The Square Root of Summer(45)

Every single one of the wormholes has opened when I’ve been sad, or angry, or grieving, or lost. Or lying.

That’s the Gottie H. Oppenheimer Principle. It’s nothing to do with particles or fractals or diaries. It’s to do with me, and what I did on the day Grey died. I’m a bad person. And this wormhole I’m in now? It’s punishment.

I want to rest my head on all these books and go to sleep, wake up to the world as it should be. Tell Thomas everything and see where time takes us. But the only way to get there is to do something about it. I force myself to pick up one of my many notebooks again and start reading it through. Third (hundredth) time’s the charm.

The very first thing I see is a diagram I printed out that day in the library, weeks ago.

The Schwarzschild metric. If you stand a billion light-years away from one, a Schwarzschild black hole looks like a wormhole. They’re the same thing.




It doesn’t flip the TV channel to a new timeline or show you something that’s already happened. If you can find a way to keep it open without a gravitational collapse, you could walk through it.

The way to keep it open is to use dark exotic matter—like jamming your shoe in a doorway. If you went through it, you’d have to cross that darkness.

Even so, I find myself “walking” my fingers across the diagram. Through the door.

And however dangerous it would be, I would go in a heartbeat. Because, oh, here I am. Under a rainstorm that shouldn’t be. This can’t be reality; this can’t be how the summer is supposed to be—without Thomas. Fate. The thought of not seeing him again makes me ache with loneliness.

At the exact same time that I start to cry, the rain stops. The pounding on the roof, the howling wind, the noise—it’s gone. It’s too sudden to be a coincidence. I wipe my running nose with the back of my hand and sit up. Alert.

There’s light, creeping round the edges of my bedroom door. Shining through its little wavy-glass window. I switch my lamp off, plunging my room into darkness—there are no Thomas ceiling stars in this reality. But there it is—a glow, coming from the garden. My heart pounds, but my Spidey senses are tingle-free.

I slide off the bed and tiptoe across the room. I’m a little apprehensive of what’s behind the door, wormhole-wise, so instead of opening it, I kneel down. But when I put my eye to the keyhole, it’s not the garden I can see on the other side. It’s the kitchen.

What the scheisse?

I look behind me. Pat the floorboards with my hand. Yup, definitely my bedroom. Turn back to the door, look through the keyhole again. Yup, still the kitchen. The lights are on and there are herbs on the windowsill, magnets on the fridge. And then there’s Thomas coming out of the pantry, striding across to the hob and I’m on my feet, yanking open my door, Gott sei Dank, calling his name—

“Thomas!”

It’s not the kitchen on the other side of the door. Of course it can’t be that easy. It’s not the garden either. I teeter-totter on my toes, almost falling into it. The doorway is filled with darkness. Not television fuzz. Not the see-through film of a screenwipe. But the dense, inky infinity of a black hole.

Dark matter. Negative energy. Pure heartbreak.

What happens if I step through it? On the other side is the kitchen, is Thomas. But this is darkness. This is grief and graves. By walking through this, I’m asking for trouble, somewhere down the line. I’m volunteering to revisit the day he died.

But where I am, there’s no Thomas, no Umlaut. It’s worth it. I walk right into the dark.

*

I emerge, gasping, in the kitchen.

It’s nighttime. The air is hot and close, heady with jasmine and lemons, and I’m sweating in Grey’s jumper. And I’m here. Somehow, I’m here. Wherever, whenever it is. I’m home. I’m safe. The tide has come in.

Thomas hasn’t noticed me yet. Instinct stops me racing over and bear-tackling him to the ground. The pain I just felt, tearing me apart as I stepped through the dark, that can’t be leading anywhere good.

I lean in the doorway, catching my breath, and watch him whisk. His muscles tense as he beats air into the saucepan, a small frown of concentration on his face. He’s wearing the T-shirt he wore last week, when he baked lemon drizzle cake. When he stood whisking at the hob. When the air smelled of jasmine. When … When …

The tide retreats.

Holy long division. Last Monday. Thomas stood over a saucepan on a hot, still night. He wore that same T-shirt, and he baked gluten-free lemon drizzle cake for Sof. Thomas never makes the same thing twice. Ach mein Gott—I haven’t come back to the right timeline. I’ve come back to last week!

Ms. Adewunmi’s warning roars in my ears: Do I need to worry about Norfolk getting sucked into the fourth dimension?

This isn’t home, this isn’t safe—this is the past. I’m going to throw up. I’m going to win the Nobel Prize. Water. I need it. Sitting down, that too. Dizzy and delirious, I stagger away from the doorway, into the room.

“G.” Thomas looks up, noticing me at last. When he smiles, it’s all for me: an explosion of dimples and his tongue poking between his teeth with delight. And suddenly I don’t care if I’ve destroyed the whole f*cking solar system.

But I can’t speak yet. I manage to make it to the table and sit down, no thanks to my legs. Thomas nods at my outfit and asks, “Aren’t you baking?”