The Secret Science of Magic Read online

  Donkey balls. I am so not in the mood for Elsie’s Future Planning tonight.

  I glance at the card again.

  It really is pretty. I guess the sand is supposed to be spilling from one side of the hourglass to the other, but there’s no way to tell in which direction. It’s a perfect palindromic image; mirrored hearts keeping some impossible, immobile time. But …

  My pencil case has been sitting in front of me, zipped shut, for the entire hour and twenty minutes of the class. I have not moved. No-one has approached me.

  Fact: This card is not mine. This card is not Elsie’s. It was not here at the beginning of the lesson. There is no logical way it could have slipped into my pencil case.

  I flip the card over.

  The two of hearts …

  Intriguing.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The paradox of time travel

  I bolt home from the bus through one of those sideways rainstorms that no amount of umbrella calisthenics can thwart. I’ve lived in Melbourne my whole life but the weather still freaks me out; blue-sky mornings that descend into gusty grey by lunch, as if the city is suffering from some chronic mood disorder.

  I stumble through our side door and into the freezing kitchen. My brother is camped at the dining table, skinny frame huddled inside his parka. I can see condensation in his breath; his lips are tinged blue. Toby recently acquired a Finnish exchange student as an Economics study partner, and he’s been filling my big brother’s head with all sorts of nonsense about memory conversion and thermoregulation – nothing with much scientific basis that I can find but regardless, thanks to Viljami, we’re no longer allowed to use the heater during exam time.

  Toby’s books are spread in front of him. His black hair is slipping slightly out of its side part, and a third of his polo shirt has come untucked from his pants. I suspect that he must be extra-stressed. My brother, normally, would never let himself look so rock star.

  He startles as the door slams behind me. For a second I almost think he looks pained, like that time Dad accidentally clipped him in the balls with a mini-golf putter. He quickly rearranges his expression into unreadable blankness.

  ‘Hey,’ he says. He opens his mouth, then closes it again.

  ‘Hey,’ I reply. I drop my wet things on the kitchen floor, swiping dripping hair from my eyes.

  Toby straightens his pens. ‘Good day?’ he mumbles.

  ‘Yes. Fine. It was … school.’ I glance at Dad’s souvenir magnets and photos of the Sri Lankan cricket team on the fridge. They don’t seem to have anything to contribute to this conversation.

  My brother and I have always been useless at sports, but Dad likes to say that if there was a doubles division in the Awkwardness Olympics, Toby and I would be gold medal shoo-ins. Dad also likes to say that comic relief is the best cure for hostility and tension. I am fairly certain no-one else in our house is on board with this theory.

  Toby taps at his laptop. ‘Did Mum text you? She and Dad are at Auntie Helen’s again. Apparently there’s some new crisis with Nisha’s wedding decorations. Mum’s left, like, eight kilos of chicken pasta in the fridge. And money for pizza.’ He sniffs. ‘Just in case I’m incapable of working the microwave, I suppose.’

  Toby tugs an exercise book towards him, and I think this is my cue to leave. Thing is though, I’ve never been able to resist a puzzle. And despite my efforts, the conundrum of my brother remains frustratingly unsolved.

  ‘So you staying in? Whatcha working on?’

  I glance at his upside-down notebook. I’m not sure what ‘competitive equilibrium’ is, but, upside-down, it’s obvious that his last answer is totally wrong.

  Toby does this double-take when he catches me peeking. I’m useless at deciphering body language, and when it comes to my brother’s, I have only the vaguest of theories. Elsie is convinced that one day we’re going to arrive home to catch Toby decked out in leather and Viljami trussed up like a Christmas ham, but – ignoring the disgustingness of imagining my brother engaged in any sort of sex antics – I think the only thing we’re in danger of interrupting is one of Toby and Viljami’s marathon debates about tax law.

  ‘Gonna tell me where I’ve messed up?’ he asks without looking at me.

  The correct answer is on the tip of my tongue, before I run another set of calculations in my head. Factoring in Toby’s tone of voice and the scowl he is aiming at his papers, I conclude that his question is probably rhetorical.

  ‘No,’ I answer. ‘Your last three steps are wrong. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.’

  I congratulate myself on my diplomacy as I grab a pear and drag my feet to my bedroom.

  I love my room. It’s my only real haven, my very own isolation chamber that hasn’t changed much since I was five – a yellowing prime-numbers poster stuck to the wall beside my bed; glow-in-the-dark stars in constellations of the southern sky that Toby helped me stick to my ceiling a lifetime ago; a brilliant picture that reads: Time Travel Club Begins Yesterday. And my favourite find of all – a faded canvas of Van Gogh’s Starry Night with a cobalt TARDIS swirling among the stars, even though both Mum and Elsie claimed it was ‘tacky’.

  My bedroom is mine, unlike the rest of my life, which feels like it was built for a person whose existence is, at best, theoretical.

  I haul my bag onto my desk and collapse into my chair. The movement jolts the mouse, kicking my computer to life. I notice, with a little heart-jump, that there is a solitary email sitting in my inbox.

  With a deep breath I click on the message from the St Petersburg Steklov Institute of Mathematics. The subject line is in choppy Cyrillic: Grigori Perelman.

  I glance at the printout on the pin board above my desk, the most recent photo anyone has managed to capture of Perelman. It’s grainy, and slightly out of focus. Dark eyes under bushy eyebrows peer hopelessly into the distance of a gloomy Russian street. He looks like a lost, bearded yeti.

  Like so many of my kind, the prevailing opinion is that he is both brilliant and batshit crazy.

  I need to talk to this guy.

  Although I’ve been studying it for a whole three months, my Russian is still a bit sketchy. I open my Russian dictionary in a separate window on my screen, switch to the Cyrillic function, then read through the email.

  Dear Ms Reyhart,

  Thank you for your continuing interest. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that we still cannot help.

  Perelman has not worked with us for years. He does not talk to academics. He does not talk to other mathematicians. He most definitely does not talk to journalists. I think we can surmise that he will not talk to high-school girls.

  It is his choice to remain incommunicado, and we must ask that you, like us, respect this decision.

  Best of luck with your future endeavours.

  Balls. I don’t know what else I was expecting.

  I push my chair back with a sigh.

  Music from Toby’s easy listening playlist drifts down the corridor, muffled by the rain on my window. I examine my room and consider my options: do the last bit of calculus homework from the first-year uni course I’ve been allowed to take online, or battle my way through the end of a romance movie Elsie lent me, even though the little I’d watched made my brain hurt. I know that the theoretical underpinnings of time travel are beyond most Hollywood movies, but even so, a time-travelling letterbox at a random lake house is just stupid.

  Stacked on my desk are my last two issues of Pi in the Sky magazine, still in their shrink-wrap. And on top of the pile, my nemesis: the Drama Solo Performance Examination Guide. I pick it up. My chest heaves. I put it down again.

  I change into my old flannel shirt, then stretch out on my bed and take a nap.

  I’m not sure how much time passes. But when my eyes jolt open, the last of the daylight has disappeared, and elephantine feet are thundering down the corridor. Elsie bursts into my bedroom, arms loaded with books. She’s swapped her school uniform for a black coat over her favourite Star
fig Soles T-shirt, and a tiny red skirt that could, conceivably, pass as a belt. She dumps her things on my desk and collapses onto my bed.

  ‘I see Tobias is having another spectacular Friday night,’ she says breathlessly. ‘Rey, does your brother even have working parts down there? Cos the evidence would seem to suggest he’s smooth, like a Ken doll.’

  I shake myself awake. ‘Elsie, can you please stop making me imagine my brother’s stuff? My counsellor already has plenty to work with.’ I glance sideways at the goose pimples on the dark skin of her legs. ‘What are you wearing?’

  Elsie struggles out of her coat. She hands me a box of apple juice. ‘New skirt. You like?’

  ‘Sure. Did you lose the other half?’

  Elsie rolls her eyes. ‘Yeah, thanks Auntie Lakshmi. Should I expect a lecture about cows and free milk next?’ She reaches over and tugs off the school tie that I didn’t realise was still knotted around my neck. ‘Besides, where else can I wear it? It’s either your place or Sunday lunch at my nana’s.’ She yanks her hair out of its ponytail, waves cascading over my bedspread as she flops onto her back again. ‘Though, now that I think about it, I did hear that Trevor Pine is having a party tonight. Feel like getting wasted and Snapchatting pics of your duck lips?’

  I shudder. ‘Can you imagine?’

  Elsie giggles. ‘Yeah. You and I would walk through the doors and it’d be like a bad western movie. The piano would stop. Guys would leap out of their chairs, hands grabbing their guns. Ugh – did that sound like a willy metaphor?’

  I groan. ‘And now I’m imagining Trevor Pine’s willy. Thanks, Elsie.’

  Elsie laughs again. She taps her feet, her wriggly body settling into place. ‘We could consider it a social experiment,’ she says eventually. ‘You know, study the locals in their natural environment and all that? It’s … been a while since we’ve done that.’ Elsie grins, but this doesn’t make her eyes crinkle at the edges like her normal smiles do.

  The idea of enforced socialisation makes my toes start to sweat. I’ve evaded enough family events lately that my parents now only insist on weddings, funerals and christenings, and I usually spend those hiding somewhere with my cousin Oscar, who is obsessed with fantasy podcasts and only speaks Dothraki. What do people even do at normal parties? The last one I remember semi-enjoying involved face-painting and a morbidly obese clown.

  ‘Yes, well, it’s lucky we weren’t invited,’ I say. ‘I don’t think I’m up for partying with a bunch of people who hate my guts.’

  Elsie sits up. She smooths back her hair and proceeds to braid it into a rope. ‘They don’t hate you. They think you’re a giant freakazoid, true, but otherwise? They’re probably just scared you’re some sort of mechanised fem-bot from the future.’ Elsie gives me a wide, proper Elsie-smile as she leaps off the bed and grabs my Drama guide. ‘So how’s this going? You figured out how to mime a convincing tree yet?’ She dissolves into snorty laughter.

  ‘I’m glad you find my pain entertaining.’

  ‘Oh come on, it’s a bit entertaining. I mean –’ she opens the course book to an arbitrary page – ‘“Create a solo performance based on the character of Pinocchio.” Is this a life skill that’s in demand?’

  I bury my face in my bedspread. ‘Elsie, I know! Why did I agree to this?’

  The bed dips as she sits down beside me, a careful handspan away. ‘You agreed because your folks gave you hopeful-eyes, and you are secretly a giant sap.’ I peek at her through splayed fingers. Elsie’s face is suddenly serious. ‘Sophia, the average female lifespan is, what, about eighty-four years or something?’

  ‘Barring congenital defects or getting hit by a bus? Yes, I think so. Why?’

  ‘Because the solo performance is seven minutes long. Seven minutes, Sophia. Not enough time for a shower, or even a decent kiss.’

  I snort. ‘How would you know?’

  ‘I shower,’ she says dryly. ‘And seven minutes is, like, point-oh-oh-three per cent of your year or something.’

  ‘More like point-oh-oh-oh-oh-two,’ I answer. I have a feeling I may be missing her point.

  Elsie rolls her eyes. ‘You are wilfully missing my point, Reyhart!’

  I can’t help but smile a little. ‘So what is it then, Nayer?’

  ‘My point, oh obtuse one, is that in the grand scheme of the universe, the exam will be a blip. You’ll do it, you’ll either ace it or not, and then it’ll be over.’

  I close my eyes. ‘Elsie, I’ve started dreaming about that stupid Arts building. Is that normal?’

  Elsie stares at me for a long moment. Her expression suggests that perhaps she is worried, though it’s a bit hard to tell under the layers of after-school make-up. She finally points to the juice in my hand. ‘No psychoanalysis tonight. Drink. Help me find a place to live next year that’s not straight out of a Girls Gone Wild video.’

  She jumps off my bed again and grabs a pile of brochures, fanning them out on my bedspread. A booklet on top features a bunch of people in matching jerseys and a banner that reads, somewhat portentously: The First Year. And the gloom that’s been threatening to envelop me all week settles with a thud in my stomach.

  Years ago, Elsie’s favourite uncle moved to America to take up a residency at some small research hospital. Ever since Elsie visited him when she was fourteen, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia, has been her unwavering goal. I know how single-minded my best friend can be. But still, I think part of me has always expected her to change her mind.

  ‘Els, don’t you think it’s premature to be looking at dorms? You’re not in yet.’

  ‘Technicality,’ she replies cheerfully. She eyeballs me again, then sighs. ‘Fine, okay. Anyway, unless I ace this Physics exam, the only place I’ll be going to medical school is the online university of suburban Tajikistan. And since we’re clearly not partying or Snapchatting any duck faces tonight, I guess we’re studying.’

  I swap the brochures for books, trying not to smile too triumphantly. It occurs to me that – barring a few of my Friday-night uni seminars and Elsie’s band recitals – this is pretty much how we have spent most of our Fridays for the past ten years.

  ‘Thanks, Elsie.’

  She sits crossed-legged on the end of my bed. ‘Yeah. You’re lucky Bernoulli’s principle sucks both arse and balls. But I am calling dibs on the movie after. Be warned, there will be tonnes of kissing in it.’

  I open my book to the homework I’ve left unfinished. It’s not like I ever deliberately slow down so Elsie can keep up or anything; it’s just, every now and then, it’s really nice to have someone to work alongside. I can’t explain why, but the blustery squall that my thoughts can whip themselves into just feels quieter when Elsie is around. Since we were kids, Elsie has accepted all my strangenesses the same way she responds to any of the random strange factoids she collects – with cheerful objectiveness. It’s one of the things I love most about her.

  Fact: Elsie Nayer is the smartest non-freak I know. And even though she sometimes checks her answers with me, Elsie rarely needs my help.

  So we work. Figures and formulas occupy the only segments of my brain that, for the moment at least, I know I can truly rely on. It’s like wrapping myself in a well-worn blanket, comfortable and familiar and certain. The ever-present tension between my shoulderblades lifts; the sensation of being somehow misaligned inside my skin disappears. As the stubborn patterns in the numbers resolve into answers before my eyes, for the first time today I feel the sparks of something like happiness. Because I may be hopeless at life in general, but this thing, I can do.

  From the corner of my eye I watch the hands on my wall clock, pacing myself so as not to fill our time too fast. I try to steer our intermittent conversation to safe ground – rumours of our Chem teacher’s plastic surgery, possible future developments on Doctor Who – but Elsie, like always lately, keeps drifting to America and her plans for next year. I see her eyes flick to her brochures more than once, and before the in
k is dry on our final equation, her hands reach for the glossy pile. I have no desire to ruin my precarious contented mood, so I chime in quickly with the only game that I know will reliably distract my best friend.

  I polish off my apple juice and give her my best attempt at an irreverent smile. ‘So what am I going to be when I grow up, Elsie?’

  Elsie stares at me with her faux thinking face. ‘Labrador trainer,’ she says decisively. ‘You’ll have your own TV show in Japan, one of those wacky ones where the audience gets to throw food and eels at you. It’ll be great!’

  ‘Dog whisperer could be fun,’ I reply vaguely.

  Elsie closes her textbook with a thump. ‘Look, Sophia, I have a crazy idea. Just hear me out, okay?’

  ‘Ugh, you’re not going to make me try out for band again, are you?’

  ‘Nah, I can live without hearing you attempt “Purple Haze” on the recorder again. No, what I was going to say is, Melbourne Uni’s open day is tomorrow, and I think we should go. I mean, I’m not applying, but maybe it’d be good for you? A bunch of people from Augustine’s are going. Mr Peterson drew the short straw of supervising a group. He was grousing about it at lunch, but I think he’s secretly excited to be showing off his old stomping ground.’

  ‘Els, I’ve been to Melbourne Uni plenty of times. I don’t need to –’

  ‘You don’t need to hang out with mere mortals? Yeah, I get it. But think about this – you get out of the house and make your parents happy, and we get dumplings on our way home. Win win.’

  ‘Elsie –’

  Elsie’s eyes flitter away. ‘Hey, Rey? Listen, I know I don’t exactly get what’s going on in your head lately. Maybe I’ve been caught up with my own stuff or whatever, but it feels like I blinked and, well …’ She smiles, a little too brightly. ‘Your charmingly weird self has kind of taken a turn in the direction of eccentric-ville.’ She touches my arm, not even wavering when I flinch. ‘But, see, this doesn’t have to be a big deal! I mean, Sophia – it’s not like you can be any less inspired.’