When the World was Flat (and we were in love)

by Ingrid Jonach

  “You asked if we knew each other,” he said.

  “Yes?” I whispered, suddenly realizing he meant the truth about the last six months, about the last sixteen years. How I knew him. How I knew Rose Hill. I wondered if this was a hallucination, if he was going to vanish, like he had in the darkroom.

  He bit his lip. “What if I told you we had met?”

  I knew it! I frowned as I searched my memory, wondering whether we had met in Green Grove. Maybe it had been in Lincoln. “When?”

  His face scrunched for a moment, as if preparing me for his next words. “In another life,” he said. “Another world.”

  I frowned and rocked back on my heels. “You mean like reincarnation?” I asked, wondering if he was as loopy as Deb.

  “Have you heard of the theory of everything? Albert Einstein?”

  I laughed, but the sound stuck in my windpipe. “Einstein?”

  He smiled. “It sounds like a science lesson. I know.”

  I suddenly remembered Jo saying he was smart in physics.

  Tom walked around in a circle, the dust billowing around his feet. He looked at me a couple of times, as if deciding whether or not to dive deeper into the water. “Einstein wanted to read the mind of God,” he finally said. “But he died before he could finish his unified field theory, which is also called the theory of everything. Physicists have been picking up the pieces for decades.” He looked me in the eye. “You might have heard of string theory?”

  I was thoroughly confused by the conversation. When did the theory of everything become the theory of Tom and Lillie? “What was the point of the theory of everything?” I asked. “World peace? Everlasting life? More red M&Ms per packet?”

  Tom gave me a quizzical look.

  “I like red M&Ms.” I knew I was babbling, but I felt like I was taking a test without having studied.

  Tom took another deep breath, his carved chest rising under his sweater. “The theory of everything led to the discovery of… parallel dimensions.”

  “Parallel dimensions?” It sounded as absurd as reincarnation, but then a slideshow of memories of other lives – of other me’s – started flicking through my head. I tried to focus and the pictures paused at a birthday party with a clown cake and a man who had the same color hair as me and ears that were kind of pointy. “Dad!” I called out to him in my memory, before the slideshow flicked on.

  I frowned, knowing there had been no birthday party and no father.

  “You see, where I come from,” Tom continued. “Einstein accepted a life-saving operation and lived long enough to finish the theory of everything.”

  “England?”

  He shook his head, his forehead creasing slightly at my stupidity. “Another dimension.”

  I gave a barking laugh.

  Tom walked towards me. “You know it, Lillie. Deep down. You know what we are.”

  “Soulmates,” I whispered, before coming around from my swoon. “No,” I said, taking a small step backwards and shaking my head back and forth. “You and me. Out of the question. Not in this lifetime. Not in any lifetime.” I frowned at him. “This is crazy. Totally and utterly insane.”

  “Let me show you,” he begged, reaching out to me. His hand on my neck made my pulse shoot up, but I stepped back again, pressing my back against a tree trunk. I suddenly realized how completely and utterly alone we were here in the clearing. If I were to scream…

  He drew back as I opened my mouth. “Forget it,” he said, shaking his head. I closed my mouth as I realized he was not going to hurt me, at least not physically. “Like you said this is crazy. Totally and utterly insane.”

  “Tom,” I started. I was unable to deny our connection, parallel dimensions or no parallel dimensions.

  He took another couple of steps backwards. “I have to stop saving you, Lillie.”

  I swallowed a barking laugh. “Is that what you call what you did to Jackson?” I asked incredulously.

  His face hardened into stone. “Jackson. I see. You do like him.” He sounded like a jealous boyfriend.

  “Of course I like him.” I had a heart, unlike him. “And I hate you for what you did to him.”

  Tom flushed angrily. “I did it for you. Though I wonder why I bothered.”

  I clenched my teeth, wondering why he would think I wanted him to turn in Jackson. “You and me both.”

  We stood there like a pair of pigheaded children, until Tom set his jaw and turned on his heel. There was a moment when he looked over his shoulder and I thought he was worried about leaving me alone in the woods. It seemed there were limits to his chivalry though, because he pushed through the branches with barely a break in his step. He seemed to suck the last of light from the sky as he went, leaving me in the twilight. I heard the branches snapping until he reached the road and then a car door slammed and its engine roared to life before disappearing in the direction of Rose Hill.

  I sat down miserably on a fallen tree, listening to the chirp of crickets from the darkness as I collected my thoughts. Einstein? The theory of everything? Parallel dimensions? Huh? Huh? Huh?

  Now and then I jumped at the crack of a twig, imagining they were footfalls. “Hello?” I called. “Is someone there? Tom? Hello?”

  When I got home I was greeted by a sage smudge stick, which my mother used to cleanse the house whenever we had an argument. I rolled my eyes as she told me to inhale the smoke, as if it were a toll to enter the house. I breathed it in, too tired for another argument. I also let her rub herbal cream into my blisters. It smelled of dusty earth, the smell reminding me of being in the clearing with Tom.

  When I went to bed I dreamed I was there again. I called out to the darkness and the killer responded.

  “Hi,” she said, in what sounded like my voice.

  16

  The next day my conversation with Tom was like a book with missing pages. I remembered talking about Einstein and the theory of everything. Did I bring up red M&Ms? And what did he say about string? It made me think of my ball of twine.

  I did remember the word that had come to me automatically – soulmates.

  I shook my head, as if I could shake out the memory. Deb believed in that mumbo-jumbo, not me. It had to be a joke, or a hallucination. Maybe I had drunk the tea Deb had made for me and had fallen asleep with the bag of stones around my neck.

  Yes. That sounded logical, more logical than parallel dimensions anyway. It had been another dream.

  The rumor mill was working hard when I got to school on Monday. The first rumor I heard was that Jackson and I had been locked up. Another was that he had fled the country and I was going to meet him in Cuba as soon as I could. I saw a few faces fall when they realized it was hogwash.

  Jackson was allowed to stay in school until his court date the following week. He was innocent until proven guilty, as they say, although he was banned from the Masquerade Ball.

  “Lucky you,” Jo said coldly when he told us. She was in a mood as dark as her eyeliner. Her head had been buried in another book all morning and she was generally responding to questions with a one-syllable yes or no.

  I was surprised she was talking to me at all after our fight in the quad. What is her deal? I wondered, but I decided not to ask again in case she bit off my head and wore it as a hat. I watched her draw a thick red line under a sentence and realized it was her physics textbook.

  “What do you know about Einstein?” I suddenly asked.

  Jo continued to read as if my voice were the distant sound of a dog barking or a car alarm.

  “Jo?”

  She looked up, but her eyes were glazed beneath her bangs.

  “Have you heard about the theory of everything?”

  “No.”

  “String theory?”

  “No.”

  I sighed as she circled another word. “Can I borrow your cell?” I asked. “I need to use Google.” Jo had a smartphone with internet connection. Her dad had given it to her for her fifteenth birthday, as a sorry-I-sc
rewed-up-your-childhood present, given he had been on the road for seventy percent of her life. Deb must have missed that memo.

  “No,” she said again.

  Sylv raised her eyebrows at me and mouthed the word “bitch”. But I had too much on my mind with Tom to think about Jo. If he had turned up to school today I could have asked him about Saturday. I was not completely convinced it had been a dream.

  I ran into Melissa as we walked to Biology. Literally. I turned the corner and bam!

  I readied myself for a tongue-lashing, but instead she smiled. Her straight white teeth were shark-like. “I heard you and Jackson got arrested on Saturday.”

  I pushed past and continued down the corridor.

  “I warned you to watch your step,” she called out meaningfully.

  It was like she had dropped a piano on my head. Melissa had turned in Jackson, not Tom. “You bitch!” I shouted, whirling around and throwing myself at her like a rabid dog. My open palm connected with her cheek, making a sound like the crack of a whip.

  She took a step backwards, clutching her cheek. Her blue eyes were wide as she looked around for her guard dogs, but Blake and Ethan had retreated as well, looking at me like I needed an exorcism.

  Sylv grabbed me before I could slap Melissa again. “Let the tramp lick her wounds,” she said.

  Melissa bucked up when she saw me restrained. “Who are you calling a tramp, you slut?” she asked Sylv.

  Sylv released me and gave Melissa a slap on her other cheek.

  There was a smattering of laughter from a few of the bystanders, especially those who knew the history between Sylv and Melissa. I think everyone else was in a state of shock. If you laid a finger on Melissa you were finished in this town.

  Even so, we had a spring in our step as we walked to class.

  “I think karma just bit Melissa on the ass,” Sylv crowed.

  I rolled my eyes. Deb carried on about karma too. If I sprayed a wasp she told me I would get stung one of these days, leaving me to point out that a wasp was more likely to sting me without the spray. “I think we should get the kudos, not karma,” I told Sylv.

  “For biting Melissa on the ass?” Jo asked. Her voice was monotone, but I think it was a joke.

  “I should have slapped that girl years ago,” Sylv continued, looking at her hand like she had discovered a super power.

  “Girls Gone Wild, here we come,” Jo said.

  Turnip called me and Sylv to his office half an hour later.

  “Hairdressing, here I come,” Sylv moaned.

  Turnip was an elderly man with white hair and watery eyes, who looked like he could use a feed, but he could stare you down until you thought you would spontaneously combust.

  We took a seat in front of his desk, which was covered with manila folders crammed with reams of paperwork. Turnip pre-dated computers. I think he pre-dated cologne too, because his office smelled like old man. He studied us without a word for what seemed like an age, before he said, “I understand you slapped a fellow student.”

  Sylv nodded. I bit my lip.

  “And that student was Melissa Hodge?”

  Sylv nodded again. I thought I could taste blood.

  “Are you sorry?”

  I laughed, a sudden burst of nerves.

  Sylv looked at me in shock.

  I took a deep breath, swallowing the sound. “She–”

  Turnip raised his hand. “I will not tolerate violence in this school,” he said. “You should consider yourselves lucky that Miss Hodge decided not to press charges. Her father wanted to take it to court, but after a twenty-five minute phone call I have managed to convince him otherwise.”

  I scowled. I hated the Hodges.

  “After school detention for both of you. Level two. Classroom Four.”

  As we were leaving, Turnip said, “Miss Dartmouth you can also consider yourself lucky you have not been expelled. You are on thin ice. Very thin ice.”

  “You would think we had tried to assassinate the queen,” I grumbled in Algebra.

  “Well, she is Green Grove royalty,” Sylv said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “A royal pain in my ass.”

  Sylv spent the hour in detention staring at the clock, willing the hands to move. She had a second date lined up with Simon.

  I had checked out a few tomes on Einstein from the school library, but there had been no books on the theory of everything or string theory. I read how Einstein had died in the early hours of April 18, 1955, in Princeton Hospital. The internal bleeding could have been stemmed by surgery, but he insisted he had done his share and it was his time. Very Hallmark, I thought, moving on to a book on the theory of relativity, but it was like it was written in another language. I finally slammed the dusty cover shut, giving up. I was going to have to learn about it from the primary source – Tom.

  Mr Hastings looked like he wanted to be there as much as we did. He alternated between looking at the window and looking at the clock. I wondered if he was dying for a cigarette.

  When he released us with six minutes to go, Sylv grabbed her handbag and booked it.

  “Wait,” I said, as I packed up my bag.

  “See you tomorrow, Lillie,” she called over her shoulder.

  I walked to my locker alone, my footsteps echoing through the empty corridors. When I spun the dial and opened the door the box of tampons fell out, bouncing on the concrete. I thought of Tom again and how he had not turned in Jackson after all.

  I thought back to the clearing on Saturday. He had said… I racked my brains. He had said, “I did it for you.” My color rose as I realized he had been talking about punching Jackson, not about turning him in to the cops. Of course. I should have known that Tom was out of the loop on Green Grove gossip. The rest of the town would have known about our run-in with the police two seconds after the fact, but he would have been in the dark, both then and now.

  As I walked out of the main building a clatter of footsteps across the quad made me spin around. I recognized the worn-out shoulder bag, the short, ragged bob. Jo. She should have been home by now. I guess she thought so too, because she was running like she was at a meet.

  “Jo!”

  I could have sworn she sped up.

  “Jo!”

  “Leave me alone, Lillie!” she screeched without turning her head.

  “Wait,” I begged, but track had given her more stamina in her little finger than I could muster from head to toe. I stopped, bending over to catch my breath, before trying to call her cell. No answer.

  “Dammit!” I threw my phone on the ground, where it broke into two. I scooped it up and thundered down the remainder of the driveway, watching Jo disappear into the distance.

  “Jo. Jo. Jo,” I chanted to the beat of my bag, as it bounced against my back, as if the rule of repetition could bring her back.

  17

  The next morning I walked to school without Jo. In my mind, I saw her running as if from the Grim Reaper, or from the woman in the balaclava.

  By the time I got to the quad, my stomach was like a front loader on a spin cycle. Jo was the kind of girl who packed extra underwear and socks for camp. She was the girl who did her homework on a Friday night instead of waiting until Monday morning like the rest of us. She was Old Faithful. But lately…

  I was halfway to my locker when I heard the rumors – not about me and Jackson, but about Jo.

  “Oh my God. Did you hear what happened?”

  “That girl Joanne–”

  “Josephine.”

  “Whatever. She shagged that teacher.”

  “Which teacher?”

  “Mr Bailey.”

  “Eww.”

  “I heard it was a threesome with that skank Sylvia.”

  “I heard that too. Gross.”

  “Double gross.”

  “Triple gross.”

  I met Sylv at my locker. “This is BS,” I said.

  “You can say the word bullshit, Lillie. We are not two year-olds,” Sylv
said, snapping her gum.

  “Fine. This is bullshit,” I said, but then I remembered how Jo had been running yesterday. “Right?” I asked, clutching my stomach as its contents started to spin again.

  “Of course,” Sylv said. “As if you would catch me dead in a threesome with Jo and Mr Bailey.” She laughed at her own joke, but stopped when she saw me put a hand to my head and close my eyes. “Wake up, Lillie. You know they talk shit in this stupid town.”

  I leaned against my locker. “Should we call Jo?” I asked and then answered my own question by reaching into my bag. “Damn,” I said, as I remembered my cell was broken.

  But Sylv was dialing her own cell with fingernails coated in liquid paper and red hearts, drawn on with a marker. “Voicemail,” she told me. “Hey biatch. Rumor is you got lucky yesterday. Hit me back.” She hung up. “We have to pay her a visit. Stat.”

  I was used to flying under the radar in Green Grove, but these last few weeks it was like a flashing neon sign had been strapped to my head. My nerves tickled my insides and gave me the giggles, as we walked down corridors lined with spectators.

  Jackson fell into step long enough to ask, “Is Jo OK?”

  I shook my head, unable to speak in case I burst out laughing from sheer adrenaline.

  Melissa crowed like a rooster as we passed her locker. I was about to speed up, but then I saw Tom. He was leaning against the next locker with his arms folded across his chest.

  My giggles dissolved like sugar in coffee. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he explained the theory of everything. I wanted to ask him if it was related to my nightmares or my mixed up memories. But he was as disconnected as an unplugged TV. It was the dead-behind-the-eyes look from his first day and it made me think that I had hallucinated last Saturday after all.

  Sylv grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the driveway. By the time we reached the road she had made up her mind that the rumors were complete crap. “Jo is too frigid,” she said.

  “Shut up!” I said, suddenly erupting like a volcano. “This is your mess!”