The Square Root of Summer(74)
All the love we’ve lost hits me like an ocean wave.
There are sirens now; Papa must have called the ambulance. And there’s shouting, and there’s pain.
God. Why can’t I remember this?
Is it because there are two of me? And why weren’t there two of me when I went back a week to the kitchen? I made all that stuff up, about the universe hiding you in a tiny cannoli—but perhaps it’s true, and that’s where my memory has been all along.
Or, perhaps, it’s this: when only seven days had passed, I was the same person, unchanged. I couldn’t meet my week-ago self, because of causality. This is different. Me at twelve, and me at seventeen—there’s a chasm of grief between us. I lost myself when Grey died, and there isn’t a single particle left of who I was. I can meet my younger self, because we’re not the same person. I’ll never be that girl again.
Thomas scurries to keep up with Grey’s seven-league strides. I squint, trying to see what he’s holding. As he runs across the garden, his unhurt hand forms a fist. The Canadian coins? There’s chocolate cake round his mouth. And I hope, in his pocket, there’s a recipe. He doesn’t look left or right, or at me in the car: he runs after Grey, after me, into the kitchen. And then we’re gone.
It’s time to go home.
The rain is easing as I climb out of the car and cross the garden. Under the tree, I retrieve the discarded knife from the grass. Water has washed the blood away. I stuff it in my pocket, then climb up into the branches.
Umlaut is waiting for me, next to the open time capsule. The padlock is lying next to it, and all that junk I put in there before—the seaweed, the coins—is gone. Was I really going to woo Thomas back with a pair of old socks?
I settle myself on my usual branch, take a notebook out of my book bag, and I start to write.
The Gottie H. Oppenheimer Principle v 7.0.
A general theory of heartbreak, love,
and the meaning of infinity, or:
the Weltschmerzian Exception
Dear Thomas,
You promised me that whatever I tell you, you’ll believe. Remember? So here it goes.
Time travel is real.
Five years ago, you and I accidentally created a paradoxical time loop. It’s fate.
What’s a paradoxical time loop? Okay, so you bake a cannoli … Kidding! It’s a wormhole that exists because it exists. You know the equation I wrote on your email? My physics teacher called it a joke. It describes a wormhole opening in the present, because at the same time, it’s opening in the past. Impossible, right?
I disagree.
It’s real. And I think its power comes from the negative energy, or dark matter, that naturally exists in the universe.
I think it comes from grief.
I’d already lost my mum. There was already grief in my world. The circumstances for a Weltschmerzian Exception (more on this later) were ideal. And you were more than my best friend. We were unquestionable. When you went away, all I had left was a scar, a hole in my memory,* and the thought that you didn’t want to kiss me. I broke your heart? You broke mine first. So we’re Even Stevens. That’s why the loop comes back to this day in particular (I’m writing this from our tree, the day you cut my hand, by the way).
When my grandfather died, I imploded. This second heartbreak completed the loop. Could I have traveled down a wormhole to five years ago if Grey hadn’t died? Would his death have shattered me, if I hadn’t already lost you? To put it another way: would losing you have hurt so much, if I hadn’t lost Grey in the future?
And then there’s this summer. You’re not supposed to be here. You’re here because of an email I sent. But I only sent it, because you’re already here. When you came back to Holksea, time went wackadoodle. I think you triggered something. What did we find, that day in the tree? I still can’t remember, but I’m going to guess: Canadian coins, which you took to Toronto with you. Did you buy a comic with them, and bring it back on the plane this summer? You wrote me a recipe for chocolate cake this July and discovered it five years ago—is that why you want to be a baker?
The universe has been tying itself in knots trying to correct all these paradoxes.
It’s called the Weltschmerzian Exception.
The rules of spacetime don’t apply. When you broke my heart, the world split into a thousand timelines. In your version of the universe, you got an email from me. Want to know why I was so weird this summer? Every time you mentioned it, we jumped to a new timeline. You know how particles get to their destination without traveling there? That was me. Sometimes time froze, like a knot in a thread. Or it bent and distorted completely, letting me step from my bedroom one rainy night into a warm kitchen the week before. Where I kissed you. (There’s a secret I never told you!)
There are years of twists and turns, but the world kept bringing me back to last summer most of all, because that’s where I needed to be. And for that, I wanted to say: thank you.
Indelibly yours,
G. H. Oppenheimer x
PS *That memory is in a tiny cannoli somewhere. Lost in spacetime. I don’t need it anymore.
I write the future date, 24 August, at the top, then I put the letter in the time capsule, close the lid, and padlock it.
The effect is instantaneous. First the apple tree bursts into blossom. Within seconds, the petals are falling like confetti. The sun rises and sets, rises and sets, a heartbeat in the sky. The clouds race by.