The Square Root of Summer (29 page)

“You could come with me…” Sof croaks so quietly, I almost miss it.

“You'd want me to? I thought you'd still be pissed off at me.”

“I was,” she says, then off my look, adds, “Okay, I still am, a bit. Look, last year? Not telling me you were ditching art, ditching
me
, it sucked. Worse than getting dumped. But I understand it, now. I mean, you lost your dad.”

I blink at the oddity of her mistake. “My grandfather.”

“Nah. I've been talking to Ned about this. He was your dad. Your papa's your dad, obviously. But Grey was his and your dad too. He was, like, all of our dads, or something.”

“Yeah, he was.”

I sigh and lean my head on her shoulder. She puts an arm round me and we sit there for a bit, both waiting for it not to be awkward. Maybe it always will be. I look at my feet, seeing how tanned they are. And dirty. The earth is definitely between my toes, and the cherry-red nail polish I put on at the beginning of summer is nothing but chips. I'm ready to fall asleep on Sof till autumn, when she pulls away.

“Please? I want to see pig racing! And eat cake—I'm going to go crazy and have gluten
and
dairy. And sugar! And the vegetable sculpting! Pleeease,” she begs. “I can't go alone.”

“What about Meg? And—is it”—I can't remember the name of her latest girlfriend—“er, Susie? Or won't Ned go with you?”

“Meg will be there. Susie's old news. And Ned's playing with Fingerband. But anyway, I wanna go with
you
.” She prods me with her pencil, and I giggle, reluctantly.

“Fingerband? You didn't want to perform as Jurassic Parkas?”

“I like rehearsing,” she muses. “And singing at the party was fun. But I think I prefer being behind the scenes. Being looked at is ugh.”

She full-body shudders. I take in her gold-sequin T-shirt, Hawaiian-print trousers, pineapple hairdo. I don't know if we'll stay friends. But I do know that if Sof can simultaneously be spotlight-reluctant
and
wear this outfit, and all that contradiction can be contained in one person, well: we might be more than the sum of our past.

*   *   *

Without Thomas, the fair is devoid of drama. My righteous anger at him has burned away and I kind of miss the chaos he might have caused.

After the pig race, Sof and I wander through the village green—sheep shearing, bric-a-brac, the world's smallest petting zoo. Distantly, I can hear Fingerband squawking. By unspoken agreement, we avoid the cake competition tent.

“What about the Bunting Belles?” says Sof as we get to the food stands, peddling everything from organic veggie burgers to hot fried doughnuts. “Girls-only touring band visiting summer fairs around the country. All our songs have hand claps in them.”

“Supported by doo-wop duo the Marquee Men. Bratwurst?” I point to a hot-dog stand. Sauerkraut will soothe my soul.

She shakes her head. “The worst. We'll travel in a gingham-themed bus.”

“And live off farmers' market food.”

Sof keeps wrinkling her nose at said food until I suggest ice cream, then gleefully scampers off to line up for soft-serve, while I sit down on the grass to watch the world. Children tugging on their parents' hands, a girl crying for her balloon that's floating off miles into the sky. People from school, a handful of faces from the party, swigging cider in milk bottles and eating jerk chicken and coleslaw from Styrofoam trays. A few wave at me as they walk by. I smile back shyly.

And then, sloping towards me through the sunshine: Thomas.

He's carrying two ice-cream cones, one a simple soft-serve, the other a toppling rainbow tower of scoops and sauces and nuts and wafers. Without speaking, he leans down and hands me the vanilla. I wordlessly accept. I'm more mixed up than his ice cream, which is practically an ice-cream sundae (barely) balanced on a cone. My heart is the cherry on top, and he bites it.

I gaze up at him as he contemplates me, blocking the sun.

“I bumped into Sof,” he finally explains, swallowing. “She thrust these at me, pointed you out, then grabbed Meg, and they both booked it. Almost like they planned this. The ice cream was melting all over my hands, and I couldn't find a garbage can, so…”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“It's ice cream. I don't forgive you.”

“Oh.”

Despite saying this, he sits down next to me. My skin runs hot and cold with confusion, sunshine and shade. He doesn't forgive me; I'm not sure I've done anything that needs forgiving. But he knows without asking that the vanilla scoop in a waffle cone is mine. I nibble at it, stealing glances at him and wondering what we'll say. How we'll get our friendship back. I think that might be all I want, for now.

“Meg and Sof planned this?” I ask eventually.

Thomas shifts, guiltily. “I stayed at Sof's the first couple of nights. Weird, right? I'm at Niall's now, on the sofa. Oh—and I entered the cake competition.” He tugs his cardigan aside, showing me the rosette on his T-shirt. “First prize. Ban's over.”

“
Mein gott
, Thomas—that's amazing.” My voice sounds false, clangs too loudly. I'm annoyed and pleased and confused, all at once.

“Yeah, well. You know I worked in a bakery back in Toronto? Every Saturday since I was fourteen, and summers.” He holds up his hand, counting off barely visible burn scars on his fingers. How have we spent a whole summer talking and this never came up? “Brownie. Mille-feuille. Tray bake. I'm not bad. I had some money saved up from that job. My dad kept telling me it was for college. I don't know what it was for—maybe to go traveling after high school. I'd like to see a shark. Or catering college. Move to Vienna and learn how to make strudel.”

“What are you going to do with it?” I ask nervously.

“Well, it turned out I saved less money than I thought—cardigans don't come cheap. Not enough for a shark. Or Vienna. Once I sold my car, it about covered a one-way ticket to England. This mad thirty-eight-hour round trip via Zurich and Madrid, the soonest flight that I could afford after term ended. Left a note for my mom that I'd be living with you till she came over. She and my dad had pretty much decided I'd be staying with him in Canada. That's why she calls so much. It's Mr. Tuttle, ten-fold. I'm in trouble.”

Ice cream. Brain freeze. Whoa.

I had no idea where his story was going, I was just happy to have him babbling at me again, but this is huge—Hadron Collider huge. Thomas cashed in his cannoli money to see me. And
why
?

Before I can ask, he glances at me and says, “I probably should have told you that before.”

“Er, yes. Probably,” I squeak, and try to refill my lungs, which seem to have collapsed. “Why didn't you?”

“Because it's nuttier than this ice cream?” He shrugs. “The moment never seemed right to confess. You might have noticed, I'm not the best at telling you stuff. And because … I knew I was using your email as an excuse. The idea of leaving Toronto and choosing to live with my mom—I'd been thinking about it for a while. If I did it, without giving them the choice, they'd have to stop arguing about it. And I didn't tell you about Manchester, and I didn't tell you I was half here to annoy my dad—”

Thomas is bat-grabbing again, sending drips of sticky ice cream flying through the air, and the gesture topples me like a domino. Every emotion falling into another—love and fondness and familiarity and want, an aching want for us to be okay. Whether that's friendship or something else.

“—or about any of it, because you seemed happy see me again, and I liked you.”

He glances at me, checking for my reaction. Which is mostly just trying to keep up. I have at least a hundred questions, but I nibble on my cone and swallow them.

“I don't want you to think I was running away. I want you to think I was running towards. Making a grand gesture.”

“A gesture like telling me you spent all your money on a plane ticket for me, when really it was to get away from your dad?” I cock an eyebrow.

“It was still a little bit about you. I wanted to know if you'd chin me again.” He smiles, rubbing his jaw. Somehow, even when we're out of sync with each other, we still have a rhythm. “It's pretty funny that you actually did.”

I put my half-finished cone down next to me and wipe my fingers on the grass. And I say to my knees, “It's pretty funny that you actually did run away again…”

“Yeah, well.” He sighs. That's all I get—a sigh?

“Look.” I shuffle around so I'm sitting cross-legged opposite him. Meet his eye. “I'm going to explain this once, about me and Jason, and then it's done. But you can't just disappear on me again. You promised you wouldn't. Deal?”

Without checking behind him, he flings the last of his ice cream over his shoulder, and reaches out his hand for me to shake. “Deal.”

“All right. Okay. I'm sorry I lied.”

Thomas nods, still holding my hand, waiting for me to go on.

“No, that's it. That's all I have to say—I'm sorry I lied, or let you misunderstand, or whatever. Period. Ned tells me I'm self-absorbed. I'm not sorry Jason and I had sex, or that I was in love with him before you, and I meant what I said in the garden—it's not your business, and I don't have to explain it, and you don't get to judge me on it or be jealous. And if you are, keep it to yourself. It's not even a thing.”

After my little speech, I nod, firmly. I think Sof would be proud.

“Why did you? Lie, I mean,” he asks. I take my hand back. “Sorry. It's just, if you'd told me … Okay, I'd still have been totally jealous. But it was like you were making fun of me.”

“I was used to keeping it a secret,” I say. “You know that thing you said—that I was the first kiss that counted? I thought it was a nice idea. You were my first best friend. But I'm not sure it matters anymore—first, second, the order you do things.”

He doesn't say anything, just sits there quietly in a totally un-Thomas-like way. He's still. Did I freeze time again? Can he even hear me? Then he blinks.

“So what happens now?” I ask, my voice squeaky. “Are you going to come home? Papa, and Ned, and Umlaut, everybody wants you to. I know you're leaving in a week anyway, but it's true.”

“Are you asking me to come back as friends, or as whatever we were?”

“I don't know.” It's true, I honestly don't. “Can't you just come back, and leave it up to fate?”

“The trouble is,” he says, “I still like you. And after the party, you just gave up! We wouldn't even be talking right now if I hadn't come over. And I like you so much, I would probably let you do this.”

“This?”

“Not make a grand gesture in return. You email me, and I come from Canada for you. You ask me to come home, but you're not coming to me. When I lied about Manchester, I came and found you. Then you go and break my heart, and I'm still the one who goes looking for you.”

There's a fairy tale Grey used to read to me called
Guilt and Gingerbread
. The princess's heart of gold is stolen and replaced by an apple. The apple rots inside the princess, there's a maggot. She sighs, she dies. That's me. Rotten. Where my soul should be, is a shriveled little dead thing.

“I'll make you a grand gesture,” I declare.

“Hmmm.”

“I will! I don't know what it'll be yet. Come back first.”

He huffs, a half laugh. “And pack all my stuff AGAIN?”

I scoot round so I'm sitting next to him, and we both lean back against the fence. We're friends. We did promise each other that.

“I don't remember it being this tiny,” Thomas says eventually, waving out at the fair.

“We're bigger now. Proportionally, it's tinier. If you're three times the mass you were then, and you used to be half a percent of the fair, there's now less of it in relation to you.”

“Hey, I nearly understood that.” He elbows me, then unfolds himself, brushing the dried grass off his jeans. “So … I'll see you before I go to Manchester, right? To say goodbye.”

The sun has slipped down the sky, and now, when I gaze up at him, he's nothing but light.

“Okay,” I say. And then he's gone, walking off into the afternoon. I sit there for a while, feeling like I missed a really big moment, and I can't even blame a wormhole.

*   *   *

When I get home, Papa is in the garden. He's lying on his back among the dandelion stars, staring up at the evening sky. There's a glass of red wine half-balanced in his hand, the bottle buried in the grass beside him, and it looks like he's been crying. It makes me want to run and run, hide inside the horizon, but instead, I sit down next to him. I'm saying yes. I'm running towards.

He smiles up at me, patting my hand.

“Grüß
dich,”
he says. “How was the fair?”

“I saw Thomas,” I blurt without preamble. “I'm sorry. I tried to get him to come back here, it was my fault he left, and the tap—all of it.”

“Liebling,”
he says, smiling, “that can't possibly be true. Ned attacked it with a wrench.”

“Yes, but—” I flail, tight-throated. I have an ocean of apologies to make and no one will accept them.

Papa sits up and takes a sip of wine, frowning at his empty glass and refilling it.

“‘It's all my fault, it's all my fault,'” he parrots. “This was how Thomas got his reputation as, what did you call that? A gremlin? The pair of you were always up to something. And afterwards you would always be racked with guilt. You'd be full of apologies and making amends—I'll be
gut
for a week, so
gut!
—and you were. Naturally, we all assumed everything naughty had been Thomas's idea.”