Papa looks down at Umlaut in his lap as he sucks air in round his teeth. “You know, you always were such a surprise.”
“A surprise?”
“Mmmm. I was deferred, you know? And Mami too, with her Saint Martins place. We were thinking to go back to London with Ned, then”—he makes a funny little whoosh noise, an explosion with his hands, sending Umlaut’s fur on end—“things changed. There was going to be a Gottie. So even though we knew,” he harrumphs, “knowing isn’t always enough. Which is why, maybe better that Thomas sleeps in his own room.”
I’m going from a surprise to being surprised. My whole life, everyone’s behaved as though this is the way it always was—that after Ned arrived and life veered off course, Papa and Mum decided: why not have a teenage wedding and another baby? Work for Grey at the Book Barn. Stay in Holksea. Forever. The only accidental thing was her death.
No one ever told me this wasn’t the plan. No one ever told me they had wanted more.
They never told me I’m what stopped them.
“What is it called—a carthorse?” Papa asks.
“Huh?”
“Your mami, she throws the stick over her shoulder and carthorsed, when she found out about you.” He nods to himself, remembering. I’m not the only one lost in the past. But Papa doesn’t need wormholes.
“Cartwheel,” I correct, thinking of a theory Thomas told me the other day, about why Papa’s English is still so loopy. He says Papa deliberately tries to sound foreign, so he can hold on to something of home. Now that I know that they were planning to leave this life, I think it’s for a different reason. It’s so he doesn’t have to admit that this is all real.
That he’s truly here, two blue lines and seventeen years later. I know Oma and Opa ask him to move back to Germany. Live with them, even. There was that fight about it, at Christmas, raised voices and closed doors. Maybe he will, now. I’ll be eighteen in six weeks—this time next year, I’ll be packing up to go to university. And Papa will be free.
As if he’s reading my mind, Papa says, “Nein. Not in ten million years. I never regret it, ever.”
He’s looking at me so fondly, so seriously, it’s embarrassing. And I wish he hadn’t told me this. Mum’s dead and Grey’s dead; Papa’s trapped here and it’s my fault. I was never meant to be part of this family at all. It’s so obvious I don’t belong.
Surely, somewhere, there’s a timeline where I don’t even exist.
I’m a wormhole away from losing it completely. I close my ears with a lurch of nausea: the pounding in my head is overwhelming.
“Have fun tonight,” Papa says. “I’m going to hide here. I don’t know what happened with you this year, Liebling, but now—it’s very happy. To see you in love. It’s gut. How can this not be a wonderful thing?”
After all that: it’s not a sex talk. It’s a love talk. I stare at my fingers, wishing Papa had talked to me last summer. Wishing my mami had still been alive to. I’d known enough to use condoms with Jason. I hadn’t known enough not to love him.
How can love not be a wonderful thing?
It’s a good question.
*
The Gottie H. Oppenheimer Principle, v6.0. I’m not supposed to be in this universe. All I’ve caused is trouble. The next wormhole will show me just how much. Unless I stop it.
Papa stays at the Book Barn after my shift finishes, saying he’ll come and check on the party later. The darkness follows me as I dawdle home the long way, through the fields, past the hay bales, thinking about how to fix time. About what the opposite of grief is.
On the way, I text Thomas—Meet me in the churchyard before the party?
He’s waiting for me, tucked between the tree and the wall. I watch him for a few seconds, wondering how he won’t be here in a couple of weeks. That we’ll never see each other again. On what stupid planet is that even possible?
“Couldn’t face the chaos alone?” he asks when I sit down next to him. He takes my hand into his lap, holding it between both of his. He’s right—whatever else is going on between us, the friendship remains.
“Something like that.” I frown. My head still hurts. What happened to the bottle of Grey’s hippie remedies? I need a bunch. “How about you?”
“I, uh…” He scratches his head, embarrassed. “Prepare to have your mind blown, but I’m not the Michelangelo I once was.”
“Huh?”
“A party dude,” he clarifies, but I’m still mystified. “I’m cool but rude, like Raphael. Seriously, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Heroes in a half shell? No? We need to get your house hooked up to Wi-Fi. You have pop culture holes that need filling. Then we could Skype, after I move…” he adds slyly.
“I’m not the life and soul either,” I say in response to this babble, hesitating, then leaning my head on his shoulder. He readjusts, putting his arm around me. My voice sounds sleepy as I add, “Maybe I don’t mind the outskirts.”