The Square Root of Summer(27)
Ugh. I hate that—as though an A in math means I’m figured out. Not everything comes easily. I don’t know the names of any bands. I can’t dance, or do liquid eyeliner, or conjugate verbs. I baked more than one hundred potatoes this past year, and I still can’t get the skin to crisp up. And I don’t have a plan.
Ned was born a seventies glam rocker, has wanted to be a photographer since he got his first camera. Sof’s been a lesbian since she could talk and a painter from not long after that. Jason’s going to be a lawyer, and now even Thomas—chaos theory incarnate—is opening a freaking bakery? All I’ve ever wanted was to stay in Holksea and learn about the world from inside a book. It isn’t enough.
“I’m not good at everything. You know The Wurst?” I tell Thomas, to prove it. “The painting above Grey’s—your—bed.”
“G, for the love of”—he bat-grabs the air, no, pterodactyl-grabs it—“why would you WANT to paint like that?” In a church-library-funeral whisper, he adds: “I can’t believe you never told me Grey did erotic art.”
“No, I—” The laughter comes so suddenly I can’t get the words out. Thomas must think I’m a complete loon, doubled over and wheezing, flapping my hands in front of my face.
“Wait, wait,” I squeak, before I’m gone again. This laugh is a burst of relief. Briefly, tantalizingly, reminding me of what it can be like—to be happy to the tips of your toes.
Thomas starts laughing too, saying, “G, it’s not funny! I have to sleep under that thing. I think it’s watching me.”
Which only makes me laugh harder, sucking in shallow breaths as I begin to verge on the manic. A kind of happy hysteria that threatens to overflow, spilling into something worse.
I suck in air, pushing the laughter and everything else down. Then explain, “No, I painted it. That got me a D.”
“G. You are joking.” He sits down opposite me again, astonished. And no wonder, if he thinks it’s a six-foot blue penis! Maybe it is, maybe I’ve got boy parts on the brain and that’s been my problem all along. I wonder if the Boner Barn has anything on Freud.
“Told you I was terrible,” I say cheerfully. I’d faked my laughter at the school exhibition, pretending to make fun of myself, but somehow with Thomas, it’s real. I’m terrible and it’s okay. “Your turn. Why baking, really?”
“Everyone says you have to be superprecise to bake—like your extra-credit thing, the time travel project. One calculation out of place and the whole thing would go wrong, right?”
“Yeah…”
“It’s hogwash!” Thomas announces gleefully. I’m charmed by his use of the word hogwash—it reminds me of the pigs at the fair. He points at the bowl. “Look at this—bit of eggshell in there, scoop it out with a finger, what the hell. Too much flour, forget the butter, drop the pan—it doesn’t matter how many mistakes you make, it mostly turns out okay. And when it doesn’t, you cover it with icing.”
“Is that true?” I’m suspicious of Thomas’s grasp of commercial health and safety.
“Probably. It’s mostly metaphorical, but I suspect you missed that part. Here.” He holds out the green-paper-wrapped chocolate and I break off a chunk. “Okay, so that’s me—wannabe patissier and upside-down apple cake of my father’s eye. Which is another terrible metaphor for saying my dad’s not exactly thrilled by my career ambitions. Or, outside of home ec, my grades.”
“You’re failing?” I ask.
After confessing The Wurst, I feel full of questions. The Great Thomas Althorpe Quiz! We’ve got five years to fill, and I’ve been wordless for so long. Wanting to use my mouth, to ask-talk-laugh—it feels as good as a thunderstorm when it begins to break.
“I’m majoring in biscuits—hey, look at that, I said biscuits not cookies. Canada’s wearing off. My grades are okay, but cookies-not-college is failing, according to my dad.” He says it lightly, but there’s an edge. I can imagine Mr. Althorpe’s response to a harebrained bakery scheme.
“Is that why your parents split up?” I nibble on my chocolate.
“Bloody hell, G,” Thomas says, suddenly as full English as breakfast. “This is what I like about you—that Teutonic sensitivity. It’s a chicken/egg thing.” He stares at the mixing bowl unhappily, flicks a bag of flour with his finger. “They were fighting nonstop anyway; my one-man detention parade probably didn’t help. It was a conduit—do I mean catalyst? Anyway, Dad was fuming when Mom took a pro-bakery stance. I won her over with my chocolatines.”
“And she wanted you to live with her in Holksea? Your dad didn’t try to get you to stay in Toronto?”
“Living in Holksea…” he trails off.
Silence blooms, expanding to fill the room. My mouth has rocks in it again, and I shove the remaining chocolate in to take the taste away.
“Canada wasn’t awful,” he allows. “It wasn’t wonderful either. It was somewhere in between. The baby bear’s porridge. Just fine, you know? Mom was planning to move back to England, then I got the chance to come back minus all the awkward years. And I’ll admit: I was curious.”
“About?”
He holds his fist straight out at me, little finger aloft. Our childhood signal, promise, salute, whatever. I gulp my chocolate down, but don’t raise my own hand. I can’t. Not yet. Neither of us moves, then he says: