The Same Speed as Fingernails

The bridge was ordinary. That was the problem.

Maya stood in the middle of it, unimpressed. It was just a footbridge over a gap in dry brown rock, somewhere in Iceland, with a metal plaque bolted to the rail. The rest of the class had already walked across and gone back to the bus for lunch.

"North America," said Soren, tapping one end of the bridge with his shoe. He walked to the other end and tapped that. "Europe."

"It's a crack," said Maya.

"It's the crack," said Soren. He was reading the plaque. "The two plates. They pull apart here. This is the seam."

Maya looked down into the gap. Black gravel, a little water, nothing moving. She had wanted something dramatic. Steam, maybe. A rumble. Two cliffs grinding at each other so hard you could hear it.

"How fast do they pull apart?" she asked.

Soren found the number on the plaque. "Two and a half centimeters a year."

Maya made a face. "That's nothing. That's not even moving."

"It's moving."

"A year, Soren. In a year I grow more than that just getting taller." She held her thumb and finger a small distance apart. "That much? That's how far apart North America and Europe get? In a whole year?"

"That much," Soren agreed. He was holding his own hand up now, looking at it, not at the gap.

"That's the most boring fast in the world," said Maya.

Soren didn't answer. He was doing something with his fingernails. Pressing on the little pale half-moon at the base of his thumbnail.

"What are you doing," said Maya.

"Two and a half centimeters a year," said Soren slowly. "That's how fast your fingernails grow."

Maya stopped.

"That's the same number," said Soren. "I read it somewhere. Fingernails grow about two and a half centimeters in a year. It stuck in my head because it seemed too slow to matter."

Maya looked at her own hand.

Her nails were a little long. Her mom had told her to cut them before the trip and she hadn't. There was white at the top of every one. White that hadn't been there when school started.

"That white grew," she said.

"Yeah."

"I didn't feel it grow."

"No."

"It just. Happened. While I was doing other stuff." She wiggled her fingers. "I bit them in September. That white is all new. That's all September to now."

"Right," said Soren.

Maya crouched down at the edge of the bridge and looked at the gap again. Then at her nails. Then at the gap.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. Wait." She pressed her fingernail against the cold metal rail. "This much of my nail is new. Since school started. I never watched it. It just moved the whole time."

"That's the plate," said Soren, crouching next to her. "Exactly the plate. It moved that much since September too. This gap got wider by exactly one nail's worth of September."

Maya put her hand flat over the gap, one finger on each side, on both continents at once.

"They're doing it right now," she said. "Under my hand."

"They can't be that fast," said Soren, but he said it the way you say something you want to be argued out of. "You can't feel it."

"You can't feel your nails either." Maya wasn't looking at him. "But look. Look at the white. That happened. Nobody watched it happen and it happened anyway." She sat back on the gravel. "How old are you."

"Eleven. You know I'm eleven."

"So since you were born." Maya was counting on her fingers, which was funny, because her fingers were the whole point. "Eleven years. Times two and a half. That's a lot. That's like a whole ruler. Since you were a baby, this gap got a ruler wider."

Soren went quiet. He took out his notebook. His hand moved down the page, eleven, times two and a half, and he underlined the answer twice.

"A ruler," he said. "Since I was born. The ocean over there got a ruler wider than when I was born."

"And it never stopped," said Maya. "Not for one day. Not while you were asleep. Not while you were doing your homework. Not while we were on the bus." She looked at the gray water far past the rocks. "The whole ocean. That whole ocean is only that. It's a crack like this one that never stopped for a really long time."

Soren stopped writing.

"That's what the Atlantic is," said Maya, and now she was talking fast. . "It's this. It's just this crack. But old. The plates pulled apart fingernail speed and fingernail speed and fingernail speed for so long that a whole ocean fell in the gap. All that water. All those ships. That's just what happens if you don't stop."

"Two hundred million years," said Soren. He had found it on the plaque, at the bottom, in small letters. "It says the ocean started opening two hundred million years ago."

"Fingernail speed," said Maya.

"Fingernail speed."

They both looked at their hands. Then at the gap. Then out at the ocean, which was too big to look at all at once, made entirely of a thing too slow to feel.

"My grandpa," said Soren. "When he was our age. This gap was, what."

Maya did it in her head. "About that." She held her thumb and finger a hand's width apart. "Since your grandpa was eleven. He stood somewhere like this maybe. And it moved that much while he got old."

Soren reached over the gap the way she had, one finger on each continent. He held them there.

A gull went over. Somewhere behind them the bus honked, one short honk, calling them back.

Neither of them moved. Soren kept his fingers on both continents and watched the white edge of his thumbnail, waiting, as if this time he might catch it.