The Square Root of Summer (27 page)

Seventy-five percent chance of disability.

Fifty-fifty chance of making it through twenty-four hours.

Ten percent chance of further seizures.

Six months till we're out of the woods.

His blood pressure is a problem, they say. There are risk factors, underlying conditions. It could go either way, they say. He's sixty-eight, they say.

I stop listening, start thinking of Midsummer's Eve. Jason's kiss. But before that, Grey lit a fire to ward off the mist that rolled in from the sea. We'd eaten roast chicken and potato salad with our fingers, and wiped the grease onto the grass.

“I want to die like a Viking!” Grey had roared, drunk on heat and red wine, leaping across the flames like an enormous Pan. “Burn me on a pyre; push me out to the waves!”

A brisk nurse, a different one from a couple of hours ago, rattles a plastic curtain around Grey's bed. Someone else, someone old, is wheeled into the next bay—

The bonfire smelled of smoke and spring.

The hospital smells of antiseptic. He can't stride into Valhalla from here.

Grey blinks up at me, tiny. The nurses roll him over so they can peel away his shit-stained sheets, and he's looking right at me and he doesn't see who I am.

I love you,
I think, holding a hand that can't squeeze mine back. His skin is slack under my fingers, loose and cold.
You are a Viking.

The nurses write numbers on a clipboard. Ned comes back from the canteen with weak, hot coffee that burns our hands through the thin plastic cups, and we don't drink any of it. Jason texts, a single question mark. Papa sits across from me on a plastic chair, his hand over his mouth. Staring at nothing. Waiting.

There were sparks in the air on Midsummer's Eve. Sweet wood smoke and a first kiss, a fire collapsing in a shower of light and flame.

The machines beep quietly over and over again. My grandfather lies on the bed, tiny and alone, and far away from me.

I close my eyes.

“Burn me on a pyre; push me out to the waves!” Grey leaps across the flames. “I want to die like a Viking!”

And I wish that for you, with everything I have.

Two hours later you are dead.

 

{5}

BLACK HOLES

The heart of a black hole, known as its singularity,

has zero size and infinite density. A black hole

is formed when a star collapses in on itself.

Gravity implodes, sucking in everything around it.

And it's called black hole entropy.

 

Sunday 17 August

[Minus three hundred and fifty]

I dream I'm in a spaceship, and Thomas is at the controls. He steers us through galaxies. We are all alone in the world, except for the stars. They rush past us as we speed through time and space, heading to the future. And when we get to the very edge of the universe, Thomas stops the spaceship and turns us around.

“You can see Earth from here,” he says. “Everyone's there, waiting.”

I look where he's pointing, but I can't see anything. Just darkness. And when I wake up, he's gone.

For a second, everything's fine. This used to happen every day last autumn, until Jason, and then not sleeping altogether. There'd be a brief, delirious moment after I woke when I'd have no memory of what had happened. A garden full of laundry,
Hey, Grey's home
. Then it comes roaring back.

Memories flood the room. Papa's confession. Kissing Thomas. Stomping around the party, drunk and belligerent. Hiding from the wormhole. Trying to have sex with Thomas. Thomas saying
no
. I cringe under my duvet, but my brain won't let me hide: Sof yelling. Ned yelling. The tap exploding. Meg telling everyone about me and Jason. Our fight. Thomas running away.

And the last wormhole. This is what this whole year's been about. That wish, that stupid Viking wish. Who did I think I was, playing God?

Grey is dead and I wished it, I wished it, I wished it. And don't tell me wishes aren't real, because I've seen the stars go out and watched numbers fall like rain. It's as real as the square root of minus fifteen. But, oh—it was only for a split second

and

I take it back!

I want to yell. I want to claw through the earth with my bare hands, screaming for him to come home. I want to bury this memory deep and never visit its grave. I want a hundred thousand million things, but mostly, stupidly, hopelessly, I want him not to be dead.

I cry till I'm raw, fat hot tears of self-pity. I cry till I'm forcing it, till my throat hurts, punishing myself. Then I lie in bed, scratchy-eyed, watching the early-morning light deepen and take on the color of the day. As the sun filters through the ivy, guilt slowly washes over me. And it brings me to shore.

The worst is over, and I've survived.

I'll never reconcile myself over Grey's death. Over the wish I made. But I can get out of bed. I can yank open the window, breaking through the ivy, and throw open the door—the room is hot and stuffy and green, and I want air and light.

When I stumble outside, the garden is all aftermath: empty bottles and beer cans wink from the grass, and there's a table lamp in the plum tree. I lift it down and tuck it under my arm, heading for the kitchen.

Ned's already there, mopping. He's dressed down in black leggings and a giant, moth-eaten jumper. I recognize it as one of Grey's—Ned said he took the clothes to a charity shop in town, but clearly he kept some. His hair is subdued under a beanie.

I knock on the door frame, unsure whether I can come in. “How bad is it?”

He looks up, green-faced. Too hungover to take a photograph of my dishevelment. “You mean Papa? Or this?”

“This” is the puddle of water that covers the floor. It looks worse than I remember from last night: the color of Sof's mum's vegan soup, topped with cigarette butt croutons. The chairs are stacked upside down on the table, café-style. I peer through them, stupidly hoping to see a loaf of bread or a pile of pastries.

“You can come in,” says Ned. He sounds amused. “You can't make it dirtier.”

I put the lamp down and splosh inside, my sneakers instantly soaking. A disgruntled Umlaut sits on top of the woodpile, surveying Waterworld. The sitting room door is closed, which I hope means the destruction is limited to the kitchen. And that Thomas isn't going to come in and help. My stomach twists as I think about facing him.

I pick up an empty can that floats by, and stand there with it, waiting for Ned to tell me what to do. “I don't know where to start.”

“Tea. Always start with tea,” the expert advises.

I splash my way to the kettle, which is thankfully full—the tap is swathed in brown parcel tape like an amputated limb. By the time it boils and I'm rummaging for milk, you'd barely know anything had happened here. Only the tap and a garbage bag of bottles are evidence.

“Where is Papa?” I ask Ned, handing him a mug.

He slurps his tea, not answering.

“Are you not speaking to me?”

“Grots,” Ned sighs. “Meet hangovers. Talking's like red-hot pokers.”

“Are you annoyed at me?” I'm stubbornly stuck on this point, I don't think I can bear it if Ned's still angry at me.

“'Course not. Like I said last night, you ignore me all year, all summer—”

“Me?” I'm incredulous. “What about you?”

“What about me? I've been here, in case you haven't noticed. Fixing your bike, making dinner, rehearsing, whatever. I'm always around. But you're not—you stare into space, or creep around in your room avoiding everyone, you upset Sof on a weekly basis. Then Thomas bats his glasses at you, and you're all smiles—don't get me wrong, that's great, I'm glad you're happy—except you refuse to get involved with Grey's party, you won't even talk about it, then you show up and bellow at us all for no reason … Never mind. '
Course
I'm not annoyed at you.”

“Oh.” After last night's shouting, I'm awash with relief.

“That was sarcasm, you idiot.” He laughs, plonking his mug down on the table. “Look, I know you hate it when I play the three-years-older card, but—”

“Two years and one month,” I correct automatically.

“Same dif,” he snorts. “I think you could be nicer to Sof. I think you should've come to me when Jason was sniffing around. But I also think it was probably nuts being here this year with just Papa for company. Maybe I should have come home at Easter. I get how hard it is, I do. It was shit, moving to London a week after he died. You're not the only one who was upset, y'know? Maybe in
two years and one month
, you'll see that a bit better.”

“You're annoyed 'cause of Jason.” I nod wisely.

“Rraaarrrgh.” Ned yanks off his beanie, stuffing it in his pocket. His hair tumbles free and he looks like himself again. “I'm annoyed
at
Jason, and I'm pretty sure you should be too.”

“It wasn't his fault,” I say, because I've been blaming him for my unhappiness all year, and I need to let him off the hook. “I think he couldn't handle it, after Grey died. He didn't know how.”

“He bloody well knew you were two years younger than him, though,” says Ned, snorting. Not listening to what I'm saying. “The prick.”

“Isn't he your best friend?”

“Can't he be both? The wanker.”

Stubbornly, I try to explain again. “He loved me.”

“Did he say that? Or did he clench his jaw and swallow so his Adam's apple jumped, and say—” Ned looks away mournfully, the perfect Jason impression, and I stifle a giggle as he says, “‘Do you love me?'”

I know what me and Jason had, that it was love. But we didn't have to be a secret. And he didn't have to make me beg for him to talk to me after he left. So I say: “The
dumm Fuhrt
.”

“C'mere.” Ned twists me into more of a half nelson than a hug, rubbing his fist on my hair. “Too right. You don't keep things like love a secret. Christ. You know who I sound like?”

We stand there for a bit, me bent uncomfortably double and breathing through my mouth. Then he rubs my hair again, and releases me. I gulp fresh air while he straps on a fanny pack and, amazingly, makes it look cool. Only Ned.

“I'll have a word with Althorpe, tell him not to mess you around. But I'm gonna hang out at Sof's today.”

“Why don't you invite her here? Her mum will give you vegan food.” I don't know much about hangovers, but instinct tells me I'm going to need pizza.

“Because Papa's going to yell at you.” Ned grins, heading out the door. “I've already been through that, I don't fancy another one.”

After he leaves, I take the garbage bag outside, then go back to the kitchen and wipe the counters with a dishrag and a squirt of something violently chemical that Grey would disapprove of. I force myself to eat a banana, make a pot of coffee. Then I put all the chairs back on the floor, sit in one, and wait for Papa.

I look at my hands, side by side on the table: this is what I did when I was little. Thomas and I would adventure, hell-bent on destruction, profit, or scientific inquiry (sometimes all three). When we got home, he would hide while I'd trot straight to the kitchen to await discovery, detection, punishment.

“Am I grounded?” I ask Papa as soon as he floats in, first checking his trademark red Converse won't get wet.

It wrong-foots him, I can tell. “Ah,
nein
? This was Ned's party, Ned's trouble. He tells me the tap was an accident?”

“Yes.” I wait for the goose-hissing, but it doesn't come.

“And the kitchen is cleaned up? Maybe you can call plumber, and Ned pays.” Papa pours himself a cup of coffee and sits down next to me. “I think I arrange the Book Barn shifts this time, until school starts again. Work together, no more fights. And maybe dinner as a family tonight, tomorrow, the next day…” He smiles. “I'll cook. Or your brother. No more baked potatoes or cereal, please. You cook like your mami.”

“That's it?”

“You want a punishment for having fun?” He wrinkles his nose. “If Grey had done this party, it would have turned out the same. I do think, is you maybe owe Thomas a sorry. I don't know the details, what happened between you, but he was very upset when he left this morning—”

Papa's still talking as I push my chair back with a squeak. I stub my toe on the table leg as I turn and shove open the sitting room door, run through to Grey's, to
Thomas's
room.