Nothing out of the ordinary happens this week. There are no surprises, no disruptions, nothing other than a brief flurry when Mr Grayson rear-ends the principal’s car on parent-teacher night.
Joshua smiles when he sees me, but it seems oddly unnatural on him. It’s like he’s constantly on the verge of saying something, but keeps changing his mind at the last moment. I don’t know what I was thinking. Why wouldn’t he think that I’m a huge, intractable freak? Obviously, whatever brief … whatever it was has passed now. It’s fine. Though I do feel like a bit of a dipshit, because I still haven’t been able to discuss any of this with Elsie. It’s like part of me is holding back, hoping that … well, hoping. It’s an uncomfortable, alien feeling.
I don’t think my lack of focus is apparent in class, though. Elsie does give me a few odd looks, but it wouldn’t cross her mind to wonder what I’ve been up to. Her school diary is filled with flyers about America, and once, when I tracked her down at recess, I found her sitting with Marcus and Nina and their friends, poring over the Atlanta Lonely Planet on Marcus’s iPad.
I want to talk to her. I feel guilty, like I am responsible for this growing distance between us. But every time I open my mouth, something in the back of my brain tells me to stop.
After intense analysis, I conclude that I am either experiencing the world’s slowest stroke, or that some part of me is reassured by the fact that the person who knows me best doesn’t know about this one thing. And though I poke and prod at this mystery, throwing multiple theories against my mental walls, I have no idea why that might be.
I clock with interest that Joshua and Damien appear to have become friends. I see them in Biology, Damien nattering in Joshua’s ear; I have no idea what’s happened there. But on Friday they seem to be having a heated discussion, Damien whispering animatedly while Joshua shakes his head, a flush staining his cheeks. When Damien waves his hand in my direction, I decide to stop snooping and focus hastily on my books.
Elsie cancels our Friday night study session, telling me that she has a ‘family thing’ as she rushes off to band practice. She doesn’t look me in the eye. I have no clue how to process her evasiveness.
Turns out, I don’t have much of a chance to try. Because on Friday evening, another first happens.
A boy calls me on the phone.
I answer the unknown number after pondering my screen uncertainly. There is a pause on the other end. I hear distant music, and the sound of someone clearing their throat. My heartbeat seems to amplify in the quiet.
‘Sophia? Um, hi. It’s Josh. Joshua Bailey? I hope you don’t mind me calling? I just wanted to … check in and … say hey.’ He clears his throat again. That hitch in his speech is more apparent over the phone, the muffling of his Ss and Ts that is, in an inexplicable way, interesting. ‘Are you busy?’ he says.
I sit down on the edge of my bed. ‘No. I’m trying to learn Russian,’ I say, and immediately feel ridiculous. I don’t know what normal people do with their Friday nights, but flicking through the online Transactions of the Moscow Mathematical Society probably isn’t it.
‘Russian? Whoa, that’s cool. Ivan the Terrible, Rasputin – the Revolution, although, you know, probably not so cool if you were a Romanov. The whole execution by firing squad thing would’ve tanked. So how many other languages do you speak?’
And even though this week has sucked donkey balls, I can’t help but smile a little as he launches into conversation as if no time has passed since the last time we spoke. ‘Three. Well, sort of. My French and German are okay. The Russian is adequate. For now.’
He whistles. ‘I never had the patience for languages. Only thing I remember from year-seven Chinese is how to ask for directions to the mausoleum of Chairman Mao.’
‘Really? Strange, since you’ve obviously spent hours perfecting, what – disappearing a pencil into your ear?’
I feel like I can hear him grinning. ‘What can I say? My focus has always been pretty specific. So why Russian?’
I glance at my desk. My last email to the Steklov Institute remains unanswered; the picture of Perelman is curling at the edges now. I realise that my obsession is bordering on unhealthy, but I can’t stop thinking about him. Lately I’ve been wondering when exactly his downward spiral began. Was it one thing, one event, one catastrophe that tipped him over the cliff edge he’d been teetering on? Who was he when he was young? Was he optimistic, confident in the limitlessness of own abilities, or did he already feel the panic of impending disappointments pressing down on him? Christ – was he hiding out in his bedroom on a Friday night while reading obscure geometrical theories in Latvian or something? Probably. This thought does not make me feel any cheerier.
I’ve think I’ve been silent for a few beats too long. I think about the parameters of the standard conversational topics that I know. But when I open my mouth, I find myself launching into a diatribe about Grigori Perelman, about the Poincaré proof, and topological spaces, and his mystifying vanishing act. My hands are shaky when I finish, and as soon as I fall silent, the heat rises, blistering, in my face. I can’t believe I have just unloaded all of that, without so much as a pause for breath. What must be going through his mind –
‘Whoa. That’s intense. He turned down a million bucks? Dude must’ve really wanted to stick it to the establishment. But bloody hell, what a grand finale.’ The sound of genial tapping echoes through the line. I can just imagine him drumming his ceaseless hands on his desk or something. ‘Though I suppose it would suck to have the highlight of your life happen when you’ve still got tonnes of it left to live,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘You think he maxed out too soon?’
My hands are trembling. ‘Maybe. Something like that.’
‘Maybe … I think that’s also the most I’ve ever heard you say in one go,’ he says quietly.
I rub my gritty eyes. ‘I used to talk more, I think,’ I hear myself say.
I used to talk a lot more, when I was a kid. Before I figured out what the shared side-eyes and giggles of my classmates meant, before I learned that they could be avoided if I just kept quiet. I think I used to get so excited that I lost myself, not realising that normal people just didn’t care about the things I found exciting. I’d forget that my voice was supposed to stay at a certain level, not too loud or too high, that my hands were allowed to gesture, but only so emphatically. But there always seemed to be someone around to point out what I was doing wrong. In those fleeting moments when I forgot to be cautious, and vigilant, there always seemed to be someone who was happy to put me back in my place.
The sound of the rain is loud in the quiet house. ‘Sorry. All that is probably pretty uninteresting.’