‘He told me about a theory of time where the future existed too, as well as the past,’ Henry says.
‘It’s called the block universe theory. The past, present and future all exist at the same time. We’re just moving forward through time to the next event that’s waiting for us.’
‘If my future already exists somewhere, I don’t want to know. I want to live under the illusion that I have complete control over my life so I’m going with the growing block universe theory,’ Henry says.
‘I want that too.’
I want a lot of things tonight. I want to touch the scar I’ve just noticed on Henry’s chin. I want to kiss him again, but tell him I mean it. I think I knew when I came back to the city that this moment would come. The moment when I wouldn’t feel overwhelmed by sadness for Cal, when I’d feel overwhelmed by Henry.
‘If our lives are there, in the future, already mapped,’ Henry says, ‘then who writes them? Because if the future is set, then someone must plan that future, and with seven billion people in the world, that’s impossible. The logistics alone rule it out.’
‘You think we’re ruled by chance, then.’
‘I’m convinced of it.’
‘I want to believe that. Because if we’re not ruled by chance, then Cal was always going to die on that day and he was born with a terrible future.’
Henry tightens his arm around me and says people could go mad looking for the answers. He says he read a story, by Borges, about people looking for the answers, looking for a book that contained them.
‘Did they find it?’
‘The answers don’t exist. You know that.’
I tell Henry about Cal’s last days, about the reasons I felt so cheated. Looking back, those days leading up to his death were beautiful and thick with meaning. The light felt different. Milk gold. He and I spent more time talking about the future than we’d ever done.
I remember one night he came into my room. He said, ‘Shhh,’ and waved for me to follow. We went to the water, and walked along the edge, and saw a silver fish, too big for the shallows. We pushed it gently out to sea. The silver against the dark velvet-blue seems unreal to me now, but it happened.
Cal told me the night that we saw them he couldn’t sleep for thinking about all the things he wanted to see – the Midnight Sun and its opposite, the Polar Night. He wanted to see the sun stay below the horizon. He wanted to see the light reflected off the sea and the snow, see everything coated in blue.
I tell Henry how we talked our way over the whole world, all the places we wanted to dive – Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, Malaysia, Japan, Antarctica.
‘After, at the funeral, I thought that it was so cruel, that in the month before he died, he thought so much about the life he wanted to have.’
I look up and see that tear-shaped sun. We’re exactly where we were before. Exactly in alignment.
‘I don’t know how to talk to you about this,’ Henry says, ‘because I’ve never been where you are. But I will be where you are, at some stage in the future, because it’s impossible for me not to be. And it seems to me as though you’re looking at it the wrong way around.’
‘There is only one way round,’ I say, letting him know that I want him to stop talking.
‘Listen,’ he says, taking my hand. He tells me he thinks that maybe Cal got lucky. That his last days seemed so beautiful, the way I’ve described them, filled with golden light. ‘Maybe he didn’t get screwed over by the universe. Maybe it was trying to cram everything in for him.’
‘Not very scientific,’ I say.
‘Sometimes science isn’t enough,’ he says. ‘Sometimes you need the poets.’
It’s in this moment, this exact moment, that I fall in love with him again.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
Letters left between pages 4 and 5
2 January 2015
Dear George
Happy New Year! Did you do anything? I spent the night on the beach with my sister watching the fireworks. We listed our New Year’s resolutions (my secret one is to try to tell you who I am). I told her I’d like to have a girlfriend, which is true. I would like to have a girlfriend, but only if that girlfriend is you. I know you can’t agree to that without knowing who I am – I’m working on having the courage.
My biggest fear is that I tell you and you’re so disappointed that I never hear from you again. My second biggest fear is that you laugh.
I have to tell you soon because my friend is moving interstate, and this friend has been leaving my letters and collecting yours for me. I moved out of town a while back but I never said because I thought you’d guess who I was.
Anyway, my sister doesn’t have to resolve to have a boyfriend, because she has one. Her resolution is to get her next level diving certificate. That’s one of mine too. I saw this picture of the underwater canyons in California. There were all these glowing creatures. That far under the water, things have to make their own light because there’s nothing, not an inch of sunlight. William Beebe, this explorer, described the deep as outer space, which is maybe why I want to go there so badly. It just looked so beautiful – all that darkness, all that drifting light.
Pytheas (name soon to be revealed)
Dear Pytheas
I’d like to know who you are – I don’t think I’ll be disappointed. I won’t laugh. I know that. I love getting these letters.
I wait for them.
I haven’t once seen your friend leave a letter – so he must be stealthy too. I’m glad he’s going away, because it means you’ll tell me.
I’d like to be your girlfriend. My fear is that when we meet for real, you won’t like me.
George
Dear George
I won’t like you? Never. Gonna. Happen.
Pytheas
Henry
his shadow on the lawn
This week is all about distraction and confusion. I spend it thinking about Rachel and waiting for Amy to come back. Rachel assures me every day that it’s only a matter of time. ‘The kiss will work, Henry. Trust me.’ The thing is, I think the kiss did work – on me. It didn’t stop me thinking about Amy. But it started me really thinking about Rachel.
I distract myself by grilling Martin for information about him and George. ‘Nothing’s going on,’ he keeps saying, but that’s not true. There’s quite a bit of flirting going on. Quite a few letters, too. ‘She still likes the other guy,’ Martin says, crouching in front of the non-fiction shelf. ‘He’s pretty much all we talk about.’
‘That’s a bit shit,’ I say.
‘Yes, Henry. That is a bit shit.’
I’ve been looking in the Letter Library for any clue of George’s mystery guy, but so far, I’ve found nothing. Rachel’s cataloguing is really coming along, though, so I distract myself on Tuesday by looking through the database. There are so many people in the Library, so many people who’ve left parts of themselves on the pages over the years. Some afternoons, I lie on the floor next to Rachel, and share the lines that I love, almost all of them marked by strangers before me.
‘You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since – on the river, on the sails of ships, on the marshes, in the clouds,’ I read. It’s Pip’s speech to Estella, and I know my dad underlined it. The copy I’m holding is the copy he gave Mum. He’s written a note to her on the title page.
‘The speech, it’s all about Pip, isn’t it?’ Rachel asks. ‘She’s part of him. There’s nothing about who she is.’
‘My dad’s love for my mum isn’t all about him, though,’ I say, and Rachel tells me that’s not what she means.
‘I was thinking aloud, that’s all.’
‘People’s love is always about themselves isn’t it?’ I ask. ‘I mean, pretty much?’
‘Maybe. It’d be nice if it wasn’t though,’ she says, and I think about Amy, and find myself agreeing. It’d be really nice if it weren’t.