“—of who I am right now,” he continues. “Thomas Matthew Althorpe, age seventeen. Archaeologists will conclude: he was messy.”
There’s silence again as I imagine him in Grey’s room now. Without all his things. Then Thomas pokes me with his holey sock and non sequiturs. “I poured whiskey on Grey’s carpet.”
“Wait—what? Why?”
“It was a ritual. A commemoration. That was his room, you know?”
“Yeah…”
“I didn’t think it through, where I’d sleep when I got here. Your dad gave me Grey’s room for the summer, and I didn’t want to act like it wasn’t a big deal,” he continues, “move in and take it over. It needed a ritual.”
“It needed whiskey?”
“Exactly.” He rolls up his cardigan sleeves and mimes pouring it out. I try to absorb this. That Thomas not only understands his being in Grey’s room is A Big Deal, he was thoughtful enough to do a supremely Grey-like thing about it, pouring whiskey on the carpet—equal parts superstition and ritual and mess.
“This is different—you coming back—than what I expected,” I admit to him.
“You thought I’d jabber aboot moose and maple syrup, eh.” Thomas dismisses the comment, rummaging for the apple and a handful of coins, piling them on the windowsill. “There,” he beams. “Grey’s room needed whiskey. Your room needs things. All the way from Canada. And, er, your garden. A time capsule of you: Margot Hella Oppenheimer, in her eighteenth summer.”
I feel a flicker of irritation. Those are his things, not mine—that’s not a time capsule of me. Mine would contain silence, lies, and regret, and I’d need a box the size of Jupiter.
“What is it with you and time capsules?”
“I like the idea of a permanent record,” he explains. “Something to say, This Is Who I Am, even when I’m not that person anymore. I left one back in Toronto.”
“What was in it?”
“Sharpies. Comics. My old glasses. A key ring for my car, which I had for all of two months before selling it to come here. I guess I don’t need it to escape my dad anymore, though. That’s Toronto. It’s like this—” He holds out his left hand, showing me the two-inch pink scar nestled there. “I’m not twelve anymore. We may not have talked for years”—he glances at me—“but I always had this, so I could remember that day.”
Whoa. His scar matches mine. I didn’t know he had one.
But it doesn’t mean he knows me.
“I don’t want to open our time capsule,” I say, not caring whether we really made one or not as my irritation gathers steam. “I don’t want to remember being twelve. Big deal, you have a scar too. That’s not a good enough reason never to write to me!”
Mum, Grey, Jason—none of them can answer me. It’s exhilarating, finally having someone to yell at.
Thomas hops off the bed and grabs his shoes. My words have slapped the dimples right off his face. His voice is flat as the landscape when he says, “Have you even considered it from the other way around? That you never wrote to me?”
After he stalks out the door, across the garden, the kitchen light stays on for hours.
I stay up with it. First I count the coins into neat stacks on the windowsill—they come to $4.99 exactly. Then I pick up my marker pen and draw a circle around the Minkowski equation, and write underneath:
WORMHOLES—TWO TIMES AT ONCE.
SCREENWIPES—TWO REALITIES AT ONCE.
And at the top of the wall, I write: The Gottie H. Oppenheimer Principle. v 1.0
Sunday 13 July
[Minus three hundred and fifteen]
“Synthmoan de Beauvoir.”
“What?” I’m highlighting excerpts from A Brief History of Time and only half-listening to Sof. When she snatches the book out of my hands, the pen leaves a fluorescent-yellow squiggle across the page, an electrical storm.
“Hey!”
“Synthmoan de Beauvoir deserves your full attention.”
“Who?” My mind is on wormholes, not here at the beach with Sof. I had my first shift at the Book Barn yesterday, working with Papa and avoiding Thomas, and I’ve finally got hold of all the titles on Ms. A’s reading list.
When Sof rang the bookshop to make peace, I thought showing up here today would be enough. But she keeps pushing to re-create our former dynamic, not noticing we can’t slip back into our old groove, like happiness is a dress you wear. Neither of us mentions her fortune-teller, or her note.
It’s a grey, grizzly day, the cold air fuzzy with impending rain. Sof and I used to hit the beach on Sundays, weather be damned—but Ned and Fingerband only showed when the sun was cranked up. I remember whispering to Jason, confused, “But I thought you were goths?” He chuckled and explained how goth and punk and metal were totally different. I don’t know; they all wear a lot of black.
There’s a glimmer of weak sunshine. He might show.
“It’s my stage name,” Sof rasps, waving my book in front of me. “Lead singer of a feminist disco-punk band. Grrrls, guitars, glitter, and Gloria Steinem lyrics.”
Is disco-punk a genre? I stop trying to grab the book back and start rubbing arnica cream—the homeopathic stuff Sof recommended—into my bruises. I found some, new, in the bathroom cabinet. Along with coconut oil and a big lump of rose quartz. Ned. He and Sof are working from the same script, putting on a play of Last Summer. Only I’ve forgotten my lines.
“What’s the band name?” I ask, finally.
“Get this.” Sof peers over her heart-shaped sunglasses. They match her heart-print bikini. If she could, she’d probably make her goose pimples heart-shaped. “The Blood Wagon.”
“Gross,” I say, trying to make an effort. “Are all your songs about tampons?”
Sof chuckles and flips my book over to read the back. “Ugh, do you have anything a normal person can read?” She rummages through my bag. “Oh my God.” I worry she’s found Grey’s diary, but she emerges with a battered copy of Forever: “Definitely extracurricular.”
Actually, it was one of two books on Ms. Adewunmi’s list that the library had. I even checked on the last day of term that she meant the Judy Blume. She just laughed, wagging a gold-nailed finger, and told me to have a good summer—and write her that essay.
“I haven’t read this in—ha, forever. Why do you have this?” Sof thumbs rapidly through the pages, murmuring to herself, “Oh my God, Ralph. I’d forgotten that. Straight people are so weird.”
“I’ve never read it.”
“Why are you—oh my GOD,” Sof says for the third time. She looks from the book, to me, shocked. “Are you having sex with someone?”
“What? No! Give me that.” I snatch Forever back from her. What the hell is this book about?
“Whoa. Gottie, I’m joking. I know you’re not having sex. You’d ask me first,” she says, superior and certain of herself as she stands up, pulling her dress on. “Okay, I’m going to get a drink.”
“Could you get me a Creamsicle?” I ask when she doesn’t offer. It’s not ice-cream weather, but I skipped breakfast.
She holds out her hand for my money, and I can hear her singing loudly “T-A-M-P-O” as she goes marching up off the beach. There’s no one else in sight.
I immediately crack open A Brief History of Time again, and try to wrap my head around the two parts of string theory. 1. Particles are one-dimensional loops, not dots. 2. There are threads of energy that run through spacetime.
Grey claimed the term was “cosmic strings” and insisted it referred to a giant harp in the sky. If he’s right, the universe is out of tune.
I look up when a shadow falls across the page.
“That was quick, you—” I break off as I see Meg standing above me.
“Hi.” She waves.
“Sof’s at the snack bar.”
“Yeah, I just saw her,” she says lightly, and helps herself to a large fraction of blanket. I can’t figure out if she and Sof are together or friends. “She said you’d be over here.”
I peer over my book as she takes a small green bottle out of her bag and starts polishing her toenails. It’s not that Meg’s horrible. But since Grey died, I barely know how to talk to my own friends, let alone someone else’s. All my words were cremated along with him.
Thankfully, I hear Sof’s voice seconds later—except she’s not alone. The full Fingerband entourage is here. And trailing them is Thomas. I haven’t seen him since he walked out of my room on Friday night. One benefit of Papa being head-in-the-clouds—no enforced family dinners. That’s how I’ll score my Nobel: one girl’s experiment to live off cereal in her room for an entire summer.
Ned and Sof lead the pack. He’s got his arm slung round her neck, and she’s laughing. Possibly at his outfit. Where do you even get an orange playsuit in Holksea? Behind them are Niall, Fingerband’s drummer, and Jason, the only one of us dressed weather-appropriate in spray-on black jeans and ever-present leather jacket. Full bad-boy regalia, except I know his mum knitted his jumper. Seeing him here isn’t a surprise—this is north Norfolk, there’s nothing to do besides cow tipping and the beach—but my body reacts anyway. I turn cold, and hot, and cold, and my throat constricts.
He smiles lazily at me, and I think of that moment in Grey’s room, when he touched my hand and called me Margot.
I shiver, no longer wanting the ice cream Sof’s flapping at me.
“Take it, it’s freezing my fingers,” she says, as everyone clusters round. “They only had ice-cream bars. You’re twenty pence short.”
“Thanks.”
Thomas is lurking at the back of the group, his hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders hunched up. He nods at me, and I focus on unwrapping my ice-cream bar so I don’t accidentally stare at Jason in front of him for nine hours. I’m so busy fake-concentrating, it takes me a minute to notice everyone’s still standing up, waiting for me to move.
“Blanket reshuffle,” Sof explains. She glances at Ned. “Actually, that’s a good name for a band.”
“All right, shoegazer,” he teases, gesturing for everyone to huddle together for a photo. “I bet I’ll have you rocking out to Savage Messiah by the end of the summer.”
“You can pay up at the party”—Sof bats her eyes—“when I get you dancing to Blanket Reshuffle.”
I stand up, somehow ending up sandwiched between Thomas and Jason while Ned fiddles with the settings. It takes forever, because today he’s brought one of his eight thousand film cameras instead of his phone. Thomas and Jason both sling an arm round my shoulders for the photo, and they clash just as Ned bellows, “Okay, everybody say ‘Ziggy Stardust.’”
There’s a clunk-click and a mad chorus as everyone shouts something different—I think I hear Thomas yell, “Trouble times two,” but his face is innocence when I look at him.
When he finally lets us sit down, there’s a scramble for the center of the blanket. Niall’s all hair and piercings, and he stumbles around, heavy-footed in DMs, so I’m pushed into the corner. Everyone ends up paired off: Sof with Ned in the middle, Thomas with Niall, and Meg next to Jason, who glances my way. I’m squished behind Thomas and Niall, on the edge of the group. Guten tag, my entire life. Except … last summer, I had Jason, and before that I had Sof, and before that, I was Thomas-and-Gottie. How did I end up here?
The weather has gone from grey to almost-drizzling.
Ned and Sof are loudly debating playlists for the party, which he still hasn’t actually told me about directly. Papa hasn’t mentioned it—he might not even know. He’s not the kind of parent to deny permission for much, except when Ned wanted to get a neck tattoo, but, then, mostly we don’t ask for anything. We muddle along.
I bite a lump of ice cream that I can’t swallow, then point at my mouth so I don’t have to talk to Niall. He’s got so many studs you could peel his ear off like a stamp, and I never know what to say to him: “Nice holes”? He puts his headphones on and ignores me.
Thomas turns around, awkwardly, twisting the blanket underneath his feet to a chorus of complaints. His glasses are sea-speckled, and his hair is as curly as Sof’s. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I mumble back, regretting my ice-cream lump.
Apologizing was never part of the Thomas-and-Gottie vocabulary. It was part of our unspoken agreement. I settle for asking, “Have you been introduced to everyone?”
“G, I already know you, Ned, and everyone,” he points out. “It’s only Sof who’s new, and she rather boldly introduced herself.”
“Oh.” I seem to still be having trouble connecting this Thomas with that Thomas.
“Does putting a jellyfish in my lunch box count as knowing me?” Meg calls out, and Thomas turns around again to answer her, retwisting the blanket, so I end up bumped out onto the cold sand. With his back to me, I can’t hear what he says. I stare at the freckles on his neck while he and Meg and Sof laugh. I catch the occasional word—it seems to be a comic-book discussion.
Using Thomas as cover, I switch my stare to Jason. His collar is popped, his blond hair swept back. He twists in my direction to give Ned’s camera the best moody seascape profile. The last time I saw him was in Grey’s room, when—when what, Gottie? Do you honestly believe you went back to last summer? But that you also stayed here? That your consciousness split in two?
I need to ask Jason what happened, from his perspective. I need to get Jason alone, again. Explain that I’m not ignoring him; my phone’s broken.
He catches me staring, and smiles. Then steals a chip from Ned, makes a joke to Meg about her nail polish, flips the bird at Sof. This could be a scene from last summer—but I’m only near him, not with him, and it makes my rib cage feel two sizes too small for my lungs.
I stare at my book, penciling formulas in the margins and trying not to mind that I don’t have a secret bubble anymore, or that Ned’s shouting about a party I don’t want to happen. Tiny raindrops fleck the page and smudge my numbers. A big fat tear joins them.
I’m surprised when Niall shoves a tissue into my hand. It’s gross—dirty and shredded, probably snotty—and he doesn’t say anything or look at me, ’cause I’m clearly too pathetic. I need to stop sniffling and do something. Otherwise the time capsule of Margot H. Oppenheimer, in her eighteenth summer, will be a soggy mess.
I shove the snot rag into my bag, on top of Grey’s diary. It’s one from five years ago, bookmarked to the day Thomas left. Hearts and flowers are doodled all over the page. He used to do that on our school reports and permission slips. (Asking Papa to sign anything is like trying to catch a helium balloon in a tornado.) I nearly didn’t get my measles shot because there were smiley faces in all the Os on the form.
When I look up, I notice two things. 1. There’s a wormhole, twenty yards from shore. And 2. Thomas is looking between me and Jason with a frown.
“I’m going to swim,” I announce, standing up. Better a watery vortex than here.
Everyone stares up at me.
“You just ate,” says Sof. Her feet are in Ned’s lap. “And the water’ll be like icicles.”
“All right, Mum. I’ll paddle,” I say, standing on the backs of my sneakers to take them off.
“Okay, well, I’ll go with you,” she says reluctantly. Her teeth chatter as she peels off her sundress. Meg claims she has a volleyball injury and can’t swim. And I think, meanly: we didn’t invite you.
Then we start walking down to the tidal line, lurching as our bare feet hit the strip of sharp pebbles and seaweed. It takes a few minutes—the flats at low tide stretch on for miles—and we don’t say much. It’s even colder when we get to the water’s edge, wind whipping in off the sea. Aside from the wormhole, it’s empty. Sof jumps up and down, making exaggerated “Brrr” noises.
“If you’re cold now, wait till we’re in the water,” I tell her.
She puts one toe in and hops back. “Shit. Yeah, there’s no way I’m going in.”
“Duh.” I copy her, dipping my toe in—then brave my whole foot. I hold it there. It’s not so col
d … I take another step forward, putting both feet in. Take another step, and another.
“Gottie,” Sof hisses when I’m calf-deep. “Come back, I’m freezing.”
“In a sec,” I say, without turning round. The sea and the sky and the wormhole are grey. Grey. I want to swim. All the way to the Arctic and away from my life. Then I turn round and splosh back to Sof.
“Ugh, thank God. If you’d gone in and I hadn’t, your brother would think I was chicke—wait, what are you doing?”
I’m peeling off my jumper and I hand it over to her, along with my shorts, then step back into the water in my T-shirt and underwear. The salt water stings on my scabs, but it’s a good pain—it’s waking me up. I splash toward the wormhole till I’m up to my knees.
“Gottie!” Sof shrieks as I step into a dip and plummet up to my waist. The sudden cold takes my breath away, and the only way to stand it is to go all in—I duck until it’s over my shoulders, my lungs screaming, and swim the last couple of lengths to the wormhole. The sand grazes my knees as I kick through the water, and seaweed slimes about my feet. And then I’m there.
I can’t see the water; I can only see the television fuzz, but the sea feels deep here, up to my neck. I can hear Sof shouting something, but I’m too far away to work out what. There’s a tug at my ankle, the underwater current pulling me down—
And I swim through the universe.
“Am I adopted?”
I’m helping Grey after he re-repainted the Book Barn. Instead of cleaning, last month he painted over the dirt in bright dandelion yellow. I didn’t help that time, because my hand was still in a bandage from Thomas. The color lasted two weeks, till he blasted through the kitchen door a few days ago: “Balls and buggery to the flames of hell! It’s like a bloody cupcake café!”
So yesterday we re-repainted it off-white, the kind that looks dirty even when it’s fresh. I helped. And now we’re putting everything back. Again.
“You’re not adopted, dude,” says Grey from the top of the ladder. “Pass me that box?”
I heave it up to him, then sit back down and look at the photo album I’ve found. The Book Barn is like that: a million paperbacks, half of them the shop’s, half of them ours. Sometimes Grey will be writing a receipt and he’ll suddenly grab the book back, saying it’s not for sale.
The Square Root of Summer Page 7