The Square Root of Summer(35)

Congratulations, Gottie. Last time you were under this tree with Thomas, the stars went out. Now you’re talking about wet bacteria.

“Petrichor, really,” says Thomas. “Sounds like one of Sof’s bands. Or your dad when he talks German.”

“That reminds me—Papa said I had to tell you to phone your mum back, and stop wiping her messages off the blackboard and pretending you’ve called.” I prod at the wet earth with my shoe. “Whatever you’ve done, you have to talk to her sometime. Like, when you’re back next door in a month?”

“Right,” says Thomas. He leans back against the tree trunk. “Next door.”

There’s a pause. I know he and his dad don’t get along—and actually, none of the messages on the blackboard have been from him. But should I not have mentioned his mum either?

Then he smiles, wickedly. “Why do you assume I’ve done something?”

“Instinct.” The word flies out of my mouth automatically, and Thomas cracks up. “Prior experience. Fundamental knowledge of you. History. That time with the pigs. Mr. Tuttle. A big, doomy sense of foreboding.”

As I list our past, my mind jumps to the future—Thomas next door, clambering through the hedge, biking to school, eating cereal together, hanging out at the Book Barn. He’s home, and it will be a year so different from the one I’ve just had.

Thomas smiles, pushing himself off the tree trunk.

“Race you,” he says, his leg already swinging onto a low branch. Next thing I know, he’s a few feet above me—I can see the bottom of his Adidas. “It’s still here!”

“What’s here?” I thought we were going to dig up the time capsule?

“Come up and I’ll show you!” He pokes his head through the leaves, offering me his hand.

When I’m sitting on a nice, sturdy branch next to him, I open my mouth, but he puts a finger to his lips, then points. Tucked inside the tree is a rusty metal tin, one of those beige petty-cash ones, with a handle on top and a loop to use for a padlock. Our names are written in marker pen on the lid, and sitting on top of it is a frog.

“Oh,” I say, not recognizing it. The box, I mean, not the frog. Though I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen that before either. “This is the time capsule? We didn’t bury it?”

Thomas shakes his head. “We found it.”

I turn my head to look at him, his face leaf-dappled in the sunshine. We used to climb up here all the time, but now we’re both too big for the tree, crammed into the branches.

“Oh. You really don’t remember this?” he asks.

I have to hold on to his shoulder with one hand, so I can show him my left without losing my balance.

“All I know is we talked about the blood pact at the Book Barn,” I say, waving my palm, “then waking up in the hospital with this.”

“Right. That makes sense. Hold on.” Carefully, he leans forward and lifts the frog onto his finger, then stands up on the wonky branch and reaches over to put it on a cluster of leaves.

I’d swoon right out of the tree if it wasn’t a totally Isaac Newtonian thing to do. Then Thomas does it for me.

“Whoa!” As he turns to sit back down, his foot slips on the wet branch. Without anything to hold on to, he windmills his arms for a second, one foot hanging off the edge. I freeze, already watching a future where he falls in slow motion.

Time speeds up when he regains his balance with a “Phew” and grins at me. “Think I just won Canada the gymnastics gold for that, eh?”

“Graceful,” I say to cover my panic, grabbing his arm at the elbow to steady him as he sits down. It’s not entirely necessary—his center of gravity seems fine. But then he grabs my arm back, in a strict violation of the Spaghetti Arms Principle.

“Thank you.” He settles next to me. We’re still holding arms. Not hands. Arms. I’m holding elbows with Thomas Althorpe, and it’s ridiculous.

And I don’t want to let go.

“Ready?” He looks at me. His eyes aren’t muddy—they’re hazel.

I chew on my lip, considering. I like holding elbows with Thomas, eating cake and joking about The Wurst. Against all odds and expectations, I like him bouncing into my room uninvited, lounging on my bed and tickling Umlaut’s ears. I like re-becoming friends—and the something else there is between us, building like electricity in the air.

But inside this box is everything that happened, on the day he abandoned me. Am I ready to remember?

“It’s just a box,” says Thomas. “Bawk, bawk, bawk…”

Before I can think about it, I grab the lid and yank it, hard.

It’s empty. There’s a brackenish black smear as though slugs have been nesting in it, and the inside of the lid is sort of sooty and covered in illegible Sharpie scribbles, but otherwise, nothing. What an anticlimax.

“G, did you open this already?”

“I told you—I didn’t even know this was … whatever this is. What is it?”

I feel Thomas shrug next to me. “It’s nothing now, I guess.”

“What did you think was going to be in there?”

“I don’t know!” He sounds completely frustrated, like he wants to shake the tree so all the apples fall out, bonking us on the head till we get some answers. “We found a bunch of junk, then we did the blood pact. I left you here to get Grey, and when we came back the lid was closed. I always wondered…”