The Upper World

by Femi Fadugba

  But where Marcus had taken the piss was by throwing in a two-pound coin. It was like driving a truck full of live goats past fasting lions. A heap of kids piled up in front of Marcus, while the rest of the hall jumped out of their seats to see who’d float to the top, money in hand. Even Ms Russel and Mr Sweeney were part of the stampede.

  The room’s centre of gravity shifted to the far end, and in the commotion I lost sight of D. I looked down at the rough sides of my arms and saw the hairs standing up, something I’d always assumed only happened to people in films. Something was clearly setting me off. And, even though I was sitting thirty metres away from the danger, I still felt like I was drifting into a trap.

  Before I could think to call him back, Kato was already at the far end of the dining hall, hustling like everyone else to see the action before the scramble mountain crumbled.

  ‘Prick,’ I muttered under my breath. Sure, Kato couldn’t see how fast my heart was racing, or my knees knocking under the table, but he knew my situation with Bloodshed and how scared I was. And yet he still left me to watch some kids fight over a two-quid coin. The exact same way he’d bumped me every other time I made the mistake of trusting him.

  I reached for my tray, and a dark shadow fell over it.

  It was D, his gold tooth glistening like the necklace draped over his school jumper. His eyes traced me top to bottom – starting with the sweat on my forehead and ending at my untied laces. Better here and now, I thought, remembering my bone-chilling premonition, versus in a dark alleyway tonight.

  ‘What you sayin? You were with them Peckham yutes that rushed my brother.’ His voice had always been low and gruff like he mixed broken glass in with his breakfast cereal. He stared at me, his eyebrows arched above big vein-stained eyes. ‘Man would wet you up right here if we weren’t in school.’

  He said it all calmly, like it was as obvious as the square root of nine. It still didn’t make sense to me how we’d gone from family friends to fatal enemies in less than a week.

  I exchanged the shock on my face for puppy eyes. ‘It’s not even like that, you know. Ask Bloodshed – I was the one telling everyone to allow it –’

  ‘Don’t call him that,’ he said, raising his voice, then bringing it back down again so it could ride with his original train of thought. ‘You lot proper disrespected my lil bro. And in West End. And in front of gyal. Do you even know how much of a violation that is, bro? Did you really think man would let that slide?’

  He grabbed the carton of blackcurrant off my tray, then punched a hole into it with the straw. Is this guy really gonna drink my juice and make me watch him finish it before he rushes me?

  But instead of putting the straw to his mouth, he just stared at it, then back at me, then back at the carton again. And, after one final pause, he turned the container over my head and squeezed its contents on to my scalp.

  I shuddered as the cold, violet liquid ran down my shirt and into my lap. And, as it dripped into my eyes, D’s laugh got louder and louder.

  Without thinking, I shot up from my chair, twisting so I was face to face with him.

  ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ the chants began a few metres away, then started echoing around the room.

  ‘D and Esso are about to rock!’ someone on the table behind shouted. I could literally hear the phones swooshing out of people’s pockets, everyone ready to post highlights online. More people joined the crowd, and the growing intensity gave me an almost divine revelation: This is my time. By settling things now, I could avoid the future I’d seen in that vision. The vision I’d gone from mocking to mostly believing. And I’d have the element of surprise on my side as well. D would never expect me to make the first move.

  I dug my heel in, felt the rubber squishing under my feet. Before I could talk myself out of it, I swung round, hitting D’s cheekbone so hard I almost split my fist in two. He moved too late to duck, and his whole body followed his head to the side.

  Not even five seconds passed before he was back upright, dazed for sure, but perfectly alive and, sadly, on his feet.

  He slid two fingers in his mouth, and when he pulled them out they were coated in a glossy red film. ‘Little dickhead,’ he said, directing the insult as much to himself as to me.

  Well, that punch didn’t go to plan, I thought. I started plotting my next move, started guessing at his. I knew he wasn’t stupid enough to bring a shank to school. Or was he? Even without a knife, I wondered how far he was willing to take the fight. He was fast, powerful, ruthless.

  I took a step back, looking for safer ground. Keep your hands up, stay crouched, stay woke, I reminded myself, bracing as a wave of rage drowned his face.

  He flew forward, his fist balled up by his hip. I’d watched enough UFC fights to be able to read a telegraph, and, just as I expected, the fist he’d kept in his pocket came out, tracing a line aimed at my jaw. I had just enough time to bring my arms up to shield my face. But, just as he got in range, he dropped his body into a lunge, lodging his fist so deep in my stomach I heard my intestines squish.

  I was wheezing, bent over with my back flat enough to lay a pint on, staring at the juice puddle at my feet. I would have sold my soul for a breath of air. But my lungs refused to lift. It was the kind of pain where just talking about it could make the spot tingle again.

  ‘Pussio.’ He laughed. ‘My guy really tried it with that cheap punch.’

  He must have known I was paralysed from the waist up because he didn’t waste any time going to work again. As his knee made contact with my temple, I could hear my brain rattling inside my skull like a metal tab in an empty Coke can. Turns out, when you take a hit to the head, and I mean a proper hit, you see stars. I’d always thought that was just some gimmick they did in cartoons to be funny. No, you actually see stars. Bright, yellow sparkles everywhere. Another fun fact: when you’re hurting in two places, your brain picks which one is worse and makes sure you only feel that one. So, my only consolation from getting a knee to the head was that I couldn’t feel the ache in my stomach any more.

  I dropped to the floor.

  ‘Perfect,’ someone shouted, congratulating D for his punch like it was a FITB punchline.

  ‘Finish him,’ another girl yelled. Each syllable drooled out in slo-mo to my ears.

  I lay there on my back, trapped. I made out four phones with camera lights on, and at least a dozen more faces watching. Along with the screaming, and the bitter taste of bile in my mouth, the pain was back as well, wrapping itself round my stomach and squeezing. The throbbing in my head felt like the same throbbing I’d had when my cranium hit the bonnet of the Range Rover that morning. Two head injuries before 2 p.m. What a start to the day.

  As I drifted further and further out of it, waiting for D to finish me off, I heard one voice scream: ‘His eyes!’ And another frightened one reply, ‘Oh my God … they’re turning dark.’

  Then the dining hall dimmed to night.

  I’m still on my back after copping that knee to the head, but now it’s dark and warmer than a sauna.

  Then a gleaming bullet whizzes towards me. Well, ‘whizzing’ is an exaggeration: it’s only moving as quick as a bowling ball, but it’s close enough to make me almost shit myself.

  More bullets appear, each one rippling through the air like a shark fin cutting water. And one by one – like spotlights shining round a stage – faces come into view. Targets.

  The first bullet is aimed at Spark.

  The second is on path for Bloodshed, standing opposite Spark.

  Rob and Kato are there as well, mouths stretched wide as four shells race at them.

  And crouched next to me is Nadia, clutching her stomach with her eyes closed and her cheeks stained with tears. She looks like she’s praying it’s just a dream, hoping the bullet parked in front of her forehead might evaporate.

  A blink later, and the dining hall surged back in full colour. My shirt was soaked through with sweat. It felt like a thick static energy had filled the h
all, like the humidity in the Upper World had followed me back. D stood over me in the same spot I’d left him, probably wondering just how knocked out I really was.

  If I had known how things would play out, I would have stayed down. If my priority was de-escalating the situation and swerving my future away from that grim moment with D and Bloodshed by the library, staying down was the only call.

  But I could still taste the Ribena on my lips. I could remember the look on D’s face as he poured it on my scalp. I accepted that he would never let this go and that no one at Penny Hill would ever let me forget what he had done to me. I remembered all the bullshit I’d gone through the whole day, the whole week. And so I decided: I’m not having it any more.

  I got up and leapt at D so fast he was still grinning when I tackled him to the ground. And, even though I was still getting my balance after a sludgy transition back to real life, I crashed down on him like an axe, letting my hooks melt into one nauseating blur over his lifeless body. It was like everything was going at turbo speed, like I was hitting him so fast that one moment of time was crashing into the next.

  If not for the ache in my arms, I’m not sure when I would have stopped. But, when I finally did, I saw and heard something that terrified me.

  No, I told myself. Go away.

  The dining hall was there in full brightness; I could even see Sweeney running towards me. We weren’t in the Upper World any more, so why was I still hearing hailstones crashing around me? Why was I now staring at D’s forehead and seeing a bullet hole in the middle of it?

  The fork that fell to the dining-room floor jingled so long and loud we could have sung the first lines of a funeral hymn to it.

  My shirt sleeves were covered in red specks. They seemed to get bigger the further down my arms I looked. My knuckles, usually smooth and creamed, were so sliced up I could see the white tissue under the skin. I was lost for words about what I’d just done, just seen.

  But, when I looked back down at D, his eyes were no longer rolled back, and the gory tunnel through his head had disappeared.

  Now all I could see was clear, brown skin.

  But, before I could process what had happened and why I was seeing flashes of dead people while wide awake, Sweeney grabbed my collar, yanking me off D and clear of the crime scene.

  ‘Man like Esso!’ Kato shouted from behind the table, bringing me back to the present. He was pumping his fists in the air like a tennis player after an ace, proud of himself for doing absolutely nothing.

  But I couldn’t really take credit for what had gone down either. I still had no idea what had happened and definitely hadn’t done it on purpose. Was I really seeing glimpses of the future? Where had that superhuman strength come from? It had made it feel like I was punching at light speed, while D was moving through porridge. Even more worrying was that, this time, not only had I visited the Upper World, it had also visited me. I’d thrown those punches and seen those visions in the bright clear light of the dining hall.

  Sweeney tightened his grip on my collar. I was still close enough to D that I could see him starting to come to. There was no sign of a bullet wound, but the rest of his face was swollen and battered with blood leaking out the gash on his cheekbone. As he rose to his elbows, I wondered what I was feeling most – relief or disappointment?

  Meanwhile Marcus had barged his way into the inner rim of the crowd and had to grope for something sturdy to hold when he saw his mate broken on the floor.

  Sweeney grunted as he tugged me along, only loosening his grip once D and I were no longer in striking distance of one another. On our way to the exit, we walked past a long wall of stony faces. I knew what they were all thinking because I was thinking it too: Shit just got real. And none of us was prepared for what would happen next.

  I’d thrown that first punch thinking it would swerve me away from the future I’d seen in the Upper World. But what if I’d just steered right into it?

  D climbed to his feet, shrugging off Marcus and the teacher as they tried to help him up. After a lumpy cough, he spat a red gob to the floor and straightened to his full height. Mr Sweeney rushed me faster towards the door, but I turned round one last time only to see D smiling at me.

  Then, without breaking his stare, he raised his hands and threw up the T.A.S. gang sign.

  PART III: MATTER

  * * *

  FROM BLAISE ADENON’S NOTEBOOK: LETTER 3

  To Esso,

  At many points during my childhood, I was told the story of Eve – a girl who lived in a village where everyone saw time.

  As the legend goes, in this village every child was born being able to see the past, present and future at the same time. They would feel the warmth of their mother’s womb right next to the cold seeping into their elderly bones.

  Then one day a girl named Eve was born. Unlike other children her age, Eve only cared about one thing: an icy evening, decades in the future, when she would fall off the edge of a mountain and die. Reliving those moments of free fall tormented Eve in a way that no one in her village could understand. To them, every moment and every emotion were sewn together. Dying on Tuesday was no sadder or more painful than finding a pebble in your shoe on Monday.

  Desperate to escape her fixation, Eve taught herself a trick – a way to forget death. She pushed all her visions of the future outside the main chamber of her mind. And the one WINDOW that could let her see them again, she buried inside a memory she knew she’d forget. With further practice, she learnt how to narrow her mind’s eye to one sliver of time that she called the ‘present’, and she vowed to only ever walk towards her last day in single steps. Henceforth she lived in hazy recollection of the past and blissful ignorance of the future. She even forgot about death altogether – its inevitability, its stench, its calm – which freed her from the only fear she had ever known.

  She rejoiced. She wept. She loved a man. She cherished her children. She truly lived like there was no yesterday or tomorrow.

  But, soon after her third child was born, the village fell under the shadow of a long drought. Eve, desperate to find water for her dying boys, set out to the only place she knew she could find it – the icy sheets at the top of a mountain north of the village. Her family and neighbours told her to stay, insisting the drought was always how they were meant to die. But Eve ignored them.

  As she neared the peak, she had a moment of déjà vu, a chilling sense that she had seen this moment before. That split second of distraction caused her to slip on a loose rock, and Eve fell silently to her death many miles below. Her village mourned her, of course, but not with any more pain than they had the day she was born.

  CHAPTER 16

  Rhia · 15 Years Later

  The winter frost had burrowed into the fleshiest parts of my fingers. But it wasn’t the wind or the cold that was making me fumble my stupid house keys. My nerves had been on fire since the end of the tutorial, when Dr Esso had dropped all of his bombshells about my mum, about me. I was still regaining my feet, and, in the rare moments I managed to cool down, I’d feel myself swinging so fast between hope and horror I didn’t know where to land.

  Chill, I told myself, slowing down so the brass key in my hand wouldn’t miss the keyhole a third time. I desperately needed a late-night dissection with Olivia before I could calm down enough to come up with a plan. But, as I shouldered the door open and stepped in, I decided it probably made sense not to tell her the physics part straight away.

  What Dr Esso had told me – about reality existing in four dimensions – had somehow made sense. I thought back to just before our first tutorial. I’d sent him my location, a pin that showed where I was in terms of longitude and latitude on the map: the first two dimensions. Then I’d told him we’d be working in the kit room on the top floor, so he’d know where along the third dimension – height – we were headed to. Finally we’d agreed to meet at a specific point in time: the fourth dimension, which, ironically, he’d ignored and arrived when he’d liked
. Since I could use those same four dimensions to locate every event in my life, it wasn’t too far-fetched to believe we might live in this 4-dimensional space–time thing he wanted to cross. What had actually blown my mind was the trail of breadcrumbs he’d used to guide me to that conclusion.

  It had started with our first class on electromagnetism, which he’d managed to turn into a lesson on light. Then he’d spent the next session getting me to betray my common sense by accepting that light travels at the same speed for everyone (‘no matter what’), while time doesn’t. I’d then worked out the next takeaway by myself: if you move fast enough, time slows to a trickle and an entire journey squeezes into a single image.

  But Dr Esso had then gone a leap further by showing that image in his notebook. The Upper World, he’d called it. A place where you could step outside the present, and into any other moment in time. A place where I might actually – I had to pause before even daring to think it – where I might actually find my mum.

  And maybe even save her.

  I still had so many things to ask Dr Esso. But I’d also got so many earth-shifting answers from him tonight that I’d been almost grateful when Tony’s message popped up telling me to rush home.

  The promo screen on the wall by our front door replaced the weather forecast with a personalized ad for Tony: Dream House: Devon Edition. I rolled my eyes … this week’s pipe dream.

  An angry crosswind tugged the front door shut behind me, and the kitchen door creaked open, stuffing the hallway with the smell of shepherd’s pie. Poppy stepped out and into my path. ‘Hey,’ she said, removing her mitts. She’d got a new dye in, a shade deeper than her natural ginger.