Catching Genius by Kristy Kiernan

Author:Kristy Kiernan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-03-30T16:00:00+00:00

Estella

I feel cleansed with telling her, as though my lungs had been filled with sand and now had finally been blown out. My head is not pounding now, the way it had been since we crossed the bridge. But when I look past the relief, I know we have not talked about what we should.

Connie makes jokes and dances, but it lies between us like the cut between Big Dune and Little Dune. It is a cut itself. It pains me, slit open again like it is. I want to take stitches to it. Scars can be prevented when sewn up with care, but I’ve not been taught that particular skill. My stitches will be ragged, clumsily done. How many will it take?

We have been here for all of three days, and I have to keep pulling them out and starting again. Connie doesn’t even know how I’ve bungled it. She is the patient, out on the table, sedated with her perfect life in Verona.

My head begins to throb again. It is back. I hear the faraway thunks of the front door dead bolts again, hear Connie climb the stairs, thirteen of them.

I close my eyes. Thirteen.

Three facts about thirteen:

The first prime gap of thirteen occurs between one hundred thirteen and one hundred twenty-seven.

A Chinese abacus has thirteen columns.

Thirteen is the smallest permutable prime.

The three facts won’t be enough tonight. I could keep going:

Thirteen is the smallest prime that can’t be part of a Sophie German pair.

The olive branch on the back of a dollar bill has thirteen leaves.

Ptolemy’s treatise, Almagest, is thirteen volumes.

Thirteen is the concatenation of the first two triangular numbers.

I think about Connie and me dancing in front of the dunes and fall asleep.

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