Lifespan of Starlight (16 page)

So after the water came back on, there were these big rallies campaigning for changes
to the ration swipers, an override system in an emergency. The government funded
an inquiry that that took eight months to reach the conclusion that the security
risk is too great to set up a secondary access system. What if it meant that illegals
were able to hack in? So of course everything stayed the same as it’s always been.

‘Listen.’ I stand up, hands on hips.

Mason keeps going. On his next trip past, I have to stop myself from grabbing his
shoulders.
It’s okay,
I want to tell him.
I can get water without the sensors working.

Though, of course, I can’t tell him that.

‘Why don’t we skip ahead?’ I try. It’s only just occurred to me.

Mason stops. ‘Now?’

‘Sure.’ The idea takes hold. ‘Think of it as a test. Like, see how we go skipping
in all conditions. Maybe we should be doing it in other ways too, like when it’s
really noisy or something.’

‘Yeah.’ He wet his lips before pushing them together. ‘Or cold. Make sure you can
jump in all conditions …’

‘Exactly.’

I suggest we don’t skip too far in case Mason’s parents come
home before he’s back,
but really it’s because I still haven’t jumped further than a minute. Soon we have
the screen set up and blankets ready.

For once I think I’m the one who drops away first, enjoying the peace that comes
from the tunnel after the heat of the garage.

The return is like how it feels when you leave a movie, reentering the real world
after the cocoon-like bubble of the theatre. The heat hasn’t seeped in yet, but even
so the air feels thicker. Heavier.

Mason comes back about thirty seconds after me, sweating but calmer, too. In finding
a place where his time slowed, his mind must have slowed as well.

‘Okay?’ I ask over the screen.

Mason drops his chin, still breathing hard. ‘Again?’

I nod.

‘Hang on.’ We’ve skipped our way through so many minutes that it’s already dark when
I realise that the walls aren’t pressing in quite so much. We pull on our tops and
shorts before leaving the privacy of the screen.

The door won’t swipe open without electricity so I do a manual override. The lock
disengages and I push sideways to open it as I’m greeted with the most exquisite
waft of cool.

We’re both outside in an instant, arms up and spinning in the fresh air. A double
flash of lightning brings everything into view before it drops away again.

Mason grabs my hand. ‘Come on.’

He’s heading back into the garage when I pull back. ‘In here again?’

‘Trust me.’

The heat is thick as he leads me through the garage and up the stairs to the main
part of the house. We keep going up to the second level and into the master bedroom.
Sort of weird, but before I ask where we’re going, Mason leads me out onto a small
balcony and the cool of outside.

Heat escapes from the brick walls in waves. I don’t dare look down, heights not being
my strong point, but before I can say anything, Mason drops my hand and grips the
rail of a metal ladder leading up the wall to the roof. He clangs his way up until
he disappears over the top ledge.

All I can do is follow, my hands slippery with sweat and my heart pounding. I almost
fall over the lip that rims the flat roof and I land on hands and knees.

Mason’s in the centre of the roof, looking out over the thousands of houses around
this one. There’s enough emergency lighting dotted around to make out the blocked
skyline of the city to the east.

‘Look.’ As Mason points, a dash of lightning brings the city into focus before dropping
away.

I find my feet and make my way over to him.

‘Haven’t been up here for ages,’ he says under his breath.

My eyes adjust as we stand and watch the show. There’s a stillness about him making
me hesitate to speak.

‘The last time I was up here was with my brother,’ Mason says eventually. ‘Storm
breaking over the city …’

I wait for him to keep going, but he stays quiet so I ask, ‘Where is he now?’

‘Somewhere in Myanmar. Probably gone.’ The words come slowly, difficult to get out.
‘Missing in action.’

I give it some time, then prompt again. ‘And … he’s why you want to go backwards
in time?’

In the pale light he shakes his head. ‘It’s not possible, I know.’ But from the way
he says it, I know I’m right. This has been his goal all along.

‘What would you say?’ I ask. ‘If you could see him again, I mean.’

In the dim light I see Mason push his lips together, holding the emotion down as
he stares out over the city skyline. ‘I’d tell him to flunk out of uni. Take the
art course that he always wanted to do instead of medicine.’

I don’t have to ask for more. They taught his brother to save lives then sent him
to die in some other country’s war.

A flash from the west makes us turn and wait until the thunder reaches us.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Mason says quietly. ‘If I ever learn how to travel
backwards, then why haven’t I come back and told myself how to do it?’

I lift one shoulder in a shrug, not sure what to say.

‘I’ve checked on the grid. Didn’t find any double-ups of my chip.’ As Mason keeps
talking, he sinks to sit cross-legged and
I do the same, shutting away the outside
world behind the rim of the roof.

‘But wouldn’t you just … I don’t know,
speak
to yourself?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ His tone drops as he presses a finger into the spongy rubber
of the rooftop. ‘I had this idea, right, that maybe it’s harder for your mind to
cope with travelling backwards. So maybe you come back but you end up with amnesia
or something. I don’t know … but I’ve done some hospital checks, just in case.’

‘And?’

A sigh. ‘And nothing.’

For some reason, the image of Mason hacking into medical records, trawling through
patient lists for broken, fragile versions of himself, makes my heart catch.

Because what if he found himself, stuck in a hospital ward somewhere with no idea
who he was? Would it help him discover the secret to travelling backwards in time?
Or would the sight of his future self, confused and broken, block him from learning
to travel backwards for fear of what he would become? Something about my expression
makes Mason rest a hand on my knee. ‘It’s okay, Scout. I’m okay.’

‘We don’t know it’s
im
possible, at least,’ I try. ‘So that’s a start, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah.’ But his tone drops at the end.

‘I mean, until it started happening I never would have imagined that human beings
could just … slip into another time. It’s like …’ My head shakes at the wonder of
it. ‘… so
amazing.

So who knows what else we could learn? For all we know it’s just the limitations
of our minds that stop us doing heaps of stuff. Unless we can first imagine what
might be possible, how will we even know to try?’

It’s only when I break off that I realise Mason’s been staring at me so intently
that it takes him a while to pull out of the spell. He catches me watching and turns
away so quickly that it’s suddenly weird, awkward. I bite my lip.

Mason clears his throat and shifts his legs to one side. He leans backwards on one
hand and points with the other. ‘First star.’

The rumblings to the west have died down, but at least the air is still cool. Only
the most precious of storms bring rain these days. Faint glimmers of light have appeared
above us and to the east.

‘Not the first,’ I say, and point to another star. ‘There. And there too.’

‘Come on.’ Mason lies backwards and pats the roof beside him. I lie back next to
him, our shoulders close but not touching as we stare up into space.

‘And there,’ I say again, finding another one. ‘And there.’ ‘All right, all right.’
There’s a smile in his voice.

It’s almost as peaceful as the tunnel here, staring up into a sky that never ends.
If I needed a reminder that the universe is infinitely more mysterious than I can
comprehend, here it is.

‘You realise we’re looking backwards in time?’ Mason says beside me. His voice is
soft at the wonder of it. ‘That little glimmer of light that we’re looking at now,’
he lifts an arm
to point, ‘first left its sun millions of years ago and has been
travelling light-years across the universe to reach us here, now. For all we know,
that star died long ago. We won’t know until millions of years after the last of
the light leaves it.’

I don’t turn my head; my mouth lifts at the corners. ‘Time-travelling starlight?’

‘Sort of. Though it’s more that each speck of light exists in all of time. It just
depends where in the universe you are when you see it. Every moment exists at once,
yeah?’

‘Fair enough.’ Though it’s with a shrug of sorts because the stuff he’s saying is
hard to hold onto, the truth always just out of my reach. ‘So … where do they end
up?’ I ask slowly. ‘These specks of light. They just keep going to the edge of the
universe?’

‘We’re not sure, really,’ says Mason. ‘They say the universe might fold back on itself.
But who knows? Maybe the light just keeps travelling forever.’

We’re quiet after that, thinking, or just being. I’m not sure I get it completely,
but the idea comforts me: so many glimmering lights travelling through the universe,
the never-ending lifespan of starlight.

‘Scout?’ Mason’s voice is so close that it makes me turn. I find his eyes staring
right back into mine. ‘Jump with me. Now.’ I’ve barely formed an answer when he keeps
going: ‘Don’t think about it. Just jump.’

‘Okay.’ It comes out as a breath.

Together, we close our eyes. Instead of sinking, tonight I allow
myself to lift,
the focal point of my mind rising into the space above me. I’m both here and there,
everywhere and nowhere all at once, feeling my way through space and time.

It’s easy to feel my way out. I pull up with a gasp, my heart pounding and cool air
against my skin as I turn my head to find that I’m alone, a shirt and shorts resting
beside me.

He returns the next instant. His eyes open and fall on me. We’re both panting hard,
the truth of the moment building because this time is different. We synchronised
our return without planning it, but that’s only part of what this is about.

He rolls towards me and stops with his mouth so close that we’re breathing the same
air, connected by our body heat. I’m inside his warmth.

The next thing I know he touches his lips against mine. It’s the softest of questions.
We pull back at the same time and when our eyes meet there’s no question anymore.
We fall together again, closer and surer. He holds firm as I press forwards, dizzy
with the way it feels to have him so close.

Soon I have to make myself pull back to inhale slowly because otherwise I think I
might forget to breathe. A shared smile, and then we’re joined again, skin to skin.
How strange to have been on my own all my life and now find myself here, with him.

I’m not sure how long it is before we part, separate but still together. Mason settles
beside me again, head in one hand and his shoulder pale in the dim light. I roll
onto my side and hook a foot over his bare leg. Our eyes stay locked the whole time.

It’s only when the city whirrs back to life that we leave our rooftop cocoon.

Mason sends a message on Monday afternoon.
Hey, you free to come over?

Who would have thought that a small bunch of words could zing me such happiness?
I wasn’t expecting to see him until next weekend.

The bike ride gives me time to move through some nerves. Excited-nerves, but still.
That night of the blackout we entered whole new territory, Mason and me, so I’m not
sure what to expect from this afternoon. Can’t wait to find out.

Boc’s there when I arrive. I push aside my whiff of disappointment, smoothing my
shirt down after the ride. He must have known that Mason asked me over, so the fact
that he stayed can only be a good sign.

‘Hey. How was the climb yesterday?’ I ask him.

‘Yeah, everyone was pretty wrecked after the blackout. So we only went to the climbing
centre.’ Boc jerks his head towards Mason. ‘But we got Mase here to climb the high
wall. No harness.’

My eyes pop. ‘No harness?’

Mason shakes his head. ‘I had a harness on, just didn’t use it.’

‘Next time,’ says Boc. ‘There’s always next time.’

We all go quiet as Boc slaps his hands, rubbing the palms together. ‘Well. That’s
it for me. Catch you later?’

Mason replies as some sort of look passes between them and it makes me wonder how
much Boc knows about the night of the blackout. He seems better about me being here
today, at least.

When he jerks his head my way, I search for words to say.
You don’t have to go because
of me
. Or something like that. But I can’t think of anything that wouldn’t sound
weird.

Neither Mason nor I speak at first after the door slides shut behind Boc.

I mush my lips together uncomfortably. ‘So …’ But I’m too slow because already Mason
has turned away and is busy at the comscreen.

‘Want to jump?’ he asks, eyes on the screen.

‘Sure.’

Mason sets up the whiteboard without another word, dropping the blanket on my side,
just like always. It’s as if the night of the blackout never even happened.

Mason goes to sit on his side, but I stay where I am.

‘You okay?’ I ask. Because so much has changed for me, but everything he’s said and
done so far is as if nothing has changed for him.

For the first time since I arrived, Mason stops to consider me properly and I know
my eyes are full of questions.
What’s going on?

‘It’s okay, Scout. Just jump first. We can talk later, okay?’ He says it with kindness,
but it somehow makes me feel young. Silly. As if I’m dumb to have thought that our
kiss meant something.