The Square Root of Summer (12 page)

The Weltschmerzian Exception manifests itself between two points, where the rules of spacetime no longer apply. As well as vortex violations, observers would witness stop-start effects, something like a “visual reboot” as they passed between different timelines. Based on theories of negative energy or dark matter and developed by Nobel-winning physicist

The next page is torn out, cutting off the entry.

The rules of spacetime no longer apply …

Vortex violations—that has to mean wormholes, which shouldn't be real. But I've witnessed them.

The Gottie H. Oppenheimer Principle, v2.0.
The world has “visually rebooted” twice now, both times when Thomas mentioned an email. An email I never received. What if that's because it doesn't exist in my reality? Thomas and I share a timeline in common except for this, so every time he mentions it, the world reboots? Is that even possible?

As I put the diaries back on my desk, I notice the kitchen light is still on. Cursing Ned, I yank on my sneakers.
The earth's not getting anywhere near my toes
, I think, stomping out into the night.

*   *   *

When I open the kitchen door, I discover Thomas. Baking.

While I'm still half out of my skin in surprise, he smiles, then goes back to painting something warm and golden-scented onto dough.

The past week clicks into place: the wonky bread, his first morning. The cinnamon muffin in my book bag. The mess in the pantry, which I've been blaming on Ned. And he never once came out and said, “It's me.” He's as secretive as I am.

“You've been making the bread. You
bake
,” I accuse.

“I bake, I stir, I cook, I roll!” He flips the brush in the air like a baton. We watch as it lands on the floor with a clatter, splattering honey on the tiles. “Oops.”

“Papa used that brush to varnish the table,” I tell him, and he stops trying to pick it up. “But why do you bake
now
? It's almost one in the morning.”

“Jet lag.”

I point at the dough. “What's that?”

“It's when you travel through different time zones and it takes your body clock a while to adjust.” Thomas manages about two seconds of straight-facedness before his mouth wobbles and he cracks up at his own joke.

“Funny.” My mouth twitches. “I meant
that
.”

“Lavender bread. Here, smell.” He lifts the baking tray up and starts towards me. I shake my head and he shrugs, spinning on his heel to the oven instead, talking over his shoulder as he slides the loaf in. “Good with cheese—normal stuff, not your weird German ones.”

“Rauchkäse is normal,” I reply automatically, surprising myself. Thomas keeps shaking words out of me. Perhaps it's friendship muscle memory. “You honestly bake now? This is what you do?”

“Where did you think the food was coming from?” Thomas cocks his head, sitting down sideways in a chair. I sit the same way next to him, and our knees bump awkwardly; we're both too tall. I still don't know what to think of him.

“I thought Ned was going shopping,” I explain. “He's a foodie—well, he lives in London.” We're probably keeping Ned awake—his bedroom is off the kitchen. Then again, he might have gone out after the Fingerband meeting. He mostly gets in at dawn, dry-heaves in the garden, then sleeps all morning. A blur of glitter, guitar, gotta-go-bye out the door every afternoon.

“You think anyone who can bake more than a potato is a foodie,” Thomas points out, then leaps up with a stop-hand and a “Wait there!”

I sit, confused, till he returns from the pantry, piling ingredients on the table: flour, butter, eggs, as well as things I didn't even know we had, like bags of fancy nuts and bars of dark, bitter chocolate wrapped in green paper. It reminds me of that first morning, a week ago, when he made me toast and jam and got Grey's Marmite jars out of their shrine.

“The best way to learn what's so great about baking,” Thomas says, not sitting back down, “is to do it. I want to open a pastry shop.”

He beams down at me, and I resist the unexpected urge to reach up and poke the resulting dimple.

“A pastry shop,” I repeat, in the tone I'd use if he suggested casual larceny. I can't imagine the Thomas
I
knew in charge of hot ovens and knives and edible foodstuffs. Well, I can, but it would end in disaster.

“Ouch. Yes, a bakery. You've eaten my muffins—don't even try to tell me I'm not Lord of the Sugar.”

 …

“King of the Muffin.”

 …

“Impresario of Flapjacks.”

I pinch my mouth into a hard line. He's not funny. He's a hobgoblin. We stare-off, and Thomas gives in first, cracking a smile and an egg into a bowl.

“Honestly? It's fun, and against all odds, I'm good at it,” he explains. “You know how rare it is to find something that combines those two things? Actually, you probably don't, you're good at everything.”

Ugh. I hate that—as though an A in math means I'm figured out. Not everything comes easily. I don't know the names of any bands. I can't dance, or do liquid eyeliner, or conjugate verbs. I baked more than one hundred potatoes this past year, and I still can't get the skin to crisp up. And I don't have a plan.

Ned was born a seventies glam rocker, has wanted to be a photographer since he got his first camera. Sof's been a lesbian since she could talk and a painter from not long after that. Jason's going to be a lawyer, and now even Thomas—chaos theory incarnate—is opening a freaking bakery? All I've ever wanted was to stay in Holksea and learn about the world from inside a book. It isn't enough.

“I'm not good at everything. You know
The Wurst
?” I tell Thomas, to prove it. “The painting above Grey's—your—bed.”

“G, for the love of”—he bat-grabs the air, no, pterodactyl-grabs it—“why would you WANT to paint like that?” In a church-library-funeral whisper, he adds: “I can't believe you never told me Grey did
erotic art
.”

“No, I—” The laughter comes so suddenly I can't get the words out. Thomas must think I'm a complete loon, doubled over and wheezing, flapping my hands in front of my face.

“Wait, wait,” I squeak, before I'm gone again. This laugh is a burst of relief. Briefly, tantalizingly, reminding me of what it can be like—to be happy to the tips of your toes.

Thomas starts laughing too, saying, “G, it's not funny! I have to sleep under that thing. I think it's
watching
me.”

Which only makes me laugh harder, sucking in shallow breaths as I begin to verge on the manic. A kind of happy hysteria that threatens to overflow, spilling into something worse.

I suck in air, pushing the laughter and everything else down. Then explain, “No,
I
painted it. That got me a D.”

“G. You are joking.” He sits down opposite me again, astonished. And no wonder, if he thinks it's a six-foot blue penis! Maybe it is, maybe I've got boy parts on the brain and that's been my problem all along. I wonder if the Boner Barn has anything on Freud.

“Told you I was terrible,” I say cheerfully. I'd faked my laughter at the school exhibition, pretending to make fun of myself, but somehow with Thomas, it's real. I'm terrible and it's okay. “Your turn. Why baking, really?”

“Everyone says you have to be superprecise to bake—like your extra-credit thing, the time travel project. One calculation out of place and the whole thing would go wrong, right?”

“Yeah…”

“It's hogwash!” Thomas announces gleefully. I'm charmed by his use of the word
hogwash
—it reminds me of the pigs at the fair. He points at the bowl. “Look at this—bit of eggshell in there, scoop it out with a finger, what the hell. Too much flour, forget the butter, drop the pan—it doesn't matter how many mistakes you make, it mostly turns out okay. And when it doesn't, you cover it with icing.”

“Is that true?” I'm suspicious of Thomas's grasp of commercial health and safety.

“Probably. It's mostly metaphorical, but I suspect you missed that part. Here.” He holds out the green-paper-wrapped chocolate and I break off a chunk. “Okay, so that's me—wannabe pâtissier and upside-down apple cake of my father's eye. Which is another terrible metaphor for saying my dad's not exactly thrilled by my career ambitions. Or, outside of home ec, my grades.”

“You're failing?” I ask.

After confessing
The Wurst
, I feel full of questions. The Great Thomas Althorpe Quiz! We've got five years to fill, and I've been wordless for so long. Wanting to use my mouth, to ask-talk-laugh—it feels as good as a thunderstorm when it begins to break.

“I'm majoring in biscuits—hey, look at that, I said biscuits not cookies. Canada's wearing off. My grades are okay, but cookies-not-college
is
failing, according to my dad.” He says it lightly, but there's an edge. I can imagine Mr. Althorpe's response to a harebrained bakery scheme.

“Is that why your parents split up?” I nibble on my chocolate.

“Bloody hell, G,” Thomas says, suddenly as full English as breakfast. “This is what I like about you—that Teutonic sensitivity. It's a chicken/egg thing.” He stares at the mixing bowl unhappily, flicks a bag of flour with his finger. “They were fighting nonstop anyway; my one-man detention parade probably didn't help. It was a conduit—do I mean catalyst? Anyway, Dad was fuming when Mom took a pro-bakery stance. I won her over with my
chocolatines
.”

“And she wanted you to live with her in Holksea? Your dad didn't try to get you to stay in Toronto?”

“Living in Holksea…” he trails off.

Silence blooms, expanding to fill the room. My mouth has rocks in it again, and I shove the remaining chocolate in to take the taste away.

“Canada wasn't awful,” he allows. “It wasn't wonderful either. It was somewhere in between. The baby bear's porridge. Just fine, you know? Mom was planning to move back to England, then I got the chance to come back minus all the awkward years. And I'll admit: I was curious.”

“About?”

He holds his fist straight out at me, little finger aloft. Our childhood signal, promise, salute, whatever. I gulp my chocolate down, but don't raise my own hand. I can't. Not yet. Neither of us moves, then he says:

“You.”

This time, the stare-off goes on and on. I'm sure Thomas has a hundred reasons for coming back to Holksea. I'm only part of it. But it's a confession, so I match it with one of my own, in the form of a question.

“Thomas. When you left … why did you never write? And please don't turn it round to me, because I need to know. I mean … you disappeared.”

“I know you want one big, earth-shattering reason,” he says at last, flopping back in his chair, his hands in his lap. “The boring truth is, it's lots of little ones. I didn't know your email or your number—if I wanted to talk to you, I always crawled through the hedge. The next reason was I didn't know where to get stamps. It took eight hours to get to New York, then we stayed in a hotel and my parents watched me like a hawk because of the blood pact. When we got to Toronto, my dad gave me a million chores around the new house, then I had to register at school, then Mom made me get a haircut, because what you need on your first day at a new school is to rock the medieval monk look.”

Thomas picks up steam, waving his hands in the air.

“My dad kept his study locked, and when we fiiinally got a kitchen drawer filled with paper clips and stamps and a rubber band ball and a pencil with a little troll on the end, I was all set to write, when you know what I noticed? It'd been over a month, and
you
hadn't written to
me
.”

I can't believe that's all it was. All this time I thought he'd Not Written as a unilateral decision, some grand sense of betrayal. It never occurred to me it was Thomas being Thomas—twelve, disorganized, and stubborn. It was geography. How different would the past five years have been if I'd just written to him?

How different this year might have been.

“Even Stevens?” Thomas holds out his hand for me to shake.

“A détente,” I agree, and take his hand.

There's a crackle of static, then Umlaut appears, suddenly curling round my ankle. I hadn't even known he was in the kitchen. Thomas and I disengage as the kitten springs up into my lap.

I wait while Umlaut turns figures-of-eight on my legs, revving like an engine.

“I looked for your email…” I admit. “I couldn't find it. Did you use the Book Barn address? Because it's not there—maybe Papa deleted it.”

“No—I used yours.”

Um. One of us is confused here, and it isn't me. I don't
have
an email address.

There was a point in the autumn when I couldn't stop going online, watching Jason's status updates, talking to everybody but me. I knew I had to wait till I saw him, and seeing his life flicker by in real time was lemon on a paper cut, so I stopped going on the Internet completely, turned off my notifications, deleted all my accounts. Waited.

I'm about to tell Thomas I don't have email, that whoever he sent it to isn't in this reality, when

time

reboots

again.

Umlaut's gone. Thomas is no longer in the chair opposite me, but sliding something in the oven and asking over his shoulder, “Want to watch some TV or something?”

“It's late. I got up to turn out the light,” I mumble, standing up. I like my string theory theoretical, not in my kitchen in the middle of the night. The spell is broken. I'm looking for a do-over on last summer, not five years ago. “Maybe another time…”

I expect Thomas to make a fuss or a chicken noise as I start backing out the door, but he yawns and stretches, pulling his cardigan tight against his arms.