The Square Root of Summer (26 page)

It's Thomas who finally calms us down.

“Ned, Ned,” he says, struggling to sit up as the giggles fade out. “Get towels from the bathroom, your bedsheets, laundry—anything, there's a load in my, Grey's,
that
room. G, is the shed locked? Is there a mop or anything? I can't think, um … Okay, Sof, can you turn off the music?”

Ned helps Sof to her feet and they head off, following instructions. Thomas nudges me: “The mop?”

“Shed, yes,” I say, still faintly delirious.

“Right. Can you handle—this?”

I nod—I don't have a choice—and he runs off, slipping in all the water on the floor and banging against the walls.

There's a saucepan on the drying rack and I grab it, approaching the sink like it's a rat I need to kill. I try holding it down over the tap but it just redirects the spray right in my face. Trying again, both hands now, I manage to use it to sort of deflect the spray back down into the sink. Half of it is still going all over the counter, the windows, but at least not me.

Distantly, I hear the music stop.

A few seconds later, a dripping Sof squelches back out of Ned's room. She comes to stand next to me, tilting her head at the saucepan.

“Clever,” she says. I glance at her, my arms shaking with effort. Her beehive has fallen apart, and her eyeliner drips in black streaks down her cheeks.

We stare at each other for a few long seconds, considering. Then she grins.

“You know who'd LOVE this?” She jerks her head at the überdestruction. “Grey.”

“Yeah,” I agree quietly. “Yeah, he'd think it was hilarious.”

“And”—Sof hip-bumps me pointedly—“he'd think
we're
really stupid.”

I hip-bump her back.

“I'm sorry I yelled,” I tell her.

The kitchen's a disaster. Papa's going to kill us. I sort of don't care. I'm weightless, the same way as when you haven't done your homework and the teacher calls in sick—everything's going to be okay. A reprieve. Wormhole, schmormhole.

“Come on, give us a go,” Sof says, putting her hands over mine on the saucepan.

“Okay, hold it tight,” I tell her, shifting aside. As soon as I let go, the pan flies out of her grasp, clunking against my wrist and spraying water over both of us again. Sof dissolves in giggles as we slip and slide in the water.

“Stop iiiit,” I say, snorting. “Come on, you have to hold it, I need to find a way to stop this.”

“Scout's honor,” Sof swears, picking the pan up again.

As she braces her arms against the pressure, I kneel down. “Budge over.” I crawl past her legs and nudge open the cupboard under the sink. There's got to be a stop button or something. The wrench is on the floor where Ned dropped it. From my hands and knees, I can see how filthy the tiles are—dirty water and discarded drinks, everything that was on the counter has been swept down here by the tidal wave.

“Gross, gross, gross,” I mutter as I peer inside the cupboard. I yank at a thingamajig. “Anything?”

“No,” Sof bellows.

I hit a whojamewhatsit and tug something else, and the thundering in the sink above me stops. Finally. I crawl out of the cupboard backwards, butt first. Bash my head as I stand up.

“Ow.”

While I was in the sink, Ned arrived with armfuls of laundry, sheets, blankets. He's already got a towel turbaned around his head, and he's wrapping Sof in a blanket as I grab a sheet and tie it round myself like a toga.
Now
it's one of Grey's parties.

“No, you—” Thomas comes clattering through the door with a mop and bucket and stops, staring at us all. “Those were for the floor? To soak up the water?”

“Fuck the water,” says Ned cheerfully, and I laugh. “We're drowning men anyway—Papa's going to kill us, whatever we do.”

“But we should at least…” Thomas is goggling at the wreck of the kitchen, and I smile at him. He nods, not unhappily. We're okay, I think.

“Tomorrow!” declares Ned, grabbing a bottle of rum that survived the melee. He tucks it under one arm, and Sof under another. “We'll worry about it then.”

“A last drink on death row,” says Sof, and he kisses her on the head.

“Yes! You get it.” He starts leading us out to the garden. “Let's warm up outside. Grots, did any mugs survive?”

I grab what I can and smile shyly at Thomas. He gathers bottles and mugs with me, meeting my eyes and smiling as we follow them.

Outside, the garden is quiet and inky dark. Pretty much everyone's disappeared. A few entwined couples are melting into the trees, and as we pass a group of Ned's friends in the driveway, there's a sweet smell in the air—a tiny orange firefly is flitting from hand to hand.

Meg and Jason are on the bench outside the house, kissing. I float above them, unbothered.

“We're going to drink rum,” I tell her as we walk by, a peace offering. “Come with us.”

She gawps at our appearance, then she and Jason follow us through the dark to the apple tree.

Ned and Sof are already cross-legged underneath it, buried in the thick grass, a gold-plated Titania and Oberon.

“A toast,” Ned announces, his towel turban wobbling, as we sit down. “Thomas, my man, the glasses.”

Among a fuss of mugs and eggcups, rum is poured. I open the bottle of coke I rescued and top everyone's mugs up. It fizzes over the top of Meg's glass, onto her hand. She giggles, trying to lick it off her fingers.

“Ooh,” she says. “Wet.”

“It's just pop,” says Sof. “Have you seen
us
?”

She shakes out her hair, which is drying into the crazy frizz she usually semitames. Ned unwraps his towel to reveal a huge perm, his eyeliner dangerously Alice Cooper. I gaze at them in the half-light. It's not that they look particularly alike underneath all the razzle-dazzle—and Ned and I actually do. But they both have this sense of themselves. They belong. Belong to a band of loons marching to the beat of Gaia-knows-what drum, but still.

But it's okay, because I belong as well. I'm trouble times two. At least for the next couple of weeks. I sip my rum, leaning into Thomas's arm. He's quiet. I squeeze his knee, and he smiles at me, then peers into his glass, fishing out a leaf.

“What happened, anyway?” asks Jason.

“Did you all go skinny dipping?” asks Meg dreamily. “Everyone's wet.”

“With my little sister? Gross,” says Ned.

“Yes, we're wet,” says Sof patiently.

“Did you know Gottie and Jason skinny-dipped?” says Meg, not listening. Too late I see she's stoned, really stoned. In the glow from Jason's cigarette, her eyes are tennis balls. “Jason told me they swam together in the canal. Like mermaids…”

Ned is staring at Jason. Sof bites her lip, glancing between me and Thomas—guessing he doesn't know the half of it. He tight-smiles at me, like he's not
thrilled
by this revelation, but he's not quite allowed to be annoyed either. I can't find my tongue; I think I left it in the kitchen.

“Mermaids,” Meg giggles, staring at her fingers like they're brand-new. Then she looks up at us all, wide-eyed and full of wonder, and I know what she's going to say before she says it. I can't stop her. Here's where my tiny white lie, a misunderstanding I could have cleared up days ago, comes back and destroys me. “They had sex.”

“Fuck,” says Jason. He stubs his cigarette out on the grass, then looks at me across the circle. We stare at each other for a long moment, in it together. But not, I suppose, anymore.

“Come on,” he says to Meg, starting to help her up. “Time to go home.”

“Jason.” Ned glowers at him, his hair crackling and huge. “Piss off, would you?”

“Ned,” Sof says softly, putting a hand on his arm.

Jason looks around at us all, staring up at him in a circle. In slow motion, he mouths a “sorry” at me, and ambles off into the darkness. Meg wobbles and Sof scrambles to stand up. We all do. I can't look at Thomas. My head throbs.

Meg shakes Sof off and stumbles across to me. She leans right in, looking at my face. “You're pretty,” she says, trailing her finger down my cheek. “Isn't she so pretty, Thomas?”

“Come on,” says Sof, taking her arm. “Bed.”

She starts leading her away, Ned lumbering after them. Sof glances back over her shoulder at me, concerned. Then Thomas and I are alone under the apple tree. I can't not look at him any longer.

“You lied to me?” he asks, his face barely visible in the dark.

“You lied too,” I say, and even though it's true, I immediately want to chop off my tongue. I should be pointing out that me and Jason makes no difference—it doesn't make me and Thomas a lie. In the grass, clumsy and new. How we were in the tree, when we held elbows. In the attic in the Book Barn, making promises to each other a long time ago. We can have all that, and I can have my summer with Jason too.

“Seriously? It's hardly the same thing,” Thomas scoffs. “And I suppose everyone knows except me and, I'm guessing, Ned?”

“
No one
knew, that's the point—”

“Then what? I don't get it. You didn't have to lie to me. It's fucked up.” He runs his hands through his hair, then finger-quotes at me. “‘First everything.'”

“That's not even what I meant!”

“Whatever,” Thomas says, not listening to me. “You know, I saw you with him earlier at the party? Before I came and found you, you were whispering together, and I knew—”

“Knew
what
?” I hurl my hands in the air, an imitation bat grab of frustration. “I'm allowed to talk to him! I'm allowed to keep it a secret, if I want. And you're right; it's not the same thing—running off to Manchester without telling me? That's actually my business. Me and Jason is none of yours.”

I'm picking up steam, ready for a fight—I think I'm in the right here, I think I deserve one—but Thomas interrupts me.

“And when you kissed me earlier—in your grandpa's room,” he emphasizes, full of scorn. “When you tried to do more, was it my business then?”

“I didn't lie,” I say calmly, thinking back to the kitchen on Thomas's first morning, weeks ago. How I'd tried to pick a fight, and he hadn't let me. “At least, not how you mean. When I said first everything, I meant I'd never been in love before. Except that's not actually true. And I don't even think you're angry I lied. I think you're jealous that I've been in love and you haven't.”

When I say that, he turns and disappears into the night.

Ned's right. I am selfish. That's what stops me from running after him.

I go to my room to wait. I know what's coming next. Minus three, minus two, minus one. I strip off my wet clothes, dropping them onto the floor, not bothering with the laundry basket.

Exhaustion sweeps over me as I climb into bed and pull up the covers. I've lived ten lifetimes in one summer. But sleep doesn't come. All the secrets and all the revelations and all the anger—me and Thomas, Ned and Sof—it all crashes over me in waves, smashing me onto the sand again and again. Drowning me.

“Umlaut?” I pat the duvet. Nothing. Even my
cat
wants nothing to do with me.

When I turn off the lamp, the light of the day, pooled in corners and hiding under the bed, slides out the door. There's just the glow from the ceiling, the fluorescent stars Thomas sticky-taped there for me, that match no constellation at all.

I stay awake, watching them blink out, one by one.

Until I'm alone with the darkness.

 

Zero

It's the last day of summer. Except it isn't, not really. I'm here and I'm not here. This is the first time I've been here, but also it isn't. Déjà vu. I'm watching myself, inside myself. It's a memory, it's a dream, it's a wormhole.

A wormhole. But it still hurts.

It's the day Grey died.

And I'm wishing. Not cross-your-fingers lightly, or how six-year-old me wished for my vegetables to magically disappear.

I'm pouring everything I have into wishing to a God I don't believe in.

How could I be sleeping with Jason in the sunshine three hours ago, and now I'm in the hospital?

Papa was nowhere to be found when I got here, but Ned was in the waiting room, green snakeskin on a grey plastic chair. We'd exchanged information: the note I found on the blackboard. The texts we swapped on that long bus ride. As though by knowing exactly what had happened, we could change the outcome.

“The paramedics say he was all right when they arrived.”

“They think he might have had a stroke after getting to the E.R.”

“He's in the ICU.”

“He's in the stroke ward.”

“Didn't you say?”

“I thought he was…”

Papa eventually showed up. Maybe he's always been here, invisible. Maybe when Mum died, Papa never left this hospital.

We follow him down the corridor.

Grey has shrunk. He was a giant, a grizzly bear. Now, he's under some evil wizard's spell. His face is a landslide.

He blinks at me, mewing, his hands frantically pawing at his flimsy hospital gown over and over again, unwittingly exposing himself, a baby.

And his hands!

There's a picture of Ned, newborn and wrinkled as a pickled walnut. He's just a frog in the palm of Grey's huge hand—a hand that's now translucent. A tube sticks out of it, covered in tape, surrounded by a bruise. There's a drop of blood on the sheet underneath.

Papa comes back and the doctors come in, and give us numbers.