‘Skip?’
‘If that’s what we’re calling it.’
‘You have a better idea?’
‘No need to be snippy,’ he says.
I ignore him and simply say, ‘I don’t know. At first it was every day, but last time it was four days.’
‘There’s no pattern?’
‘You really think if there was a pattern I wouldn’t have already figured it out?’ I cross my arms over my chest. Cheeky bastard.
‘No, I guess you would have. You are rather a genius.’
It’s probably the first nice thing this Tyler has ever said to me, but I act as if I didn’t hear the compliment.
He sits back, deep in thought. I wait for him, hoping for something profound. Hoping for an answer.
‘When you next skip,’ he says slowly, choosing his words carefully. I lean forward to make sure I don’t miss a word of wisdom. ‘You need to come and find me immediately.’ He sits back and looks slightly smug.
Is that it? Is that really all one of the greatest minds on this planet can come up with? Jesus Christ. Fat lot of good he is. ‘Seriously?’
‘I can help you, but I need more time. And you’ll need to give me a head start in the next …’ He gropes for the word. ‘Place?’
‘First things first, we need a vocabulary,’ I say, only partly joking.
‘You need something to tell me. Something that will make me one hundred per cent believe you and stop us from wasting time.’
‘Something only you, as in another version of you, could have told me?’
‘Exactly.’ He pauses. ‘But what?’
‘Something about Helen maybe?’
‘Helen?’
‘Yeah, well, other people could’ve told me stuff about you. The physics world is hardly big and you know what massive gossips everyone is as soon as they get a wine in them.’
He nods sagely.
‘But why would anyone know things about Helen and why would they tell me even if they did?’ I add.
‘She’s dating your sister.’
That’s a fair point. ‘But only in this world,’ I add.
‘Really? Interesting.’ He pauses. ‘But even if Helen and Cesca weren’t together, you could know one of my other siblings.’
‘How many do you have?’
He laughs, a short sharp bark of a laugh. ‘There are six of us.’
‘Six?’ I’m shocked. Mainly because I’ve never heard he has brothers and sisters and how do you hide that many? ‘How do you have five brothers and sisters and no one talks about it like it’s gossip?’
‘Why would anyone care?’
I shrug. I don’t know; people are weird and nosey. ‘How many brothers and how many sisters?’ I ask instead. Because I am ‘people’, weird nosey people wanting to know every last detail about him.
