Page 41 of Out of the Blue
I can’t quite deal with it just yet, though. I roll over and check my phone for messages. The past few days have been like the first few weeks after Leah left: constantly glancing at my phone, checking Instagram, refreshing her online profiles. There are no missed calls on the screen, no texts. It’s like our meeting on Calton Hill never happened.
As I’m about to get up, a WhatsApp from Allie appears:
Bad news – my mum/prison warden is off work with a cold, so I’m not going to be able to sneak out to hang out with T. Gutted . . . it’s been way too long since I’ve seen her. Or you.
There’s a flutter in my stomach, and a knot of guilt in my chest. I can hardly stop thinking about Leah, and yet I still wish I’d kissed Allie before running out of her room the other day. Because I do like Allie. I kind of don’t see how anyone couldn’t: she’s funny and brave and pretty and smart, and she’s so thoughtful and caring around Teacake. I like the way she throws back her head when she laughs, and the cute way she fiddles with her earrings when she’s thinking, and . . . yeah. I really, really like Allie.
But I really, really liked Leah too. And I don’t quite know what to do with that.
I text Allie back, then reluctantly roll out of bed and get dressed, bracing myself for high-octane excitement from Dad. Instead, I find him sitting on the edge of the sofa, brows furrowed as he and Rani watch a video on his laptop. On the screen, a neatly coiffed white guy is standing on a quiet hillside, overlooking a valley dotted with rustic Mediterranean farmhouses.
‘This is Manosque, in the French region of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence,’ he says, as the camera pans across the valley. ‘A quiet town with a population of just twenty-two thousand, it was perhaps best known as the birthplace of writer Jean Giono – until 5.42 this morning, when it became the Fall spot of the 88th Being.’
The film cuts to a school courtyard, where a dozen flustered gendarmes are pushing back a pulsating crowd of Wingdings. If this were my insane plan rather than Dad’s, I would take this as a bad sign: it’s unusual for two Beings to land in one day, and even more so for them to be relatively close together. If one’s already fallen in the south of France, there’s very, very little chance that a second will turn up in Edinburgh on the same day.
Rani has made the same connection. ‘Remember the twelfth of June?’ she says. ‘Three Beings fell that day: one in the Philippines, one in Canada, and one here. It happens all the time.’
Dad nods. ‘Good point. It’s certainly not unheard of.’ He jabs the red button on the remote control, then slaps his knees and stands up. At this stage, his confidence is like a brick wall; it’ll take more than a few bumps to knock it down. ‘Right, then! Let’s go catch this Being, shall we?’
My insides feel like they’re being tossed around like lottery balls. I sense Rani’s gaze flicker towards me, but I don’t look at her.
‘Yep,’ I say, copying his neon-bright tone. ‘Let’s do it.’
His Wingding friends are already waiting for us when we arrive at the hill ten minutes later. They’re not wearing tacky T-shirts or plastic halos like some of the tourists you see around town, but I can pick them out instantly. There are people of all ages and races, dressed in everything from suits to football tops,Dr WhoT-shirts to floral dresses. What else would bring all these people together, if not the Beings?
Dad parks near the edge of the road and grabs a box of tools from the boot of the car. A couple of the Wingdings wave, and theDr Whofan lifts a cigarette in greeting. Behind them, two people are working on a strange contraption of metal and plastic. Its base is a little like a giant four-poster bed, only with metal wheels for feet, waist-high handles meant for pushing and pulling, and a large steel hook linking it to the back of a pickup truck. Attached to the top is a huge metal contraption not unlike the engine of a plane, only much bigger: a giant metal sphere encasing eight enormous propellers. It looks a bit like a fan, just like Dad said it would, only seven metres tall and as wide as a bus.
‘That,’ he says proudly, ‘is what we’ve been working on up in Perth.’
‘Wow, Dad!’ Rani looks up at him and beams. ‘It looks amazing! It’s huge!’
A few of the Wingdings come over to greet us, all handshakes and high fives. Others wave from across the lawn, where they’re dragging lumps of bright blue plastic from the boot of a car. Dad introduces us, but I can’t keep up with the names: there are about twenty-five of them in total, more than I’d expected. Rani makes a beeline for the machine, where a black woman in green overalls is fiddling with a huge tangle of wires, while a lanky Nordic-looking man climbs a ladder to attach something to the frame. Rani begins to bombard them with questions.
‘We didn’t have much time to put it together, but it’s incredibly powerful,’ says the woman, who introduces herself as Maya. ‘It rotates at around the same speed as an aircraft, but we’ve modified the propellers to allow for greater resistance. Look, I’ll show you.’
She reaches up and presses a button on the side of the machine. The fan makes a roaring sound like a jet taking off; a couple of crows get caught in its airway and are blasted into the sky so fast some of the feathers are ripped from their wings.
The man, Lars, points to a row of dials just below the button. ‘These let us control the power and the speed. So, the idea is, we’ll direct the machine towards the Being, use the fan to break its Fall, then slowly lower the pressure, letting it make a safe descent to earth.’
I dropped Physics after second year, but all of this seems quite amateur to me. Lars tells Rani – who’s now questioning their credentials – that he’s a maths teacher, and that Maya has a PhD, so they must know their stuff. I suppose it’s just hard to make calculations when we don’t know much about the most important variables: how much the Being weighs, the angle and speed he or she is going to fall at, and when it’s going to happen . . .
Dad claps me on the shoulder. ‘Right, you two,’ he says, grinning from Rani to me. ‘Let’s get to work.’
The lumps of blue plastic that the Wingdings were pulling from the car turn out to be inflatable mattresses to cushion the Being’s fall. Rani and I spend the first hour helping a chatty Glaswegian called Amir unfold and inflate them using an electronic pump, then help Lars and Maya practise moving their machine across the grass. It’s quite tiring, but at ten o’clock Evelyn, theDr Whofan, hands out choc ices – nobody questions having ice cream for breakfast – and we sit on the grass, chatting and licking cream from our hands.
To my surprise, I’m kind of having a good time. Having a task is distracting me from the guilt of letting Dad carry on with this farce, but also the Wingdings’ happiness is sort of infectious. They seem so convinced that the Fall is going to happen, all talking of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’. Some are planning what they’ll buy when they get their share of the reward money; others have long lists of questions they want to ask the Being.
‘I’m no looking for proof of the afterlife, mind. I have my faith – dinnae need anything else, ken whit I mean?’ Amir says. ‘But there’s other things I’d like tae know . . . aboot what’s going on up there that’s making them fall.’
Evelyn nods. ‘I know it won’t be straightforward, that it all depends on how fast the Being learns English . . .’ (I bite back a smile at that – if only they knew.) ‘I just want them to tell me if I’ll see my Daniel again. That’s all.’
She crumples the choc-ice wrapper and goes to help Maya and Lars with the machine. Her words leave a lump in my throat.That’s all. As if it’s just some simple request, instead of the biggest question going.
By half past ten, a crowd has started to gather around the machine. There are dozens of Wingdings from other countries, all taking photos and asking tons of questions. Shona pops down and witters on about positive energy and the moon being in Scorpio as Rani gives her a grand tour of the site. There’s even a journalist and a cameraman wandering around.
‘Should we do a countdown?’ Amir asks, at 10.53 a.m.
Dad scoffs. ‘It’s hardly going to be on the dot! You know there’s a ten-minute margin on either side.’ But after a moment, he shrugs. ‘What the hell. Let’s do it.’
