The Colors of Madeleine 01: Corner of White (41 page)

Suddenly the Twicklehams were running, Derrin still between them so their arms stretched and concertinaed like a chain of paper dolls.

“
Stop
them!” the Sheriff shouted, finding his voice.
“Get Derrin!”

He was trying to run against the drag of his limp. Behind him, chairs were crashing to the ground.

On her porch, Clover Mackie watched as the Twicklehams ran toward the parking lot; as Gabe, Cody, Nikki, and Shelby sprinted after them; as the Sheriff loped and hollered; as Olivia Hattoway, grade-school teacher, threw open the doors of her car and slid into the driver’s seat; as a sheet of paper flew from Fleta’s hand, and curved itself high into the breeze.

There were sounds of commotion — engines revving, squealing tires, horns, shouts, even a siren — but Elliot didn’t take much notice, riding along Aubin Street toward the Watermelon.

His mood was so high and hopeful.

Then he was at the top of the slope, and there it all was, right before him.

The madness.

A car was speeding up Aubin from the opposite direction.

Three motor scooters right behind it, zigzagging madly. One almost toppled, then rode on. A fourth motor scooter was heading cross-country, across the dirt, toward the Overbrook Bridge. Behind them all came the Sheriff’s car, siren blazing.

In the parking lot of the Watermelon, the tiny shape of Corrie-Lynn stood still amidst parked cars, watching in wonder.

The cross-country motor scooter skidded sideways, slammed onto the dirt, and its rider leapt up and ran toward the bridge.

Elliot recognized her. It was Shelby.

He looked back at the speeding car. That was Olivia Hattoway driving, and in the passenger seat beside her was Fleta Twickleham.

Looked like Mr. Twickleham in the backseat, and Derrin too.

And on the other motor scooters?

It couldn’t be.

But it was.

Nikki, Gabe, and Cody: What were they
doing
?

“Stop it!” he shouted.
“Stop it!”

This could
not
be happening! What had he started? What were they doing to the Twicklehams now? Chasing them out of town? What sort of madness had overtaken them?

He tried again, but now the car’s tires were spinning as it swerved toward the bridge — the bridge that led to the road out of town — and his voice got lost in the squeal of it.

“Leave the Twicklehams alone!”
he shouted, rough with hoarseness. “Let them go!” and right at the word “go!” there was a low, thunderous BOOM!, a blast of black smoke, and a scream from Corrie-Lynn.

The bridge!

She’d blown up the Overbrook Bridge. Shelby had blown up the bridge.

Great chunks of concrete crashed and collided, single bricks fountained, dirt and water flew up from the river.

The Sheriff’s car shrieked to a stop.

Olivia Hattoway braked just as her car was about to hit. Almost at the same moment, she reversed, and mud splattered the windows.

Nikki and Gabe swerved to avoid her, but now they’d caught up. They were riding either side of the car, Cody just behind, all of them heading up Aubin now, toward Elliot.

He threw himself to the side of the road to get out of the way, and watched from the dirt.

Nikki was riding alongside the car, using her elbow to smash the back window. Inside, there was a lowering of heads against the showering glass. Gabe reached a hand through the broken window, hit a pothole in the road, bounced twice, and overturned so he spilled onto the gutter. Nikki rode up instead, reached in one hand, her other hand on the handlebar — and next thing, impossibly, she was opening the car door.

It swung back and forth as the car sped, Nikki sped, Cody sped
behind her, then somehow, between them, Nikki and Cody were dragging Derrin from the car.

The car raced away.

Its door rattled closed. It disappeared into the distance.

The Sheriff’s car flashed by Elliot, siren blasting.

There was another sound — loud and persistent — and the siren stopped suddenly, the Sheriff’s car slowing.

It was the warning bells.

Everybody stopped.

The motor scooters. The Sheriff’s car.

The warning bells chimed and chimed.

It was the code for a first-level Yellow.

Lemon Yellow.

Most lethal Color of them all.

They hadn’t noticed Corrie-Lynn in the parking lot.

They got themselves into the Watermelon Inn: Nikki carrying Derrin in her arms like a baby; Gabe, Cody, and Shelby running; the Sheriff reversing his car down the hill, then racing in after them. The shutters to the Watermelon slammed closed.

That’s when they saw her.

Through the gaps in the shutters, swarms of Yellow filled the air. These took the form of bright little darts, each group soaring low and sure.

Lemon Yellows aim for the eyes and the heart. Each one blinds with its first strike, and kills with its second.

They saw her all at once — Corrie-Lynn — still standing in the parking lot, confused, and Alanna screamed and threw herself at the shutters, scrabbling to open them and get out.

Then Elliot was there.

Outside, flying past the shutters, running by the windows, into the parking lot, to Corrie-Lynn.

“He doesn’t have anything,” someone said.

“There’s nothing he can do.”

He was there with her. He was trying car doors, but they were locked. He took Corrie-Lynn’s hand in his, looking back toward the Watermelon. The air was thick with the Yellow dart swarms; any moment now a swarm would aim at Elliot and Corrie-Lynn.

In the Watermelon, Alanna kept screaming to get out to them, but guests gripped her elbows and dragged her back.

Elliot and Corrie-Lynn were running, hand in hand.

“They can’t make it,” whispered Hector.

A swarm cut them off from the hotel. Two more swarms drifted closer.

At the edge of the parking lot, Elliot and Corrie-Lynn stopped. They were surrounded.

Elliot put an arm tight around Corrie-Lynn.

“They’ve given up,” murmured someone.

They were going to die. Elliot and Corrie-Lynn were going to die right before their eyes.

But now Elliot was crouching. They could see his lips moving — he was talking and crouching.

He was doing something on the ground. He was at one of the faucets, and was turning it.

Now Corrie-Lynn was on the ground at the other faucet.

Then, all around them, the sprinklers shot up.

Elliot called to her again.

They were detaching sprinklers, and lifting them into the air, the water rising higher.

A swarm of Yellow darts had seen them now.

A second swarm swerved toward them from the east.

They were tilting the sprinklers, lifting them, lowering them. Then it happened. Sunlight hit the water and faint colors wavered in the air around them.

“Stop!” Elliot shouted, so sharply it was audible from the Inn. “Hold it now!”

Rainbows
of colors shimmered around them in an almost circle —

The swarms were almost on them. And then the strangest thing.

The Lemon Yellows hit the rainbows and faded.

They struck at Elliot and Corrie-Lynn, but over and over they hit the rainbows, and dwindled into something pale and listless.

Other swarms attacked, but each Yellow that hit melted away — melted into something that wasn’t quite there, like mist on a window.

Then there was a shift, and the swarms changed direction altogether.

They swung around, flew away, and disappeared.

Elliot and Corrie-Lynn stood in the parking lot.

The rainbows played in the air around them. The water drenched them. But still they stood, arms aching, sprinklers held high to catch the sun.

2.

I
saac Newton liked questions.

In 1704, he published a book called
Opticks,
in which he described and analysed the nature of colour and light. At the end of the book, he appended a list of “queries” — questions without answers that leapt between topics — from air, honey, oil, and sunrays, to comets, animals, backbones, and atoms. Over the next several years, he
returned to his list, adding to his questions, adjusting them, expanding on them.

Whence is it that Nature does nothing in vain? And whence arises all that beauty that we see in the world?
he asked.
To what end are Comets and whence is it that they move all manner of ways?

And so on.

On the day that the neurosurgeon at Addenbrooke’s Hospital took Madeleine aside and explained that her mother’s collapse the previous night had been brought about by bleeding in the brain, which itself was the result of a high-grade tumour; that the tumour had probably been growing for several months now; that this explained the irrational behaviour, the headaches, vomiting, confusion, numbness, memory loss; that surgery and radiation treatment might prolong Holly’s life for another few months, but that surgery itself could well kill her; that, however, without surgery, she would die within the next few days — on this day, Madeleine found herself ensnared by one of Newton’s queries.

The query was this:

What hinders the fixt stars from falling upon one another?

Sometimes the query took the form of a bramble bush that wound itself tightly around Madeleine, muffled her mouth, and scratched her skin, so that it was almost comical, trying to answer the doctors’ and nurses’ questions, and she actually giggled at one point.

How could they expect her to speak with these thorny branches crossing her eyes?

At other times, the query was more of an intransigent force; a vacuum that dragged her down with it; and then the difficulty was trying to walk or stand or move in any way.

What hinders the fixt stars from falling upon one another?

It was not so much that she had to
answer
the query, it was that
she
herself turned out to be the answer.

She had to stop the stars from tumbling together. The query had given her the job. A sky full of stars was relying on her to keep her
back straight, her shoulders firm, her head nodding now and then, her voice calm and polite — when they asked if there was somebody else she wanted to call, her father, for example, or a friend, she shook her head, no, it was just her. Because as long as she could keep the stars in place in the sky for just this day — as long as she did that, her mother would be okay.

Obviously, the doctors were not in a position to take care of the stars.

The choices they offered! Death by surgery, or death over the next few days. Didn’t they know about
third options
? They were quitters, these doctors, without vision. They knew nothing of problem solving, the key to which, she had just realised, was finding the third option.

For example, she now discovered that there were
not
, after all, two choices about crying. She had thought of herself as “not a crying kind of girl,” but today, neither crying nor not-crying was possible.

This called for a third option, specifically: wailing, shrieking, and smashing of windows. The hospital would frown on that, most likely. They’d sedate her, which was proof, again, that these people knew nothing of third options.

So she did nothing, pressed her lips together and used them to form small smiles.

Anyhow, it was lucky, she thought, while they took her mother’s blood, pinned her mother down with tubes and machines, as if they were worried she might escape — like those diamond pins the stylist used to put in Madeleine’s hair — they had kept her
head
in place, those pins, but not
Madeleine
herself; no, she had fled, trailing her mother behind her — and now their adventure had taken an unexpected turn; she supposed it had been following this path all along, and it was true that she had urged her mother to turn back, or sidestep, but she’d never tried hard enough. She’d been too busy with her summer romance, or with visions of her father in a punt —

But
still
, it was lucky, she thought, while they conferred about her mother, it was just so
lucky
that she’d been reading Isaac Newton.

Because now she knew about problem solving.

Even though the hospital did not.

And this problem, Isaac had solved for her.

All she had to do was keep the stars fixed to the sky.

At some point that morning, Madeleine fell asleep in the hospital chair. She dreamed that she was a hat rack. The hat rack’s job was to hold up the stars; however, various people kept adding extra weight to it. Federico, Belle, Jack, the waitress from Auntie’s Tea Shop, two or three doctors — they were hanging decorations from the hat rack, as if it was a Christmas tree.

“No, no,” she explained, polite and smiling at first. “I can’t take the weight of this. My duty is to hold up the stars.” But they smiled blandly at her, and kept on hanging decorations. Colours, lights, calculus, curves, alchemy, chemistry, mathematics, measurements, gravity, magnets — each of these things was an ornament that weighed her down. Then they started adding facts.

“At two
A.M
. on Christmas Day in 1642,” said Jack, “he was born.”

“And he was so small,” added Belle, “that they put him in a quart pot.”

“Two women,” said the neurosurgeon who had spoken to her earlier, “were sent to collect items for the baby, but they sat down on a stile along the way, and they said to each other: ‘There is no occasion for making haste, for we are sure the child will be dead before we get back!’”

“And he was so weak,” piped a voice — and it was her mother! Madeleine rushed forward, elated, spilling ornaments and concepts, but Holly shook her head firmly. “He was so weak,” she repeated, “that he had to have a
bolster
all around his neck to keep it on his shoulders.” Then Holly pointed to her own neck, which was bolstered with something like a wooden frame, and she gave a wry, sad smile.

“
Who
are you talking about?” shouted Madeleine, shaking herself so that everything rattled, jangled, and began to fall, including the stars.

She opened her eyes and thought:
Isaac Newton, of course.

The dark red in her mother’s hair looked like streaks of blood or wine against the pillows. Her face had a pale greyness to it, like concrete. There was a small pimple on her mother’s chin, which Holly had pointed out the day before. She had explained to Madeleine, as she always did when she got a pimple, that chocolate was not the cause. It was more likely a manifestation of an unpleasant thought someone in the building had had.

She ate too much chocolate. She had a pimple. She made dumb jokes about the pimple!

It was impossible for her to die. The doctors were wrong.

Madeleine was suddenly exasperated.

She stood up, stretched her arms above her head, reaching absentmindedly for lost stars, frowning, angry.

“It’s twenty to, I think,” said a passing voice.

“Twenty to
what
?” responded another voice — they all seemed to talk in that jokesy, blustering way here — their voices looming up and then fading into corridors.

“Twenty to ten,” called the other voice.

Not even ten o’clock yet.

There was another reason. It was not even ten o’clock in the morning yet! How could anything so serious happen before ten?

And there it was.

The third option.

She put down the fixed stars and she ran.

She was running in the rain.

It’s a long way from Addenbrooke’s to downtown Cambridge — she remembered this as she ran, but it only made her run faster.

There were cars, clouds, rain splatters, umbrellas, bicycles, and someone was walking a dog. Her chest was aching, her breath was heaving, her legs were shot through with needles or magnets. The closer she got, the more crowded the footpaths, and she was dodging and swerving. Some people scowled at her and this made her laugh aloud.

My mother is going to die!
she thought.
And here I am running to a parking meter!
Each breath of laughter was a spasm in her side.

She almost fell as she slid onto the street, and there it was — the graffiti, the broken parking meter, a car with its hubcaps missing….

Through the rain-blurring, she thought she saw the hint of white in the crack, but no! There was nothing. She was running, skidding toward the parking meter, and there was
nothing
in that crack, and through her gasps of air she was laughing and the rain was hammering her head.