Multiversum

1

Alex Loria was ready for the decisive basket.

His yellow-and-blue jersey was dripping with sweat, his blond page-boy fringe curling over his forehead, above the steady gaze of a basketball player who knew he was about to score.

He was team captain. He'd just drawn two last-minute free throws. The first had gone in nicely. Rim-backboard-rim-net.

They were down by only one point. He couldn't miss this shot.

Alex wiped the palms of his hands on his shorts and then looked straight at the referee as the man passed him the ball. He gave the boy who had fouled him — a student at the school across the street from his — a chilly glance, and focused his mind on the free throw.

‘Let's nail this basket and win the game. C'mon, Alex, you can do it …' he whispered to himself, psyching himself up as he lowered his head, dribbling the ball. His teammates stood in silence, tense, ready to lunge for the rebound, while the three regulation bounces echoed throughout the high-school gymnasium. This was just an exhibition match: there were no banners held up by parents in the bleachers, no children with popcorn at courtside. But no one wanted to lose, especially not the team captain.

Suddenly,
that
hollow feeling. His knees sagged. A chill ran up his spine. His eyes fogged over. While his teammates and adversaries watched aghast, Alex fell to his knees, caught himself with one arm braced against the synthetic floor of the basketball court, and started panting.

He could feel it.

It was about to happen again.

‘Will you please come down for dinner?' Clara called from the kitchen.

‘Just a second, Mum!'

‘You've been saying “just a second” for twenty minutes now. Get down here!'

Jenny Graver puffed out her cheeks in annoyance and shook her head, while she shuttled her fingers around the trackpad, shutting down the various applications running on her MacBook Pro. She looked up at the wall clock. Her mother's tone made it clear that she would brook no further delays. Jenny stood up and met her own gaze in the mirror over the desk where she studied. Her wavy chestnut hair spilled over her broad shoulders, the shoulders of a professional swimmer. Although she was only sixteen, Jenny could already boast enough medals to fill a trophy case, all of them hanging on the wall in the upstairs hallway of the Gravers' family home. Her athletic victories were her father's pride and joy. Roger Graver was a former champion swimmer, and had made quite a name for himself in Melbourne.

Jenny walked out of her bedroom and across the hall to the bathroom to wash her hands. The inviting aroma of roast beef came wafting up the stairs.

Suddenly,
that
shiver. By now, she knew it all too well.

As her eyesight blurred, she took two more steps and made a desperate grab for the edge of the sink, trying to stay on her feet. She felt her body collapse, as if none of her muscles, except for her arms, were capable of responding to her brain's commands anymore.

It was about to happen again.

Where are you?
the voice thundered, ricocheting through the convolutions of her brain.

Silence.

She heard a few distant whines, sinister and unsettling like sobs echoing from the depths of an abyss.

Tell me where you live …

Mel —
Jenny was straining to answer, but the word was cut off halfway.

I can hear you … I need to know where you are.

Every syllable Alex managed to utter was like a needle driven into her skull. The pain was excruciating.

The answer came, accompanied by a gust of shouts and infantile laughter. Everything whirled in his head like a tornado, a vortex, an indistinct storm of emotion. But that name had come through intact, reaching its intended recipient.

Melbourne.

I'll find you
,
were the last words from the male voice, before everything went dark.

2

Clara Graver stripped off her rubber kitchen gloves and rushed upstairs the minute she heard the thump as Jenny collapsed to the floor. She reached the top of the stairs in a panic and tripped, almost sprawling headlong. When she reached the half-open bathroom door, she gave it a smack and flung it wide. Her daughter was stretched out on the floor, her lips flecked with foam and a trickle of blood dripping from her mouth.

‘Jenny!' she screamed as she sank to her knees beside the senseless body.

The girl's eyes were wide open, as if staring into the distance.

‘Oh, my darling … Mum's here. Look at me.'

With a couple of light slaps to her cheeks, Clara managed to rouse her daughter. The technique was simple but effective, and by now it had become standard practice.

Roger took the steps two at a time and came running down the hall to the bathroom. First he looked at his wife, and then at his daughter, who was gradually regaining consciousness.

‘Is she okay?'

Clara said nothing, merely shrugging in reply.

‘It happened again?' he insisted, even though he already knew the answer to that question.

Jenny's eyes slowly focused on her father's worried face, then she reassured him. ‘I'm fine.'

‘Did you hit your head?'

‘No, I don't think so.'

He leaned down and placed his hand on the back of her head. His fingers were smeared red.

‘That's blood, Jennifer.' Roger's voice sounded more resigned than concerned.

‘Oh my God!' Clara cried.

‘Don't worry, the cut's not deep,' he said, while Jenny rubbed her head.

‘Do you think you can stand up?' Clara asked as she held out a hand to her daughter. Jenny bent double to get into a sitting position, and a stabbing pain penetrated her right temple. She got to her feet.

‘Now you lie down and rest, and I'll make you a cup of herbal tea,' her mother said affectionately, forcing a smile to her lips.

Roger shook his head. ‘Jesus Christ, Clara, when are you going to get it into your head that your herbal teas are never going to cure her? Dr Coleman told us that …'

‘I don't care what Dr Coleman said!'

‘If you'd just consider the therapy —'

‘We've already talked about it, and the answer is still no!' she broke in, her voice firm. ‘Jenny is … Jenny
will be
just fine.'

In the meantime, their daughter had moved over to the window, where she now stood, her gaze lost in the middle distance. Behind the hand-stitched curtain that her grandmother had made, Jenny could see the roofs of the terraces on Blyth Street.

Her parents' argument followed a script that she knew by heart.

Her fainting spells had begun four years earlier. Jenny had just turned twelve, and she was sorting through the gifts that friends and family had brought to her birthday party. Her mother was dusting furniture in the living room when Jenny, standing in front of the television set, suddenly fell to the floor with a thump. In the brief instant when she felt her head become heavy and her eyesight blur into mist, she'd only had time to say ‘Mum'. The last thing she clearly saw before fainting was her mother's diploma, framed and hanging on the living-room wall:
Clara Mancinelli, Bachelor of Arts in Literature, summa cum laude
. At the bottom of the diploma, next to the dean's signature, was the embossed seal of the Sapienza University of Rome. The diploma was dated 8 May 1996. Exactly one week after that date, Clara had met Roger, who was on holiday in the Italian capital with a friend from Australia, and she decided to radically change the course of her life by following this new man back home to Australia. Jenny's mother liked to say that if she hadn't ducked into a café in Rome's EUR quarter because she had to pee, she and Roger would never have met. And Jenny would never have been born.

That day in the living room, when she was twelve, Jenny fainted for the first time.

Her doctors put her through a battery of medical tests, and none of the results turned up any cause for concern. Her blood pressure was normal, and her general health was excellent — her athletic achievements backed this up. For two years running she'd won the gold medal at the regional swimming meet, and she'd even been selected to compete in the Student Olympics, to Roger's delight. In fact, Roger coached her four afternoons a week at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre.

Since that afternoon, her fainting spells had become increasingly frequent. Sometimes they had all the hallmarks of an epileptic fit, while at other times she seemed simply to faint. According to the doctors who Clara talked to, there was no reason to treat Jenny for epilepsy. Clara's faith in homeopathy and Bach flower remedies clashed with Roger's more traditional medical beliefs, but up till then, her views had always prevailed. No drugs, no medical therapies.

In the years that followed, Jenny learned to take what she called ‘her attacks' in her stride. She'd had them in all kinds of situations. During a school trip to Brisbane, she had collapsed in the hotel lobby while the teacher was calling the roll and assigning students to share rooms for the night. At the cinema, her friends had watched a whole film without realising that Jenny was slumped over in her seat, arms dangling, head twisted to the left. And then once at the local pizzeria, where Roger had taken her to celebrate her first gold medal, and another time at Hungry Jack's, where the swimming team ate every Friday with the coach. To say nothing of the times that it happened at home, in her bed or in any of the rooms of the house on Blyth Street. Luckily, it had never happened in the pool. She could easily have drowned.