“You lied to me?” I take the little voice in my head that’s reminding me I’ve lied to him, and I squish it down. That was a misunderstanding, a one-off. It’s not the same thing. “All those times I said about starting school, or you being back next door? You didn’t think to mention it?”
“Also not my plan.” He shuffles in the sand. “Look, I’m not proud of myself, okay? But things were so awkward between us when I arrived, and I knew if I told you I wasn’t here for long, you’d never talk to me. We wouldn’t have the chance to become friends again.”
He thinks this is friendship? This is five years ago, all over again.
“When?” I ask.
“When what?”
“When everything. When were you going to tell me? When do you go to Manchester?”
“Three weeks.”
Stars swim in front of my eyes. All this time, all this time I’ve spent trying to understand the past, and it goes and repeats itself. Thomas is leaving. And he never even said.
I want to scream the clouds away, punch the moon back out into the sky. I can’t do this. Time is moving too fast. I turned around and it was winter, closed my eyes and it was spring. Summer hot on its heels and it’s already half over, and Thomas is leaving, again, everybody leaves, Mum, Grey, Ned, Jason, Thomas. Grey, Grey, Grey. I’m on my knees and I can’t breathe, I need a wormhole, now—
“Gottie.” Thomas’s voice is soft. “G. I honestly thought, for the first couple of weeks, that you knew.”
I stay on my knees and shake my head miserably: no.
“I guess I thought your dad would’ve explained. My mom called him, when I was on the plane. I’d left her a note. She told him the plan. He’s talked to me about it.” He sounds confused, frustrated. I don’t turn around. “Then I figured out you had no idea, and I just … I didn’t know what to do. It took weeks to get you to be my friend again. You were so sad about Grey … I don’t get why he didn’t tell you.”
“So it’s my fault for supposedly sending you an email,” I say, hunching up my shoulders, staring at the water pooling by my feet. “And Papa’s fault for expecting you to tell me yourself. Who else should we blame? Ned? Sof? Umlaut?”
“I think you needed me to be here this summer,” he says. “And I am. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
“Nope.” It comes out in two sulky syllables, my throat tight. I know I’m not being fair, and I don’t care. If I say another word, I’ll cry. Next to me, I can see Thomas’s feet shuffle forward. He stoops and grabs a stone, skimming it across a tidal pool.
“We can visit each other. Take trains. I’ll buy a car. Get another bakery job and meet you halfway across the country with home-baked iced buns.” His voice is cajoling, and I’m not in the mood to be cajoled. Just for once, I want things to go my way. I stand up, and I kick my way through his stupid equation, stomping all over the X.
“I hate iced buns…” I turn to tell him, viciously, and the words disappear in my mouth when I see what I’ve done.
The sand I sent flying through the air is hanging there. It won’t ever fall. The white foam waves hover over the dark sea, forever cresting and not crashing down. Everything is still. Everything is silent. And Thomas is frozen, midplea.
The geometry of spacetime is a manifestation of gravity. And the geometry of heartbreak is a manifestation of a stopped clock. Time stands still.
* * *
I speed-cycle the three miles home through the gathering dusk, and it never gets dark. The world is as broken as my smashed watch. The sun isn’t setting. It stays right where I left it at the beach, hovering just under the horizon, as the moon fails to climb the sky. It’s beautiful and awesome, in the old-fashioned sense. Daunting.
Pedaling fast, I take the shortcut through the field and straight through the nettle patch, not caring. I need my books, I need to figure out what’s going on—mathematically speaking. It may not make a difference. But for all that the universe is in charge, I want to at least try to take control.
I ditch my bike in the driveway, out of breath, and jog-walk-wheeze into the garden. And stop dead. Ned and his bandmates are—were?—having a bonfire. A prelude to the party, which I realize with a jolt is this Saturday. Where did the summer go? In nineteen days, my grandfather will be dead forever. No more diaries. And I’ve spent this whole time chasing myself down wormholes, without ever thinking I could be finding my way back to Grey.
The flames are frozen, sparks painted on the air. Ned stands near the Buddha, mid-beer-chug, while Sof is a tableau of worry-tinged admiration as she watches him. It’s a momentary glimpse of her private face.
I’m an interloper. I tiptoe past, trying not to look, Edmund creeping through the White Witch’s lair. Then I think, screw it, and double back to tie Jason’s shoelaces together. His lucky lighter’s in his hand and I pocket it, planning to drop it down a drain later or something.
The trees are as still and silent as gravestones. It’s spectacular and eerie—I’m already writing equations in my head to describe it all, the frozen antigravity. This is what I’ve wanted all year, isn’t it? To stop the inexorable forward motion.
As I pass under the apple tree, I see Umlaut. He’s midprowl along a branch, towards a moth he’ll never catch. I fetch Thomas’s email from my room, along with my A-level physics textbook, then I climb the tree and grab Umlaut onto my lap. If I can restart the clock, I don’t want him falling off the branch in surprise. He’s warm, which is reassuring, and taxidermy-stiff, which isn’t.
“Okay, Umlaut,” I say. I don’t think he can hear me, but talking helps me swallow the incipient panic. This is Halloween levels of creepy. “How do we fix this?”
The Friedmann equations describe the Big Bang. Maybe time could be jump-started like our crappy old car in winter. I know what Grey would do: read them aloud as if from a spell book, the origins of the universe. Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps I should enact them, create a Little Bang—heat from Jason’s lighter and a vacuum inside the time capsule. Tweak the math and make it smaller. It’s a start.
I get comfortable, flipping the time capsule shut so I can stretch my legs out.
The lid is blank.
When Thomas and I climbed up here to open it, the day of the frog, our names were on the lid. He’s disappearing. Himmeldonnerwetter! Time hasn’t just stopped. The branches are unraveling. We’re reverting to a world where Thomas isn’t here. For all that he’s lied, I don’t want that.
I want the forward motion.
I want to see summer dwindle into autumn. For school to start, university applications, mock exams, and A-level results. I want to kiss Thomas again, and kill him for not telling me he was leaving. Tell him about Jason, everything, and all about the day Grey died—a truth I don’t even admit myself. I want to see what happens with him and me, even after he leaves. Even if it all goes wrong.
Because I want the chance to cry when it hurts.
Faced with a choice between this—stopping time, making my world so small I can wrap my life up in a blanket—and smashing my heart to pieces, well. Pass me the hammer.
* * *
I scrawl the first equation underneath the lid of the tin, then crumple up some pages from my physics textbook, put them inside, flick Jason’s lighter—thankfully, it wasn’t lit when time stopped, and it catches flame—and drop it in. Then I shut the tin and write THOMAS & GOTTIE on top.
I cross my fingers. The inside of the time capsule was black and sooty when we opened it, clean just now. I’m lighting the fire we found a few weeks ago. Actions have consequences—it just so happens that I do mine the wrong way round.
I’m right. Gradually, the world begins to turn. Slow and creaking at first, like a carousel at a funfair, the first ride of the day. A meow as Umlaut starts clawing through my jeans. Wind begins to rustle through the tree. Nettle stings finally blossom on my ankles.
Faster now, the moth flutters through the branches, there’s a whoop from the garden. Faster and faster, th
e crackle of the fire, the world going dark as the sun dips away.
I stay in the tree, and curl myself up like a caterpillar.
I’m not sure how much time passes, how long I wait until I hear Thomas calling my name. I know that I’m cold and that there’s a pool of dark matter in the hollow of the tree. And I’m afraid of what’s happening. How things that started off as beautiful, cosmic occurrences—stuttering stars and pi, floating in the air—have turned ugly and intense. The world is spiraling out of control.
And I don’t think time restarting has anything to do with what I’ve done, mathematically.
“I’m up here,” I yell.
A few seconds later, his face pokes through the leaves. It’s a question.
Our eyes meet, and I nod.
“I’m really pissed off at you,” I tell him.
“Fair enough.”
“But I’ve got nettle stings. And I’m cold. So I’m coming out of the tree.”
“Okay.”
After I climb down, I let Thomas take my hand.
“I don’t forgive you, or anything,” I say.
As we walk through the garden, Ned and Sof have their heads together, hair mingling as they whisper. She looks up as we go by. “You okay?” she mouths. I nod.
Thomas holds my hand as he leads me inside, into the kitchen. He holds my hand as we detour into the pantry, as he rummages one-handed past the Marmite tower to grab something I can’t see. He holds my hand all the way to the bathroom, and then he holds my hand as I sit on the edge of the bath, and he cranks on the taps. He did promise me friends. He did promise me he wouldn’t let go.
The water is Niagara Falls loud, and we don’t speak as he lets go to undo the jar he grabbed from the kitchen, dumping the entire thing in the water. Bicarbonate of soda.
I look a question at him.
“Grey,” Thomas shouts over the water. “He taught my mom to do this when I had chicken pox. I guess it’ll work for nettles.”
Mutely, I nod, staring at the water as it turns milky white, filling up to the brim. I’m shivering as I stand up and yank off my jeans, and Thomas turns away. I climb into the bath in my T-shirt. The warmth and the relief of the water on the stings is so good I actually growl.
Thomas laughs, sitting down on the floor, his back against the bath.
“You sound like Umlaut.”
“It’s good.” Two-word sentences are all I can manage.
The water’s hot and deep, up to my neck, and opaque. When was the last time I had a bath? The day after Thomas arrived, when I crashed my bike, and all I wanted was for him to go away. Now I’m back in the tub, and he’s leaving. Ironic.
Also ironic: there’s a wormhole in the bath. Life moves forwards and I go backwards. What is it I’m missing? What more does the world want from me? It’s already so fucked up.
“Aren’t I a total gentleman?” asks Thomas, not turning round.
“You are.” I splosh the water with my hands. I could fall asleep in here. “I feel like I’m in a science experiment.”
“Dropping you into a bathful of fizzing chemical compounds?” There’s a smirk in his voice. “Are you … in your element?”
Thomas jazz-hands over his head at me. I want to clamber out of the bath, and kiss him. I want to clamber out of the bath, and clobber him. How can he be going away again? How could he lie to me?
I laugh, at his stupid joke, at his stupid hands. It mutates into a sob.
“G, please don’t—” Thomas breaks off. “Can I turn around?”
I nod, my face buried in my hands, my hands buried in my knees. I don’t care.
“I’m taking that as a yes,” he says, and then his arms are around me as I go into full meltdown, crying into his shoulder. “I’m sorry. For a while, I really did think you knew. Then when I realized you had no idea … I didn’t know what to do. I don’t want you to hate me.”
“I don’t want you to go,” I say, my face hot. I’m falling apart in Thomas’s arms.
There’s a wormhole reaching for me, and I’m bruises and hurt as I hold on to him. I don’t want to disappear. I don’t want to do this anymore, but I don’t know how to stop it. I’m here. I want to exist.
I’m ready to live in the world again, but the world won’t let me.
He’s warm and safe and cinnamon as he promises me, “I have to go. But you remember my promise, right? I’ll always—”
Before I hear the rest, I spin away down the drain.
Thursday 5 September (Last Year)
[Minus four]
I’m sweating hot. Autumn, and the air is glossy with sunshine. It’s the wrong day to be wearing a black wool dress. Any day is the wrong day for what we’re doing.
We’ve been standing, singing hymns I don’t know, for ten minutes. I’m not used to wearing heels; Sof got the bus to town and bought me these. They’ve rubbed all the skin off the back of my feet—I can feel my tights sticking to the blood. I sway in the heat, shifting my weight from one foot to another. I want to sit down, I think. Then immediately try to unthink it.
Ned grips my elbow as I sway, and I look up at him. His hair is tied back in a neat bun.
“You okay?” he mouths. I nod as the hymn finishes and we sit down with a murmur, a clatter of pews, a rustle of paper. There’s a pause while the pastor climbs back up to the lectern. I glance over my shoulder, searching for Jason. He’s looking at Ned, not me. Sof catches my eye. I turn back to the front.
“Grots,” Ned hisses at me, nodding at the coffin. “It kind of looks like a picnic basket.”
A giggle forms in the back of my throat. I chose it—one of those woven, willow branch ones. Grey would have been pushed out to sea and shot at with burning arrows if he could. Instead, after this, there’s—
Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t.
We stand up again.
Papa gets the words of the next hymn wrong, confidently launching into a second chorus. Ned snorts.
It’s been like this all day, lurching from ordinary to horror, a binary rhythm.
Washing my hair with mint-flavor shampoo, eating a piece of toast. Putting Marmite on the table before I remembered. Pulling on black tights even though it’s twenty-nine degrees outside and Grey would want us all barefoot anyway. I took them on and off a thousand times and I was still ready too early. Ned’s arm around me on the sofa, flicking through the channels. Waiting for the motorcade to arrive, even though the church is a five-minute walk from our house.
Traveling in a hearse. Feeling hungry. Trying to remember what food I asked the pub to prepare for afterwards. Papa red-eyed. Ned asking me to tie his tie.
The word eulogy.
Listening to the pastor talk about James Montella. Thinking, who’s that? Why aren’t you calling him Grey? Everybody laughing at a story the pastor tells about him trying to jump across the canal to prove something, and his daughter asking him to at least hand over the keys to the Book Barn first. I try to remember, then understand he’s talking about something that happened before I was born. He’s talking about Mum.
We’re standing up again, another hymn. I wince, my feet aching.
“Take them off.” It’s Ned, his hand steady on my shoulder. “It’s okay, Grotbags. Take them off.”
It’s what Grey would do. But I can’t, I don’t deserve to be comfortable, and I sway in the heat and I’m falling—
Saturday 16 August
[Minus three hundred and forty-nine and Minus three]
“No, like—forsythia, or heather. That color yellow.”
The florist shows me more lilies, creamy ones, and I want to shout at her because she’s not getting it. She won’t give me yellow tulips and it has to be right; it has to be yellow tulips at the funeral! I’m practically screaming it, and she’s looking at me blankly, saying, “It’s September…”—
* * *
[Minus two]
I yank the dress over my head. It gets caught around my bra. I’m sweating alrea
dy, huffing and puffing as I tug on the zip. Sof’s outside the changing room curtain and she needs to shut UP, everything comes up too short around my thighs and stretches tight round my armpits, I’m too tall. I’d never choose this dress anyway, this color. It’s black, but then, it’s supposed to be—
* * *
[Minus one]
The phone in the kitchen rings and none of us move to answer it, just carry on staring at nothing like we have been all evening. After a second, the machine cuts in. “This is James, Jeurgen, Edzard, and Margot,” Grey’s voice booms out and then he starts chuckling at our ridiculous names and he’s laughing fit to burst, it fills the room, like his death is just a big cosmic joke the universe is playing on us. Ha, ha, ha—
* * *
It’s obvious what’s coming next. Since the funeral, I’ve been lurching in and out of time, closer and closer to Grey’s death. Four wormholes in three days, their intensity and frequency leaving me dizzy. I only know it’s Saturday, the day of the party, because this morning Ned was staggering round the kitchen, haphazardly assembling a bacon sandwich and asking me if I wanted to borrow his eyeliner for tonight.
I have time-travel jet lag and a sick, sour headache. There’s a stale taste in my mouth as I sit in the Book Barn, a pool of darkness waiting in the shadows. Papa is harrumphing. He’s prowling around the shelves near the desk, while I painstakingly type. The computer is so slow, it clicks and whirs between each keystroke.
In between each click and each whir, there’s a harrumph.
It’s setting my teeth on edge. Especially as I’m not actually inputting the receipts, like I’m supposed to be—all those clicks and whirs are another email to Ms. Adewunmi. She hasn’t replied to the first one I sent. What is it with me and emails?
The Square Root of Summer Page 16