The Square Root of Summer(61)

Distantly, I hear the music stop.

A few seconds later, a dripping Sof squelches back out of Ned’s room. She comes to stand next to me, tilting her head at the saucepan.

“Clever,” she says. I glance at her, my arms shaking with effort. Her beehive has fallen apart, and her eyeliner drips in black streaks down her cheeks.

We stare at each other for a few long seconds, considering. Then she grins.

“You know who’d LOVE this?” She jerks her head at the überdestruction. “Grey.”

“Yeah,” I agree quietly. “Yeah, he’d think it was hilarious.”

“And”—Sof hip-bumps me pointedly—“he’d think we’re really stupid.”

I hip-bump her back.

“I’m sorry I yelled,” I tell her.

The kitchen’s a disaster. Papa’s going to kill us. I sort of don’t care. I’m weightless, the same way as when you haven’t done your homework and the teacher calls in sick—everything’s going to be okay. A reprieve. Wormhole, schmormhole.

“Come on, give us a go,” Sof says, putting her hands over mine on the saucepan.

“Okay, hold it tight,” I tell her, shifting aside. As soon as I let go, the pan flies out of her grasp, clunking against my wrist and spraying water over both of us again. Sof dissolves in giggles as we slip and slide in the water.

“Stop iiiit,” I say, snorting. “Come on, you have to hold it, I need to find a way to stop this.”

“Scout’s honor,” Sof swears, picking the pan up again.

As she braces her arms against the pressure, I kneel down. “Budge over.” I crawl past her legs and nudge open the cupboard under the sink. There’s got to be a stop button or something. The wrench is on the floor where Ned dropped it. From my hands and knees, I can see how filthy the tiles are—dirty water and discarded drinks, everything that was on the counter has been swept down here by the tidal wave.

“Gross, gross, gross,” I mutter as I peer inside the cupboard. I yank at a thingamajig. “Anything?”

“No,” Sof bellows.

I hit a whojamewhatsit and tug something else, and the thundering in the sink above me stops. Finally. I crawl out of the cupboard backwards, butt first. Bash my head as I stand up.

“Ow.”

While I was in the sink, Ned arrived with armfuls of laundry, sheets, blankets. He’s already got a towel turbaned around his head, and he’s wrapping Sof in a blanket as I grab a sheet and tie it round myself like a toga. Now it’s one of Grey’s parties.

“No, you—” Thomas comes clattering through the door with a mop and bucket and stops, staring at us all. “Those were for the floor? To soak up the water?”

“Fuck the water,” says Ned cheerfully, and I laugh. “We’re drowning men anyway—Papa’s going to kill us, whatever we do.”

“But we should at least…” Thomas is goggling at the wreck of the kitchen, and I smile at him. He nods, not unhappily. We’re okay, I think.

“Tomorrow!” declares Ned, grabbing a bottle of rum that survived the melee. He tucks it under one arm, and Sof under another. “We’ll worry about it then.”

“A last drink on death row,” says Sof, and he kisses her on the head.

“Yes! You get it.” He starts leading us out to the garden. “Let’s warm up outside. Grots, did any mugs survive?”

I grab what I can and smile shyly at Thomas. He gathers bottles and mugs with me, meeting my eyes and smiling as we follow them.

Outside, the garden is quiet and inky dark. Pretty much everyone’s disappeared. A few entwined couples are melting into the trees, and as we pass a group of Ned’s friends in the driveway, there’s a sweet smell in the air—a tiny orange firefly is flitting from hand to hand.

Meg and Jason are on the bench outside the house, kissing. I float above them, unbothered.

“We’re going to drink rum,” I tell her as we walk by, a peace offering. “Come with us.”

She gawps at our appearance, then she and Jason follow us through the dark to the apple tree.

Ned and Sof are already cross-legged underneath it, buried in the thick grass, a gold-plated Titania and Oberon.

“A toast,” Ned announces, his towel turban wobbling, as we sit down. “Thomas, my man, the glasses.”

Among a fuss of mugs and eggcups, rum is poured. I open the bottle of coke I rescued and top everyone’s mugs up. It fizzes over the top of Meg’s glass, onto her hand. She giggles, trying to lick it off her fingers.

“Ooh,” she says. “Wet.”

“It’s just pop,” says Sof. “Have you seen us?”

She shakes out her hair, which is drying into the crazy frizz she usually semitames. Ned unwraps his towel to reveal a huge perm, his eyeliner dangerously Alice Cooper. I gaze at them in the half-light. It’s not that they look particularly alike underneath all the razzle-dazzle—and Ned and I actually do. But they both have this sense of themselves. They belong. Belong to a band of loons marching to the beat of Gaia-knows-what drum, but still.

But it’s okay, because I belong as well. I’m trouble times two. At least for the next couple of weeks. I sip my rum, leaning into Thomas’s arm. He’s quiet. I squeeze his knee, and he smiles at me, then peers into his glass, fishing out a leaf.