Chapter Twenty-Three
I get home just after midnight, ready to flop into bed and fall asleep.
But as I’m standing in front of the mirror, cleaning my teeth and gurning at myself like a fool, I’m hit by a wave of …
it’s tricky to describe. I don’t know if it’s sadness exactly, or exhaustion, or maybe even just good old-fashioned disappointment.
But whatever it is I realize that I desperately want to wake up tomorrow morning and be here, in this world, ready to put on a brave face and spend the day with Cesca before we go to the wedding the day after and I can stand with my parents and watch my baby sister give her vows and I can shed a few tears at the enormity of the occasion.
I want to feel part of something, part of my family. I want to feel like I belong.
I FaceTime Tyler. He’s just got home; I can see he’s not even had time to take his coat off before he answered. ‘You okay?’ he asks, the concern evident in his voice.
‘Can I stop it?’
‘The wedding?’ He sounds totally horrified.
‘No! Of course not the wedding. You were right, earlier I mean, with what you said about this Helen and this Cesca having something good. I mean, can I stop skipping?’
‘Oh.’ He makes this adorable face of overacted relief and I’m forced to bite my lip to stop myself giggling like an infatuated teenager. But then he turns serious. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you think it’s possible?’
‘Well …’ He draws out the word as he thinks.
‘I don’t mean forever, just … maybe until after the wedding, you know. I’d like to be there.’
‘You always skip while you’re asleep, right?’
I make an ahum noise that passes for affirmation.
‘So … what if you don’t go to sleep?’
It’s such a simple and quite frankly inelegant solution from one of the greatest scientific minds in the UK that for a moment I’m shocked. But maybe … ‘You think that would work?’
‘It’s worth a try?’
I nod.
‘I’m coming over there to help,’ he announces, putting his phone down on the kitchen counter so all I can see is his ceiling and the very top of his head.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Doing my coat back up. I’ll be with you in fifteen minutes. Get some coffee brewing.’
And then he cuts the call, leaving me standing in the hallway with my mouth open.
It takes me a full minute before I galvanize into action and realize that he is coming here.
Right now. And I’m wearing novelty PJs, I already took off my make-up, and there are toast crumbs all over the kitchen from where I made myself a midnight snack.
I’m just flicking the last few crumbs from the kitchen counter when the doorbell rings. He’s standing on my doorstep with the biggest bar of chocolate I’ve ever seen in my life and a smile I can’t quite decipher.
‘That is a big—’
‘Yep,’ he interrupts, with a twinkle in his eye.
‘That’s what all the girls say. I bought a huge Galaxy too.
’ He raises both eyebrows at me and motions to the chocolate.
A lot of guys would make that line sound crude and a little gross.
But Tyler makes it sound endearing, almost like he’s trying on the big kids’ jokes for fun without fully understanding the context.
I grab the Galaxy, and motion him inside.
‘I figured the sugar would help us to stay awake.’
‘Not a bad plan. And I’ve made coffee.’
‘I assume you have a chess board.’
Of course I have a chess board; I was Devon under-twelves champion.
I beat him. He humphs.
I beat him a second time. ‘I guess I’d better start actually trying,’ he says and begins to set up to play another game.
‘Well, it would be nice to actually feel like I have an opponent.’
‘Ooh. Trash talk. I like it.’
There’s a moment in the middle of a game where I falter and he beats me.
‘Did you just let me win?’ he asks.
‘No. I …’ I don’t know if I should put the thought I’ve just had into words.
‘Spill,’ he demands, as if he can see the torment in my mind.
‘It’s just …’ I pause and take a breath. ‘Is it fair?’
‘Chess? No. You’re beating my ass.’
‘I mean … Trying to stay. To be there for the wedding. What about this world’s Bethany?’ I say it quietly.
‘Oh.’ He sits back. ‘Well.’ His face twists as he thinks. ‘I don’t know,’ he says eventually. ‘We have no idea how any of this works, or what is happening. When you skip, time could reset here and we do it all over again anyway.’
I stare at him. ‘Are you serious?’
He shrugs. ‘Or this world could cease to exist at all. Or this world’s Bethany could be having a glorious time in another world. Or she could still be here.’
I blanch at that one. The thought that this world’s Bethany is also in this body feels too weird to contemplate. If she is, then where is she? How does she feel? Is she trapped in the—
‘Stop,’ Tyler says, interrupting my train of thought.
‘Sorry,’ I say quietly.
‘We’re scientists. We have to deal with what we know. What we can see in front of us. Okay?’
I nod.
‘And what we know is that you’re here, in this world, right now.
And you want to stay to watch your sister get married.
And so that is what we’re going to do.’ He sounds so serious, so practical and level-headed, that I can’t help but nod again.
He makes me feel safe. He makes me feel like this is where I need to be.
As the sun begins to paint the horizon in a blaze of orange and pink, we go for a walk, the air cool and crisp. I don’t feel tired, but I catch Tyler’s surreptitious yawn.
I elbow him in the ribs.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ he says and then rubs his side. ‘That hurt. You don’t know your own strength, Raven.’
The Tyler from my world used to call me by my surname and it always felt like a dig. But here, coming from this Tyler, it feels oddly personal, like a nickname between friends.
Then he laces his fingers with mine and begins to skip down the street, dragging me behind him.
‘What are you doing?’ I try to pull him backwards to stop the skipping, but he carries on despite my protestations.
‘Taking you for breakfast to celebrate. It worked!’
He’s right. It did work. I’m still here, in this world with this Tyler. And tomorrow my sister is getting married. I just have to stay awake for long enough to be there. I mean, how hard can it possibly be to stay awake?
We used to pull all-nighters all the time when we were students.
And then there was that first year I lived in London and stayed on Cesca’s sofa.
There were more than a few weekends when I worked through the night in a local club on the Friday and then stayed up for a house party at Cesca’s flat, drinking and dancing until the sun rose on Sunday morning. Easy-peasy. I can do this.
Except I’m not twenty-one any more. I only close my eyes for a second while Tyler orders our waffles.
I wake up with a start, heart hammering in my chest.
I’m in the flat.
The alarm is blaring on the bedside cabinet.
I’m wearing shorts and a vest, my hair twisted into one of those silk heatless curler thingies you see all over Instagram in my world.
I’ve skipped again.