The Square Root of Summer (4 page)

“Do you want to tell him that, or shall I?”

“Ha.” He bounds past me to a book stack and starts shuffling through it—not so much organizing as rearranging. Fiddling. Flicking through and reading bits of things. He glances up at me. “Grotbag. What do you think Thomas did?”

“What do you mean?” I frown at the box in front of me. I'm trying to line up the books perfectly perpendicular, but one of them has warped pages from being dropped in the sea, and it's wonkifying everything.

“You know,” says Ned. “To get sent back here. Banished to Holksea.”

“Banished?”

“C'mon, there's no way this settle-in-for-the-summer story holds up,” Ned continues, juggling a book. “It's so last-minute—the flight must have cost a fortune. Nah, it's punishment for something—or getting him away from whatever he's done. I bet he's pulled a Mr. Tuttle.”

Mr. Tuttle was Thomas's hamster. A furball who escaped at bedtime seventeen nights in a row, until his dad worked out what was going on and bought a padlock. “Oh dear,” Thomas would sorrowfully declare, having opened the cage not five minutes before. “Mr. Tuttle has got out
again
. I'll sleep over at G's in case he's there.” His bag would already be packed.

“C'mon,” insists Ned. “
You
know what Thomas was like.”

Huh. It hasn't occurred to me to wonder
why
he's been sent home so quickly.

A hammering on the bedroom door breaks my thoughts wide open.

“Yo, Oppenheimer! Answer your phone much? I've been looking all over, have you seen the time—” Jason stops when he sees me. There's a pause as he literally shifts and readjusts: stepping back and leaning against a bookshelf by the door, arranging himself just so, before he smiles lazily and amends, “Oppenheimer
s
.”

My throat plays rock-paper-scissors and settles on
rock
.

“Gottie.” He meets my gaze this time, blue eyes searching mine before he weighs out his words, one by one. “Again. All. Right?”

I have a book in one hand, the other opening and closing on empty air, trying to hold on as we look at each other.

Oblivious, Ned drops the book he's holding onto a stalagmite, which promptly topples. He leaps across the falling books, offering his fist for Jason to bump.

“Shiiit, mate,” Ned says, as they perform a complicated handshake. It seems to involve a lot of thumbs. “Is Niall going ballistic?”

“The usual.” Jason reverts to slow motion as the handshake ends. He sighs. “You ready?”

“Grots.” Ned's practically out the door already as he turns to me. “Swaps?”

I concentrate on assembling another box, fumbling over the corners. “What's the swap?”

“I forgot, we've got a Fingerband meeting. Look, do the books? Get them in the car, and I promise I'll take care of the rest of it.” When I look at him, he adds softly, “His clothes.”

“Seriously?” I can't decide if Ned's trying to get out of packing the books or shield me from everything else. Grey's shoes. The photographs.
The Wurst
.

I steel myself to look up at the painting on the wall. My final art exam from last year. It's hard, being the straight one in a house with Dumbledore and Peter Pan and Axl Rose, being friends with bangle-wearing glittered artists. So I'd tried, and I'd painted the canal. At the school exhibition, Papa had taken one look at it—a giant blue sausage—and christened it
The Wurst
. Ned had laughed himself silly. I'd pretended I didn't mind, and laughed too.

“Gots, dude.” Grey had clamped my shoulder in one giant hand, holding me steady. “You tried something different. You think your brother would attempt anything he wasn't already good at?” We contemplated the sausage for a minute, then he said, “Your mum liked blue.”

I tear my eyes away from
The Wurst
and see Ned is hovering in the doorway, waiting for me to make up my mind.

“Deal,” I say.

“Cheers, Grots!” he yells, disappearing across the sitting room. “Jase, I'll grab my gear, see you outside in five.”

Then I'm alone with Jason for the first time since the day Grey died.

Soft as a sunset, he smiles. And says, “Margot.”

The way it ended between us, a text message from a hundred miles away, I never had the chance to let him go. Instead, I stuffed all my heartbreak in a box like the one I'm packing now, and waited. When he says my name, it floods the room.

I could melt into him. But instead I grin, teeth and terror, try to speak, and—

Jason finally breaks the awkward to murmur, “How's. It. Going?”

“Okay!” I answer too loud and too fast. Then, squeakily: “How is…”

Shit. My brain blanks on where he's been. We talked every day last summer, I Internet-stalked him for weeks in the autumn, but I can't remember where he went to college.

“Nottingham Trent,” he fills in with a slouchy shrug, his eyes not leaving mine. “It's all right.”

There's no air in the room, no air in my lungs, as Jason peels himself off the doorway and approaches me. For a second, I let myself hope he'll slide his arms around my waist, help me forget about this whole horrible year by giving me someone to belong to. Then he flops backwards next to the half-empty box, onto Grey's bed. I wince.

It's too much: the combination of Grey's room and Jason, so close to me. Last October, alone in this empty house and after weeks of trying to work out what we were to each other, I'd asked him. And he'd texted,
I think I can only manage friends for now
. For now. I bet my heart on that caveat, and now here he is.

I grip the side of the box, trying to breathe. Concentrate on stacking Grey's diaries inside the box. Don't look at
The Wurst
. Don't remember how Jason had laughed at it too, a bit.

“Hey, daydreamer.” He reaches out and touches my arm. “What about you? Had a good year?”

And as he says it, everything inside the box blinks out. It's no longer a box of books, but a box of nothingness. TV fuzz. Like in detention this afternoon.

Not like detention.

This time, the fuzz is tuning in, forming a picture, swirling, more like, more like—smoke. I can even smell a bonfire. And there's a flicker of light. My fingers tremble. This can't be happening, not with Jason here. I lean closer, to check if he dropped a cigarette or something, and I swear I can see the tartan check of our picnic blanket. Our dandelion-strewn lawn. Hear music. I reach my hand out, I can almost touch it—

“Margot? Gottie?” Jason says. “You seem…”

His voice is far away, and I feel a sudden tug as though I'm being

I close my eyes as the universe contracts and expands.

*   *   *

“Hey, daydreamer. Brewski?” Jason asks, handing me a can of beer.

I take it, even though I don't want another drink. Sof has been sneaking vodka all night, but one sip left me woozy—floaty. And parties aren't my thing. When Grey wants to celebrate the existence of trees, or the migration of birds, or his annual Last Day of Summer hootenanny, I hover at the edges. Tonight, it's Midsummer's Eve, and I've hidden myself under the apple tree, where I can see everyone, and everyone can't entirely see me. Except, apparently, Jason.

He's already opened it—the “brewski.” Fingerband has started doing this stupid dude-backwards-baseball-cap in-joke. Everything's brewski and broseph and fist bumps. It's idiotic.

“This way, we don't have to keep getting up and down,” Jason adds, plonking a six-pack in front of us, then flopping onto the blanket. Next to me. Um. Okay?

“Cool thinking, bro,” I say in a deep voice, then take a sip of the beer—it's warm.

He laughs. “You know we're being ironic?” He twists to look at me, and I look back. In the dark, his eyes are practically navy. “You can't be called Fingerband and go full metal.”

“Full metal?” I take another sip, wishing the beer were cold. It's a hot night, but Grey has insisted on a huge bonfire. Earlier he was leaping across it, yelling about Vikings. I smile in the dark.

“KISS makeup, safety pins in our noses, shouting about Satan.” Jason attempts devil horns, but it's tricky when you're resting on your elbows.

“Isn't that punk?” I ask.

Jason laughs, a low rumble as though we're in on a joke together, but I'm not trying to be funny. I don't have a clue. Ned's the musical encyclopedia. I listen to whatever's on the radio—which Grey tunes to static. I'm not sure why Jason's even over here, talking to me about music. The most he's ever said to me in ten years of knowing Ned is, “How's it hanging, oddball?”

“The point is, it's cooler if we play metal but act dorky.” He cracks open another can. The
clunk-sploosh
is as loud as a firework in the dark garden, but no one looks over at us as he edges closer and murmurs, “Margot. How come you never come to see us rehearse?”

Because you've never asked. Because I'd rather watch paint dry. Because Sof worships Ned and if I tell her you've invited me, she'll make us go—and Fingerband sounds like a goat in a lawnmower.

Across the garden, Sof's on a blanket with this week's girlfriend, both of them laughing at Ned's air guitar. I mentally add Jason's invitation to the tally of secrets I'm keeping from her.

“You should come along,” he says again. “School's over, huh?”

“Yeah. I finished my last exam on Friday.” My elbows are getting fuzzy; pins and needles. Is that why he's talking to me? School's out, and I'm rolling with the cool kids now?

Across the garden, Ned hollers something and jogs off inside, into the house. When he's out of sight, Jason leans over my shoulder, nudging me with his chin. “Give me a taste.”

I turn to him, to say he can have the beer, it's gross, and he all of a sudden plants his mouth on mine. I squeak with surprise, into his tongue, but he doesn't laugh. His lips are firm against mine, a question. I kiss him back, but I don't know what to do. I've never kissed anyone before. It's warm and beery, and it's Jason! Why is he kissing me? And then it's … I'm … We're … I float away, closing my eyes.

*   *   *

When I open them, I'm still standing in Grey's bedroom. Only now it's dark, and Jason's gone—and we just had our first kiss.

That's what it seems like, anyway. A memory so vivid, there were sights and sounds and smells and touches. I could sense the scratch of the blanket we were lying on, smell the wood smoke in the air. The taste of beer on his tongue, the roughness of his face against mine. The first of a summer of secret kisses, something that belonged to just me.

And the loss of him is suddenly so real and so raw, I want to cry.

I take a big, juddering gulp of air, trying to fill my lungs, which are pinched and small. I'm so overwhelmed by how much it hurts—missing Jason,
seeing
Jason—it takes me a moment or two before I catch up with what just happened and think: WTF?

I unpack the thought I pushed down after detention today. How a daydream shouldn't last more than an hour. How it shouldn't leave me standing alone in the dark. Why can't I remember Jason leaving, saying goodbye? And what
was
that, inside the box? It felt like I was looking the wrong way through a telescope, to another time. A time when Grey was alive.

A vortex. A one-way metric. But that would mean—

I stumble towards the door, switch on the light, turn around.

Everything's packed. All the books are gone, the boxes too. There are little dust outlines on the shelves. Book ghosts. And the room seems smaller, now that it's empty. The ceiling is lower and the walls are closing in.