Since it’s already happened, I can’t stop my idiotic younger self from getting stabbed in a tree, so I go and hide from the rain in Grey’s car. It’s parked askew, half in the hedge. One wheel is missing, propped up on bricks. We got an ambulance to the hospital today, so I’m safe here. I won’t bump into anyone else.
What did I cause by meeting myself just now? When Thomas asked me about time travel, I’d been absolutely certain in my explanation of why this could never happen. Cosmic censorship. Clearly, I was wrong—you can see beyond an event horizon. But, then, this: I still don’t remember what happened with the blood pact, but I do recall the part beforehand, when Thomas and I were in the garden, in the rain. It’s coming back to me.
And there definitely wasn’t a cat. There definitely wasn’t another me. What’s different about this time?
Rain slashes at the car windows as I try to figure out what’s missing from my theory, what could cause the memory gap. Then I hear a yell and turn to see little Thomas, running across the garden, clutching his bleeding hand, screaming fit to bust for Grey, for Papa, for tree girl—that must mean me, I think—for anyone, to come quickly.
Papa pokes his head out the kitchen door. When he sees Thomas, he turns green, turns away. A few seconds later, Grey strides out of the house.
And I’m verklemmt.
It’s been one thing, seeing him in my memories, reading his diaries. Remembering him, over and over. But this, this is him here now, flesh and blood and here and alive …
I ache with how much I miss him.
He starts crossing the garden, half running to the apple tree as Thomas wails and runs behind him.
Grey. Grey, alive, and here, and I’m here too, and if I could just follow him through the garden—he’s disappearing beyond the shrubbery, almost gone, if I could just talk to him … My hand is on the door handle, ready to leap out, to run across to him, one last time—
If I could just.
But I can’t. It’s the wrong time. It’s the wrong place. It’s the wrong me.
And anyway, Grey is moving out from behind the rhododendron now, carefully and urgently. He’s carrying other Gottie in his arms. I’m already with him. Another me, in another time, always I’ll be with him.
I laugh, a little, through my tears. Seeing my younger face, its stubborn, gremlin-y achievement, muddled with pain and confusion. And pride! I think that I look safe. I think that Sof was right—Grey was all of our dads. He was my daddy. There I am, in his arms.
All the love we’ve lost hits me like an ocean wave.
There are sirens now; Papa must have called the ambulance. And there’s shouting, and there’s pain.
God. Why can’t I remember this?
Is it because there are two of me? And why weren’t there two of me when I went back a week to the kitchen? I made all that stuff up, about the universe hiding you in a tiny cannoli—but perhaps it’s true, and that’s where my memory has been all along.
Or, perhaps, it’s this: when only seven days had passed, I was the same person, unchanged. I couldn’t meet my week-ago self, because of causality. This is different. Me at twelve, and me at seventeen—there’s a chasm of grief between us. I lost myself when Grey died, and there isn’t a single particle left of who I was. I can meet my younger self, because we’re not the same person. I’ll never be that girl again.
Thomas scurries to keep up with Grey’s seven-league strides. I squint, trying to see what he’s holding. As he runs across the garden, his unhurt hand forms a fist. The Canadian coins? There’s chocolate cake round his mouth. And I hope, in his pocket, there’s a recipe. He doesn’t look left or right, or at me in the car: he runs after Grey, after me, into the kitchen. And then we’re gone.
It’s time to go home.
The rain is easing as I climb out of the car and cross the garden. Under the tree, I retrieve the discarded knife from the grass. Water has washed the blood away. I stuff it in my pocket, then climb up into the branches.
Umlaut is waiting for me, next to the open time capsule. The padlock is lying next to it, and all that junk I put in there before—the seaweed, the coins—is gone. Was I really going to woo Thomas back with a pair of old socks?
I settle myself on my usual branch, take a notebook out of my book bag, and I start to write.
The Gottie H. Oppenheimer Principle v 7.0.
A general theory of heartbreak, love,
and the meaning of infinity, or:
the Weltschmerzian Exception
Dear Thomas,
You promised me that whatever I tell you, you’ll believe. Remember? So here it goes.
Time travel is real.
Five years ago, you and I accidentally created a paradoxical time loop. It’s fate.
What’s a paradoxical time loop? Okay, so you bake a cannoli … Kidding! It’s a wormhole that exists because it exists. You know the equation I wrote on your email? My physics teacher called it a joke. It describes a wormhole opening in the present, because at the same time, it’s opening in the past. Impossible, right?
I disagree.
It’s real. And I think its power comes from the negative energy, or dark matter, that naturally exists in the universe.