The Square Root of Summer(49)
“It’s okay,” I squeak, trying to talk out of the corner of my mouth so I don’t breathe on him. Jason and I never spent the night, or even fell asleep together. I’ve never woken up with anyone before, what if I’m a wildebeest? I shouldn’t speak. But I want to find out what happened between hanging out in the garden on Friday, and him falling asleep in my room just now. I’ve hopped about in spacetime, skipped an entire day.
“Did I see you at the Book Barn yesterday? My mind’s gone blank.”
“Mmmm,” Thomas says noncommittally, and shivers.
“Are you cold? Get in,” I say, without thinking.
“I smell like a monkey cage.” But he’s already rolling off the bed and clambering under the duvet with me.
Uh-oh.
Serious uh-oh, because Thomas on my bed is one thing. It’s safe. It’s friends. We’ve been here a million times before. But underneath the duvet is arms and legs, skin on skin, warm sleepiness. I’m only wearing a T-shirt and underwear.
Atomic particles, on high alert.
“Hi,” he whispers into my mouth, his lips brushing against mine with each word. “I think we’ve got about fifteen minutes before Ned goes on the rampage.”
There’s no morning breath, just warmth and cinnamon cake, his mouth against mine.
And then it’s his hands underneath my T-shirt, cold on my warm back. Then it’s my legs tangled with his. Then it’s our bodies pressed together. Our mouths, pressed together.
My heart hammers, and I break away. Back and forth, up and down, happy and sad. I can’t keep track of where we are, how far I want to go. Last night was crazy intense, and now we’re here, a week later from a kiss that doesn’t exist—kissing like we’ve done a lot more than that. I want to live my life in the right order.
“Hi,” Thomas says again, pushing towards my mouth.
“Hello,” I respond formally, tucking my chin down like Umlaut, which makes him laugh.
“Okay. Back to sleep for you,” he says, lifting his arm and letting me burrow into him. I curl up, staring at the ceiling stars. The pattern is different.
When I stepped through the doorway, I changed something.
Above me, the stars start moving, spiraling open. Television fuzz. I’m not upset right now. I’m not lost, or sad, or lying. There’s no diary nearby. A glance at Thomas tells me he’s asleep. I clamber out from underneath the duvet, and Superman my hand to the stars. It’s going to hurt. But beam me up anyway, Scotty.
*
My body bursts apart, scattering particles across the sky.
*
“You made a fort?” Jason looks from the hay bales to me, and back again. He shakes his head, smiling. “I forget you’re younger than me.”
It was a solid-gold idea this morning. I regretted it a little when it took me an hour to move one bale, sweating in the sun. But when I came back with a blanket to go inside and an umbrella propped up at the top for shade, it was brilliant again. A little three-sided hideaway. But Jason’s looking at me like I’m nuts.
“Not just any fort, party pooper.” I grab his hand and drag him inside, sort of half push him to sit before plonking myself next to him. It’s August and the wheat’s been harvested—the cut-off stalks prickle up through the blanket like leg hair underneath tights. “Look.”
“All right.” Smirking, Jason aims his sunglasses in the direction I’m pointing. Golden fields, stretching out forever and fading into blue sky. Nothing in sight but birds. “What am I looking at?”
“The universe,” I point. “The whole, wide world. Isn’t this great?”
“Margot,” he says. “Holksea’s hardly the whole world. Wait till I get to college…”
I tune him out and turn away to rummage for all the stuff I brought: books, apples and packs of biscuits, bottles of fancy fizzy water in a little picnic cooler. I haven’t quite figured out what we’re going to do when we need to have a wee, but otherwise we could hang out here all day.
He’s leaving in three weeks. We haven’t talked about what will happen after that. But I think, nothing, very much. A fizzle and a fade and a forgetting. I almost don’t mind. We’ve had a whole summer. And he’s still talking, but I’m not listening.
“I got ice cream,” I interrupt. “You have to eat it now, before it melts.”
I hold out a Creamsicle and an ice-cream sandwich, and, annoyingly, he reaches for the Creamsicle, my favorite—then takes my wrist instead, and pulls me into his lap.
“I’ve got to be at work pretty soon,” he says. I’ve still got both ice creams in my hand as Jason slowly lies down. I shriek, but his hands are on my waist, holding me steady. I end up in this weird position with my elbows beyond his shoulders, fists clenched round the ice creams, face in his neck, laughing.
“Margot,” Jason says into my neck, “put the ice cream down, yeah?”
“Oh.” I drop them. We only have a few more weeks, so I remember what else you can do in a fort with your secret boyfriend, on the last day of summer.
*
My skin feels flayed raw—traveling through time, it’s not like before. It’s starting to hurt. But I’m back in bed, face-to-face with Thomas. He has his glasses on now, and Umlaut is snuggled between us, making little kitteny snores.