“Yes.” I nod emphatically. “It does.”
“Maybe I should stop taking my existential crisis out on my poor boyfriend.” Sal runs a hand through her waves and they inexplicably bounce perfectly back into place again. “That’s what Derek says I’m doing, and he’s probably right. I’m unhappy with my life generally, so I’m taking it out on him. I feel crazy. As if I can’t work out what’s real and what isn’t real anymore. Derek can’t do anything right. I accuse him of messaging other girls, and then it turns out she’s his cousin or whatever. We go to a restaurant, and I accuse him of giving the twenty-year-old waitress his phone number, but he’s just written down a recommendation for a wine they don’t have on their menu. What the hell is wrong with me? He’s right. I think I’m losing my bloody mind.”
Sal looks at me with enormous, wet-lashed eyes, and I can feel her sadness, her fear, her embarrassment, her shame, all mixed up; I can feel her sense of self wobbling. And I don’t want it to. With a sudden wave of conviction, I realize just how much I like her and have since the first day I moved in.
“You’re not losing your mind,” I say quietly.
Sal frowns. “I’m not?”
“Salini. Listen.” I take a deep breath and plunge. “In thirteen days, I am going to tell you that Derek is hitting on me. He’s going to deny it so emphatically, I apologize for reading the situation wrong. He is then going to accuse me of having a crush on him and hitting on him—in fact, he’s going to say I’m making the living situation really uncomfortable for him—and I will get super confused at all the emotions and think maybe he’s right and apologize for that too.”
Sal frowns. “What?”
“And you’ll get understandably upset about the situation and suggest that I find somewhere else to live.”
“I...” Sal rubs her tired face. “What do you mean, in thirteen days?”
“It hasn’t happened yet,” I admit, realizing my finger is still perched on her shoulder and promptly removing it. “It’s a...prophecy, I guess.”
Sal studies my face carefully. “A prophecy? That my boyfriend is hitting on you? That my boyfriend is going to hit on you? In the future? I’m so confused. Has he hit on you or has he not?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I wanted to warn you, just in case.”
Slowly, Sal leans away from me on the bed as if she needs to see me from a distance. “This is really weird, Cassandra. And hurtful. Derek has been saying you’re a bit odd since you moved in and I’ve been defending you, but this is not really helping. So let me get this straight. Are you saying you can see the future?”
“No,” I admit. “I can’t see the future. Not properly. I hoped I’d be able to. I think that was the appeal of time travel, to see things coming. So I could prepare. But it’s not working out the way I thought it would. Every time I go back, something changes. So, no, I can’t see the future. I can just guess at it, based on what I’ve already experienced. I’m not a prophet, and I suppose that makes me the worst Cassandra ever.”
I obviously mean Cassandra the Trojan priestess—not myself in the third person—but Sal doesn’t give me time to explain.
She moves farther away. “Are you saying you’re a time traveler now?”
I’ve read a few books about time travel now and they never really cover how to drop it into polite conversation.
“Yes.” I nod. “Just kind of a...beta one. With minor powers.”
Sal’s eyes open wide and I obviously never expected her to believe me: if I’ve learned anything from Cassandra’s original curse, it’s that nobody ever will. But I needed to try anyway. Just once. Just so I don’t feel quite so alone.
“Bloody hell,” Sal says as I close my eyes. “And this is exactly why you don’t find new flatmates on Gumtr—”
“What the hell is wrong with me?” Sal is staring at me again, soggy and shining. “He’s right. I think I’m losing my bloody mind.”
Clearly now is not the time to suspend her powers of disbelief further, though it was incredibly cathartic to get that all off my chest.
“You’re not losing your mind,” I say quietly.
Sal blinks. “I’m not?”
“No.” I think about how to say this for a few seconds. “Trust your gut. Or...your kidneys, your earlobes, your ankles, wherever it is in you that feels the truth. There’s a sensation, a kind of...solidness. A safe place. Somehow, it knows. If something feels off with Derek, then it probably is.”
Frowning, Sal puts a hand on her stomach, then slowly pulls it upward and puts two fingers on the base of her throat.
“It’s here,” she says finally. “The sensation. It’s here.”
“Mine’s in my shoulder blades and in the top of my spine.” I smile faintly. “Also at the bottom of my stomach, but that could also be undigested veggie chili. Honestly, I’m terrible at listening to it too. I get caught up with trying to read all the music around me instead of one note inside myself.”
We sit in companionable silence for a few minutes: Sal, with her hand on her throat, and me with my hand on the back of my neck.
“Thank you, Cassie,” she says finally. “I feel a lot calmer.”
“Me too,” I say, standing up. I think that’s quite enough emotional intimacy for one evening—no need to go overboard. “It’s late. I should go.”
We smile in embarrassment at each other, but somehow both our colors have shifted, as if we’ve run into each other like paints.
“You know,” I add suddenly, pausing in the doorway with a wide yawn I’m too tired to cover with my hand. “Maybe we’re both stuck for a reason, Sal. Maybe we’re not supposed to move on until we know what it is.”
“Maybe.” Sal yawns too. “Night, Cassie.”
“Night,” I say.
And I take myself back to bed.
28
The truth always has consequences.
My conversation with Sal stays with me the whole next day at work, drifting gently at the back of my head like a cobweb. It reminds me a little of Arachne, the talented Greek weaver who was challenged by a jealous Athena to a weaving competition. As Arachne wove her stories in silk, instead of telling the approved tales she was supposed to tell, she told the truth: of gods who abused mortals, tricked and assaulted women, punished us for their own misdemeanors and egocentricities.
When Athena saw what Arachne had woven—beautifully, accurately, honestly—she ripped the work to shreds in a fit of fury. After a distraught Arachne tragically hanged herself, Athena relented and turned her into a spider so she would spend forever weaving at the end of a rope.
The full truth is not easy or comfortable; it is often far safer to construct an alternative that keeps everyone happy instead.
Especially when it’s the story we’re weaving for ourselves.
By Friday evening, I know I’m waiting for the end.
Will and I have been quiet and busy all day: him with editing animals, and me with trying to give the credit for the SharkSkin campaign to Sophie. She’s convinced the entire thing was my idea, which is both frustrating and my own fault for forgetting to let her come up with it on this timeline. I’ve resorted to scribbling thoughts in her notepads while she’s out at lunch and trying to convince her I stole them: a human notepad, carrying her plans from one reality to another.
Frowning, I glance again at my watch.
I’m waiting outside Brixton tube and Will is now—I quickly calculate—sixteen and a half minutes late. I feel a sudden glistening thread of truth, like finely woven silver silk: that this is not something I can live with for the rest of my life. That I’m not sure a constantly late person and a person highly distressed by any form of lateness are necessarily a perfect love match.
There’s a tap on my shoulder and I jump half a foot in the air.
“Shit. Hi. Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
I whip round and soften: Will’s face brings so much happiness with it, even if it’s quarter of an hour after it was supposed to arrive.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, softly kissing my cheek. “I couldn’t find a cab, so I got a train and the platform was rammed. Have you been waiting long?”
“Yes.” I smile faintly. “But don’t worry about it too much.”
Will strides down the pavement with his unbuttoned coat flaring slightly and I watch it with a faint pang. I’m trying to identify any colors coming out of him, but again there’s nothing. Honestly, I wonder if there’s a way of finding out how another human is really feeling. You’d think as a species we would have been clever enough to come up with something by now, but apparently not.
“How are you?” I ask, scurrying slightly to catch up.
“I’m good,” Will says a little too quickly. “You?”
“Good,” I echo in frustration: See what I mean? Useless. “Everything okay?”
Everything is not okay and I can feel it on the back of my neck like a cold, flat palm. He’s moving extremely fast, for starters: I’m practically jogging now, but I still can’t quite reach his hand to hold it. I’ve tried at least three times and it remains just out of my reach.