The Colors of Madeleine 01: Corner of White (17 page)

Madeleine was already there, leaning against the kitchen counter.

She was thinking about Denny’s accent: It was always so loose and free, as if his voice had started the day with its own star jumps. The kind of accent that made slow smiles rise on listeners’ faces.

The opposite of her accent. That made people squint or lean forward: Something’s at an angle or askew, something needs straightening or pinpointing.

The room smelled of baking pecan-and-banana muffins; they did their star jumps, and then they sat at the workbench and looked at their computer monitors:

“How do you know we haven’t?” said Belle.

“Have you?” Denny paused, his inhaler almost at his mouth.

“No.” She shrugged. “But I bet Madeleine has.”

They all looked at Madeleine. In fact, she’d experienced three typhoons and a cyclone, which were the same things as hurricanes, but there was a strange challenge in Belle’s voice, so she shook her head no, and they all started work.

For a while, they worked happily. Now and then Denny would say something like, “Now, what
do
you call the unique web address of every page on the net anyhow?” or “I’m just sitting here trying to recall what a phreatic volcanic eruption might be.”

He liked to make his pop quizzes appear as if they had grown, naturally and organically, out of a nonexistent conversation.

Once, Sulky-Anne sat up on the bed, clattered to the floor, and wandered moodily around the room. There was something disapproving in the elaborate care with which she moved through the chaos: the old motherboards and modems, boxes of socket spanners and wire cutters, baskets of tangled cables. She pressed the side of her head against Madeleine’s knee for a moment, slurped from the water bowl in the kitchenette, then headed back to her place in the centre of the bed.

They kept working. Denny wondered aloud just
what
the relationship was between Java and JavaScript anyway, and all three of them told him there was no relationship.

Then Jack announced that he hadn’t even done his intro yet, so maybe Denny could give them a break from interruptions.

“Don’t say that,” said Belle.

“Say what?”

“Intro. Say ‘introduction.’ I hate people who abbreviate.”

Madeleine and Denny both looked up from their computers.

“What do you mean you hate people who
abbreviate
?” demanded Jack. “Everybody bloody abbreviates.”

Belle blinked rapidly. “I don’t.”

“You just did. What do you think ‘don’t’ is. It’s an abbreviation of ‘do not.’”

“It’s a contraction. That’s different. Ah, where are my house keys anyhow?”

There was a surprised pause in the room and everybody raised eyebrows at Belle, who laughed, swerving into her new topic. “I thought I must’ve dropped them on Mill Road somewhere, but they’re not there anymore if they were. Did you accidentally take them home from my place yesterday, Madeleine?”

“I doubt it,” said Madeleine. “That would’ve been kind of a strange thing to do.”

“Could you just check your backpack maybe?”

Now there was a curious quiet. Denny picked up a pair of tweezers and leaned over the open computer he was working on. Jack gave Belle a questioning look, but she refused to look back.

Madeleine reached for her backpack and opened it.

Over at his workbench, Denny worked and wheezed quietly.

“Don’t just rummage around like that,” said Belle. “Take everything out so you can be sure.”

Madeleine shrugged slightly. “Whatever.” And she began to place the objects onto the desk beside her. Books, notepads, a pencil case, a bruised banana.

Belle watched closely.

“Your keys aren’t here,” said Madeleine.

“Tip your bag up and shake it out,” commanded Belle.

Madeleine looked up. “No,” she said.

“Seems to me those muffins must be ready!” Denny stood and moved across the room. “You know what we ought to have? A bake sale! Schools have them, right? To raise money for my travel fund!” He pointed to the jar of pound coins that stood against the wall, alongside two old bikes with missing wheels and half a dartboard.

“I don’t think teachers are supposed to use bake sales for personal benefit,” Jack pointed out. “They’re supposed to be for charity or new instruments for the school band or whatever.”

Denny opened the oven. Obligingly, the smell of muffins billowed across the room, and Sulky-Anne sat up and smiled, swinging her tail back and forth. Denny kept up his chatter, now addressing the muffins themselves, “Well, you’re looking mighty fine and golden in there, little guys; you feel like coming on out?” and to the others, “I’ll put on the coffee, who’s for a cuppa?”

Belle turned away from him. Her hand reached towards Madeleine’s backpack.

“Seriously,” she said. “I need you to tip it up.”

“There’s nothing in there,” Madeleine said.

Belle’s hand closed around the frayed strap of the backpack, and Denny took two strides across the room. He picked up a book that Madeleine had taken out.

“Isaac Newton,” he said. “You reading this for Science or for pleasure?”

“She’s reading it for History,” said Jack, and explained about the names in the hat.

“She’s supposed to
become
Isaac Newton.” Belle let go of the backpack and craned to look at the book.

There was a portrait of Newton on the cover.

“Long nose,” Belle said. “You’ll have to grow your nose, Madeleine, to be him.” She lowered her voice slightly. “You’ll have to tell a lie.”

“Belle,”
murmured Jack.

“What do you think of Isaac so far?” Denny returned the book to Madeleine, poured coffee, and tossed muffins onto plates, saying, “Ow, ow, ow,” since they were hot.

“I haven’t read it yet,” said Madeleine. “Don’t want to. An apple fell on the guy’s head and he invented gravity. So basically he stopped people flying. Who wants to know about him?”

Denny laughed. “Ingeniously flawed reasoning,” he said, then he took an apple from his fridge, and moved along the bench, dropping it on each of their heads.

“Any of you come up with brilliant new thoughts about the universe? Gravity or whatnot? Huh! You didn’t? Now, see? It’s harder than it sounds. A little respect for Isaac.”

He returned to his own bench and broke a muffin in half.

“You know what Isaac Newton did when he was here at Cambridge?” he said, facing them across the room. They waited.

“His second year of university,” continued Denny, “he sat down with a notebook, and he opened it somewhere in the middle. Left a few blank pages and started writing — he changed his handwriting to a whole different style from what he’d used before. And he started
writing questions. Questions about mysteries in the universe. Air, meteors, reflections. Heat, cold, colours, and the sea. Forty-five topics, he wrote questions about.”

Madeleine, Jack, and Belle watched Denny, not touching the muffins, not looking at one another.

“He did it again a couple of years later,” Denny continued. “This time he just chose twelve problems and made a promise to himself that he’d solve them in the next twelve months. Now
here
,” said Denny. “Here’s a spot assignment for you.”

“Isn’t this our coffee break?” said Jack.

“You can drink your danged coffee while you do this. Just don’t go spilling it, or getting crumbs in the keyboards. This is what I want you all to do. I want you to open a new document and type up a list of
three
problems in your life. Not the universe’s life — your own. Underneath, type the solutions.”

“If we know the solutions,” said Belle, “they’re not problems.”

“Exactly,” said Denny. “You
do
know the answers to most of your problems. Somewhere deep inside, you know. That was more or less what Isaac was getting at when he wrote questions for himself. And changing his handwriting — you see how that could work? How he could find another part of himself that way, the part that might know the answers?”

There were faint shrugs; the remnants of tension still in the air.

“You know, of course,” Denny said abruptly, “you know that computer monitors generate and store a whole lot of voltages of electricity? And you know those voltages can still be around even when the equipment’s been switched off for a whole lot of time?”

They stared at him.

“Electrical safety,” he shrugged. “I’m supposed to cover it — see, right here in the syllabus?” and he got back to his own work.

Madeleine opened a new document.

Three Problems
, she typed.

Then she spent a while trying out new fonts, looking for one that would release the problem solver inside her.

She went back up to Problem Number 1, and right away she wrote the answer.

Now she looked at the next problem, and again, before she knew it, she was tabbing in from the margin and writing a solution.

She was laughing now, quiet breaths of laughter. Who knew it could be so simple? At the computer beside her, Belle made an exasperated noise, her fingers clattering and flying. Beyond Belle, Jack was gazing at his screen, pulling at his lower lip.