down, but not much. Iâm compelled to keep going. Thirty feet now. Where the letters should be, thereâs nothing but space. And this time I donât mean emptiness, nothing, a negative integer, the square root of minus-fucking-seventeen. I mean, literally: outer space . Thereâs a hole in the sky where the sky should be.
Twenty feet now. Iâm half a mile from the sea, 52.96 degrees north, and a billion light-years away from Earth. This isnât a telescope. Itâs the ficken Hubble.
And at the edges of the hole, where the sky turns back to blue, the same untuned-television fuzz that Iâve seen before, twice now. What did Ms. Adewunmi say, about vortexes? That the image would be distorted? This is crystal.
Iâm sick with terror, but I canât make my feet stop pedaling. Because, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. Greyâs bedroom. Greyâs diaries. Greyâs bookshop. Whatever this isâand thereâs definitely a this , yesterday I saw last summer, and today thereâs a hole filled with the Milky Way!âit has to do with Grey. And Greyâs dead. Which means it has to do with me â¦
At ten feet away, instinct jerks my handlebars, aiming for the footpath to the sea. I lean my body into the turn, one Iâve taken a million times before, and faster. But this time, for whatever reason, Iâm in trouble.
I hit the turn too hard, itâs more of a swerve, and adrenaline floods me. This is going to be bad. Thereâs a shot of fear as I try to correct my balance, jerking to the right. But then my front tire veers from a rock to a pothole, and Iâm downâand it hurtsâbut I donât stop moving, even when I hit the path. My elbow meets the ground first, and a throb shoots up my arm. Thereâs fire in my thigh as I slide along for a few feet, leaving my skin behind. I crumple to a halt when I land in the hedgeâbut the bike keeps sliding, my foot trapped in the pedal. It drags my leg round, twisting my ankle, before discarding me and spinning away with a crash. Leaving me alone.
Â
Tuesday 6 July (Later)
[Minus three hundred and eight]
I lie in the hedge for an eternity, looking up. All I can see is the skyâthe real sky, the one thatâs supposed to be there. Itâs huge and cloudless, bright and blue, and very, very far away.
A century or so later, I check my watchâsmashed, the LCD digits scatteredâand my phoneâdead, however hard I mash the buttons. But even so, I know I havenât lost any time at all. I felt every second. Because
Jesus
Fuck
Ow
it hurts.
My heart hurts. I want Jason. I want the mami Iâve never had. I want Grey. I want .
âHello?â I say eventually, experimentally, my voice wavering. âHello?â
And I wait and wait, but nobody comes to find me. Iâve been making myself smaller and smaller for a year, and now Iâm barely here at all.
Finally, eventually, I stand up, testing my ankle. Itâs not broken, I donât thinkâIâd have heard it snap, like when Thomas dared me to jump off the pier and I spent three months in a cast that he drew swears all over. But shit , it kills. I stumble on it a few times till Iâm able to lean against the hedge and look around.
On the other side of the road, the bookshop sign flashes pink neon. Normal as pie. My bike is at an angle in the ditch, taking a bubble bath in the white wildflowers. I hobble over and see itâs mostly unharmed: the front wheel is twisted and the chain has come off, but itâs all stuff I can bash back in place. I haul it out of the ditch and lean on it while I hop, wincing, to the bookshop.
After avoiding it forever, itâs the only place I want to be.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
The door is locked, Papa at the airport picking up Thomas. It takes a couple of tries of fumbling with the key. Inside itâs dark and quiet, the smell hitting me in a whooshâpaper, old wood,