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.
“It’s okay,” I whisper to Umlaut, scooping him into my lap. “We’re going home.”
I’m no longer afraid. I can see all the loops and snags and knots I’ve made in time. I can see all the universes at once.
The timelines layer over each other. I watch a dozen different Gotties running through the garden, appearing and disappearing, faster and faster. Mathematically speaking, all this will happen over and over again, a hundred different heartbreaks in a hundred different ways. One of the Gotties will wake up underneath this tree at the beginning of summer, drenched in déjà vu, sad, and alone. My heart goes out to her. But for me, that’s in the past.
I’m ready for now.
The years pass more quickly now, snow then sunshine then snow. The garden is a blur. As the sky gathers into one last autumn and the leaves come fluttering down, a torn scrap of paper floats by. I stand and catch it: a page from a future textbook. The yet-to-be-written equation for the Weltschmerzian Exception. And I see my name next to it, and the title “Dr.”
In a moment of complete clarity, I know: I won’t remember everything. That I shouldn’t remember everything. Especially not this. So I hold the page out to the wind and let it fly away in the snow. It vanishes into thin air. This is a secret that the universe can keep. The sun comes out, first spring, then summer. Then I close my eyes, and I jump out of the tree …
Now
I land in the grass, my pajamas still soaking wet.
Dazed, I sit up, peeling off my book bag, and look around the garden. The lawn is freshly mowed and has the scent of cut grass. There’s no more rotting fruit on the ground. Yellow roses, hundreds of them, tumble over the kitchen window.
I tilt my head back and see my room, upside down. The ivy is clipped back, and I catch a glimpse of curtains inside the windows. Beyond them, against all odds, I think I can see a glow of stars.