The Infinite Lives of Maisie Day Read online

  “Hello?”

  6

  “And you tell that sister of yours to give me a call.” Nanna’s voice sounds grumpy on the other end of the line. “I shouldn’t have to wait until teatime to talk to my granddaughters.”

  It might be morning here, but for Nanna Pegg it’s teatime. That’s because she lives in Australia. She moved there when I was just a baby, so I’ve only seen her in real life a couple of times. It costs a lot of money to fly to Australia.

  We went there on holiday once when I was six, but I don’t remember much about that now. Just the kangaroos and koalas I saw when Nanna Pegg took me to the zoo.

  I speak to Nanna most weekends though because she’s always phoning Mum up to moan about how you can’t buy proper Marmite in the shops and how big the bugs are over there. Once she rang up in hysterics after she found a funnel-web spider hiding in her knickers when she hung them out on the line.

  Dad said he felt sorry for the spider. Mum hit him then.

  Mum’s always trying to get Nanna Pegg to use her computer to give us a call, but she says she doesn’t do technology.

  “Are you still there, Lily?” Nanna’s voice echoes slightly as it bounces off the satellite to reach me here.

  “I’m here, Nanna. And it’s me – Maisie.”

  “Good girl. And how are you doing at school?”

  Nanna forgets that I don’t go to school any more. She gets me and Lily mixed up too. She gets a lot of things mixed up. I think that’s why Mum wants her to come back to Britain to live with us.

  “Fine,” I say. It’s quicker than reminding her that I’m studying for an Open University degree in Mathematics and Physics. She was so proud when I was the youngest person ever to pass their A levels, but I think she’s forgotten that now.

  “You keep working hard and don’t forget to send me a picture from your birthday party.”

  “I will, Nanna.”

  “Bye, Maisie.”

  “Bye, Nan.”

  As I place the phone back in the stand, my arm brushes against the statue of a cat standing on the corner table. For a second, the blue-glass figurine wobbles dangerously and I have to quickly catch hold of it to stop it from falling to the floor.

  I breathe a sigh of relief. That was close. Mum collects these little cat statues and this one is her favourite. She says Dad bought it for her from a flea market in Florence when they went there on their honeymoon. It’s vintage Murano glass apparently. Mum would kill me if I broke it.

  Carefully placing the cat back on the table, I turn around. Through the door to the kitchen I can hear Mum clattering about, the fresh smell of baking making me feel hungry again even though I’ve only just eaten breakfast. I glance at my watch. Still over two hours to go before people start arriving for my birthday party and I get the chance to open my presents.

  Albert Einstein once said that if you put your hand on a hot stove for a minute it seems like an hour, but if you sit with a pretty girl for an hour it seems like a minute. That’s relativity. And a bit sexist, I think. But waiting for my party to get started makes me feel like I’m travelling near the speed of light.

  This is because Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity says that time passes slower for someone travelling near the speed of light relative to – that means compared to – someone standing still. The speed of light always stays the same – 299,792,458 metres per second – but time and space can change, depending on where you’re looking from. So if I took off in a spaceship from Earth and then zoomed around the galaxy at nearly the speed of light to kill a couple of hours before my birthday party, time would slow down for me compared to everyone back on Earth. Onboard the spaceship I wouldn’t feel like time had slowed down, I’d just think the trip was only taking me a couple of hours, but when I got back to Earth ready to get the party started, I’d discover that decades had passed. All my family would be fifty years older – Lily would be an old lady, and Mum and Dad might even have died.

  Shaking my head to try and escape this scary thought, I head for the stairs. If Mum and Dad are busy getting things ready for my party and Lily’s disappeared as per usual, I’ll just hang out on my own in my room.

  From the doorway my bedroom looks pretty normal: bed, desk, wardrobe and bookshelves, the colour scheme a tasteful lilac and grey. But it’s underneath my cabin bed that things get really interesting. That’s where I keep my experiments.

  Pulling back the chequered bedspread that hangs over the arched entrance, I climb beneath my bed. It’s like the TARDIS under here, not exactly bigger than it looks from the outside, but definitely full of surprises. Squeezing past the innards of an old-fashioned TV that I’ve left just inside the entrance, I switch on the lamp so I can inspect my latest experiment.

  I’m using this TV to build my own particle accelerator. This is a machine that can speed up and smash subatomic particles. The biggest particle accelerator in the world is called the Large Hadron Collider. It’s a twenty-seven-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets and cost four and a half billion pounds to build. Scientists are using this particle accelerator to search for the secrets of the universe, but I’m building my own using this second-hand TV that Dad bought me off eBay for 99p.

  As he struggled up the stairs with the bulky TV, Dad asked me why I couldn’t have got a flat-screen instead. I told him that I needed the cathode ray tube inside the TV and you don’t get these in a flat-screen. Inside the cathode ray tube, you’ve got this wire that when it gets heated up spits out tiny subatomic particles called electrons. These electrons are then accelerated in a beam before being deflected by a series of magnetic coils until they hit the back of the TV screen. This is coated in stuff called phosphor, which glows when the electrons hit and it’s these tiny spots of glowing colour that make up the picture you see on the TV.

  I turn what’s left of the TV on. As it hums into life, I closely watch the screen. Instead of Scooby-Doo I see a white spot in the centre of the screen. This is the beam of electrons.

  Reaching behind me, I grab hold of my shoebox of scientific equipment. Ignoring the Geiger counter resting on the top, I rummage around the box until I find what I’m looking for.

  Bringing the magnet towards the side of the tube I watch the white spot on the screen zip upwards. Then, as I pull the magnet away, the spot returns to the centre of the screen. It works. The magnet is bending the path of the electron beam.

  I close my eyes, trying to visualise what’s happening. Nearly two hundred years ago a scientist called Michael Faraday showed that there are invisible spiders’ webs called fields that fill the universe. When I bring the magnet towards the TV the strands of these invisible webs mingle and cause the electrons to curve towards the edge of the screen.

  I imagine these gossamer-thin lines stretching in every direction, trembling in response to the slightest disturbance in the universe. I open my eyes. Even light is just the rippling of this spider’s web as it stretches through space.

  I turn off the TV with a sigh. I thought that being ten would feel different, but so far it’s just the same. Me stuck in my room thinking about science while Lily ignores me upstairs.

  If space is infinite, Mrs Bradbury says this means there’s another galaxy out there that looks just like ours. This is because there’s only so many ways that atoms can be arranged to make stars, planets, people and stuff, so in an infinite universe things would just keep on getting repeated, but randomly. In an infinite universe, there’s an infinite number of Maisies out there, just like me.

  I bet they’re having a more interesting birthday.

  Outside my bedroom, I hear the clattering sound of Lily’s footsteps coming down the stairs. I sit tight in my Batcave, waiting to see if she’s coming to say sorry for being such a pain on my birthday. But instead of a knock on my bedroom door, I hear the bathroom door slam shut instead.

  Lily never apologises.

  Climbing out from under the cabin bed, I walk across and open my bedroom door. Across the
landing I can see the closed bathroom door. I hover in the doorway, trying to decide what to do.

  Maybe if I accidentally bump into Lily when she comes out of the bathroom, she’ll do something with me. It is my birthday, after all. We could play a videogame together or maybe just go out in the garden and giggle at Dad making a mess of putting up the gazebo or even—

  From inside the bathroom I hear the sound of Lily crying.

  For a second, I’m not a hundred per cent sure that’s what I’ve heard, but then I hear another long juddering sob followed by the sound of Lily’s voice, barely louder than a whisper.

  “Oh God…”

  Suddenly worried, I gently knock on the bathroom door.

  “Lily? Are you OK?”

  No answer.

  Downstairs I hear the distant whirr of a food blender as Mum carries on baking up a storm, but inside the bathroom there’s just silence now.

  “Lily?” I ask again, knocking a little louder as I put my ear to the door. “Do you want me to get Mum?”

  That’s when the bathroom door opens and Lily stares back at me, dark circles beneath her bloodshot eyes.

  I’m just about to ask her if she’s OK when she grabs hold of my T-shirt and drags me inside.

  7

  “Lily, is that you? You’ve got to help me. You won’t believe what’s happening.”

  “Maisie?”

  The sound of my sister’s voice on the end of the telephone line is all echoey and strange.

  “Lily, where are you?” I sob, trying hard to stop myself from losing it completely. “When I woke up there was nobody here. Mum, Dad, you – you’d all left me behind and I don’t know what’s going on any more.”

  On the other end of the line I hear Lily whisper a word that would get her in so much trouble with Mum.

  “Things are getting really weird here, Lily. Everything’s gone. The world outside’s just disappeared and all that’s left is this darkness. And I think it’s coming to get me.” Tears stream down my face as the words rush out of me in a torrent. “I don’t even know what’s real any more. I’m trapped in this nightmare and I don’t know how to get out.”

  “Maisie.” Lily’s voice sounds even further away now, a distorting crackle on the line making me strain to catch what she’s saying. “I’m so sorry. I’m going to put things ri—”

  A high-pitched electronic whine cuts her words off mid-sentence, the screeching sound so painful I have to pull the phone away from my ear. Then this electronic whine is cut off too. Quickly, I put the phone back to my ear.

  “Lily, are you still there?”

  There’s no reply. Not even a dial tone. Just an empty silence that stretches on forever.

  I can’t stop myself from sobbing as I press redial.

  Please, Lily, come back.

  But the line stays dead, not even the sound of an automated voice this time.

  With a frustrated howl I slam the phone back into its base, the impact causing the figurine on the edge of the table to teeter and fall. Realising my mistake I lunge forward to try and catch the blue-glass cat, its tear-shaped tail pointing upwards as it tumbles through space. But I’m too late, the figurine smashing into pieces as it hits the wooden floor.

  I stare at the broken statue, tears still running down my face.

  This was Mum’s favourite. Dad bought it for her from a flea market when they first got married. She says this is what made her start collecting her little glass cats.

  And now it’s smashed to bits.

  I’m in so much trouble.

  Then I laugh. It’s only a hollow laugh, but the way I’m feeling right now, any kind of laugh seems like a miracle.

  With everything that’s happening, breaking Mum’s favourite figurine is the least of my worries.

  On the polished floorboards the broken pieces of glass still seem to be moving, a trembling motion that makes me think for a second that the whole house is shaking. But as I look around, everything else in the room is completely still. It’s just these broken pieces of blue glass that can’t seem to stop shivering.

  With a frightened fascination I watch as the shattered fragments slowly start to piece themselves back together, the chips and shards of glass scattering in reverse as the broken figurine takes shape again.

  I can’t believe what I’m seeing as the blue-glass cat jumps into the air, rising as swiftly as it fell and landing with a teeter on the table. For a second, it trembles, then stops, the feline figurine miraculously restored.

  With a shaking hand I reach out to touch the cat. Its blue-glass tail feels smooth to the touch, not a single flaw or crack to be seen. Moments ago this was smashed to pieces on the floor and now it’s perfect again.

  I don’t understand what’s happening. First those black blobs erasing the kitchen and now this blue-glass cat turning back time. My house has turned into a palace of impossibility.

  Then I remember the time when me and Lily tried to make Mum a birthday cake. It was in the Christmas holidays last year. Mum’s birthday is on the twenty-eighth of December, slap bang between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. Mum always says this is the worst time ever to have a birthday, but it does make it cheaper to buy her a present in the Boxing Day sales.

  Anyway, Dad had made sure Mum was safely out of the way and Lily and I were busy baking in the kitchen. I say we were busy baking, but all we’d done so far was pull almost every ingredient out of the cupboards while we argued about what kind of cake we were going to make. In the end we’d agreed on a chocolate cake and Lily had started mixing the butter and sugar in a bowl.

  I was supposed to be beating the eggs, but I hadn’t even got them out of the fridge. I’d got distracted by this book Mrs Bradbury had given me for Christmas. It was called A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. With a title like that, I’d thought it was going to be some completely boring book about the history of clocks, but it was actually all about the Big Bang, black holes and how the universe works. It was the best book I’d ever read.

  I was leaning against the fridge with my head stuck in Chapter Seven, reading about entropy and the arrow of time when the sound of Lily’s voice pulled me out of its pages.

  “Maisie!”

  I looked up to see Lily standing by the mixing bowl with a scowl on her face.

  “What?”

  “The eggs,” she said with a theatrical sigh.

  She sounded really annoyed at me already and we’d only just started making the cake. Dad had said it would be nice for us to do something together for Mum, but I didn’t think it was going to be much fun if Lily was just going to order me around.

  Reaching inside the fridge, I pulled out a box of eggs. My brain was still buzzing with the part of the book I’d just been reading and, as I looked at the eggbox, an idea jumped into my head. A way I could finally make Lily understand just how totally amazing science is. Opening the box I took out an egg, but as Lily held out her hand for it, I asked her a question instead.

  “What’s this egg made of?”

  Lily looked at me like I was stupid.

  “It’s an egg, Maisie. It’s made out of egg.”

  I shook my head

  “No, you don’t understand,” I said, ignoring the look of irritation on Lily’s face. “It’s made out of atoms. Everything’s made out of atoms. But in this egg all the atoms are arranged in a particular way.”

  Then I dropped the egg.

  Lily gasped in shock as it smashed on the floor.

  “Maisie!”

  “Don’t worry,” I quickly said, looking down at the yolky mess. Broken shards of eggshell were now scattered across the floor. “I’ll clean it up. But take a look at the egg, Lily. What’s it made of now?”

  Lily sighed, just like she always does whenever I try and get her interested in science.

  “Atoms,” she said, her voice a dull monotone. “It’s still made out of atoms.”

  “Exactly,” I replied, feeling excited that Lily understood. “It
’s made of exactly the same atoms as before, but they’re arranged differently now.”

  “Yeah,” Lily said. “It’s broken and now you’re going to have to clean it up.”

  “I know,” I said. “But there were so many different ways in which the egg could break. When the egg was whole, its atoms were arranged in a highly organised way, but now they’re just disorganised and random. The entropy of the egg has increased.”

  Lily frowned as she stared at the eggy mess that was splattered on the floor. “What’s entropy?”

  “Entropy is how random and disordered something is,” I said excitedly. “In the universe, entropy is always increasing. Eggs break, glasses smash, stars burn themselves out. We never see the broken bits of eggshell stick themselves together again to form a perfect egg. There’s nothing in the laws of science to say this can’t happen, but the chances that each atom could arrange itself in the exact same position as before are so infinitesimally small, you’d probably have to wait until the universe ends before you saw this happen.”

  I stood there grinning as I waited for Lily to realise how amazing this is, but my sister just shook her head.

  “The universe is going to end before we finish making this cake if you keep on dropping the eggs. Stop messing about, Maisie, and clean up this mess.”

  Sitting on the sofa in the empty living room, Lily’s words echo in my mind. I stare at the blue-glass figurine, the crystal cat now restored to perfection.

  The universe must have ended.

  That’s why I’m on my own.

  An unstoppable wave of anger and rage rises up inside me. I won’t let this happen. I want the universe back in the right place. I want a world that obeys the rules.

  I want my family back.

  With a flailing hand, I sweep the cat off the table.

  The figurine falls, tumbling through the air until it hits the floor and smashes into pieces again. This time, I don’t give it a second chance. Picking up the remote control from the sofa I bring it down on the broken pieces of glass again and again and again. I feel my fingers cut as I pound the splintered shards into dust, the sharp stabs of pain proving to me that this is real, even though I don’t want it to be.