The Square Root of Summer(32)

FOR GOTTIE, it’s inscribed, in Grey’s handwriting. MAY YOU ALSO DISCOVER THE UNIVERSE.

It was my seventeenth birthday the October after he died. This was my present? A book? Grey never gave books. He said it was lazy. Ned, Sof, Papa—they gave me things like T-shirts, lavender nail polish, gift vouchers. Grey gave me a telescope. Bugs preserved in resin. Goggles for chemistry lab with my initials monogrammed on the lanyard. A subscription to New Scientist. Silver square root stud earrings.

I don’t know what to think about a book.

When my phone beeps, I want-assume-hope it’s Jason—but it’s Thomas. Against all odds, he and Sof and Meg have bonded over comics and are on a trip to London. They’ve gone to a signing at Forbidden Planet, and he’s texted me a picture of The West Coast Avengers: Lost in SpaceTime. I recognise Sof’s paint-stained fingers holding it up to the camera. And there’s a message: I assume you’re the one in the green spandex?

There’s a text from Sof, too. I ignore both messages and flip back to the inscription Grey left for me in the book. Picking up a pen, I write inside the cover: The Gottie H. Oppenheimer Principle, v 3.0.

Most everything in the universe is made of hydrogen—what 5 percent we can see, anyway. The rest is dark energy, and dark matter. The stuff we haven’t figured out yet.

What if it’s all the other possibilities?

More than just two timelines. Schr?dinger the shagger says every time an atom decays—or doesn’t—every decision we make, it splits the universe. Starting from the Big Bang onwards, until the world spreads out like the branches of a tree. And that’s what we mean by infinity.




I label the branches:

A world where I never kissed Jason

or a world where we weren’t a secret

A world where it’s still last summer

A world where wormholes are real

A world where they’re not

The question is, which is the right one?

The ancient computer whirs loudly when I switch it on. Three minutes after the Internet connects, I have a new email address: [email protected].

I glance down at my notes, typing rapidly about timelines, and I send it to Ms. Adewunmi. I’m not saying I’m taking her deal—writing the essay in exchange for university help. Let’s just call it … a possibility.

It’s time to meet Jason.

“Papa, I’m going to the café,” I bellow up the stairs. No reply.

I don’t waste time standing in the rain locking the door, or wrestling with an umbrella, just scurry the few yards across the grass. The café’s empty, the windows fogged up as I pick my way through the Formica tables and order a herring on rye for Papa and a tuna melt for me. I’m going to be blasé as hell when Jason arrives—hanging out with my sandwich, no big deal. Even though my stomach is turning flips.

“Fifteen minutes for the tuna melt,” the man grunts from behind the counter. Great. “I haven’t turned the grill on yet.”

“Can I use your restroom?” I ask, and he jerks his thumb.

The toilet is rickety, with overhead Victorian plumbing, but it’s a palace compared to the Book Barn. I sit down and shiver in the draught, then see the rusty streak of blood. Oh. I don’t have anything with me. I’ve got money, but the café isn’t exactly fancy-tampon-machine territory.

In the end, I wedge cheap, shiny toilet paper into my underwear, then waddle out to the sink, rustling. When I got my first period, I marched to the pharmacy with my legs clamped at the thigh, not wanting to tell anyone. Grey would’ve tried to throw a pagan ritual. I ended up buying giant winged mattresses that scraped at my thighs and gave me diaper rash, till Sof gave me a crash course in vaginacrobatics. I’d just turned thirteen, and she’d got hers at twelve—apparently this was light-years ahead of me. She forced me to write tampons on the shopping list we kept on the blackboard. “Otherwise I’m starting a performance art band called Are You There, Gottie? It’s Me, Menses.”

I stare at myself in the mirror as I wash my hands with gritty liquid soap and cold water. I haven’t seen Sof in any real way since that day at the beach two weeks ago. We’ve nodded when she and Meg trail in Fingerband’s wake. I dry my hands on my jeans and reply to her texts. Kind of. I ignore her questions about the party and write the performance art band name, and—remember? Maybe we can all go to the beach tomorrow, if the rain clears. If she replies.

I wish I didn’t feel sick.

*

He’s standing by the till when I come out, laughing with the man behind the counter and ordering a black coffee. Black coffee. Black leather jacket. Blond hair dark from the rain, swept back into what Grey called a duck’s arse. Jason. He’s shorter than Thomas, I notice for the first time.

I’m glad his back is turned so I can stare at him. I itch with not knowing whether I’m allowed to hug him yet, or even touch him. Last summer, I knew I could reach out and brush straw from his shoulder, sand from his stomach, grass from his legs. Even when the others were around, I’d find a thousand excuses to touch him. And I knew he wanted me to.

I’m falling to pieces when the man calls out, “Tuna melt girl!”

Jason turns around. “Margot. Been. Swimming?”

“No.” I finger-comb my topknot. “It’s raining. The sea will be cold.”