The Square Root of Summer

Monday 5 July

[Minus three hundred and nine]

‘Spacetime!’ Ms Adewunmi scrawls on the whiteboard with a marker-pen swoosh. ‘The four-dimensional mathematical space we use to formulate – what?’

Physics is my favourite subject, but my teacher is way too energetic for 9 a.m. For a Monday. For any day after I’ve been awake all night, which since October is basically always. Spacetime, I write down. Then, for some inexplicable reason – and I instantly scribble it out – Thomas Althorpe.

‘E equals McSquared,’ mumbles Nick Choi from the other side of the classroom.

‘Thank you, Einstein,’ says Ms Adewunmi, to laughter. ‘That’s the theory of special relativity. Spacetime – space is three-dimensional, time is linear, but if we combine them, that gives us a playground for all sorts of physics fun. And it was calculated by . . .?’

Hermann Minkowski, I think, but instead of raising my hand, I use it to stifle a yawn.

‘That guy Mike Wazowski!’ someone yells.

‘What, from Monsters, Inc.?’ asks Nick.

‘They travel between worlds, don’t they? McSquared.’ I hear from behind me.

‘Minkowski,’ Ms Adewunmi attempts over whoops and catcalls. ‘Let’s try to focus on reality . . .’

Good luck with that. It’s the last week of term, and the atmosphere is as fizzy as carbon dioxide – probably why Ms Adewunmi’s given up on the curriculum and is making her own fun.

‘Anyone else for interstellar dimensions? How would you describe a one-way metric?’ A wormhole, I think. A one-way metric is a blast from the past. That’s how I’d answer. Ned bringing back Grey by repatriating his Buddhas, leaving crystals in the bathroom sink, cooking with way too much chilli. Jason, smiling at me in the garden after almost a year.

Thomas Althorpe.

But I’ve never spoken up during any of Ms Adewunmi’s lessons. It’s not that I don’t know the answers. And back at the village school in Holksea, I never minded saying so and having everyone stare at the maths-genius-prodigy-freak-show-nerd. We’d all known each other since forever. At the town sixth form, classes are twice the size and full of strangers. But mostly, it’s that ever since the day Grey died, talking exposes me. As though I’m the opposite of invisible, but everyone can see right through me.

When Ms Adewunmi’s gaze lands on me, her eyebrows go shooting off into her Afro. She knows I know the answer, but I keep my mouth clammed shut till she turns back to the whiteboard.

‘All right, then,’ she says. ‘I know you guys have fractals next period, so let’s keep moving.’

Fractals, I write down. The infinite, self-replicating patterns in nature. The big picture, the whole story, is just thousands of tiny stories, like a kaleidoscope.

Thomas was a kaleidoscope. He turned the world to colours. I could tell you a hundred stories about Thomas, and it still wouldn’t be the big picture: he bit a teacher on the leg. The vicar gave him a lifetime ban from the Holksea summer fete. He put a jellyfish in Megumi Yamazaki’s lunch box when she said I had a dead mum, and he could thread liquorice shoelaces through his nose.

But it was more than that. According to Grey, we were wolf cubs raised in the same patch of dirt. Thomas didn’t belong on his side of the hedge, where the lawn was neatly clipped and his scary dad’s rules were practically laminated. And I didn’t quite belong on mine, where we were allowed to roam free. It wasn’t about like, or love – we were just always together. We shared a brain. And now he’s coming back . . .

I feel the same way as when you flick a rock over in the garden, and see all the bugs squirming underneath.

The bell rings, too early. I think it’s a fire drill, till I see everyone around me holding worksheets in the air. The whiteboard is covered in notations, none of them about fractals. The clock suddenly says midday. And, one by one, Ms Adewunmi is plucking paper from hands, adding them to her growing pile.

Panicked, I look in front of me. There’s a worksheet there, but I haven’t written on it. I don’t even remember being given it.

Next to me, Jake Halpern hands in his worksheet and slouches away, his bag knocking against me as he slides off the stool. Ms Adewunmi snaps her fingers.

‘I . . .’ I stare at her, then back at my blank paper. ‘I ran out of time,’ I say, lamely.

‘All right, then,’ she says, with a small frown. ‘Detention.’

I’ve never had detention before. When I check in after my final lesson, a teacher I don’t recognize stamps my slip, then waves a bored hand. ‘Find a seat and read. Do some homework,’ he says, turning back to his marking.

I make my way through the hot, half-empty room to a seat by the window. Inside my ring binder is the UCAS packet I got in tutor group this morning. I shove it to the bottom of my rucksack, to be dealt with never, and pull out Ms Adewunmi’s worksheet instead. For lack of anything better to do, I start writing.

Even after I stare at the final question for several centuries before giving up, it’s still only 4.16 p.m. Forty-four minutes till I can escape.

Resisting the urge to nap, I start doodling: the Milky Way, constellations of question marks. Geometry jokes, spaceships, Jason’s name written then scribbled out, over and over and over. Then Thomas’s, same thing.

When I look down at the worksheet again, it’s a total mess.

4.21 p.m. I yawn and open my notepad, planning to copy my answers on to a clean page.

E = MC², I begin.

And the second I write the ², the whole equation starts to shimmer.

Um . . . I yawn and blink, but there it is: my handwriting is definitely shimmering. All it needs is a pair of platforms and a disco ball.

I flip the notepad shut. The cover says it’s A4 standard medium-ruled in faint, blue parallel lines. Heart fluttering, I fumble a couple of times opening it back to the right page. Those ruled lines are now rippling like sound waves across the paper.

Once, I read that lack of sleep can make you hallucinate if you stay awake long enough. But I thought it meant migraine aura-type black spots in front of your eyes, not cartoon-animated notepads. As if to prove me wrong, the equation begins to spin. Distantly, I’m aware I should probably be panicking. But it’s like trying to wake up from a dream – you give yourself the instruction, and nothing happens.

Instead, I yawn and look away, out of the window, and begin counting backwards from a thousand in prime numbers: 997, 991 . . . My curiosity gets the better of me around ninety-seven, and I glance back at the notepad. It’s not moving. There’s my biro scrawl on lined paper, nothing more.

All right, then, as Ms Adewunmi would say. It’s the summer flu, or the temperature in here, or the being-awake-since-yesterday. I shake my shoulders back, pick up my pen.

I’m writing Jason’s name again when the notepad disappears.

Seriously.

My pen is hovering in the air where the page should be and suddenly now isn’t. It’s so ludicrous, I can’t help it: I laugh.

‘It’s not giggle time, Miss Oppenheimer,’ warns the teacher.

Ms, I correct in my head. And then, ‘Giggle time’? What, are we, seven? I’ve had sex! I’ve made irreversible decisions, awful ones, huge ones. I’m old enough to DRIVE.

He frowns at me – I’m grinning like a loon, so I pretend to write on an invisible notepad until, satisfied, he turns away.

I look back at the absence-of-notepad, and swallow another cackle. Because I’m wrong: it’s not invisible. If it were, I’d be able to see the desk underneath. But instead, there’s a rectangle of nothing. An absence. It looks sort of like the black-and-white fuzz when the TV won’t tune in, or how I imagine the indescribable gloop beyond the boundaries of the universe, the stuff Big Bang is expanding into.

Am I going bananas?

I bend down, peering underneath the desk. Lumps of gum, a Fingerband sticker, and graffiti on solid wood.

But when I sit upright again, there’s still that rectangle of television fuzz.

It’s not growing, or changing, or moving. I slump in my seat, and stare at it, hypnotized. Drifting back to five years ago. When there was a boy.

An attic.

And a first kiss that wasn’t.

‘Bawk, bawk, bawk,’ Thomas says from the other side of the attic. ‘Chicken. Bet there’s not even arteries in your hands.’

‘Mmmm.’ I don’t look up from the anatomy encyclopedia. Like everything else in Grey’s bookshop, it’s second-hand, and there’s biro graffiti on the pictures. ‘Let me check.’

He’s wrong, you do have arteries in your hands, but I’m planning to do the blood pact anyway. I just want to look at this book first. The pages with boy parts especially. I turn it on its side, tilt my head. How does that even . . .?

‘G, what are you doing?’ Thomas peers over my shoulder.

I slam the book shut.

‘Nothing! You’re right. No arteries,’ I lie, my face bright red. ‘Let’s do it.’

‘Gimme your hand,’ he says, waving the knife. ‘Oops.’

The knife flies through the air. When Thomas turns to get it, he topples over a stack of books.

‘What are you kids doing up there?’ Grey bellows from the floor below.

I yell down the stairs, ‘Nothing. Thomas is just reshelving. We thought we’d use this wacky new system called the al-pha-bet.’

There’s a muffled curse and a giant rumble of laughter. I turn back to Thomas, who’s retrieved the knife and is carving our initials into a bookcase. He won’t be here tomorrow. We’ll never see each other again. On what stupid planet is that even possible?

And it means there’s about four hours left to do something I’ve been thinking about for weeks.

‘Thomas. No one is ever going to kiss you,’ I announce. He looks up, blinking owlishly behind his glasses. ‘And, no one’s ever going to kiss me either.’

‘OK,’ he says, and takes a huge inhaler puff. ‘We should probably do that then.’

We stand up, which is a problem. I grew ninety-three feet this summer. The eaves are low and I hunch, but I’m still six inches taller than him. Thomas clambers on a stack of books, then we’re the right mouth height. He leans forward, and I suck peanut butter off my braces. Here we go . . .

‘Ow!’

His head hits my chin. The books slide out from underneath him. Our hands flail in the air, grabbing at each other, and we smash into the bookshelves. We’re still untangling ourselves when Grey comes bellowing in, chasing us downstairs to the front door, hands flapping like big hairy butterflies.

‘It’s raining,’ I pretend to whine. It’s the seaside, I don’t mind getting wet, but I want to hear what he’ll say –

‘You’re a twelve-year-old girl, not the Wicked Witch of the West,’ Grey booms, slamming the door behind us as I giggle.

Outside, Thomas and I teeter on the porch, the air soggy. He looks at me, his glasses smeared, his hair curly with humidity. His hand forms a fist. Little finger pointed straight out at me.

A salute, a signal, a promise.

‘Your house?’ he asks. I don’t know whether he means for a kiss, or the blood pact. Or both.

‘I don’t know how to be, without you,’ I say.

‘Me either,’ he says.

I lift up my hand, and curl my finger into his. Then we jump off the step. Into the rain.

A paint-stained finger taps on the fuzz in front of me, and instantly, it’s a notepad again. I blink, looking around me, dazed.

‘What are you doing?’ Sof is standing in front of the desk. Silhouetted against the windows, she’s just an outline – pointy hair, triangle dress, stalk legs, light blazing all around her. An avenging angel, come to rescue me from detention!

I’m confused, sleepy. Sof and I have barely been on corridor nodding terms all year, yet here she is, throwing her portfolio on the ground and her body into the chair next to mine.

After blinking the sun out of my eyes, I blink again when I see her curly hair done up in a Mr Whippy cone, red lipstick, rhinestone glasses. Sometime between now and whenever I stopped noticing, my erstwhile best friend has remade herself into a fifties musical.

‘Uh, hi,’ I whisper, unsure whether we’re allowed to talk. Not because it’s detention, but because our talking has dwindled lately. We nod and smile in the college canteen or the library, but we don’t hang out the way we did at our old school.

She leans over to peer at my notepad.

‘Huh,’ she says, tapping my doodles, where I’ve scribbled out both Jason’s and Thomas’s names so they’re illegible. I suppose this explains my dream. ‘Is this your artistic comeback?’

It’s a pointed remark. At GCSE, Sof opted for art, geography, German. I went with her choices to save making my own; which sums up our entire friendship. I never told her I had different plans, once we started sixth form – it was easier to wait for her to notice I wasn’t at the next easel.

‘Physics quiz,’ I explain.

‘Whatcha do to get thrown in the gulag?’ she croaks. For a white-witch-tiger-balm-super-hippy, she sounds like she gargles cigarettes for breakfast.

‘Daydreaming.’ I fiddle with my biro. ‘What about you?’

‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘It’s time to spring you.’

When I look up at the clock, she’s right. The teacher’s gone. The room’s empty. Detention ended an hour ago. Huh. It doesn’t feel like I’ve slept for that long.

‘They lock the bike sheds at five.’ She stands up, fiddling with the strap on her portfolio. ‘Do you want to catch the bus with me?’

‘OK . . .’ I say, only half paying attention. I stare at the notepad: it’s only biro and paper, but I shove it right to the bottom of my rucksack like it’s to blame for what just happened.

Was I really asleep? Is that where the last hour went? I think back to Saturday, a whole afternoon lost before I found myself under the apple tree.

Perhaps I am insane. I take that thought, and shove it as far down as it will go too.

Sof’s waiting for me at the door. The silence that rides between us all the way home is so heavy, it deserves its own bus ticket.