The Infinite. Patience Agbabi
ELLE
Something bad just happened and I want to leap back in time to make it unhappen.
But you’re not supposed to solo leap till you’re 3-leap, which is 12 years old for Annuals.
I won’t be 3-leap until the 29th of February. Three days’ time.
I just ran out of double geography and now I’m in the corridor. I’m tongue-tied and my face is burning red with humiliation and I can still hear Mr Carter’s old, creaky voice in my memory: ‘Elle, where are you going?’
I check my watch: 15:01, Wednesday 26 February.
I close my eyes to block out the muffled shouts from the classroom, the yellow walls of the corridor, the smell of sweat and all the bad thoughts colliding in my head about the bad thing that happened AND getting into trouble for running out of a lesson.
I’m THINKING about leaping back in time so the bad thing won’t happen. I don’t MEAN to leap. That would be wrong. When I have that thought, another one comes into my mind at the same time. Will athletics club still be on tonight? It’s usually 5 o’clock on a Wednesday, but someone said it might be cancelled. I imagine doing running round the track to keep myself calm and it feels like it’s actually happening. My body goes fizzy, charged up like a battery. Something very strange is happening to me. My body isn’t any bigger but it’s much stronger. I’m no longer Elle, I’m Elle to the power of 3! My head begins to spin so fast I stop thinking about running. I try to think about nothing at all but I’ve never felt so happy, like I could take on the whole world.
I clasp my hands tight.
Everything goes dark.
I hear a door open.
Classroom chatter pours out, like a tidal wave.
I open my eyes. Things slowly come into focus, like my eyes are a camera. I’m sitting on the grass by the school track, next to the long-jump pit. My watch says 17:00. My mouth is a capital O. I just leapt 1 hour 59 minutes into the future!
I feel dizzy, like I’ve been in the spin dryer at the laundrette and my skin’s still damp. When I try to move, I throw up all over the grass. But it doesn’t make me sad; it makes me feel better. I look around me. No one’s doing slow jog or high knees. No one’s spinning in the discus circle. Athletics really is off tonight. So, nobody saw me appear out of thin air; nobody saw me leap from the corridor.
Only you and I know what just happened.
I’m tongue-tied with everyone. Except you. It’s easier talking to you because I don’t know what you look like or if your eyes are rolling clockwise or anticlockwise because I said something odd or rude like ‘How many days have you suffered from acne?’
I’m autistic, so sometimes I’m very direct or say the wrong thing at the wrong time. But I LOVE words, the sound and shape of them and how they feel on my tongue. And I love sprinting and long jump because it’s the closest you get to flying. And when I TALK about sprinting and long jump, it’s like the words come to life and I’m pounding down the runway, launching myself into the air. It’s the best thing ever.
I like it here beside the track. If I was a millionaire, I’d build my house right here.
How fast can you run the 100 metres? My PB’s 13.12 seconds, which gives me an 89.59% age grade. That means I’m almost in the top 10% in the world for 11 year olds. I want to run in the Olympics and stand a good chance because I’m a Leapling with The Gift and the Olympics only happens in a leap year.
My favourite Olympics is Mexico City, 1968.
My favourite athlete of all time is Bob Beamon.
Bob Beamon made a world record in the long jump of 8.90 metres at the 1968 Olympics.
They had to send someone out of the stadium to buy an old-fashioned tape measure so they could measure the jump properly.
Mr Branch, my athletics coach, says it was the most political Olympics since 1936, when Jesse Owens got four gold medals and made Hitler leave the stadium. In 1968, Tommie Smith and John Carlos did the Black Power salute wearing black gloves on the medal podium and got suspended from the US team. Dick Fosbury raised his fist during his medal ceremony in solidarity with Black Power. Dick Fosbury was white. He invented a new way of doing the high jump called the Fosbury Flop.
But the best part of the 1968 Olympics was Bob Beamon’s jump.
It’s 17:10 and Grandma will be home in 20 minutes, so I need to run home. There’s still frost on the opposite pavement and cracked ice on the puddles, even though the sun came out today. I love weather like this. It doesn’t happen very often in February. Usually it’s grey, cloudy and damp. I wonder what the weather will be like in the future. If it gets warmer, we won’t get frost any more and people will read about it in history books.
I suddenly realise how cold it is, that I leapt out of school without my coat and now school’s closed. But you don’t need a coat if you’re running. You just run and run and run and feel warm inside and the air feels cool on your skin. I grab my bag and run across the school fields, the frost crunching under my feet, jump over the fence like in the steeplechase and start running up the tree-lined drive that leads to the Hill. You’d think after leaping I’d be tired but it’s the opposite. I feel like I could run a marathon.
It’s not a steep hill but it goes on for ages. It’s next to the main road, and there isn’t much traffic, so it really is like running a marathon in the Olympics when they get rid of the traffic so the runners don’t get run over. But I don’t run on the road, I run on the path. The council haven’t cut the hedge so I have to be careful not to get cut on the thorns.
There’s lots of houses on both sides of the road with their windows boarded up and piles of rubbish stinking in the gardens. You know people still live there because the bins are overflowing. Grandma says they’re flats where they put criminals when they come out of prison and have no money. The bins smell horrible. The council never empty them. I breathe through my nose, even though Mr Branch says it’s better to breathe through your mouth to get more oxygen. It’s hard running uphill with a schoolbag full of books, my geography project which I didn’t hand in, my yam and my PE kit.
When I reach the top of the hill, I’m in the zone. The zone is when you get into your running rhythm and forget where you are. I like being in the zone. It feels safe, like being under the table when I want to calm down. But there’s a car horn hooting, hooting, hooting. I turn my face to see a bright red car and a woman with long ginger hair. It’s Mrs C Eckler, my favourite teacher. She stops, winds down the window and says