The Square Root of Summer(13)

I leave the door open and the lights off as I inch my way through the narrow shelves, emerging into a small, book-lined cavern. A maze of more bookshelf corridors leads off it in all directions. The boxes I packed last night are piled in a corner, next to the desk. Behind it looms Grey’s giant armchair.

I crawl into it, throbbing, and try to shut out the too-loud, off-kilter tick of the grandfather clock that Grey refused to have fixed. I examine the desk, squinting through the gloom for the first aid kit. The top drawer is overflowing with scraps of paper—it reminds me of the wildflowers in the ditch. Fishing through the receipts and order forms, I find chocolate bars, essential oil, a tin of tobacco, a brown glass bottle. I rattle it. One of Grey’s hippie remedies. He swore by ginkgo biloba, Saint John’s wort, evening primrose. I swallow two pills dry, forcing them down around the lump in my throat.

Everything hurts. My leg is gravel-scraped and gross. I’ll have scabs for days. When I was a kid and fell over, my grandfather would be there to give me a Band-Aid and kiss it better.

I rest my head against the velvet chair, breathing in its Grey scent, falling apart over and over. Papa’s kept the bookshop exactly as it was—dusty and disorganized, a shrine to Grey’s admin policy. (“I’m a keeper of books, not a bookkeeper!”) His ginormous chair, I’m tiny inside it, the desk where he sometimes wrote his diaries, and that stupid broken clock, its ticktick … tickticktick … -tock. Tears blob my eyes so I can’t see, and the mottled velvet blurs until it looks like the untuned TV, the monochrome fuzz I saw outside, right before I crashed. Tick …

Tock.

Ticktick.

*

“Make it look good, okay?” I say. We’re in the apple tree, which is all full of slimy wet leaves, and my bum is cold, but Grey says you have to feel the earth underneath you. “They can’t know it was us.”

It’s Ned’s tenth birthday party and he uninvited me and Thomas. Grey says we are invited and that Ned is on thin ice, but I think we should steal his cake anyway. Thomas came up with the plan to do face paint like bandits.

“Obviously,” says Thomas, rolling his eyes. “Okay, I’m going to give you a mustache as well.”

“Yes,” I agree. It’s always yes when it comes to us, and I close my eyes. The paint tickles as he starts drawing. “Remember the signal: when Grey shouts ‘Trouble times two…’”

“That’s when we run,” Thomas finishes. “G, open your eyes.”

When I do, Thomas is laughing and holding up a permanent marker—

*

“—what happened? Gottie? Gottie, open your eyes.”

Papa’s voice breaks through the darkness. My eyelids are thick and heavy, rusted over. I must have fallen asleep. I’ve been dreaming of Thomas and me in the tree, but not the right day, not the day he left …

When I open my eyes, the images fade away. I blink. Papa is in front of me.

“Fell asleep. Oh. And off m’bike,” I tell him, mumbling into the chair’s velvet wing, twisting a bit to the side to show him.

He makes a sucking-in-air sound, out of proportion to a scraped leg. Papa hates the sight of blood, winces when me or Ned gets a paper cut. How did he deal, when Mum died, if there was blood? Did he disappear down wormholes looking for her?

I can’t keep hold of the thought, of any of my thoughts; they scatter like autumn leaves.

“Ist your bike outside?” Papa’s asking. My bike is pink with a basket and cereal box clackers on the spokes, so I don’t know whose else’s he thinks it might be.

I force myself to sit up, wincing in anticipation of cotton balls and hydrogen peroxide sting. The sense memory of childhood cuts and scrapes wakes me up enough to smile at Papa, convince him I’m all right.

“Good.” Papa smiles. “The car’s parked down at the beach. I go and fetch, so wait here?”

“Okay.”

“Keep her company,” I hear as Papa turns away, and I sneakily close my eyes again, snuggling back into the velvet. It’s the Milky Way. Who her? I think. I’m me.

Footsteps, and the bookshop door banging in the distance as Papa goes outside. But maybe not, because he’s still here, holding my hand. Being annoying, too, he keeps on tapping on it.

“Gerroff.” I try to shake the hand away, but warm fingers slide into mine, squeezing me awake. “Papa, ztoppit.”

“G?” someone says. A boy’s voice, coming out of the stars. “Your dad’s outside. It’s me.”

Me has a funny accent; it’s English but not English at the same time, and I open my eyes to look at it. There’s a boy my age leaning over me, holding my hand, his face glasses and freckles and concern.

And he’s surrounded by stars, all the time, everywhere. There’s an entire galaxy inside the bookshop, hanging in the air.

“You’re covered in stars,” I say.

His mouth crinkles. That’s how Thomas Althorpe always smiled—like his face couldn’t contain how hilarious he found the world, and it overflowed into dimples. This version has added cheekbones, and canine teeth that push into his bottom lip. Oh. Glasses. Freckles. It’s him.

“Hello, G.” Thomas smiles as a comet whizzes by his head. “Remember me?”

“I remember you. You came back. You promised you would. But I don’t remember you being this gorgeous.”