He is quiet for a long moment. ‘You know, Sophia, you don’t have to be so careful about what you say,’ he says softly. ‘You don’t always have to … pretend.’
I snort, a pathetic puff of air that has no energy behind it. ‘Ask anyone in my Drama class if I have any skills in pretending. Check with your friend Damien. I can’t even successfully fake being a normal human.’
‘That’s not what I meant. It’s just, I know what it feels like,’ he says slowly. I hear the sound of a door closing in the background. ‘Triple-checking everything in your head before it comes out of your mouth.’
‘How do you have time to check anything before it comes out of your mouth?’ I blurt.
He laughs. ‘Okay, whatever. I know I talk too much.’
His tone is light, but I’m struck by a wave of panic. ‘I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to be insulting. Sometimes I say something, and in my head it sounds perfectly logical, but somehow it ends up sounding rude when it comes out of my mouth.’
‘Hey, I’m not that easily offended. Don’t stress.’
I exhale. ‘I’ve been told I’m not always a nice person,’ I mumble.
‘Who told you that? Wait – first of all – I think you’re nice.’ His voice brightens, as if he’s discovered the answer to a tricky problem. ‘You’re, like, the most honest person I’ve ever met. You want people to like you, but you don’t pretend to be something you’re not to make it happen. I know you’d never do anything to deliberately hurt anyone – I’ve seen how you are with Elsie.’ He clears his throat, an unasked question hovering between us. ‘But, Sophia, for whatever it’s worth – you don’t always have to be nice for me to like you.’
I look up, somehow surprised to find that he is not sitting right there beside me. It’s the oddest thing, this disembodied conversation. In real life, I can never seem to figure out the appropriate amount of time to devote to eye contact, especially in those moments when I’m focused on what a person’s saying and not, you know, on what my face is doing. It’s the reason I find myself talking to my feet, or staring at a person until they get all awkward.
But I remember him holding my gaze, neither put out nor discomfited by my blinkless stare. Waiting, patiently, for me to speak.
‘I’ve been told I make people uncomfortable,’ I say, experimentally. ‘It doesn’t seem to matter that I don’t do it on purpose. The rules with people aren’t always logical. Everyone I know keeps trying to fix me. Everyone seems to think I’d be happier if I could just be the way everyone else is and, you know. Smile when I’m supposed to, I guess.’
‘Oh, I call bullshit,’ he snaps. I startle at the harsh tone in his voice. ‘And no, I’m not annoyed with you, not at all, but I’m pissed that people’ve made you feel that way. It isn’t your job to make them comfortable. Maybe it’s not you who needs to keep pretzelling yourself to make everyone else happy? Maybe who you are is perfect, and everyone else just needs better glasses.’
I get up, and pace a circle from my bed to my desk. I don’t know what to do with this strange, squashed feeling in my chest. I sit heavily on my bed again. ‘Joshua. Can we talk about something else?’
He exhales, his breath heavy through the phone. Then he chuckles. ‘Sure. All right. Small talk. Amazing weather, isn’t it?’
I look out my window at the bleak dark sky, not a single star visible. ‘Melbourne weather sucks balls. Next.’
He laughs again. ‘Okay, no weather. Did you catch the game on the weekend?’ He bursts into guffaws before I can respond. ‘Nope, I can’t even. Come on, your turn.’
‘Okay.’ I think about something I’ve heard my dad ask our neighbours when he fails to avoid them while collecting the mail. ‘Got plans for the weekend?’
‘Weekend plans, how mundane! Let’s see – my sister needs help building this HMS Endeavour model for her Australian History class, which means I’m going to end up neck-deep in craft glue and icy-pole sticks while she listens to podcasts. I’m working at the shop on Sunday … oh, some friends are having a party Saturday night.’
‘You’re going to a party?’
‘Yeah, probably. I bunked on the last one and I never heard the end of it.’
‘Oh,’ I say. I’m not sure what I expected. Of course he’s a normal person, with friends and normal friend-things like parties and movies and whatever else normal people do. He’s not some freak who gets stressed in a crowd, who hasn’t been to a pool since he was eight because the thought of a stranger brushing against his skin makes him feel all prickly. Of course he’d be fine at a party. He’s a normal guy with a normal life –
‘Sophia?’ he says quietly. ‘Um, there’s going to be heaps of people there, and the place can get kind of crazy –’
I head back to my desk and my Russian and my Perelman. ‘It’s okay. Have fun.’
‘Hey, see, I’d really like you to meet my friends, but I’d never ask you to do anything that you didn’t want to do –’
‘I get it. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t want to be stuck at a party with me, either.’
I hear him take a deep breath. ‘Sophia, would you like to come with me?’ he says in a rush.
I look around my room. The answer is no, of course I don’t want to go to a party. I want to spend Saturday night in my bedroom, in my pyjamas, with vintage Hartnell Who. The no is gathered behind my breath, but somehow it refuses to release. I don’t know what’s possessing me; it’s like a book that I haven’t read, a Schr?dinger’s box with an unknown paradox inside. And then I think about Elsie’s stubborn insistence that I learn to be fine on my own, and I feel my resolve harden.
‘Sure,’ I hear myself say, distantly. ‘I’ll come. If it’s okay? Will your friends mind? Are you sure you want me to –’
‘I want you to,’ he replies.
My eyes skirt around my room. I’m struck by the alarming thought that I’m behaving just like Sandra Bullock from Elsie’s crappy movie; preoccupied with the colour of the leaves in autumn, when I should probably be investigating the time hole in my letterbox that has the potential to suck the universe into oblivion.
‘But, ah, Sophia, there’s something I should say first. I just need to get this out of the way, before … well, before. I need to say this in advance.’
‘What?’ My voice sounds kind of hoarse.
On the other end of the line, I think he might be smiling. ‘I’m really sorry about Adrian.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The multiverse conjecture