Matt planted his hard hat on his head. “Follow me.”
Nate squeezed Andrea’s shoulder. “Try not to destroy anything while I’m gone.”
“I’ll do my best.” She watched Nate walk away, towering over most people at the construction site. His build and blond hair, she thought, made him look like a Viking that had lost his way. Andrea smiled to herself and touched her lips. They were still warm from his kiss.
“Good day, Ms. Louviere.” A voice, grainy and dark like coffee grounds, snaked over her shoulder. “Lovely house.”
Andrea twisted around. Except for the sweat that dripped from his brow and the red-gray mud that caked his wing tip shoes, Mr. Westin looked the same as he had the year before. “How…how did you know I was here?”
He smiled and handed her a rectangular package wrapped in parchment. “Happy birthday.”
Her fingers trembled as she took the delivery from him.
“You’ve been playing the cello again,” he said.
She jerked her head back. “How did you know?”
“Music leaves marks.”
She glanced at the calluses on her fingers. Each was a reminder of the nights she had failed to find Isaac. “Ugly ones.”
“You should be proud of them, Ms. Louviere. Not many people are blessed with such talent, myself included.”
“It’s never too late to learn,” she said, choosing to be polite rather than truthful.
“Are you offering to teach me?”
“Teach you? No. No way. I can’t.”
“Why
not?”
“I’m not a teacher.”
“Last year you said you weren’t a cellist. Who can say what you will or won’t be next year? Time has more twists and turns than any road, don’t you agree?” He tipped his fedora. “Enjoy the rest of your day.”
She grabbed his arm. “You haven’t answered my question. How did you know that I’d be here?”
“My delivery instructions are quite precise.”
“Who gives you your instructions?”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you. I’m sorry, Ms. Louviere. I simply follow the instructions I am given.”
“Is there a person I can contact? Someone who can tell me more about these letters? Please, Mr. Westin. I have to know.”
“I truly wish that I could be of more assistance, but I simply—”
“Follow instructions. I know, I know.” Andrea rubbed her forehead. Red mud streaked over her skin.
“Here.” Mr. Westin offered her a white handkerchief. “Don’t worry. It’s clean. You can return it when you give me my first music lesson.”
—
Andrea kept Mr. Westin’s delivery buried deep in her backpack until she flew home. She couldn’t have risked Nate seeing it, and it wouldn’t have seemed right to open it so far away from her cello or wall. Now she sat on her bedroom floor and leaned against the white and gray stripes that had taken the place of the room’s yellow paint. She pulled the package out from her carry-on bag and ripped its wrapper. A book’s mottled leather cover stared up at her. Ovid’s Metamorphoses. A yellowed piece of folded paper stuck out from its pages. Andrea tugged it free. Isaac’s wax initials sealed its flap. She held her breath and cracked the seal open.
My dearest Andrea,
Much time has passed since we first touched, but my hand still remembers the shape and softness of your palm. I also recall the puzzle you left me with when your lips shaped my name. I struggled to comprehend how you came to know it, not having had the privilege of introducing myself before then. I have a better understanding of the nature and sequence of these events now, and one day, you shall, too.
Love and Gravity Page 7