The Square Root of Summer(7)

“Man, this is going to take forever!” Ned exclaims, even though he hasn’t done anything yet. After a final ten-finger kerplink on the piano, he spins round idly on the stool. “You shouldn’t have to be in here, doing this. It’s Papa’s grand plan.”

“Do you want to tell him that, or shall I?”

“Ha.” He bounds past me to a book stack and starts shuffling through it—not so much organizing as rearranging. Fiddling. Flicking through and reading bits of things. He glances up at me. “Grotbag. What do you think Thomas did?”

“What do you mean?” I frown at the box in front of me. I’m trying to line up the books perfectly perpendicular, but one of them has warped pages from being dropped in the sea, and it’s wonkifying everything.

“You know,” says Ned. “To get sent back here. Banished to Holksea.”

“Banished?”

“C’mon, there’s no way this settle-in-for-the-summer story holds up,” Ned continues, juggling a book. “It’s so last-minute—the flight must have cost a fortune. Nah, it’s punishment for something—or getting him away from whatever he’s done. I bet he’s pulled a Mr. Tuttle.”

Mr. Tuttle was Thomas’s hamster. A furball who escaped at bedtime seventeen nights in a row, until his dad worked out what was going on and bought a padlock. “Oh dear,” Thomas would sorrowfully declare, having opened the cage not five minutes before. “Mr. Tuttle has got out again. I’ll sleep over at G’s in case he’s there.” His bag would already be packed.

“C’mon,” insists Ned. “You know what Thomas was like.”

Huh. It hasn’t occurred to me to wonder why he’s been sent home so quickly.

A hammering on the bedroom door breaks my thoughts wide open.

“Yo, Oppenheimer! Answer your phone much? I’ve been looking all over, have you seen the time—” Jason stops when he sees me. There’s a pause as he literally shifts and readjusts: stepping back and leaning against a bookshelf by the door, arranging himself just so, before he smiles lazily and amends, “Oppenheimers.”

My throat plays rock-paper-scissors and settles on rock.

“Gottie.” He meets my gaze this time, blue eyes searching mine before he weighs out his words, one by one. “Again. All. Right?”

I have a book in one hand, the other opening and closing on empty air, trying to hold on as we look at each other.

Oblivious, Ned drops the book he’s holding onto a stalagmite, which promptly topples. He leaps across the falling books, offering his fist for Jason to bump.

“Shiiit, mate,” Ned says, as they perform a complicated handshake. It seems to involve a lot of thumbs. “Is Niall going ballistic?”

“The usual.” Jason reverts to slow motion as the handshake ends. He sighs. “You ready?”

“Grots.” Ned’s practically out the door already as he turns to me. “Swaps?”

I concentrate on assembling another box, fumbling over the corners. “What’s the swap?”

“I forgot, we’ve got a Fingerband meeting. Look, do the books? Get them in the car, and I promise I’ll take care of the rest of it.” When I look at him, he adds softly, “His clothes.”

“Seriously?” I can’t decide if Ned’s trying to get out of packing the books or shield me from everything else. Grey’s shoes. The photographs. The Wurst.

I steel myself to look up at the painting on the wall. My final art exam from last year. It’s hard, being the straight one in a house with Dumbledore and Peter Pan and Axl Rose, being friends with bangle-wearing glittered artists. So I’d tried, and I’d painted the canal. At the school exhibition, Papa had taken one look at it—a giant blue sausage—and christened it The Wurst. Ned had laughed himself silly. I’d pretended I didn’t mind, and laughed too.

“Gots, dude.” Grey had clamped my shoulder in one giant hand, holding me steady. “You tried something different. You think your brother would attempt anything he wasn’t already good at?” We contemplated the sausage for a minute, then he said, “Your mum liked blue.”

I tear my eyes away from The Wurst and see Ned is hovering in the doorway, waiting for me to make up my mind.

“Deal,” I say.

“Cheers, Grots!” he yells, disappearing across the sitting room. “Jase, I’ll grab my gear, see you outside in five.”

Then I’m alone with Jason for the first time since the day Grey died.

Soft as a sunset, he smiles. And says, “Margot.”

The way it ended between us, a text message from a hundred miles away, I never had the chance to let him go. Instead, I stuffed all my heartbreak in a box like the one I’m packing now, and waited. When he says my name, it floods the room.

I could melt into him. But instead I grin, teeth and terror, try to speak, and—




Jason finally breaks the awkward to murmur, “How’s. It. Going?”

“Okay!” I answer too loud and too fast. Then, squeakily: “How is…”

Shit. My brain blanks on where he’s been. We talked every day last summer, I Internet-stalked him for weeks in the autumn, but I can’t remember where he went to college.

“Nottingham Trent,” he fills in with a slouchy shrug, his eyes not leaving mine. “It’s all right.”