Page 65 of Chaos Theory
‘Okay.’
‘From when I was a kid.’
‘Okay.’
‘Well, pre-teen years. I was around twelve. We were living in Chicago. I’d already lived in London and Boston. And a couple of places in Ireland. So anyway, I had this friend called Sacha. We were in different schools, but we only lived a block away from each other. We met at the local chess club. Yes, I know, I was a bit of a nerd. We were the only girls in the club, and pretty soon we were inseparable.’
I smile at the memory. ‘We had so much in common. We discovered that we had the same shoe size and our birthdays were both in July. One time, we pretended to be each other for a day. We swapped clothes and gave our parents quite thesurprise when we went home to each other’s houses at the end of the day.
‘Anyway, our birthdays were coming up, and it was my idea that we’d ask our parents for the same pair of Converse but get one pair in black and one in white. “To really know someone, you have to walk in their shoes,” I told Sacha. I was so wise! And I was the one who insisted that we each wear one black shoe and one white one. Our mothers thought it was dumb, but they tolerated it.
‘Until one day my dad announced that we were moving again. A great opportunity had come up in South Africa for work. A couple of weeks before we were due to leave, Sacha asked me for her white shoe back. She was crying. The new school term was starting soon. Said her mom was determined she wasn’t going to turn up at school looking like a weirdo.
‘So I said okay, but I didn’t give the shoe back. I avoided Sacha for the next two weeks, ignoring messages and refusing to leave my room when she called to the house. My mam went ape, but I refused to give up the shoe. I just couldn’t do it. I ended up hiding it in a crawl space under the house. What were they gonna do? Leave me behind when they went to Cape Town?
‘The last message I ever got from Sacha said that she’d been grounded. She begged me to come over, said she would forgive me, we could forget about the shoe and just say goodbye properly. But I didn’t. I left Chicago without saying goodbye to her.’
‘And without the shoe?’ says Shane.
‘And without the shoe.’
‘I see.’
‘Yeah.’
‘You said this was a funny story.’
‘Sorry. I thought it was going to be a funny shoe-in-a-crawl-space story. I had forgotten about the other parts. Until now.’
My eyes are wet. My chest feels heavy. There have been so many goodbyes, so many new beginnings. Maybe I do push people away. But I’ve been doing it so long, I no longer know if it’s to protect myself, or just the habit of a lifetime.
Shane reaches behind him, pats my leg gently without looking at me. ‘It must have been hard, moving around so much.’
‘Dad said we were lucky.’
‘Even so.’
I’m glad he can’t see my face. I stay still, trying to even out my breath.
There’s a faint zing from Kobi’s sleep pod, indicating that he’s fully charged. I jump off the bed. Shane scrambles to his feet.
I stand beside Kobi, fiddle with the buttons on his control panel.
‘Hey,’ I say softly. ‘Can you hear me?’
His eyes flicker to life. He moves his head in the direction of my voice. ‘Greetings, Maeve. I can see and hear you. It is a pleasure to do both.’
‘Woo-hoo!’ I yelp and throw my arms around him. It’s awkward, but I don’t even care.
‘Yes!’ Shane cheers. ‘Go on!’
‘Maeve, Shane, please be calm,’ says Kobi. ‘What did I miss?’
‘Not much.’ I can’t stop smiling.
My phone pings, and so does Shane’s. ‘Hang on.’
I pick it up. A message from Matthew, with a link:
