Elsie closes her textbook with a thump. ‘Look, Sophia, I have a crazy idea. Just hear me out, okay?’
‘Ugh, you’re not going to make me try out for band again, are you?’
‘Nah, I can live without hearing you attempt “Purple Haze” on the recorder again. No, what I was going to say is, Melbourne Uni’s open day is tomorrow, and I think we should go. I mean, I’m not applying, but maybe it’d be good for you? A bunch of people from Augustine’s are going. Mr Peterson drew the short straw of supervising a group. He was grousing about it at lunch, but I think he’s secretly excited to be showing off his old stomping ground.’
‘Els, I’ve been to Melbourne Uni plenty of times. I don’t need to –’
‘You don’t need to hang out with mere mortals? Yeah, I get it. But think about this – you get out of the house and make your parents happy, and we get dumplings on our way home. Win win.’
‘Elsie –’
Elsie’s eyes flitter away. ‘Hey, Rey? Listen, I know I don’t exactly get what’s going on in your head lately. Maybe I’ve been caught up with my own stuff or whatever, but it feels like I blinked and, well …’ She smiles, a little too brightly. ‘Your charmingly weird self has kind of taken a turn in the direction of eccentric-ville.’ She touches my arm, not even wavering when I flinch. ‘But, see, this doesn’t have to be a big deal! I mean, Sophia – it’s not like you can be any less inspired.’
I don’t know why the idea of doing one stupid university open day makes my heart beat faster than it should. I don’t know how to explain to Elsie that inspiration isn’t exactly my problem. And I really don’t know how to explain that I am fully aware I’m veering in the direction of ‘eccentric-ville’, but I feel like I’m on a one-way road and I can’t seem to find an off-ramp.
But I also don’t know why I keep forgetting that with Elsie, the path of least resistance is usually the path least painful.
‘Okay. You’re right, it’s not a big deal. Let’s go.’
Elsie bounces on my bed, her tiny skirt hitching even further upwards. ‘Hooray! Chinatown dumplings, cute university boys. It’s going to be great!’
I force a smile. ‘Yes. Great. Hoorah,’ I say weakly.
We finish our homework, then heat up leftover pasta and watch one of the romance movies that Elsie loves, the plot of which I find somewhat questionable, though it still makes infinitely more sense than Keanu Reeves and his time wormhole inside a letterbox. I can’t help but feel this curious relief that I can still, albeit unintentionally, make Els crack up laughing with my movie commentary. Not that I always understand what she finds so funny, but every time she giggles, I’m convinced I’ve been imagining the weird new undercurrent of tension between us.
And then Rajesh, my favourite of Elsie’s brothers, picks her up at eleven, and I am left alone in my silent, changeless bedroom.
I shower and climb into bed. At some point I hear my parents’ cars return home and pipes creak in the bathroom. Toby’s door clicks shut across the hall, and silence settles over the house. Meanwhile, me and my brain are locked in our nightly battle:
So. Uni. This should be interesting. Wonder if we can induce that impending mental collapse ahead of schedule? You could be, like, the Phantom of the Opera of the Maths faculty.
Shut up. Shut. Up.
Sixteen weeks, Sophia! Sixteen weeks – that’s two thousand, six hundred and eighty-eight hours. Goodbye, high school. Damien Pagono almost got expelled for posting a selfie of his testicles on the school webpage, and even he’s probably better prepared for the world than you.
Sleep. Sleeeeep.
Do you know that ‘forty’ is the only number with its letters in alphabetical order? Do you know that the average person spends six months of their life on the toilet? Do you know that the King of Hearts is the only king in a deck of cards who doesn’t have a moustache?
I sit up.
I climb out of bed, robotically, and slide the mysterious playing card from my pencil case. The sand seems to waver in the watery moonlight, an illusion that almost gives the impression of movement. I turn the card over. The weak light glimmers across the silvery stars on the other side.
I will never understand what makes me do this, but I move my Perelman photograph a few inches to the left, and pin the card on my board, just below my ticket for last summer’s seminar on Deutsch’s theory of time travel, which seems a strangely appropriate place for a suspended hourglass.
I crawl back into bed and tuck my blankets around my face, my eyes lingering on the two of hearts. From this distance, Perelman’s inscrutable eyes seem fixed on the card too. In the dark, I can almost imagine that his eyes are just as perturbed.
I’m not completely crazy. I mean, I understand that even if any of the most obscure quantum mechanical theories of time travel were possible, you’d most likely end up as your own grandmother or, like, triggering a universe-unravelling paradox – at best, getting trapped in a ridiculous causality loop, a hapless billiard ball bouncing in an eternal circuit through time and space.
I am not crazy. Not properly.
Not yet, anyway.
But the ability to know where I’m going? Having more than one chance to get it right?
That would be nice.
CHAPTER THREE
The theory of gravitation
I’ve spent heaps of time at Melbourne Uni over the years, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it buzz quite like this. Elsie and I step off the tram in front of the main entrance, Rajesh bouncing behind us. Elsie and Raj stand aside, presumably for me to catch my breath, but before I can recover from the press and mash of the tram, I’m smacked in the face by a giant spray of balloons. The colour, the almost TARDIS blue of MU, should probably be comforting, but somehow, it’s anything but.
‘Sorry mate,’ the guy attached to the balloons says. ‘Latex injuries are an occupational hazard.’ He smiles at me, all facial scruff and confidence. Under his jacket he’s wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a pipe and some French words in cursive. My head is light and my French is rusty, but I think the slogan translates as, this is not a hipster shirt. Although the thought of catching the crowded tram again makes me queasy, it takes every bit of my willpower not to bolt back onto the idling behemoth and head home.
Elsie and Raj hover beside me, a Nayer on either side. Balloon-guy’s eyes travel over Elsie’s tiny denim skirt under her black winter coat. ‘Lemme guess, you’re a life-drawing model? Arts building’s thataway,’ he says to her legs.
Raj whistles. Elsie gives balloon-guy a wide, toothy smile, even as her eyes narrow. ‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ she says sweetly, and loudly, in French. ‘If I ever need to brush up on deviant sexuality in film noir, or whatever.’