The Square Root of Summer(29)

I scoop him up and head to the kitchen, where I get my second surprise of the day—a new phone. This comes with a note, too, a more enlightening one: Sie sind verantwortlich für die Zahlung der Rechnung. Dein, Papa. (You’re in charge of paying the bill. Love, Papa).

I abandon my cake on the windowsill and tear open the phone like it’s Christmas morning, plugging it in to charge. Papa has Scotch-taped my old SIM onto the box. I’ll be able to see if Jason’s texted a time for us to meet. I’ll be able to ask him: what happened in Grey’s room—did I disappear?

And the real question: what happened, with us?

“Goog ’ake.”

I look up from my phone-charging vigil to see that a pajama-bottomed Ned, his hair wild, has emerged from his nest. Wednesdays and Fridays are his bookshop shifts, which means he’s up early-ish. And he’s eating my cake for breakfast.

“’Eckon.” He swallows in one gulp, like a snake, and tries again. “Think Thomas would make a massive one for the party?”

This is the first time he’s spoken to me directly about the party—but he still hasn’t asked me if I’m okay with it. For all the hydrangeas and sleep in the world, alles ist not gut. I grab my satchel and my partially charged phone and run out of the house.

*

My phone chimes along with the church bells. I’ve been hiding out in the churchyard for hours, folded like origami between the yew tree and the wall. The text is from Jason. We’re meeting at lunchtime, a week from tomorrow.

Notebooks and diaries are spread out around me on the yellowing grass. It’s out of sight of the church, the graves, the road. We came here once.

It was the beginning of August, about seven weeks after our first kiss. We hadn’t slept together yet, but suddenly I could see it on the horizon. Every day, everything—the air, the sunshine, the blood in my veins—was pulsing hot and urgent. The minute we were alone, our words and clothes would disappear. Grey’s diary for that day says: LOBSTER WITH WILD GARLIC BUTTER ON THE BARBECUE. Behind the tree, Jason’s hand slipped between my legs, and I bit his neck. I wanted to eat him.

Where did all that love go? Where did that girl go, who was so alive?

My phone emits a rapid flurry of beeps, and I swoop on it. But it turns out to be old messages from Sof, arriving all at once. A couple checking if I’m okay, after our beach spat, but mostly chattering about the party I don’t want to happen. There’s no way to answer those, so I throw the phone onto the grass instead and pick up a notebook.

The Weltschmerzian Exception.

It started the day I saw Jason again. I’m writing his name down when a shadow falls across the page. Thomas is peering round the tree.

“I’d say you’re avoiding me,” he remarks, flopping down opposite me, against the wall, “but I know you know I know all our hiding places.”

He stretches out his legs, putting his feet up on the trunk next to me, making himself practically horizontal. Whatever landscape he’s in, he folds himself into. I parse my way through his sentence, come up with: “So you’d say I’m … waiting for you?”

“If you say so.” A laugh bursts across his face.

Well, I walked into that one.

“You liked the cake?” he asks.

“Delicious,” I lie.

“Funny, Ned thought so too.”

Twelve years of stare-offs between us, and my impassive face is perfect. Finally Thomas blinks and says, “Okay, subject change. Is this your extra-credit project?”

He makes a “may I?” gesture and reaches for the notebook, which is balanced on my bare legs. His fingers graze my knees as he takes it, glancing at the pages and saying, “Senior year here must be intense.”

I peer over at what he’s reading. A page of impenetrable numbers, and standing out like a big red flag, Jason’s name. For some reason it seems important that Thomas not know this particular secret. Time for my own subject change.

“How’s the jet lag?”

“I think my time zones are still cuckoo.” Thomas yawns.

“As in the clock? They’re actually very efficient.” It’s this sort of fact-based fun, Sof informs me, that doesn’t get me invited to the parties I don’t want to go to.

“For real? Okay. Wackadoodle, then.” Thomas closes his eyes. There’s no cardigan today, he’s wearing a T-shirt with a pocket, which he tucks his glasses into. He looks less artfully constructed without them. More like someone I would be friends with. “I stayed up too late. Don’t lemme sleep, though,” he mumbles. “Keep talking.”

“I need a topic. Unless you’re interested in Copernicus.”

“Not Copper Knickers,” he says. “Umlaut. What’s up with that?”

“Papa brought him home in April.” I lean forward, lifting the notebook off Thomas’s knees as gently as I dare. But he opens his eyes and squints at me. In the sunshine, his flawed iris looks like a starburst nebula.

“G. That’s not talking. That’s information. I need details.”

“Okay. Um. I was doing homework in the kitchen after school, when this orange thing shoots out from under the fridge, scuttles across the room past the stove and into the woodpile. So I picked up a ladle—”

“A ladle?” mumbles Thomas, closing his eyes again.