The remote control finally slips from my hand, my anger leaving me breathless as I stare down at the shattered figurine. You can’t even tell it was a cat any more; the blue splinters of glass are scattered like fractals across the floor.
I want Mum to run into the room right now to see what I’ve done – to shout at me, to scream at me. I wouldn’t even care if she hit me for smashing up her crystal cat. I just want to see her again.
Still sobbing, I climb slowly to my feet, but then through my tears I see my very worst fear.
The TV screen is still blank, but this blackness now looks much darker than before – the same darkness that I first saw when I opened the front door. And it’s getting bigger.
I back away, the broken glass crunching beneath my bare feet but I don’t even feel it as I stare spellbound at the screen.
Our TV has only got a 32-inch display – Lily’s always moaning at Mum and Dad to get a bigger one – but this growing rectangle of darkness must be at least twice that size now. It’s as though the living-room wall is turning into an indoor cinema screen and it’s showing the scariest movie I’ve ever seen.
The bookcase in the corner, the pictures on the mantelpiece, even the mantelpiece itself – everything is being erased by this absolute blackness. And then it starts moving towards me.
It’s difficult to tell this at first. The creeping darkness is almost two-dimensional as the walls start to slowly fold in on themselves. I stare at this impossibility, an abyss now gaping on every side of me. I’m trapped – just like the photons of light lost in the Vantablack. And as the darkness reaches out I know that if it touches me, I’ll be lost too.
Spinning around, I see the only sliver of reality that’s left – the door that leads to the hall. Desperately I lunge towards it, barging the door open with a bang as I skid out into the hallway. My bare feet slip on the polished floorboards as I scramble forward, trying to put as much space as possible between myself and this onrushing tide of emptiness as it washes reality away.
As I reach the bottom of the stairs I glance towards the front door, praying that it stays shut. In the tinted-glass arch at the top each segment of glass is now stained black. It’s almost like the house doesn’t have to pretend any more. There’s no way I can stop it. The outside is coming in.
I scramble up the stairs, the darkness now lapping at my heels. My heart is pounding in my chest, every snatched breath a desperate prayer that I’ll make it to the top. There’s nowhere else left to go.
I’m almost there, the top of the stairs a single step away. I can see that the bathroom door is open, the polished white tiles inside a stark contrast to the absolute blackness that’s behind me.
I can’t stop myself from looking back over my shoulder, just to make sure that I’m safe. And that’s when I slip, the trailing hem of my dressing gown snagging on the broken carpet runner that Mum’s been nagging Dad to get fixed.
I hit the landing with a thump. Winded, I glance back to see flecks of black foam only a few centimetres away. The stairs are gone – all that’s left is an empty void that stretches on forever.
I don’t even have time to get to my feet.
Lunging forward, I scramble across the landing, feeling the cold shock of the porcelain tiles beneath my hands and feet as I reach the bathroom. The infinite darkness surges behind me, erasing the space where I was only seconds before. I kick out with my last ounce of strength, my foot connecting to slam the bathroom door shut as I collapse sobbing on the floor.
8
“Lily – get off me!”
Dragging me by my T-shirt, Lily dumps me down on the toilet seat. Luckily the lid is already pulled down, so it’s not as embarrassing as it could be, but I still don’t know what I’ve done to upset her as my big sister glares down at me.
“What’s the matter with you?” I ask, smoothing down the sequined star on the front of my top to get rid of the marks where Lily has grabbed it. Then I look at my sister again. “Are you OK?”
Lily’s face is pale and drawn, dark shadows etched beneath her eyes where her mascara has run. She’s still wearing Dad’s long-sleeved T-shirt and, beneath his black bird’s-nest hair, the pop star on the front of this has got the same panda eyes.
I know I shouldn’t say it, but I can’t stop the words from escaping from my lips.
“You look a mess.”
“Shut up,” Lily snaps, and I shrink back on the toilet seat, hugging my arms tight to my chest to protect myself from my sister’s fury. She really hates me, I can tell. Fighting hard to stop myself from crying, I blink back my own tears. Why’s she being so mean to me?
“It’s not fair. You can’t tell me to shut up,” I protest. “It’s my birthday. I’m going to tell Mum and Dad.”
Lily laughs hollowly.
“That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it?” she says with a sneer. “Tell Mum and Dad and expect everything to work out perfectly like one of your stupid experiments. Just like when you got them to take you out of school and give you a private tutor while I got left behind. Well, real life’s not like one of your experiments, Maisie. Real life is messy and painful and it’s not bloody fair.”
Lily’s spitting her words out now and I shrink back even further on the toilet seat.
“You don’t know what it’s like, Maisie. Everything is so easy for you. You just get to stay here safely at home, while I go out into the real world. I’m the one that has Sophie criticising every fashion choice I make. I’m the one that has Mum and Dad on my back the whole time, nagging me to revise. I’m the one who’s messed up my entire life. Not you.”
Lily’s doing it again. Making everything about her, but what about me? I’ve had enough of staying quiet. I’m ten years old now. It’s time that Lily listened to me.
“Least you get to have a life,” I yell, making Lily lean back in surprise. “Mum and Dad never let me go anywhere on my own. I’m stuck in this house nearly every day while you get to go to school. It’s not my fault I’m good at science and maths; I just like the way they help me to understand the universe. But they’ll never help me to understand why you hate me so much!”
Lily stares at me, her mouth open wide in shock at my sudden outburst. Then she slowly shakes her head.
“I don’t hate you, Maisie,” she says quietly, her eyes shining brightly with the same tears that are now creeping out of mine. “I just wish I could be more like you.”
Now it’s my turn to look shocked.
“But why would you want to be like me?” I ask, unable to understand why Lily would say something so ridiculous. “You’re the popular one – I’m the freak. You’ve got friends, you get to go out on your own, and stay up late. And you’re beautiful too.”
Sitting down on the edge of the bath, Lily bows her head. She’s fiddling with the hem of her sleeve, stretching the material almost to breaking point as she pulls it down over her wrist.
“I’m not beautiful,” she says, shaking her head scornfully as she lets the sleeve hang. “I’m disfigured.”
I feel really confused. I don’t know why Lily is saying this. She’s not disfigured. She’s really pretty. Without thinking, I reach out for Lily’s hand, just wanting to let my sister know that she’s talking rubbish.
But as I reach for her hand my fingers catch on the hem of her sleeve, revealing a strange black mark on the inside of Lily’s wrist.
Lily snatches her hand away, but it’s too late. I’ve seen it.
“Is that a tattoo?”
A tsunami of emotions washes across Lily’s face – anger, fear, disgust, shame. Then she slowly nods her head.
“We were all supposed to get one,” Lily says, her voice trembling slightly. “Sophie, Daisy, Lauren and me. We’d spent ages choosing a design and even got fake IDs so we looked old enough. I went first, but then when I’d had mine done Sophie took one look at it and said it looked tacky. She changed her mind and told the others not to bother too. So now I’m the only one who’s got a
tattoo.” Lily looks down at her wrist, her face screwed up in disgust. “It means eternity and now I’m stuck with it forever.”
I can’t stop myself from looking at my sister’s tattoo, her pale skin now marked with this black loop of ink.
“It’s a Möbius strip,” I say.
“What do you mean?” Lily asks, her forehead furrowing into a frown. “What’s a Möbius strip?”
I remember asking Mrs Bradbury the same question when she was teaching me hyperbolic geometry.
“It’s like the scientific symbol for infinity,” I reply. “A Möbius strip is an infinite loop that you can never escape from.”
Lily’s face crumples.
“You’re telling me that I’ve got a science tattoo?”
Then she really starts to cry, her whole body shaking as her words come out in juddering gasps.
“Mum and Dad are going to kill me when they see it,” she sobs. “It’s the middle of summer and I can’t even wear anything with short sleeves in case they spot it. I don’t know what I’m going to do!”
I’ve never seen Lily this upset before. Part of me just wants to run downstairs to get Mum, but I know that would be completely the wrong thing to do. I stare at the infinite loop tattooed on the inside of her wrist, racking my brain for something helpful to say that will stop my sister from crying.
“Why don’t you just put a plaster on it?”
Lily looks up at me, the mascara smudges beneath her eyes making her look like a doubting panda.
“You could say a cat scratched you or something,” I explain. “It’ll give you an excuse to keep the tattoo covered up while we work out what to do.”
I don’t know what Lily’s going to say. Call me stupid. Shout at me. Scream in my face. But instead I see a faint hopeful smile start to creep across her lips.
“That might work,” she says. “Maisie, you’re a genius.”
I feel my cheeks flush. I might be academically gifted, but Lily’s never said anything like this to me before.
“But you’ve got to promise not to tell Mum and Dad,” she continues, wiping her tears with her sleeve. “I couldn’t face them going on about how I’ll never be able to get a job with a tattoo and how I’ll regret it when I get older.” She glances again at the black loop of ink on her wrist. “I regret it already.”
Looking up, Lily meets my gaze with a pleading stare.
“Do you understand?”
Pythagoras said that the number ten contains the key to understanding everything. I think he was right. Now that I’m ten, Lily’s speaking to me like I’m a grown-up. And I do understand.
I nod my head.
“I won’t tell Mum and Dad.”
“Thanks, Maisie,” Lily says, the muscles around her lips finally remembering how to smile properly. “I owe you one.”
“Lily!”
A look of panic flashes across Lily’s face as Mum’s voice echoes up the stairs. Reaching for her wrist, she tugs at her sleeve to hide the tattoo.
“I’ll go,” I say, springing up off the toilet. “I can keep Mum busy while you wash your face and put a plaster on.”
Pulling the bathroom door open, I head across the landing. Behind me I hear Lily opening the cabinet where Mum keeps the plasters as I bounce down the stairs.
Inside me, I feel the same surge of excitement I felt when I woke up this morning. But it’s not because it’s my birthday. It’s because I feel like I’ve got my sister back.
9
Sitting on the toilet seat, I stare blankly at the bathroom door. My knees are pulled up to my chest with my arms wrapped tightly around them, but this doesn’t make me feel any safer. The door might be closed, but I know what’s waiting for me on the other side.
I’m counting every breath that I take as my heartbeat gradually slows to something nearing normality. If I focus on this, maybe it will stop me from falling apart.
Everything’s gone. I watched that tide of absolute darkness devouring everything in its path. The kitchen, the living room, the hallway and the stairs – I reckon all that’s left now is this bathroom I’m sitting in, and I don’t know how much longer this will last.
When she first started teaching me, Mrs Bradbury asked what I liked best about science. I told her I liked science because it helped me to understand the universe, but nothing I’ve learned in science can help me make sense of anything that’s happening now. I remember the flecks of nothingness, foaming on the edge of that impossible abyss. Infinite. Unknowable.
Then I remember what Mrs Bradbury said next.
“Science can’t help you to understand everything, Maisie.” Taking off her glasses, Mrs Bradbury started to polish the lenses with the sleeve of her cardigan. “There’s so much we still don’t know.”
Holding up her glasses to the light to check for smears, Mrs Bradbury then placed them back on her face, peering through the lenses at the textbook open on the table between us. She pointed down at the contents page, running her finger along the list of topics covered in the book.
“I can teach you how the chemical elements formed and about the structure of an atom. We’ll cover electromagnetism, radioactivity and the quantum of light. You’ll learn why the Earth orbits the Sun, how the Sun orbits the Milky Way and why the Milky Way will eventually collide with the distant galaxy of Andromeda, billions of years from now. But everything that science has seen or ever observed, from the smallest subatomic particle to the most distant star, makes up less than five per cent of the universe. The rest is completely unknown.”
I remember scratching my head as I tried to work this out. I stared through the patio doors at a darkening sky, faint pinpricks of white studding the blue as the stars slowly came out.
“That’s impossible,” I said. “You told me there were billions of stars in the Milky Way and the Milky Way is only one of the trillions of galaxies that exist. How can all that add up to just five per cent of the universe?”
“Less than five per cent,” Mrs Bradbury corrected me. “You see, the visible universe – all the stars, planets, comets, everything on Earth, even us – is all made out of ordinary matter. But nearly a quarter of the universe seems to be made of a mysterious substance that scientists can’t even detect. We call this dark matter, but what it is, we just don’t know. And the rest of the universe seems to consist of a mysterious force called dark energy, which might eventually tear our universe apart.”
Behind her glasses, wrinkles furrowed around my tutor’s eyes as her features creased into an encouraging smile.
“Maybe you’ll be the first person to discover what this really is, Maisie, and expand our knowledge of the universe, but don’t be in so much of a hurry to understand everything that you miss out on the fun of being young.”
Beneath my pyjama bottoms, the toilet seat feels freezing cold. I’m ten years old today and this isn’t any fun.
Maybe the impossible darkness that’s destroying my home is dark matter or it could be dark energy, but what does it matter if I discover what it is, if there’s nobody left in the universe to tell?
In the living room just now I managed to speak to Lily on the phone. Only for a few seconds, but that was enough to prove I’m not completely alone. There must be something out there apart from that infinite emptiness. And maybe Lily can help me to find a way out of this nightmare…
I run over her words in my mind. “I’m so sorry. I’m going to put things ri—” Lily’s sentence was cut off mid-flow, but this must mean something. Why did she say she was sorry? And how can she possibly put things right?
I glance around the bathroom. From my position perched on top of the toilet, I can see the basin and the bathroom cabinet, the laundry basket in the corner and the towels folded over the towel rail. Blue for Dad, green for Mum, purple for Lily and yellow for me. Above the bath, the white metal slats of the blinds are shut tight against the darkness outside.
Nobody’s bathroom has a clock in it, but ours does. Dad put it up after Lily ke
pt on hogging the bathroom every morning when she was supposed to be getting ready for school. Mum, Dad and me would be queuing outside while Lily spent two hours in the shower. Dad says she’s got no excuse now for not knowing how long she’s been in here.
I look at the time on the clock.
The hour and minute hands stand at a perfect right angle, telling me it’s nine o’clock.
That’s not right.
It was nine o’clock when I woke up this morning. I remember the time flashing on my alarm clock. And so much has happened since then. This clock must have stopped – maybe the batteries have run out – but looking more closely I see the second hand tremble before ticking forward a single second.
It must be running slow then, the last bit of battery juice stretching out the seconds into hours.
I shiver. The bathroom suddenly feels cold, the shadows cast by the light overhead starting to lengthen across the white-tiled floor.
Wait a second, how can that even be possible? When you’re outside, shadows change shape due to the position of the Sun. When the Sun’s high in the sky your shadow is short, but when the Sun’s low your shadow gets longer as you block out more of the Sun’s light. But the bathroom light overhead isn’t moving, is it?
I glance up and discover that things have taken a turn for the weird again.
Tiny specks of dust are dancing in the light spilling down from the ceiling, twisting in shifting patterns as the dust particles are bombarded by invisible molecules of air. But seeing Einstein’s theory of Brownian motion in action isn’t what makes me gasp in surprise. It’s the fact that the light beams are curving downwards.
It’s like when you pull the plug out of the bath and the water swirls around, taking your rubber duck on a crazy trip round the plughole as the bath slowly empties. That’s what’s happening here, but instead of water it’s the light that seems to be swirling round, the beams curling as they loop on seemingly endless paths around the bathroom.
The Infinite Lives of Maisie Day Page 5
