The rain pounds the windows as I grab a tea towel, rubbing my hair into a static frizz. A trail of damp footprints follows me through the kitchen. I tiptoe towards Ned’s half-open door and fling it wide: “Found you!”
It’s empty. Just records and Ned’s huge stereo system, a collection of cameras, and a dank dirty-laundry smell. The sheets are the same ones Papa put on at the beginning of the summer. I wrinkle my nose: gross.
I close the door and squelch back through the kitchen, then into the sitting room, peeking up the staircase to Papa’s bedroom and even check the bathroom. No one’s home.
Huh. Maybe they’re at the pub or went to the beach before it started raining—maybe I was asleep for ages. But when I wander back to the kitchen, the clock says it’s only half past three. Even with the lights on, it’s Addams-family spooky. I pinch my arm and tell myself I’m being silly, flick the kettle on to follow the ritual: tea bags, mug, milk.
But when I open the fridge, normality falls apart.
This morning there were trays of Thomas’s fudge, a plate of brownies covered in cling wrap, leftovers in bowls and Tupperware, and a door crammed with jars of pickles. Now, there’s nothing but a moldy hunk of cheese and a milk bottle that—ugh. It fails the sniff test. Unease blooms like algae. This isn’t right.
Still holding the milk, I shut the fridge. There are no photos on the door, no magnets.
I can’t shake the idea that I’m not supposed to be here.
Lightning flashes through the gloom, and I run to the window as the thunder follows fast, stare out through the rain. Where is everyone?
Another flash makes me reel: the entire sky is television fuzz. The whole world’s a wormhole.
I stumble away from the window, colliding with the table. Pain shoots through my hip bone. My breath comes in gulps, my lungs won’t fill. This is a nightmare. I spin round, taking in the details I should have noticed before. The blackboard is blank. It’s been marked all summer with notes for Thomas to call his mum—and somehow he never does, and it occurs too late that I’ve never asked him why not, or why his dad never calls. In the sink, there are three dirty cereal bowls, hard cornflakes barnacled to the sides.
The calendar on the wall has the days marked off in pen as Grey used to do and Ned insists on still doing—it’s Friday the eighth. The newspaper on the table concurs. A glance at the gone-off milk says it passed its sell-by date last week.
It is Friday, it is the eighth of August. It is the right time.
But I think it’s the wrong branch.
My heart collapses like a dying star. I don’t want to be here, in this lonely house. Three cereal bowls—Papa, Ned, me. This is a world where Thomas isn’t. A timeline of how this summer coulda-woulda-shoulda gone, if he’d never come home.
I drop the milk onto the floor with a sour splash and hurtle towards the door, running out through the garden, under the rain. Ignoring the nothing sky until I’m safe in my room, the door shut, and I’m crying into my pillow, gasping, please, please. I don’t want to be here. I want to go home. I want this all to just stop. Please.
I’m inside a wormhole, but this is no memory of mine. It’s some other timeline, some other place. But what did I do to cause this? Think, Gottie. What did you do? What did you do? What did you do?
{4}
WELTSCHMERZ
Inside the Exception, remember: the rules no longer apply.
Don’t assume that when you enter a wormhole from one timeline, that’s where you come out. Don’t assume all timelines last forever, or are going in the same direction.
The universe is made of hydrogen. The Weltschmerzian Exception is made of dark matter.
And the longer it goes on, the more time gets twisted. The harder it becomes to untangle.
But how does it start?
And how do you make it stop?
Saturday 9 August
[Minus three hundred and forty-two]
The page is blank.
It’s past midnight. Outside, the storm rages on. I’m still on my bed, but now I’m wrapped in an old jumper of Grey’s. Staring at his diary.
The day Jason and I tumbled into the kitchen, the day Grey died—that was early afternoon. He always wrote his diaries in the evening. The page in front of me, the first of September—he hasn’t written anything.
The Gottie H. Oppenheimer Principle, v5.0.
The diaries may have been navigating me at first, but they’re not any-more. The rules don’t apply—I could go anywhere. The funeral. The hospital. The world could show me all the things about myself that I don’t want to see.
And I know now where this will all end up if I don’t stop it. Ned’s party. A wormhole. Grey’s death.
For the third time, I write a list of all the wormholes. But now, I admit what truly happened.
Grey’s bedroom. The first time I’d been alone with Jason since he dumped me.
Outside the Book Barn. The first time I’d been there since Grey died.
Grey’s chair. I’d just crashed my bike and I wanted my grandfather and I hurt.
The library. Seeing my relationship with Jason in Grey’s diary. He’d called it love.