The Secret Science of Magic

by Melissa Keil

  I leave him standing in the drizzle as I walk to my bus. I’m thinking about questions, and I’m thinking about fire. But in all the calculations that my brain is capable of factoring, I think I may be overlooking a few very relevant variables.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The extra dimensions in string theory

  I arrive at school the next morning with a new, fluttery feeling of anticipation. I want to attribute it to this morning’s Physics class, because today we are starting a unit on particle accelerators, and really, who wouldn’t be excited. But then I find my eyes drifting down the year-twelve corridor. And I realise it’s possible that I am, in fact, assigning my anticipation in totally the wrong direction.

  After morning break I have double Biology, where I take my usual front-row seat. I think I’ve been a bit preoccupied at recess. Part of my brain was focused on Elsie’s description of this Rosalind Franklin documentary she watched last night, the rest sliding sideways into untested territory.

  He is two minutes late, sneaking in just as Mr Grayson trips over his laptop cable and sends his Mac crashing to the floor. There is a chorus of guffaws from the class. I use the distraction to cast a quick look over my shoulder. I’m not sure what to do when Joshua catches my eye as he folds his long body into his seat. The hair shielding his face makes it even harder for me to tell what he is thinking, but he holds my gaze with a fleeting smile before dropping his eyes to his books. I do notice that he shuffles his chair over, as far away as he can get from Damien, who has just discovered the diagram of a naked woman in our textbook and is protesting loudly about the apparently disappointing size of her breasts.

  Elsie gives me a look as I turn back. ‘You’re in a weird mood,’ she says without preamble.

  ‘What? Why? I’m in a normal mood, Elsie. A normal, third-period Bio mood, just hoping I can make it through class without catching a glimpse of Lucas Kelly’s willy.’ I gesture behind me, where, due to the unfortunate height of our lab benches, Lucas Kelly’s open fly is once again on display.

  Elsie peeks behind us. ‘Jesus. That kid needs a bathroom buddy. Doesn’t he feel a breeze down there?’ Her brow is still furrowed when she looks back at me. I smile widely, flashing some teeth. I hold the smile in place for what I hope is a reasonable length of time, but judging by the look Elsie gives me, it’s as unconvincing as it feels.

  ‘Yeah. Okay, Sophia. You’re in a perfectly normal mood,’ she says with a snort.

  I decide to keep my head in my work, despite the fact that I finished this unit’s exercises over last semester’s holidays. When I do look around, with eight minutes of class to go, Margo Cantor and Jonathan Tran are swinging their joined ankles beneath their bench like they’re holding hands with their feet, and Lucas’s fly remains persistently open. Joshua has his head buried in his pocket-sized notebook, seemingly ignoring whatever Damien is babbling in his ear. He uses the end of his pencil to push a strand of dark hair behind his ears, exposing one side of his face. I wonder if it’s a conscious gesture or a habitual tic.

  My normal and perfectly reasonable behaviour continues until lunchtime. When the bell goes, I purposefully pack my bag without looking anywhere else before walking calmly to my locker. I don’t even descend into an irritated fugue when some guy with a football under his armpit grabs me briefly by the shoulders and moves me out of his way.

  A tingling on the back of my neck makes me turn and scan the space behind me, but I see nothing of interest.

  I open my locker. My books are just as I left them, my Feynman wedged beside my Physics notebook, my chicken-on-whole-wheat sandwich and pear in front. I slot my Bio folder and school diary inside, then grab my sandwich.

  I’m juggling my lunch and books when a crisply folded piece of paper slips from between the pages of my diary. It flutters to my feet.

  I look around quickly, but no-one seems to be paying me any attention. I unfold the paper, heart hammering. In the centre of the page, in small, familiar handwriting, is a basic parametric equation:

  I grab a scrap of blank paper. With my head inside my locker and the paper balanced on my diary, I scribble out a quick Cartesian plane. It takes me about a minute to plot out the answer, and another thirty seconds or so with my graphics calculator to double check what I am seeing.

  ‘Oh, you have got to be kidding,’ I mutter. Ava Dawson, the hockey captain, who has the locker above mine, glances at me suspiciously. She hasn’t uttered a word to me all year; then again, I don’t think I’ve seen her pay attention to anything that doesn’t have a puck or stick in hand.

  Ava strides off, muttering something about strange birds under her breath. I’m left staring at my hand-drawn parametric solution, a curve plotted across an x and y axis, which looks like this:

  It is the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever been given. It’s the sort of thing the boys at primary school Maths camp hand to girls, all sweaty hands and eager smiles, crinkly notepaper encased within Valentine’s Day cards featuring kissing swans and too much glitter. It’s absurd, and super cheesy.

  I turn the paper over. There is a tiny inscription on the other side, the same familiar neat calligraphy, that reads:

  You’ll probably find this super cheesy. But I remembered this quote, and I thought of you.

  And beneath that are the words:

  In Mathematics, the art of proposing a question must be held of higher value than solving it.

  There is no signature.

  I fold the Cantor quote and the scribbled answer within the page that holds the equation, and slip them blindly into my pocket. My expression is reflected in the shiny metal as I slam my locker shut. I see confusion coupled with a hint of panic, which I’m guessing is customary when I’m confronted with the unfamiliar. My first thought is that I need to put a stop to this – only, I have no idea what exactly ‘this’ is.

  I walk numbly down the corridor and out into the chilly air. I briefly acknowledge then quickly discard the something else I thought I saw in the background of my mystified expression.

  It was faint, but I think it might have been the shadow of a smile.

  The rest of the day passes without incident or further … encounters of any kind. Elsie and I eat lunch between the lichen-covered concrete lions that bookend the old library steps, huddled together as the wind whips wet leaves around us. There are probably more sensible spots to hang out. But it’s quiet and isolated here, and that, to my mind, makes it the best spot at St Augustine’s. I think I manage to behave somewhat normally, or at least, no stranger than usual – nothing that draws comment from Elsie. Every now and again I think about the parametrical heart in my pocket, and blush behind my school scarf. It’s on the tip of my tongue to blurt out everything to Elsie, except she’s in the middle of a diatribe about the road trip to Nashville she’s planning for her first ‘college vacation’, so I let her steer the conversation to her hypothetical future, and remain quiet.

  I arrive home in the evening desperate for a shower and pyjamas. The walk from the bus is so cold that my skin feels prickly, tiny icicles jabbing beneath my blazer. I may not be looking forward to my future as an eccentric shut-in, but living permanently in fluffy pyjamas could be kind of a bonus.

  The kitchen is quiet. A half-finished puzzle sits on the table, scattered pieces of tulips and a windmill that Mum and Dad abandoned last night.

  I drop my bag, ears straining. From somewhere beyond the kitchen I register the sound of rhythmic thumping. Then there is a thud, and what sounds like a grunt of exertion.

  I pause, my brain cycling through a series of alarming visions, courtesy of Elsie – the image of Viljami wearing a bikini and a Spiderman mask flashes behind my eyes.

  Sometimes, I really wish my best friend was less evocative with her theories.

  There is a crash and a yelp from the hallway. I wipe my brain clean and hurry through the kitchen.

  The foyer between the front door and the lounge usually holds only Mum’s small statue of the Virgin Mary
and a side table overflowing with photos of various aunties and uncles and cousins. These things have been pushed to one side, and in their place is a noisy, wobbly treadmill. Toby is running – or at least, his legs are moving in a fashion that resembles running. It also vaguely resembles the gait of a gawky gazelle that’s had one leg mangled in a hunting trap. The ladder from the shed sits in front of the contraption, and one of our chopping boards is slotted through the rungs. Toby’s laptop is balanced precariously on top, along with a stack of books, one of which has clattered to the floor.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I call out.

  Toby shrieks and stumbles, and for a second I am convinced he’s going to face-plant on the moving conveyer belt, a comic pratfall I’ve seen in half a dozen of Elsie’s movies. But then Toby slams a hand on a console button and both the treadmill and Toby’s lame-antelope jog jolt to a stop.

  My brother jumps down and wipes his face with his jumper, an old Movie World sweatshirt with the face of Sylvester the Cat on the front. His sweaty black hair is plastered to his forehead.

  ‘Why are you here?’ he gasps, chest heaving. His glasses immediately fog.

  ‘I live here. Remember?’ I reply. ‘Where did that come from?’

  Toby plants his hands on his hips, still breathing hard. ‘Hired it. Need to start working out.’ He looks hesitantly at me and smooths back his hair. I’m never sure what is passing through my brother’s mind, but I have the oddest suspicion he’s struggling with more than just regaining his breath. ‘Supposed to help boost brain power,’ he says, whipping off his glasses and wiping away the mist. ‘Exercise, I mean.’

  ‘Well okay, sure. You know, there was this study that said people who exercise a lot have a larger hippocampus – that’s the part of the brain most associated with long-term memory conversion. I remember reading that in a journal.’

  ‘Of course you did,’ he mutters.

  ‘Do you want it? I think I still have the issue somewhere.’

  For half a second I think my brother might actually respond, or at least, that he might briefly forget that he can’t stand being in the same room as me. But instead he gathers his laptop and books, perspiring face wiped blank, and stomps to his bedroom.

  ‘Should I take that as a no, then?’ I say into the empty, sweat-tinged space.

  The only response is the click of Toby’s door at the end of the corridor.

  I retreat to my room with a sigh.

  Perelman stares down at me from his place above my computer. His eyes are shadowed, but even if I could see into them, I have no reason to believe I’d have any clue what he is thinking.

  And yet, there’s something on the edge of his expression that is almost familiar to me. A glimpse, through his thick muppet eyebrows and out-of-control beard, of a bewilderment that’s at odds with his giant brain. I can just imagine how he must have felt in this moment, stunned by the unwelcome flash of a camera while on a brief, rare foray into the world. No doubt he was on some mundane mission, probably going to the store for pencils or bread. I wonder what he did afterwards. Did he scamper back to the safety of his tiny apartment, heart hammering, or did he soldier on, marching forward despite the intrusive, unsympathetic eyes upon him? Was he thinking about saddle surfaces in Euclidean geometry, the boundlessness of three-dimensional space, or just trying to make it to the shops without tripping over his own feet or stepping in dog poo?

  I sit tiredly at my desk and withdraw the parametric equation from my pocket. My heart thuds wildly, curiosity at war with trepidation. I feel like I’ve fallen into a daydream not entirely of my own making, like I’m an unprepared companion on an unscheduled TARDIS trip.

  I toss the mathematical heart into my desk drawer and slam it shut, then close my eyes, shivering in my too-thin uniform. I can feel Perelman staring down at me. I doubt there is any judgement in his eyes, though.

  I pull the flannel shirt from the back of my chair over my lap as I turn on my computer and compose another quick email to the St Petersburg Steklov Institute. I’m sure I’ve messed up my syntax, and a few of my verbs are conjugated arse-around, but it doesn’t seem important. The only thing that matters is the question.

  Hi Professor Kowalevski,

  I understand that Doctor Perelman does not wish to be contacted. I think I probably understand why, though I’m still hoping he will make an exception for another Alexandrov geometry fan. I will try again later.

  I don’t want to be a nuisance, but I’m hoping you can answer just one thing for me. On the last day that you saw him, did Perelman seem satisfied?

  I tug my flannel blanket tighter around my legs.

  That word, satisfied, in either English or Russian, isn’t quite what I want. Satisfied implies that it were possible for someone like Perelman to have found the answers to all his questions, that his brain could finally be at rest. It implies that his curiosity had ceased; that he’d discovered everything he needed to, and could therefore be content spending the rest of his life with his feet up in front of the TV.

  But then again, what if he had reached his limits? Even someone as brilliant as him had to run out of ideas eventually. Maybe in the end what made him run from the world was the realisation that he’d done the absolute best he could, but his skills could stretch no further. His life was supposed to be an endless series of achievements. It was supposed to be extraordinary. Maybe, after all those expectations, all that potential, he simply couldn’t face the ordinary.

  I scan over the email again and hit send.

  Then I lie down on my bed, still in my uniform, and fall into a nap until Dad wakes me up for dinner.

  Later, Toby disappears to the library, and Mum and Dad park themselves in front of the TV to watch one of the cooking shows they’re obsessed with. They try to include me, as they always do, but there’s only so much conversational mileage I can get out of tears and kale, and it’s not long before I lapse into silence.

  Eventually, I find myself sitting alone in the kitchen with a microwaved slice of apple pie, reading an article on my phone about the latest failed Riemann hypothesis proof. This time, it’s a German mathematician with giant sideburns, who has spent the last seven years of his life working on something that was immediately proven to be a waste of time.

  I feel the last of my energy fade. My eyes fall on Dad’s souvenir fridge magnets, little reminders of seemingly every place we have been. Some of our holidays have been okay – like our trip to the Sydney Observatory, and that time we went to Rottnest Island and Toby coaxed a baby quokka right up to my hand. But a lot of our holidays have been unmemorable, and some unequivocally disastrous, like that time we went to Cairns with Auntie Patricia and her family, and everyone came down with gastro.

  I push away my pie and turn off my phone. I briefly consider my buoyant mood from earlier in the day, and its possible, probable source. And then I quickly relegate both to the far archives of my brain.

  I know there is an axiom in experimental mathematics – out of everything you try, most things don’t work.

  But how useful would it be to know, before you set out on a journey, if the destination was going to be worth the effort?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The eccentric orbits of binary stars

  I sleep badly, jerking awake whenever I start to drift, my thoughts becoming more erratic as the house settles into silence. Needless to say, I feel like balls the next morning. My skin is a sallow shade of day-old coffee, the blue circles under my eyes evidence of a night spent staring at the ticking hands of my clock.

  I do manage to make one decision, though. Whatever faltering social experiment I have been conducting needs to stop, immediately. I have enough uncertainty in my life. There is no room for another ambiguous variable.

  Of course, this resolution is predicated on said ambiguous variable behaving in a logical manner. The limited data I’ve gathered to date should have been evidence enough that this wouldn’t be the case.

  Because on Wednesday, as
I’m deflecting Elsie’s probing questions while struggling to keep my eyes open in Biology class, Mr Grayson’s vintage movie projector at the back of the room starts to whirl. It floods the dreary lab with flickering light – and then begins broadcasting a Doctor Who Christmas special. It’s the really great one where David Tennant and the TARDIS materialise on the space-liner Titanic. The projector is shoved on top of the grimy shelves at the rear of the lab, and as far as anyone knew, was for decoration only. It’s still covered in a thick layer of dust and doesn’t look like it’s been touched, and it’s not connected to a power source that anyone can see. No-one can figure out how it is working. David Tennant’s pretty face bounces among the projected stars, smiling at me through the dust motes. Mr Grayson has a bit of a meltdown when he can’t make it stop, eventually yanking the safety switch and cutting the electricity to the entire wing. It doesn’t help. Through the darkness, the Doctor continues grinning at me for another thirty seconds before fading into the ether.

  Joshua vanishes from the lab before I can catch his eye.

  I hold the pieces of this incidence in my head, but shuffling them around and evaluating them in varying orders does not help it make sense. What’s even more puzzling? When I do bump into Joshua in the hallway near the water fountains, our brief exchange somehow segues to the relative merits of cheese sandwiches, with or without Vegemite (Fact: Joshua does not like Vegemite), and NASA’s latest theory on the bright spots of Ceres.

  On Thursday in Physics, I open my pencil case to discover that all of my pens have been capped with tiny felt fez hats, tassels and all. It’s unbelievably useless, but it makes me involuntarily laugh out loud. Mrs Angstrom glances up in alarm, presumably at the foreign sound coming from my desk. She asks me if I am feeling okay, and threatens to send me to the sick bay.