by Femi Fadugba
As we’d been debating the boy’s name and what exactly qualifies as racism in modern Britain, the driver had been stumbling backwards, almost tripping over the pavement ledge. ‘’Ow the hell d’you know that name?’ His widened eyes traced me up and down like I was an alien. Just when I was ready to draw a line under all the spooky shit that had happened to me that morning.
‘So, what – is your name Preston?’ I asked, just in case.
He shook his head, before turning back to his Range Rover parked up the road. ‘This is long for man. I’m off.’
‘Good,’ the big man shouted after him. ‘Go back to tha’ rubbish 2018 vehicle.’ He looked down at me and winked, and I couldn’t stop myself cracking up inside.
The engine on the black tank roared to life, and before the window on the driver’s side could reach the top lip, a fluffy terrier dog hopped out.
Right as an eighteen-wheeler was rolling past.
‘Jesu!!’ the big man shouted. Everyone scrambled for safety on the side of the road, everyone but the dog.
I turned away, squeezing my body into the tightest ball possible. But that didn’t stop me hearing everything that happened – starting with the man in the Range Rover yelling the two words that had been ringing in my ears ever since I’d left that heated dream.
‘Preston! No!!!!!’
CHAPTER 10
Rhia · 15 Years Later
Even on week nights, SE Dons matches felt like block parties. Olivia and I were in the stands and down to our last two nuggets when the referee blew for the start of second half, inspiring a fresh chant from the crowd. Smog might roam the streets outside, but mega-tycoon Dangote buying the club had brought a shiny layer to everything inside the grounds: leather dugout seats; a pair of eight-figure Chinese strikers; the newest Bugatti for Don Strapzy; and a silver-haired manager who looked like a Bond villain. With over 50,000 fans exchanging body heat, it wasn’t the ideal spot for our weekly debrief. But academy players got free tickets and Olivia had let me pick the venue for once – so I figured we might as well spend our time supporting the boys.
I’d finally found someone to pull the data from Dr Esso’s iris scan. But I wasn’t exactly rushing to tell Olivia, knowing how she’d react when she heard who was helping me.
Five days had passed since Dr Esso made his comment about light being the key to time travel. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and was more convinced than ever that, when he’d mentioned going back in time to change things, he’d been talking about Mum.
I didn’t have proof of anything yet, though. In fact, the only solid thing for me to touch was the dirty napkin in my coat pocket, which I’d scribbled on with equations on both sides. Once I’d started my most recent extra-credit assignment, I hadn’t been able to get it off my mind. It was weird how much time I’d spent on it; it was weird that it mattered to me. I’d gone from refusing to see the point of Dr Esso’s questions to seeing the answers rise off the page. I knew what Olivia would say if I told her about my new obsession with homework: Dr Esso was selling me on a science-based cult and I should run a mile. I should have been telling myself the same thing.
As she shared the gritty details of her latest date, I pushed the napkin further into my coat. No need to go into that tonight.
‘I had on the Alonuko corset you got me – the one with the aerographene mesh. And you know how excited I get on my birthdays.’ She bumped my arm. ‘My expectations were probably a bit too high, though.’
I braced myself in my seat, knowing the story would turn any second.
‘In fact,’ Olivia continued, ‘I stepped out the house, thinking, Nothing can spoil this day.’
‘Wait, before you go on,’ I interrupted. ‘Red flags? You gotta start with the red flags, sis. You know the rules.’
‘Nah, you’re gonna laugh.’
‘I won’t.’ It was a lie, but that was part of our routine.
‘His name –’ She paused, squeezing her face like it hurt all over. ‘His name was Ricky Christmas.’
Whatever cool I’d held up to that point shattered to bits and I turned away so she couldn’t see how hard I was cracking up. Hearing his surname also reminded me of the plastic tree we were meant to set up in the living room that weekend.
‘I know.’ To soothe herself, she patted the gelled ridges of her finger-waves. ‘So, anyway, Ricky Christmas picks me up from our flat. And literally, within thirty seconds of leaving, he’s already looking for parking. Now, we both know there ain’t no nice restaurants between our yard and Queens Road station. But, I’m trying to be open-minded, telling myself, Stop being so judgy; give the boy a chance.’ It wasn’t lost on me that the voice she used to mimic her nagging conscience was the same one she used when she was mimicking me.
‘So, then, Christmas leads me into the train station. The train station, Rhia. And we walk right past the ticket barriers, the shops, all dat, till we reach a section I ain’t ever even seen before.’
‘Not gonna lie,’ I said, just to pinch her back. ‘This guy’s getting ten out of ten for originality in my book so far.’
She ignored my comment. ‘Then, we walk into this dark abandoned-looking restaurant – basically a graveyard that smells of pork. And no one else is there – it’s literally just us two – and my G has the nerve to say to the waiter – wait for it –’ she paused to gather her composure – ‘he says to the waiter, “Table for two, under Sexy Santa,” then winks at me.’
I was sliding off my seat again from laughing too hard.
‘Oh, you reckon that’s funny?’ Olivia said, giggling. ‘Wait for the part when lover boy showed me the pine-tree tattoo on his bicep.’
My phone rang in my pocket as she was talking. I snatched it up. It’s him.
He’d promised me he could pull everything ever documented on Dr Esso – social media, police reports, hospital and council records, taxes – and all for free. Which meant I’d have my answers. The answers. Who I am. Where I’m from. Where I’m going. Answers that most kids come built with and don’t even know it.
‘Is that –’ Olivia snatched my phone as I was lifting it to answer.
‘Give it back!’ I reached across, very ready to wrestle her for it.
She grinned while stretching away from me, the guy next to her not too pleased about having his side of the armrest invaded. ‘Not until you tell me what on earth you’re chatting to him about at 8 p.m.’
The ‘him’ she was referring to was my ex-boyfriend Linford. His mum worked high up at CantorCorp, which housed all the government’s civilian data and, according to him, there was a way to get in.
‘Tell me why he’s calling. Or I’m gonna pick up and tell him you hate Italian mopeds.’
It wasn’t till after I’d broken up with Linford that I found out how much he irritated Olivia. You could see her holding back vomit each time he mentioned that 16,000-quid Vespa he rode into school every day. Not that it ever stopped him. But most of Olivia’s dislike came from seeing how flaky and shifty he’d been in our three-month relationship last year. She kept telling me I deserved much better.
As my phone kept ringing, I imagined Linford’s frustration on the other end, which only amplified mine. What if he got cold feet mid-ring and changed his mind? He’d only agreed to help because we’d shared saliva in the past and agreed to ‘stay friends’ after. But what I had asked him to do was technically illegal. He’d have been smart to bail, especially if he thought I was ignoring his call.
Coming clean to Olivia ASAP was the only way to rescue the situation.
‘Linford agreed to do the data pull for me,’ I shouted, still trying to retrieve my phone. ‘I’m going to his house tomorrow to get it. It’s nothing.’
‘And I –’ she wrapped my phone behind her back, pushing it even further out of reach – ‘am coming with you.’
I stopped and sat back to get a look at her. I’d expected a scorching, a long lecture where she scolded me for coming up with the idea, then for g
oing through with it and finally for keeping her in the dark.
‘Sisters before misters, innit.’ She pressed the phone to her ear.
Her final comment made me a tad less nervous, but I was still hanging on to my seat.
‘Hey, it’s Olivia,’ she grumbled into the phone. ‘Yeah, but she’s not here right now.’
I bit my nail down to the pink waiting for his response, praying she wouldn’t scare him off.
‘Tomorrow 8 p.m. it is.’ She hung up and handed me back my mobile.
‘Thank you.’ I sighed. I couldn’t remember any other time I’d meant it so much.
‘Instead of thanking me, why don’t you tell me what else is going on here?’
Maybe the sight of me chewing off my fingers made her ask. Or maybe it was just a guess. Either way, she was too smart for me to play dumb and I’d been sitting on these secrets for the best part of a week.
Plus, deep-down, I was dying to tell her. I wanted her to accept me obsessing over my physics homework the same way she’d got behind my Linford plan. Her scowl sank deeper the longer I kept her waiting. So I reached into my jacket pocket for the final secret.
‘Wow,’ Olivia said after grabbing the napkin.fn1 She spent a minute trying to make sense of it. ‘I’m gonna need you to explain why the hell you’ve got a Cantor’s napkin with equations written all over it. And, more importantly, why you’re being so weird and secretive about it.’
‘I’m not being weird and secretive,’ I answered, hoping that the less bothered I sounded, the less she’d bother me. ‘It’s just some homework I was doing before you got here since I had no paper on me. It’s to do with this weird time-travel thing called time dilation.’
‘D’you actually understand this stuff?’ she said, handing the napkin back.
‘Yeah.’ I paused to think on it further. ‘Well … maybe like eighty per cent.’
‘Explain it to me, then.’
I twisted to get a fresh look at her, make sure she wasn’t ill.
‘What, you think I haven’t noticed the hours you’re putting in on your homework? Look, I get it – you don’t want your GCSEs to be the reason you don’t get your Dons contract.’
Phew. She still believed this was about football, which was a relief since my real reason for being so nerdy would have been a much tougher sell.
‘Also, don’t sleep on me,’ she added, probably spotting the doubt still on my face. ‘Just cos I’m buff and sociable doesn’t mean I’m not up for a bit of time-travel maths.’
‘You used that line on Christmas, didn’t you?’ I passed off casually. ‘It’s a lot classier than your hand-shandy joke, to be fair.’
‘Whatever,’ she responded. ‘All right. Time travel. Maths. Explain. Now.’
‘You asked for it.’ I took a fresh napkin from Olivia, pausing for just a few seconds to think through my explanation. Then I clicked my gel pen. ‘Imagine the ink in here is a source of light. So any line I draw on this napkin represents the path a beam of light can take.’
I asked her to pull up the stopwatch on her phone. ‘I want you to press “start” on that once I start drawing. Then press “stop” when I reach the top. Cool?’
After I’d finished drawing, she read out the time stamp. ‘Around four seconds.’
‘Nice one. Now I’m gonna draw a second line, starting from the same place as before, but this time I’m making the light travel vertically up, rather than diagonally like the last one.’
‘Two seconds,’ she said the second time, watching me scribble her numbers on the napkin.
‘As you can see, it took me twice as long to draw the diagonal light beam as it did the vertical one. Why?’
‘Cos it’s twice as long, innit?’ She looked unimpressed so far. ‘The light had twice as far to go.’
‘Yes! And because I kept my writing speed – i.e. the speed of light – the same both times.’
She opened her mouth to speak, but, before she could get any cheek out, I reminded her, ‘You’re the one who asked me to explain this to you. Gonna let me land or not?’
‘Chill, fam – I was actually just thinking,’ she replied, leaning forward again. ‘Jesus.’
‘This final bit will only take a minute anyway.’ I stole the last remaining napkin from her lap. ‘All right, bom. Now I need you to imagine Tony driving his old Tesla out at night with Poppy in the passenger seat.’
‘So all I have to do is imagine a world where Tony has his licence back,’ she said, giggling. ‘And hasn’t chugged half a bottle of Famous Grouse before getting into a car.’
It crossed my mind that maybe Tony liked a drink because he was into time travel as well. A half bottle of spirit let Tony take all of today’s problems and dump them into tomorrow. And, with just a few more swigs, he could steal all of tomorrow’s energy and squander it today.
Even if you never quite knew when he was, at least he was there. He and Poppy were the only ones who gave enough of a shit about kids like Olivia and me to put us up. Tony was also the one who’d pulled strings with Gibbsy – his old mate from when they were at secondary school together in Devon – and got me my trial at Dons. So we had Tony to thank for the heated seats we were sitting on and, assuming I kept impressing the head coach, for my soon-to-be-full-time contract.
‘Anywaysss,’ I hissed, trying to remember where she’d interrupted. ‘So, yeah – Tony’s speeding along. Poppy’s in the passenger seat, and, by mistake, triggers the torch on her phone, making its bright white light shoot straight up into her eye. Now imagine you –’ I lifted my pen at her – ‘are standing on the pavement when the Tesla goes by. Since the car is speeding past you from left to right at the same time that the light from Poppy’s torch is shooting vertically up into her eye inside the car, you basically see the light beam taking an overall diagonal path. Sort of like this.’
‘Now, if you’re looking at the same event from Tony’s perspective – i.e. watching this scene play out from inside the whip – the picture’s quite different. Since everything inside the car is moving at the same speed as the car itself, the phone in Poppy’s lap looks stationary to Tony. To him, the phone isn’t moving backwards or forwards – it’s resting in the same spot in Poppy’s lap next to him the whole time. So, when Tony turns to the side, he just sees the light beam shoot straight up into his wife’s eyes – he sees it travel vertically.’ I sketched the final bit of the diagram for her.
‘You see where this is going?’
She stayed quiet. The guy next to her shook his head for the umpteenth time, probably wondering why our analysis couldn’t wait till after the match.
‘Lemme summarize. You and Tony both saw the exact same event: a light beam going from Poppy’s phone into her eyes. But the path you watched the light take was diagonal – and therefore twice as long as the vertical path that Tony saw from his seat.’
I overlaid the second napkin on the first so she might catch the resemblance. ‘So, if Tony claimed that the light took two seconds to get to her eyes, then you would say it took –’
She put her hand up, so she could answer. ‘I would say it took four seconds. Twice the time.’
‘Yes, Olivia!’ I held out my right fist, but she was too busy napkin-gazing to notice.
‘So, the time it takes the light beam to go from the phone to her eyes is different, depending on who you ask …’ A corner kick later and she still looked spooked by her own answer. ‘Shiiiit.’
‘I know,’ I replied, glad to see she was having the same reaction I’d had when I’d realized it.
‘But who’s right?’ She was still absorbed in the diagram. ‘Did the light beam take two seconds to reach Poppy’s eyes? Or four seconds?’
‘That’s the manic bit: you’re both right!’ I grabbed her shoulders, turning her to face me. ‘We grow up assuming there’s some invisible silent grandfather clock out there that sets the time that the universe marches to.’ I could feel my pulse rising, but I forced most of my excitement into hi
ding. ‘But that’s all completely wrong. We actually all have our own clocks: some ticking at one pace over here, others ticking slower over there. And turns out, the faster you move, the slower your clock ticks compared to everyone else’s.’ I pointed back to the napkin. ‘So, because Tony was in a speeding car, he saw the same event take half as much time as you did.’ I paused to let the next line really bang. ‘Fewer seconds passed in that car, which means time literally went slower for him and Poppy.
‘When time stretches out like that,’ I continued, ‘it’s called time dilation. It happens all the time in real life, and the effect is just too tiny for us to notice. But, if you got near the speed of light, you’d notice it. You’d see time slow down to a fucking trickle.’
‘You’ve changed, Rhia,’ she said, only half joking. From the look on her face, she’d gone from curious to suspicious, and I’d missed the turning point.
‘Nah,’ I replied, spinning to the pitch before she smelled the rest of my anxiety. ‘Just showing you cah you asked.’
She’d taken the Linford thing quite well, and had breezed through the physics, and that would be enough. Asking her to believe the napkin in my lap had any connection whatsoever with my mum felt like a step too far. I was still working up the courage to say it to myself out loud. I knew how ridiculous it sounded. And I knew any possibility could die if you let it out too early.
I could feel her staring at me, analysing me, judging me. But I kept my nerve. ‘These assignments have also been really helpful in getting Dr Esso’s trust.’
And she kept hers. ‘Fair enough.’ After a long pause, she added, ‘But when he starts trying to lure you into a cult, just remember I warned you.’
The ref blew the final whistle. Three-nil. A happy Dons crowd sent applause round the stands, while Olivia and I sprang to our feet to get to the aisle.
