by Femi Fadugba
As we snaked through the masses and towards the stadium exit, she turned to me. ‘One last question, sis.’
I tensed up, hoping she wouldn’t notice the new bead of sweat dancing down my forehead.
‘That time-slowing thing … time dilation, I think you called it.’
I nodded, letting out a humungous sigh inside now the personal interrogation was done. This kind of question, I could handle.
‘Well, you mentioned that time dilation is only noticeable when you’re almost at the speed of light. What happens when you actually hit the speed of light?’ she asked. ‘What happens to time then?’
The only thing that travelled at the speed of light was light itself, and, according to my textbook, it took eight minutes to get from the sun to earth. But, if time shortened at higher speeds, how long did that journey take from light’s perspective?
‘I guess …’ The first answer that came to me felt too odd, too extreme. Nah. Can’t be.
But the harder I fought, the brighter the truth shined through: to light, that ninety-million-mile journey across space happened in a single moment. To light, no seconds ever passed at all.
‘I guess it stops, innit,’ I said to Olivia, scared of the words escaping my mouth. ‘I guess time stops.’
CHAPTER 11
Esso · Now
Always go for the last or second-to-last shitter. That rule had served me well for as long as I could remember. Unfortunately both bogs on the ground floor at Penny Hill were looking overly sloppy. Even if I went to the hassle of wiping the seats, there was still a fifty-fifty chance that, once I sat down, I’d look up and see the sky filled with flying balls of wet toilet paper, each one a soggy arrow aimed at my face. And, by the time I pulled up my trousers and opened the door to see who’d thrown them … crickets. The seniors would already be out the door.
Because of the slight delay caused by getting hit by a Range Rover, I’d arrived twenty minutes late to school. But thankfully Purdy, seeing me looking a bit dazed and roughed up, had let me off. I still had two hours till lunch, though, so I’d had to negotiate a leak break with my geography teacher, which I now planned to spend in a cubicle clearing my head. Thinking about that poor dog getting peeled off the road after I’d left had cast a long, furry shadow over my morning. Then there was that vision of D and Bloodshed cornering me, and worrying that might now come true as well. Although the finer details of the vision had already started fading, it wouldn’t stop playing in my mind: I could still feel them creeping towards me, still hear the hailstones crashing down around all three of us with Peckham Library in the distance.
Not for the first time that morning, I felt like I was losing it. Maybe me and Dad had a lot in common, after all. It was a throwaway thought, but made me pause. That place I’d dreamt up after the crash did have stuff in common with what he’d scribbled in his notebook. The Upper World, I thought he’d called it. Hadn’t he also written some shit about seeing time differently there? I was pretty sure he’d even used the words ‘hidden energy’ on one line, which reminded me of that searing heat from nowhere that I’d felt throughout the dream. What if the impact from the crash had somehow jolted me out of that ‘cave’ he’d described on the first page?
I patted the sore side of my head. My brain clearly had me imagining stuff, seeing my dad’s words where they didn’t belong.
But then again, a jumbled mind didn’t explain the whole ‘Preston! No!’ thing. It couldn’t. Once that premonition had come true, everything else had no choice but be more real as well.
Maybe, I thought, smiling while I inspected the next cubicle, Dad wasn’t that mad after all. Maybe he’d known way back when that something like this might happen and had cared enough to tell me.
Even if I was wrong, it still made sense to be shit-scared of D and Bloodshed. In fact, on the bus ride over, I’d sent a ‘just in case this shit is real’ text to Spark, and had breathed a sigh of relief when he’d responded a few seconds later:
Brixton yutes in Narm tonite? Say nuttin
‘Say nuttin.’ Two teeny words. But, look close enough, and you’d find a multiverse of hatred in the short gap between them. It was funny – whenever I told someone Spark was my guy, they’d respond with something like: ‘You don’t mean Spark as in … the gangster Spark …?’ And after a careful pause: ‘Do you?’ I remember one night at his house, he confessed to me that his sickle cell meant he spent about six out of twenty-four hours each day in excruciating pain. I wondered if that was part of what made him so ruthless – he was so used to being hurt it was nothing to make someone else feel the same. The fact I’d sent another message to Spark clarifying that my first text was ‘not worth telling anyone about’ and ‘just a rumour’ would have no effect – before the sun went down, he’d have a circle of shooters waiting for the word.
I ended up going for the urinal furthest from the door – more out of loyalty than logic. ‘Danny B ♡ batty crease’ was scribbled on the wall, and a few centimetres to the right, in the same neat handwriting and ink, was a phone number.
I’d always wondered if one of Danny B’s mates had written it to take the mick. Or if Danny had written it himself.
Corey Marciel walked in, smiling into his phone. My guy was clipping six foot four at fifteen. Not only was he the most chased-after boy in school, but he was also arguably the most talented midfielder in South London. Girls turned into stuttering messes when they were around him. Even guys got kinda neeky and beg-friendly when he was about. Line-up fresh, he bopped to the urinal next to me, pretended I wasn’t there, then we both unzipped and let our streams loose.
‘Whuuuuhaaaaaa–’ I was stuck between the words what!, oooh! and ahhh! and that was how it all came out.
Instead of its usual solid lemon colour, my urine was filled with red streaks.
In my confusion, I lost control of my line, and it scraped the edge of the urinal before I managed to swing it back to centre. Thankfully none of it splashed on Corey. He must have been wondering what the hell was going on, because his eye wandered down to where I was aiming and I watched him snap upright like he’d been Tasered.
‘I –’
That lonely, pathetic word was all I managed. But what words could I add to make the situation any less embarrassing, without also making it worse? ‘I promise, Corey, the next time you look over at my urinal, we’ll both be better prepared for it’? Or maybe I could maturely acknowledge the situation: ‘I know exactly how this looks, Corey. But, trust me, I’m just as concerned by the colour of my piss as you are.’
I’d checked my whole body after I got hit by the Range and there hadn’t been any blood anywhere. Plus, I wasn’t in any serious pain, definitely not near my crotch. Was this what internal bleeding looked like? Maybe it was my lungs or my liver or something? Fam, I thought. I really need to pay more attention in biology.
While I was thinking things through, Corey was staring forward like his life depended on it. What I wanted more than anything in that moment was to cut my piss short, zip-up and duck out. But I couldn’t. I’d never been able to. I still remembered when I was six or seven and Mum’s brother-in-law came to stay. At some point, he got sick of me watering the toilet seat like a houseplant and, knowing my old man wasn’t alive to guide me, he decided to intervene. He’d stand behind me, holding my shoulders, telling me in his gentlest voice that peeing was like flying an aeroplane: ‘The hardest part is taking off and landing; the rest of it is smooth sailing, see?’ Unfortunately, my uncle went back to Bénin before I got the lesson on how to stop a plane mid-flight.
I tapped my right foot a couple times, Corey did the same, but we both stopped once it got obvious we were mimicking each other out of nervousness.
I swayed to the left at the exact same time he swayed to the right, and our elbows touched. We sprang away in opposite directions, desperate to stretch out the space between us.
He turned away and stared at the front door – it was like he was trying to use his
mind to pry it open or will someone else into walking in. But no one came, and he stared back at the wall in front of him in defeat. It was probably the longest piss of both of our lives. I remembered more things happening in that one minute next to Corey than I could recall happening in most weeks.
He stopped his flow abruptly and zipped up. His uncle must have stuck around. Then, without even glancing at the sink or soap dispenser to his side, he jogged out the door.
Thankfully, by the end of my run, my urine was mostly back to yellow. My shoulders dropped and, after flushing my panic down the drain, I yanked down the handle a couple more times just to be sure the evidence was destroyed.
Then I washed my hands.
When I stepped out into the hallway, I noticed the CAUTION: WET FLOOR sign had been taken away, despite there being a brand-new puddle below the cracked ceiling tile. Interesting, I thought. But not that interesting. Seconds later, my phone was in my hand – a clinic visit would have to wait till the weekend, but I had to know ASAP what was good with my insides. Time for an incognito search: What causes blood in urine?
‘C’mon, hurry up,’ I mumbled as the page loaded.
‘Hey, Esso.’ The voice behind me was as luxurious as mink on silk.
Nadia, I realized. Shit!
As the crush of my life made her way round to my front, I tried to tap the ‘X’ button on the search window. But my normally delicate fingers had turned into blocks of cheese, prodding the whole corner of the screen while hitting nothing useful. I gave up and tried to swing the phone round to my back pocket, but it dropped instead, and we both watched it bounce then land next to her heel.
Face up.
I jumped on top of it, smothering it like it was a grenade about to pepper her in shrapnel.
‘What on earth –’ She looked almost nauseous as she stared down at me in confusion. ‘What exactly are you trying to hide?’
‘Uhhh … nothing,’ I replied. But, while getting back to my feet, I realized there was a get-out-of-jail-free card hidden in her question. ‘But it had boobs in it, and it’s weird to be looking at boobs on your phone at 11 a.m. in the school hallway.’
‘Ummmm.’ She stretched out her face in surprise, and after a few seconds … ‘Fair enough, I guess.’
I double-checked my hip was still in its socket and, once my phone was safely pocketed, even managed a fake smile.
‘Anyway, I’m late for class, E.’ She chuckled. ‘Maybe you can reply to my text from this morning after you’re done browsing?’ She raised one cheeky eyebrow.
I knew I should have just texted her back earlier, I thought, kicking myself. Three years we’d known each other. Three years she’d sauntered through my maths classes and weirdest fantasies. Three years! And just one wrong move could crumble those well-laid foundations.
My mouth creaked open, ready to shower her with sorrys, to make up some excuse about my texts not coming through all day or not having had a chance to check my messages all morning. But I’d been down that path before – a cold, winding road that wouldn’t take me anywhere better than the lonely spot I was already standing in.
Nadia, meanwhile, tired of getting nothing but rubbish from me, announced, ‘Later, E,’ before dusting off. The top set for history had their class at the far end of the corridor, so she had a distance to cover. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t staring at her the whole time she jogged away. How on earth, I wondered, does she look that good even in school clothes?
As I was mulling it over, the strangest pair of coincidences collided: a strong whoof of Dettol from beneath me; then a roar of laughter from room 4A – the exact two sensations I’d had after stepping into that first vision in the dreamworld.
Déjà vu, I thought.
Watching Nadia pick up pace, I realized she’d probably not seen the puddle, nor the warning sign they’d taken away minutes earlier. And just as I feared – just as I’d basically foreseen – her foot scraped the edge of the spill, spinning her whole body backwards with her skull tracing a straight line to the unforgiving floor.
And I was there to catch her.
My left arm cradled the top of her back, the other arm a bit lower.
She was panting, dazed. She’d probably just watched her whole life flash before her eyes, then blinked and saw me.
After taking a few seconds to catch her breath, she smirked. ‘I see you got a nice handful there, E.’ Each syllable came out of her mouth right on cue.
That. Clarted. Dream. Was. Real. It had predicted the future not once, but twice with perfect precision. Had I not been supporting Nadia’s weight I’d have probably fainted right there.
She smiled up at me, and I stared back into her piercing eyes. Not only had I dreamt this exact moment after the car crash, I’d watched it in basically every romcom ever made. This is the moment the girl falls for the guy, the moment he shoots his shot. Even if I had dreamworld problems to figure out, I also had real-world opportunities to nab.
But my sore leg was seconds away from buckling under the load. I could just about reach her lips with mine, but I’d drop right after. Plus, the BO sneaking out my armpit crevice smelled like a gremlin was taking a dump in there. It had hints of an old bag of spinach, and, the worst part was, the more I smelled it, the more I sweated – a funky, rotten cycle. I’d hoped to keep my distance from any and all girl-kind till the day was done, but here I was.
‘E …’ she said, looking a little less comfortable now. ‘Help me up, please?’
‘Yeah, I got you,’ I replied, then spent everything I had getting us upright again. If only I’d started going gym like Kato, I thought in regret, we’d be lipsing right now.
‘Hey,’ she said, calling me back to my senses, ‘I reckon it’s safe for you to let go of my bum cheek now as well.’
‘Oh, my bad.’ I threw my guilty hand behind my back. ‘Was just holding it there for your safety, innit.’
Her full-toothed smile somewhat dampened the blow. I fancied the pants off her; that much I’d always known. But now she definitely knew as well. Worse, she knew that I knew she knew.
We hugged, and she thanked me more times than I could count. All the while I pretended there’d been nothing weird about me sprinting to catch her three seconds before she’d even fallen. We stared at the puddle by our side, watching as the next drop fell from the ceiling.
‘I really didn’t see that coming,’ she said.
‘Nope,’ I agreed. ‘I guess I didn’t either.’
For a moment, I almost believed my own words. After guessing she might slip, I’d decided to save her. I’d had every intention of staring into her gorgeous eyes. I had chosen those things. But the real question was, when had I chosen? Now? Or back when I was in that dreamworld? The more I thought about the question, the less sense it made. And the less certain I got about how things with D and Bloodshed might end … and what say I had in it all.
A final thought caught me on my way back to classroom 4C, bringing an ironic smile to my face: I’d figured out how to gaze across time, and yet, there I was, heading into bottom set for history. Mad ting.
CHAPTER 12
Rhia · 15 Years Later
Everything in Linford’s house was just so white. The spiral stairs, the walls and high ceilings, the tiles in the underground flippin pool. Even Linford, strolling about barefoot in matching ivory jeans. I’d had no clue houses like this even existed in London, let alone half a mile from ours. He’d never invited me over when we dated, and now I wondered if this was why.
The area he lived in was technically East Dulwich but had earned the nickname ‘Peckerly Hills’ since it was the street of choice for Western Europe’s bougiest black professionals. His parents weren’t home, and his older brother stayed in the basement, which left him, me and Olivia alone upstairs waiting for the download to finish. Most of the files were q-formatted, which meant they were taking ages to unzip. But buried somewhere deep in that trove of data was Mum. I just knew it.
‘You
know all that time-dilation stuff you were explaining last night?’ Olivia said, while the three of us sat in front of the massive data portal in Linford’s mum’s study. ‘I think it’s happening to me right now. Like, a second ago, I literally thought we’d been staring at this thing for two hours.’
‘Funnily enough, it’s been exactly two hours,’ Linford replied, not even trying to hide his laughter.
And just when I’d thought Olivia was sobering up. Fucking Bakewell tart …
On our way in, we’d walked through Linford’s kitchen and stumbled across a half-eaten Bakewell tart on the counter. Unfortunately, it wasn’t till after Olivia had slyly stuffed a whole slice into her face that Linford shared how his older brother had mixed medical-grade neon into the flour, making it so strong that even a dozen of his stoner-banker mates hadn’t been able to finish it. According to the internet, neon was pretty harmless – its main trick being that it temporarily switched off the part of the brain that distinguished genius thoughts from shit ones.
The night was already on back to front. Olivia was meant to be helping ease the tension between me and Linford, and making sure we escaped with the data sharpish. In the end, it was me and Linford who were babysitting Olivia, and I still didn’t have Dr Esso’s records in my hands. I’d been punching myself all week for keeping secrets from her. But now – as I watched her roll across Linford’s carpet – I felt a tad less guilt.
I turned to Linford with an exhausted stare. ‘Should we be worried?’
‘Nah,’ he said. ‘It’ll wear off by the time you lot get home.
‘So,’ Linford continued, spinning a lollipop round in his mouth. ‘You chatting to anyone at the moment?’
‘Nah,’ I replied. ‘Not for a while. Things have been quite busy with –’
‘I am!’ he cut in.
Next came an in-depth retelling of how he met the new love of his life. I was sighing inside throughout.
