CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The limits of the observable universe
I’d almost forgotten how comforting Elsie’s home is, with her dogs and cats and too-loud brothers, most of whom don’t live here anymore but who nevertheless are always here. I wave at Ryan and Raj, who are in the midst of raiding the fridge, and who greet me casually, like I haven’t been missing at all. Colin is in the lounge, feet up on the sofa, phone pressed to his ear while he shuttles handfuls of peanuts into his mouth. He winks at me without a pause in his conversation, lilting Hindi following me up the stairs. And when I’m curled up on Elsie’s messy bedroom floor, the setting sun casting oranges and pinks through her window, it’s like I can breathe properly again.
Elsie sits in front of me with her no-nonsense face on and methodically assails me with questions. I do my best to answer, laying out facts as succinctly as I can. But I’m fairly certain that, in this case, the facts only illuminate some of the story. Elsie wants me to talk about my feelings. And, like that floundering boy in so many of her romance movies, I stumble and choke on my words, not at all sure what I’m supposed to be communicating.
We exhaust every permutation of the Joshua conundrum, till I beg for a change of subject. Just saying his name is making my heart falter. It is as disconcerting as it ever was, but I have long since given up trying to quash it.
Now Elsie is stretched out on her bed watching An Affair to Remember on her laptop while I, having abandoned any hope of gleaning usable information from her movies, am reading an article on Maryam Mirzakhani and her Fields Medal on my phone. Half my brain is on the symmetry of curved surfaces, the other half on … other things.
It’s late. The only light in the room is from our screens and the string of butterfly lights above Elsie’s bed. I’m yawning, waiting for my brother to give me a ride home, when my phone pings with a message. Like my errant thoughts have conjured him from the ether, Joshua’s name appears on the screen. My hands start to tingle.
The message reads:
Sophia. I think I have made an important discovery. And I think you might be the only one who understands it. I know it’s late, but can you meet me at school?
I don’t know what Elsie has seen on my face, but she pauses her movie. She sits up and clicks on her lamp, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. Wordlessly, I hold my phone out to her. She grabs it from my hand and looks at the screen.
She stares at it, and then at me, for an absurdly long moment. And then she leaps to her feet and flings open the door. ‘Rajesh!’ she yells down the stairs. A moment later, a flustered Raj appears in her doorway, Sunil Gavaskar wheezing behind him.
‘You need to drive us to school,’ she barks.
‘What, now?’ he says, waving a hand at his Mr Men pyjamas.
Elsie grabs her denim jacket with one hand and my sleeve with the other. ‘Yes, now, dumb arse! It’s an emergency.’
I swallow, my eyes fixed on my phone. ‘Elsie –’
Elsie stops fluttering. She walks over to me, stopping a handspan in front. ‘Rey,’ she says gently. ‘What do you want?’
I glance at my phone as it pings again, twice in quick succession. The first message is from Toby, letting me know that he is waiting out the front.
The second message is from Joshua.
If you’re coming, head towards the East Lawn.
I gather my thoughts. They’re still half circling through Mirzakhani’s moduli spaces, and also, for some reason, the fact that the collective noun for a group of cats is a clowder. My phone feels hot in my hand.
‘All right,’ I say decisively. ‘Let’s go.’
Toby pulls up in front of St Augustine’s and kills the engine, thankfully no longer protesting or demanding explanations. Elsie and Raj lean forward from the back seat. The four of us stare, silently, at the hulking buildings and shadowy lawns.
I turn around. I don’t know what Elsie is pondering as her eyes roam over our school. I think what I’m seeing in her face is something like sadness.
‘You know, Sophia,’ she says quietly. ‘Did you ever wonder if all of this isn’t just some giant, pointless waste of time?’
I follow her eyes. ‘Pointless. Which part, specifically?’
Elsie waves a hand at St Augustine’s. ‘All of it, specifically. Like, so far, we’ve spent most of our years in buildings like this, and for what? What are we supposed to be equipped for when we’re spat out the other end?’
Toby drums his fingers on the wheel. ‘I remember a heap of guff that’ll only ever be useful for pub trivia – if I ever got invited to pub trivia, which I don’t, because oh hey, my only friend is a weird Finnish guy who I’m pretty sure is stealing my clothes –’ He takes off his glasses and rubs hastily at them.
I swivel in my seat and consider my brother. He looks like the same Toby; crisp shirt and clean-shaven face. But there’s something bubbling to the surface under his skin; it’s like watching liquid on a Bunsen burner just before it boils. This unmoored version of Toby fits no part of my paradigm. It’s alarming, and yet oddly comforting.
Raj leans through the gap in the seats and punches Toby in the shoulder. They’ve never really gotten along; I think Raj is too loud, and Toby too grim, for them to be friends. I don’t think Toby knows how to interpret the punch. He stares, frowning, at the spot on his arm that Rajesh has smacked.
‘So then maybe Pinky has the right idea,’ Raj says. ‘Lock yourself away in a lab or something. Stick to what you know. It worked for – I dunno, who was that guy who discovered oxygen? I read about him in History of Econ?’
Elsie wraps her hands around my headrest with a snort. ‘You mean Carl Scheele? You know he also liked to lick his experiments? This guy was supposedly a genius, but he couldn’t figure out that sticking your tongue in a test tube of cyanide is probably not a great idea.’
‘He ended up dying of mercury poisoning,’ I add. ‘I don’t think he’s the role model any of us should be trying to emulate.’