The Square Root of Summer(25)

It’s not exactly a stab in the dark when I croak: “Jason?”

“Yeah…” he says. “Who’s this?”

“Aaargh,” I cough. “Aaargot. Margot. I mean … me. Hey,” I finish up, smooth as a cucumber (Papa’s phrase).

“Gottie?” he says in his teasing voice, as though he knows more than one Margot and needs to clarify with the nickname he never used to use. “What’s up?”

I remember what I need to ask—what happened when I disappeared into the wormhole. All my split-screen theories collapse if it turns out I disappeared in a puff of smoke. But I can’t form the question. My brain’s still catching up with my body, and the complexity of what I have to say is beyond me right now.

“Can we meet up? It’s important,” I say instead. “Sorry.”

“Maaaybe,” he drawls, and then adds, “You sound kind of strange. You okay?”

I lean my head on the wall, drowning in his question. In all the things I want it to mean. That I can find my way home.

“It’s about the party,” I lie. “I want to surprise Ned.”

I hate myself for using this stupid party as an excuse. But perhaps I can persuade Jason to persuade Ned to cancel.

“What about a coffee at the café, a week from Saturday? Ned’s busy that day,” he adds. “I’ll text a time.”

Ned chooses this moment to strut in from the garden. I garble, “Okayseeyouthengottagobye,” and yank the receiver away from my head before I can mention that my mobile isn’t working.

“You’re meant to put it up to your ear,” Ned says, demonstrating with his hand. Then, because he’s Ned, he adds a phone gesture with his other hand, segues into devil’s horns, then flashes a Vulcan salute. At least he’s acting normal.

“Fixed your bike, by the way,” he adds. “Want to go for a ride this weekend?”

“Ned—what day is it? The date, I mean.”

“The phone?” he reminds me, shimmying across to the fridge and peering inside, bottom waggling in purple paisley Lycra. “Tuesday. Fifteenth of July in the year of Our Satan two thousand and—”

“Thank you,” I say. Then, “Oh.” And slam the receiver down.

Ned kicks the fridge door shut and hops up to sit on the windowsill, swigging milk straight from the carton.

“Wrong number?” he asks.

“Heavy breather,” I lie. The amount that Ned knows about me and Jason is zero, and I want to keep it that way. “What you up to, Freddie Mercury?”

Ned wipes off his milk mustache before answering.

“Garage. Did your bike, then planned my set for the party. My guitar solo’s going to be like”—air guitar, tongue between teeth—“whoa.”

I smile, despite the party reference and the photograph in my hand, despite seeing Grey in the wormhole and the way Ned seems back to normal while I’m anything but. Because making that phone call, Jason agreeing to see me—it means I’m going to get some answers. It means something. Doesn’t it?





Thursday 17 July

[Minus three hundred and nineteen]

Fick dich ins Knie, H. G. Wells!

It might be a sci-fi classic, but The Time Machine turns out to be all fi and no sci—sphinxes and troglodytes, rather than equations and mechanics. I throw the book on my bed and look up to the wall where I’ve scribbled my notes. My room is starting to take on a serial killer’s lair Wall O’ Crazy appeal.

This is the first chance all evening I’ve had to be alone. Fingerband was in the kitchen, brainstorming “something major” for the summer’s-end shindig, while Papa flitted in and out. Newly minted groupies Sof and Meg tagged along, and when Thomas came back from his Book Barn shift, all three of them launched into a furious comic-book debate. (“Graphic novels,” Sof corrected me.) I lurked, cradling the warmth that Jason and I had a secret again.

Now it’s past midnight. I’m hypothesizing, trying to narrow down what the wormholes have in common.

Meow. On my desk, Umlaut is hopping around atop the stack of diaries. I get up, grabbing them—kitten and all—and carry them back to the bed. As I move around the room, I notice the kitchen light through the garden, still on.

The diaries. Grey wrote about the day I first kissed Jason. There was DRUNK ON PEONIES, the same day we met at the beach. If I can find some of the other wormholes, I could plot the dates. Establish a pattern.

I let myself fall into the pages, ripping my heart wide open with how the world once was.

Umlaut paws at the duvet as I find the day at the Book Barn, how Grey wrote RESHELVING WITH CARO before scribbling it out and writing my name. In last year’s diary, I find more of those asterisked *Rs, confettied on the pages. There are no *Rs in the earlier diaries, but I do find an entry about me and Thomas going on a school trip to the Science Museum, which ended in disgrace when he got trapped inside the space probe.

Seeing the words on the page reminds me that before we got in trouble, there was a projection of the galaxy on the ceiling. Lying on the floor, staring up, it was like …

Like being in the Milky Way.

It’s not just one diary entry that corresponds to a vortex. All the wormholes are here.

Are the diaries what’s causing everything? It can’t be a coincidence—even if it doesn’t explain the screenwipes, or the way the stars went out in the garden. This means I can only wormhole to days Grey wrote about. I don’t have to revisit his funeral.