The Square Root of Summer(66)

What next? Thomas’s cardigan is draped over the back of my chair, and I hurl it onto the laundry heap, yanking the chair over. I have to keep moving, keep doing something, otherwise I’ll think: Thomas hates me and Thomas is gone and—

I’m so angry.

I can’t believe he’s pulled a disappearing act again!

A broken lipstick gets chucked in the trash, followed by a pair of earrings borrowed from Sof. I tip my little bowl of hairbands and bobby pins in as well, then throw the bowl after them. Every surface is littered with plates, a legacy of Thomas’s baking and hours spent at my desk in search of lost time. When they’re stacked by the door and everything’s in the trash, the room seems a little less haywire—but my heart is still bouncing off the walls. How dare he do this.

I clamber onto the desk, flick the plastic stars one by one onto the floor. It’s grimly satisfying. But when I gather the constellations in my hand, it’s too much. I can’t throw these away. I heap them on the stripped bed instead, where they’re joined by a pile of coins from the windowsill. On top of the chest of drawers, the piece of seaweed from the beach. I take down everything from my corkboard, the email, the cake recipe, Polaroids of Ned’s.

Then I’m done. I stand and look at the bed, breathing heavily. All of these things, a time capsule of our summer, and what does it amount to? A heap of junk, and broken promises. Thomas hasn’t given me anything of meaning, not even his word. I barely know anything about him. I suppress the voice that says—because you never asked.

I had no choice, I was disappearing down wormholes.

Is that true? Grey’s voice answers me. Determinism, dude. Drive your own lawn mower. What to do with all this Thomas stuff? Grey would call it a cleansing and have me burn it in a herb-spiked fire. Sof would donate it all to a charity shop. Ned would chuck it in the trash. But me, what would I do? Do I know myself well enough to make a decision?

I dig inside my wardrobe for my book bag, unused since the last week of term, and cram everything inside. The front pocket rustles. I fumble with the zip, and pull out a crumpled piece of paper—Ms. Adewunmi’s quiz. How did I not notice she asked about the Weltschmerzian Exception?

I put the book bag at the back of my wardrobe. I put The Great Spacetime Quiz! on my windowsill. Then I crawl into my unmade bed and sleep for the next sixteen hours.

*

I wake up in the middle of the next afternoon, to sun streaming green through the ivy. The first thing I see is the quiz. Clocks are a way of measuring time … It’s infinite … A spacetime boundary—the point of no return … what is the Weltschmerzian Exception?

Good question.

Ten minutes later I’m out in the fens. The sky is huge, infinite and empty as I cycle along the deserted coast road. I’m the last person left in the universe. The whole wide world is in high-definition 3D, bigger and brighter than I’ve ever known it. Or perhaps that’s me. Facing down that final wormhole, I feel like sunshine, burning the fog away.

When I reach school and chain my bike to the rack, there are students everywhere. Anxiety tweaks at me—has term started?

Ms. Adewunmi’s classroom is unlocked and empty. It’s strange, being at school when you’re not meant to be. It makes me nervous—stools I’d normally sit on and whiteboards I’d normally take notes from are suddenly museum exhibits. Look but don’t touch.

The whiteboard is covered in equations from last term, second-year stuff. It’ll probably be cleaned off before lessons begin again in September, so I grab a pen and add the equation from Thomas’s email, the one in my handwriting. I still don’t know what it means.

“Whoa.”

I jump. Ms. Adewunmi’s in the doorway, and she’s staring not at the whiteboard, but at me. “You changed your hair,” she says.

“Uh, yeah.” I prod my mullet self-consciously. “You too.”

She puts the box she’s carrying down on the desk, tossing her braids. “I like it. Very Chrissie Hynde.”

“You’re moving?”

“Getting ready for the new term.” She starts unpacking: fresh board pens, reams of paper, plastic-wrapped sets of cardboard folders, a catering-size bag of lollipops, which she shakes at me. “Get a cola one before they all go.”

I take the bag from her and fish out a lollipop at random, waiting while she finishes sorting her things out before plying her with questions.

“Sit down, smarty-pants,” she says, gesturing to the desk. “Scooch. I’ll be with you in a sec.”

I perch on the edge of the desk and gaze at the whiteboard. Am I clever? I know I understand all the numbers I’m looking at. But it’s no different from the way Sof can decipher a Renaissance painting or Ned can read music. How Thomas can translate a recipe into cake.

This summer is the world’s doing, not mine—the wormholes could have happened to anyone. I just knew how to recognize them mathematically. Even so, the equations on the board—they’re incredible. Maybe that’s something I could do when I go to university. Learn all the ways to describe the world.

“All right, then, Ms. Oppenheimer.” My teacher hops up next to me, talking round her lollipop like it’s a cigarette. “You’re a bit early. Term starts next month.”

“I needed to talk to you,” I say. “I brought my quiz back. And I wanted to ask about a theory—there’s a page missing, in one of the books from your reading list…”