The Square Root of Summer(28)

“You.”

This time, the stare-off goes on and on. I’m sure Thomas has a hundred reasons for coming back to Holksea. I’m only part of it. But it’s a confession, so I match it with one of my own, in the form of a question.

“Thomas. When you left … why did you never write? And please don’t turn it round to me, because I need to know. I mean … you disappeared.”

“I know you want one big, earth-shattering reason,” he says at last, flopping back in his chair, his hands in his lap. “The boring truth is, it’s lots of little ones. I didn’t know your email or your number—if I wanted to talk to you, I always crawled through the hedge. The next reason was I didn’t know where to get stamps. It took eight hours to get to New York, then we stayed in a hotel and my parents watched me like a hawk because of the blood pact. When we got to Toronto, my dad gave me a million chores around the new house, then I had to register at school, then Mom made me get a haircut, because what you need on your first day at a new school is to rock the medieval monk look.”

Thomas picks up steam, waving his hands in the air.

“My dad kept his study locked, and when we fiiinally got a kitchen drawer filled with paper clips and stamps and a rubber band ball and a pencil with a little troll on the end, I was all set to write, when you know what I noticed? It’d been over a month, and you hadn’t written to me.”

I can’t believe that’s all it was. All this time I thought he’d Not Written as a unilateral decision, some grand sense of betrayal. It never occurred to me it was Thomas being Thomas—twelve, disorganized, and stubborn. It was geography. How different would the past five years have been if I’d just written to him?

How different this year might have been.

“Even Stevens?” Thomas holds out his hand for me to shake.

“A détente,” I agree, and take his hand.

There’s a crackle of static, then Umlaut appears, suddenly curling round my ankle. I hadn’t even known he was in the kitchen. Thomas and I disengage as the kitten springs up into my lap.

I wait while Umlaut turns figures-of-eight on my legs, revving like an engine.

“I looked for your email…” I admit. “I couldn’t find it. Did you use the Book Barn address? Because it’s not there—maybe Papa deleted it.”

“No—I used yours.”

Um. One of us is confused here, and it isn’t me. I don’t have an email address.

There was a point in the autumn when I couldn’t stop going online, watching Jason’s status updates, talking to everybody but me. I knew I had to wait till I saw him, and seeing his life flicker by in real time was lemon on a paper cut, so I stopped going on the Internet completely, turned off my notifications, deleted all my accounts. Waited.

I’m about to tell Thomas I don’t have email, that whoever he sent it to isn’t in this reality, when

time

reboots

again.

Umlaut’s gone. Thomas is no longer in the chair opposite me, but sliding something in the oven and asking over his shoulder, “Want to watch some TV or something?”

“It’s late. I got up to turn out the light,” I mumble, standing up. I like my string theory theoretical, not in my kitchen in the middle of the night. The spell is broken. I’m looking for a do-over on last summer, not five years ago. “Maybe another time…”

I expect Thomas to make a fuss or a chicken noise as I start backing out the door, but he yawns and stretches, pulling his cardigan tight against his arms.

“You’re right. We’ve got all summer,” he says, leaning against the oven as I wave goodnight from the garden. “There’s plenty of time.”

Outside, it’s getting light. Somehow, Thomas and I have talked till dawn. I pass Ned as I trudge back to my room.

“Grots.” He nods formally before serenely throwing up in the bushes.

Back on my bed, I think about what Thomas said. That there’s plenty of time. It’s not true, but it’s a comforting lie. I write it on the wall, then I finally fall asleep. Dreaming of chocolate and lavender.





Friday 18 July

[Minus three hundred and twenty]

I wake a couple of hours later to sunshine and a piece of chocolate cake on my doorstep. Actually, there’s a plate between it and the step, the difference between Thomas-now and Thomas-then. What other midnight baker would be leaving cake outside my room—Umlaut? He’s sniffing round my ankles. Tucked underneath the plate, to stop it from flying away, there’s a folded scrap of paper. In Thomas’s blocky print, it reads:

BEAT BUTTER AND SUGAR TILL CREAMED. STIR IN WHISKED EGGS, THEN FOLD IN SELF-RAISING FLOUR. USE 4 OZ OF EACH INGREDIENT PE`TWO EGGS. ADD 2 TBSP COCOA POWDER WITH THE FLOUR FOR CHOCOLATE. BAKE AT 150°C FOR AN HOUR. EVEN YOU CAN DO THIS. TRUST ME.

There are hydrangeas in bloom, the sun is shining, and I’ve finally slept. Alles ist gut. Confessing The Wurst, if not the worst, has left me somehow able to close my eyes. Are Thomas and I friends? Age twelve, if someone had asked me that, I’d have punched them in the nose. Our friendship just was, like gravity, or daffodils in spring.

I stand on the step with the cake, the note, the kitten, and this thought: we talked till the sun came up. And it only makes me want to say more. Next to me, Umlaut does flips in the sunshine.