The Square Root of Summer (24 page)

“And,” continues Papa, beaming, “we're running out of bedrooms to put babies in!”

I make a harrumph noise of my own. “Papa, was that a joke? Because we're still wrapping our heads round the duck one.”

“One of its legs is the same,” Papa chuckles, wiping his eyes at his favorite punch line. I roll mine (it hurts). Seventeen years of “What's the difference between a duck?” and I still don't get it, but it always has Papa—and Grey—rolling on the floor in stitches.

I make a little shooing motion with my pen, hoping he'll go away so I can commune with my headache, but he just carries on giggling. I haven't seen Papa laugh in months. It's nice.

“We didn't know with Ned, I mean. We knew the second time, obviously—when you were to arrive,” Papa carries on, oblivious to my grimacing. Maybe this is his plan: gross me out with
conception
talk so I'll spend my time with Thomas crossing my legs. “But still.”

“Papa, I know,” I say, to hurry him along. I've already gone off the thought of the banana cake in my bag.

“Maybe you don't,” he says contrarily. “I saw in your room, you'd put the picture of you and your mami. This is where the hair is from?”

I prod my hair self-consciously and one-shoulder-shrug, neither
ja
nor
nein
.

Papa looks down at Umlaut in his lap as he sucks air in round his teeth. “You know, you always were such a surprise.”

“A surprise?”

“Mmmm. I was deferred, you know? And Mami too, with her Saint Martins place. We were thinking to go back to London with Ned, then”—he makes a funny little whoosh noise, an explosion with his hands, sending Umlaut's fur on end—“things changed. There was going to be a Gottie. So even though we
knew
,” he harrumphs, “knowing isn't always enough. Which is why, maybe better that Thomas sleeps in his own room.”

I'm going from
a
surprise to
being
surprised. My whole life, everyone's behaved as though this is the way it always was—that after Ned arrived and life veered off course, Papa and Mum decided: why not have a teenage wedding and another baby? Work for Grey at the Book Barn. Stay in Holksea. Forever. The only accidental thing was her death.

No one ever told me this wasn't the plan. No one ever told me they had wanted more.

They never told me I'm what stopped them.

“What is it called—a carthorse?” Papa asks.

“Huh?”

“Your mami, she throws the stick over her shoulder and carthorsed, when she found out about you.” He nods to himself, remembering. I'm not the only one lost in the past. But Papa doesn't need wormholes.

“Cartwheel,” I correct, thinking of a theory Thomas told me the other day, about why Papa's English is still so loopy. He says Papa deliberately tries to sound foreign, so he can hold on to something of home. Now that I know that they were planning to leave this life, I think it's for a different reason. It's so he doesn't have to admit that this is all real.

That he's truly here, two blue lines and seventeen years later. I know Oma and Opa ask him to move back to Germany. Live with them, even. There was that fight about it, at Christmas, raised voices and closed doors. Maybe he will, now. I'll be eighteen in six weeks—this time next year, I'll be packing up to go to university. And Papa will be free.

As if he's reading my mind, Papa says, “
Nein
. Not in ten million years. I never regret it, ever.”

He's looking at me so fondly, so seriously, it's embarrassing. And I wish he hadn't told me this. Mum's dead and Grey's dead; Papa's trapped here and it's my fault. I was never meant to be part of this family at all. It's so obvious I don't belong.

Surely, somewhere, there's a timeline where I don't even exist.

I'm a wormhole away from losing it completely. I close my ears with a lurch of nausea: the pounding in my head is overwhelming.

“Have fun tonight,” Papa says. “I'm going to hide here. I don't know what happened with you this year,
Liebling
, but now—it's very happy. To see you in love. It's
gut
. How can this not be a wonderful thing?”

After all that: it's not a sex talk. It's a love talk. I stare at my fingers, wishing Papa had talked to me last summer. Wishing my mami had still been alive to. I'd known enough to use condoms with Jason. I hadn't known enough not to love him.

How can love not be a wonderful thing?

It's a good question.

*   *   *

The Gottie H. Oppenheimer Principle, v6.0.
I'm not supposed to be in this universe. All I've caused is trouble. The next wormhole will show me just how much. Unless I stop it.

Papa stays at the Book Barn after my shift finishes, saying he'll come and check on the party later. The darkness follows me as I dawdle home the long way, through the fields, past the hay bales, thinking about how to fix time. About what the opposite of grief is.

On the way, I text Thomas—
Meet me in the churchyard before the party?

He's waiting for me, tucked between the tree and the wall. I watch him for a few seconds, wondering how he won't be here in a couple of weeks. That we'll never see each other again. On what stupid planet is that even possible?

“Couldn't face the chaos alone?” he asks when I sit down next to him. He takes my hand into his lap, holding it between both of his. He's right—whatever else is going on between us, the friendship remains.

“Something like that.” I frown. My head still hurts. What happened to the bottle of Grey's hippie remedies? I need a bunch. “How about you?”

“I, uh…” He scratches his head, embarrassed. “Prepare to have your mind blown, but I'm not the Michelangelo I once was.”

“Huh?”

“A party dude,” he clarifies, but I'm still mystified. “I'm cool but rude, like Raphael. Seriously,
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
? Heroes in a half shell? No? We need to get your house hooked up to Wi-Fi. You have pop culture holes that need filling. Then we could Skype, after I move…” he adds slyly.

“I'm not the life and soul either,” I say in response to this babble, hesitating, then leaning my head on his shoulder. He readjusts, putting his arm around me. My voice sounds sleepy as I add, “Maybe I don't mind the outskirts.”

“Sabotaging the balloons, stealing the cake.”

“Baking the cake,” I correct. My neck cricks when I twist to look up at him. “How did the croquet thing turn out?”

“Croquembouche,” Thomas corrects. “I think Ned was a bit over-ambitious. And it's meant to be a party for Grey, right? So I made a Black Forest gâteau.”

Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte
. Grey's favorite. “The best choice your mother ever made,” he always said, “was bringing a piece of Germany home with her.” I'd never seen him eat it without needing to be hosed down afterwards.

“Thank you.”

Gently, like he can sense my skull is about to burst, or maybe wondering whether I forgive him about Manchester, Thomas kisses me on the head. I could sink into this friendship like a comfortable sofa. But wouldn't that miss the point of this entire summer? And Grey would kill me. It's all through his whole life, all through his diaries, with their explosions of peonies and majestic goats. Take risks. Live boldly. Say yes.

Like a comet, I know: that's how you stop a wormhole, that's the opposite of grief—love.

Before I can think about it, I twist round to kiss Thomas—and boink my head on his. There's a crack like thunder as we connect. Stars everywhere. Nothing spacetimey, just
pain
.

“
Ow
.” He rubs his jaw, looking at me with concern. “Are you okay? Of course you're okay, your skull's made of concrete.”

“Me?” I twist around and prod him in the ribs. “That's twice now, you've chinned me.”

Then I flatten out my fingers and try to read him like Braille. Scrunch his cardigan underneath my hands. How are you supposed to be best friends with someone when they're a hundred and eighty miles away?

“Third time's the charm?” Thomas offers, jutting his chin.

We're still laughing when we start kissing, messy and clumsy and happy. Dizzy and smiling and tentative, figuring out a way towards each other. I didn't know it could be like this.

“Ready to face the death metal?” I ask, when I can finally speak.

*   *   *

We kiss-walk-stumble the couple of hundred yards home hand in hand, so by the time we get there, the party is in full swing. We stand in the driveway, hiding behind Grey's Beetle. The hood is vibrating with noise. My skin vibrates too. I'm pulsating—with Thomas's kiss, with Papa's revelations. With what's to come. My head has started to throb again. I can't let go of Thomas's hand; it's tethering me to the world.

“Is there any way,” he yells in my ear, “that we can get to your room without anyone seeing us?”

I wish. From what I can see of the garden, this is
not
Grey's party. No one's in a toga, for starters. And his style of debauchery was much more aren't-tea-lights-everywhere-romantic?-oops-I've-accidentally-set-the-rhododendron-on-fire. The hundreds of different-colored balloons pay lip service to that idea—I half expect to see Papa floating about up there—but ultimately this is Ned and his mates, rocking out.

“C'mon.” I lead Thomas into the melee. Immediately, we're in a throng of people. Niall pushes a plastic cup of beer into my free hand and I accept it. He says to someone else, “That's Ned's baby sister.”

After that, “Heys” follow us through the garden as we push our way through clumps of people. And out of the corner of my eye, a pool of darkness follows us too. A kiss wasn't enough.

“Heeey.” This comes from Sof, a vision in gold who bursts through the crowd to hug me. I let go of Thomas's hand to hug her back, surprised by her warmth. When she peels away, I see her cheeks are flushed and both her beehive and eyeliner are wonky. She's got a beer in each hand.

She peers at my own half-empty cup as someone bumps into us and we stagger sideways. I feel a sudden emptiness. “Gottie! You need to catch up! Where've you been?”

“The bookshop. And Thomas and I—” I break off. I've lost him in the crowd. “Where is everyone?”

“You see all these people?” she stage-whispers. I can smell the beer on her breath. “They are everyone!”

“People
I
know.” I only know her and Thomas and the band. “Ned.” Talking makes me wince, the headache building up steam with all the noise, and maybe Sof notices, because she says, “Drink.”

I follow her instruction, downing my cup like a shot, and she says, “Whoa, actually, slow down. You're not used to it.”

Her fussing reminds me of last summer. We were both the same year, weren't we? Both finished with exams, out of school uniform forever. I already don't have a mum; I don't not need another one.

“Seriously, where's Ned?” I drop my empty cup on the grass. Under a nearby shrub, the darkness slides into view. A little bigger than before. I turn away, picking up an unopened can that's sitting on the bench. Someone says “Hey” and not in a “Hello” way, and I shoot a glance at them: “What?”

“That's my beer,” says a boy I don't know, gesturing to the can I'm opening.

I stare at him. He has a weird chin and I don't know who he is and I don't care. “I'm the baby sister,” I explain.

“Gottie!” says Sof. “What's up with you? Ned's setting up.”

“I'm going to find Thomas,” I tell her, walking off, pushing my way through all these people I don't know.

Behind me, I can hear her apologizing to the boy whose beer I took. Whatever. I fight my way to the kitchen, then beyond that to the bathroom.

Inside, I lock the door and stuff a couple of aspirin in my mouth, then chug the beer. That's the plan anyway, but I only manage about two gulps. I'm not used to it. Sof's right. How predictably annoying.

My reflection throbs, pale and tired, and my stupid, wonky haircut sticks up in all the wrong places, until I can't see it anymore because the mirror is an untuned television. I turn away and put the toilet seat down and sit on it, closing my eyes, but that just makes my stomach lurch and someone's knocking on the door anyway. I force myself to finish the can, then I go back to the kitchen.

I scour the fridge. Thomas's Black Forest gâteau nestles pristine among six-packs. What would Grey drink? Something effervescent. I find an old bottle of sparkling wine at the back of the pantry and take a mug from the dresser. It's a celebration, isn't it? There should be champagne bubbles and dancing. Every year at this party, Grey would waltz me across the garden on his toes. I want to dance. I want to feel joy. I want to exist.

I go outside and no one's dancing there either, so me and the bottle stomp around on our own for a bit in the flower bed, because it's the only place there's room. The darkness dances with me, hand in hand. We never got the yellow tulips in the end, for the funeral, and it doesn't matter, except it still does.

I top up my mug, and wander round the edges of the garden, looking for Thomas. More people say “hey” as I pass them. Ned's friends, boys in bandanas. When I reach the big stone Buddha, I stop and lean against it, gulping in air. It takes me a couple of seconds to realize I've basically joined Jason and Meg.

Great. Perfect. Unholy long division. Meg's floating dreamily back and forth to the music, wearing ballet flats and generally being petite and adorable and not a great galumphing secret giant. She sees me staring and waves, cautiously. Her other hand is entwined with Jason's.

“Gottie!” she calls out. “Isn't this party insane? Can't wait for later. I'm going to get drinks. You want?”