The Square Root of Summer (16 page)

But inside this box is everything that happened, on the day he abandoned me. Am I ready to remember?

“It's just a box,” says Thomas. “Bawk, bawk, bawk…”

Before I can think about it, I grab the lid and yank it, hard.

It's empty. There's a brackenish black smear as though slugs have been nesting in it, and the inside of the lid is sort of sooty and covered in illegible Sharpie scribbles, but otherwise, nothing. What an anticlimax.

“G, did you open this already?”

“I told you—I didn't even know this was … whatever this is. What is it?”

I feel Thomas shrug next to me. “It's nothing now, I guess.”

“What did you think was going to be in there?”

“I don't know!” He sounds completely frustrated, like he wants to shake the tree so all the apples fall out, bonking us on the head till we get some answers. “We found a bunch of junk, then we did the blood pact. I left you here to get Grey, and when we came back the lid was closed. I always wondered…”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He shakes his head like a dog coming out of the sea. “Nothing. Maybe we opened it too soon, I don't know.”

I twist to look at him, sliding one arm behind his back so I don't fall out of the tree. With the other, I take his elbow again.

A month ago I didn't want any memories of this summer. Now, I'm not so sure. I'm starting to remember that there are two sides to every equation.

“Thomas. Listen. It's empty. So what? We can put something new in there. A time capsule of you and me. Who we are now.”

He turns to take my elbow. The shift means now neither of us can move without totally losing our balance. My face must be as serious as his as we look at each other. I want to ask,
Who are you, really? Why are you back?

“So who are we now?” we both ask at the same time.

“Telepathy,” Thomas says. And his smile could light the whole fucking tree on fire.

The sky turns from sun to rain in an instant. Within seconds, it's pouring.

Lightning flashes through the leaves, bouncing off Thomas's glasses. Followed fast by a long, low rumble of thunder.

“G!” Thomas has to raise his voice over the noise even though we're inches apart. “We have to get out of this tree.”

Lightning flashes again. I can barely see through the water in my eyes, but I nod. My arm is still tucked around his waist, his hand still on my elbow. If either of us moves, we'll both fall.

“I'm going to let you go,” Thomas shouts. “Jump backwards. On three?”

Instinct says don't wait, jump—I slide down the trunk, scraping my stomach on the bark. My topknot snags on a twig, tugging at my scalp with a sharp wince. There's thunder again, then Thomas, tumbling down from above me, grabbing my elbow the minute he's on the ground.

“You didn't wait for three,” he yells, his other hand pushing back his soaking-wet hair.

“Neither did you!”

We turn, laughing, jostling, grabbing at each other's hands in a race to my bedroom. Where Ned's standing sentry in the doorway, arms folded, his fur coat bedraggled from the rain. He looks like Umlaut after losing a fight with a squirrel.

“Althorpe.” He scowls at Thomas, who drops my hand, which makes Ned scowl more. What's his problem? “Just had a nice chat with your mum—she's on the phone, wants to talk to you.”

*   *   *

After Ned practically frog-marches Thomas across the garden, I curl up on my bed with Grey's diary from five years ago. Turn to the autumn, the winter, after Thomas left. I'm not sure what I'm looking for—clues, mentions of a time capsule,
something
. What I find is:

THE POND FROZE OVER, ICE-SKATING DUCKS

G'S HAIR IS GETTING AS LONG AS NED'S. SHE STILL LOOKS LIKE CARO.

I drop the diary on my bed, go and sit on the floor in front of my mirror. The photo of me and my mum is taped to its corner. My hair's still wet from the rain, scrolled up in its topknot—and when I take out the elastic, it falls in damp waves all the way to my waist. A stranger looks back at me.

“What do you think, Umlaut?”

Meow?

I consider my reflection, my mum's face in the photo. Who am I?

I was someone so afraid of making a choice, I held on nine months for Jason. I waited five years for Thomas, silently. I painted
The Wurst
and never told Sof I was quitting art. I drift, I don't decide. I let my hair grow long.

I twist it in a wet rope around my hand. This doesn't feel like me anymore. I opened the time capsule and jumped before the count of three—that's someone who gets drunk on peonies and dries her underwear in a tree. I think I might want to write Ms. Adewunmi's essay.

I want to come out of mourning.

Cutting my hair is suddenly a planetary necessity. I high-paw Umlaut, then jump up and tear out into the rain forest, immediately tripping over a bramble and ripping a chunk out of my ankle.
Scheisse!
I'm going to take a flamethrower to this mess.

Wet-haired and wild-hearted, I burst into the kitchen, where Jason and Ned are sitting round the table. Ned is playing acoustic guitar, half a hot cross bun dangling from his mouth like a cigarette.

“Rock 'n' roll,” I say, giving Ned double thumbs. The gesture falters when it comes to Jason. I chose to be over him. He told me we were friends. We've never been that, I don't know how. I turn back to my brother and say, “Hot cross buns are for Easter, it's July.”

Actually, July's nearly over. Ned's party's in two weeks, and then two weeks after that—a year since Grey died. Term will start and time will slip away. It already is.

“Hangovers yield to no season,” Ned mumbles round the bun, even though it's seven in the evening. All the joy I felt moments ago is draining away.

“If you're looking for lover boy, he's in his room,” says Ned, as though I were rummaging for Thomas in the cutlery drawer. I assume Jason's staring at the back of my neck while I all-over blush at Ned's foot-in-mouth comment, or maybe he isn't and hasn't noticed and, God, how hard is it to put spoons back in the right place, anyway?

“I've commissioned him for the party,” Ned adds. “We're thinking a giant croquembouche.”

“Hey, Gottie, did you see the Facebook invitation?” Jason calls over as I turn around, drawing me into their circle. “Meg drew this cool—”

I walk out while he's still talking—I've found the scissors, and I'm hacking my way back through the soaked garden to my room, jabbing at random shrubs as I go. I want it all gone. Hair, party, garden, Jason, wormholes, time, diaries, death—especially death, I've had a lifetime of it.

My room feels like a coffin.

CHOP.

That's how I imagine it—one swift, clean slice of the blades and I'll be able to stuff all my sadness in the trash. Jason's hands in my hair, his mouth on my neck, the girl I was and am and will be—whoever she is. Gone.

Reality: I ponytail my hair, reach behind me to cut, there's a crunch—then the scissors stop. Even yanking as hard as I can with both hands … Nothing. They're stuck.

Patting around the back of my head with my fingers, my pulse fluttering, I can tell I'm only about a third of the way through my hair—but it's enough that I have to keep going. Except I can't. Open. The. Scissors.

A chunk of chin-length hair swings loose.

Umlaut turns in circles on the diaries, yowling.

“Not helping,” I sing-song to him.

My face burns even though there's no one but the cat to witness my embarrassment. There's no Sof to call like when I shaved my unibrow instead of plucking it—I've shut her out. Why did I do that? The scissors hang off my hair, bouncing against my back as I throw myself across the room to my phone and text her back, reply to everything, rapidly, urgently, immediately.

Pick a color, pick a number—meet me at the beach on Sunday. Please?

A world where Sof and I are friends.

Then I grab my nail scissors and start hacking away in tiny blunt snips, not caring about the strands that are falling to the floor, how it's going to look. I'm so ready to be—

Free. The kitchen scissors hit the floor.

I run my hand over my head–it feels
really
short. In places. There are also long lengths that I've missed. When I was a kid, Grey would cut the food out of my hair instead of washing it. I suspect I've accidentally re-created toddler chic.

Umlaut pads over to the mirror with me.

My eyes flick between my reflection and the photograph. Olive-skin-dark-eyes-
so
-much-nose-out-of-time-eighties-mullet-hair: yes, I do look like Mum. But it's nice. Because also, for maybe the first time in forever, I look like me.

A mirror ball of light ripples across the room. I look up, catching the end of a screenwipe—and on the other side of it, my ceiling is starred with phosphorescent plastic constellations. Like I used to have when I was little and shared a bedroom with Ned. He always hated them.

Did I stick these up there? Or did Thomas?

Under their fluorescent glow, my phone beeps with an alert for gottie.h.oppenheimer. Thomas's email has arrived. Even though it's impossible, even though this is a brand-new address: this is the email he sent a month ago. The timelines are converging.

 

Thursday 31 July

[Minus three hundred and thirty-three]

I've deleted and reinstalled my email app, climbed the apple tree and waved my phone around for 4G, and boinked it with my fist—but, aside from our addresses and the date at the top, Thomas's email refuses to be anything but this gibberish.

It shouldn't even exist! I hadn't even set up this account when he sent this. Did he guess hundreds of addresses, sending out emails like messages in bottles?

v 4.0
—opening Schrödinger's box determines whether the cat is dead or alive.

But what if the cat isn't in there yet?

When dawn arrives, I shove my new hair into a facsimile of normal and change out of my planet-print PJs into a vest and shorts. At my bedroom door, I pause, looking out at the damp grass—and kick off my tennis shoes. If I'm going to discover the universe, I'll start with my feet.

When I enter the kitchen, muddy up to my ankles, Thomas and Ned and Papa are already at the table. There's a plate of cinnamon rugelach between them.

Papa's eyes go wide, while Thomas swallows in a choking sort of way, then says, “Whoa. Your
hair
.” I can't tell from his tone if it's good or bad.

I reach up and prod it. “Scale of one to eleventy million, how awful?”

Thomas shakes his head, his own tousled hair bouncing. “Nah, you look awesome. It's exactly how it's supposed to be.”

We stare at each other for a moment, something unspoken passing between us.

Then Ned whispers in Papa's ear, and he harrumphs, muttering in German. I think I catch the word
Büstenhalter
.
Bra.

I fold my arms across my chest, and Thomas leaps up, launching himself round the kitchen, putting a rugelach on a plate for me, flipping the kettle on, bat-grabbing and babbling a mile a minute about Ned's croquembouche commission.

I eat the pastry, licking sticky sugar from my fingers, and let myself laugh at Thomas's antics. Ignore the way Ned's scowling at us both.

After nearly a year of mourning, I feel like the Victorians when Edison came along—all those years in the darkness, and then
electric light
.

I've got the earth between my toes.

*   *   *

On Sunday, I dodge Ned's weird policeman act and walk inland out of Holksea, along the canal to Sof's. It's a scalding day, and she's already sunbathing when I get to the boat, barely visible through the jungle of pot plants her mum keeps on the deck.

I stand on the towpath for a couple of seconds, watching as Mrs. Petrakis goes from watering the plants to sprinkling Sof, who shrieks with laughter. Grey used to do that to us in the garden. Did he do that to my mum? Would she have done it for me? The thought is a wormhole yank to my heart.

“Sof!” I bellow, to stop thinking about it.

She sits up, peering over the ferns, and her mouth forms a perfectly lipsticked, perfectly gobsmacked O.

As in,
oh
, my hair. I'd forgotten about the makeover.

While Sof stares at me, I clamber on, rocking the boat—my movement makes all the leaves sway, even though there's no breeze. Sof shakes her head, maybe in disbelief.

“Hi, Mrs. Petrakis.” I wave, awkwardly.

“Hello, stranger.” Her mum's smile is warm, sending lines radiating out from her eyes. She puts the watering can down. “Darling, I'd give you a hug, but my hands are covered in compost. It's only been four days since all the rain, but everything's totally dried out. I expect your garden's much the same?”