[Minus three hundred and forty-nine and Minus three]
“No, like—forsythia, or heather. That color yellow.”
The florist shows me more lilies, creamy ones, and I want to shout at her because she’s not getting it. She won’t give me yellow tulips and it has to be right; it has to be yellow tulips at the funeral! I’m practically screaming it, and she’s looking at me blankly, saying, “It’s September…”—
* * *
[Minus two]
I yank the dress over my head. It gets caught around my bra. I’m sweating already, huffing and puffing as I tug on the zip. Sof’s outside the changing room curtain and she needs to shut UP, everything comes up too short around my thighs and stretches tight round my armpits, I’m too tall. I’d never choose this dress anyway, this color. It’s black, but then, it’s supposed to be—
* * *
[Minus one]
The phone in the kitchen rings and none of us move to answer it, just carry on staring at nothing like we have been all evening. After a second, the machine cuts in. “This is James, Jeurgen, Edzard, and Margot,” Grey’s voice booms out and then he starts chuckling at our ridiculous names and he’s laughing fit to burst, it fills the room, like his death is just a big cosmic joke the universe is playing on us. Ha, ha, ha—
* * *
It’s obvious what’s coming next. Since the funeral, I’ve been lurching in and out of time, closer and closer to Grey’s death. Four wormholes in three days, their intensity and frequency leaving me dizzy. I only know it’s Saturday, the day of the party, because this morning Ned was staggering round the kitchen, haphazardly assembling a bacon sandwich and asking me if I wanted to borrow his eyeliner for tonight.
I have time-travel jet lag and a sick, sour headache. There’s a stale taste in my mouth as I sit in the Book Barn, a pool of darkness waiting in the shadows. Papa is harrumphing. He’s prowling around the shelves near the desk, while I painstakingly type. The computer is so slow, it clicks and whirs between each keystroke.
In between each click and each whir, there’s a harrumph.
It’s setting my teeth on edge. Especially as I’m not actually inputting the receipts, like I’m supposed to be—all those clicks and whirs are another email to Ms. Adewunmi. She hasn’t replied to the first one I sent. What is it with me and emails?
I want my fingers to fly across the keyboard, minding their own business, spilling out everything that’s happened, from split screens to apple trees, how the Weltschmerzian Exception is out of control. I know exactly what the next wormhole will be, and when it’s coming out of the shadows—it will be at the party tonight.
Isn’t that what this whole summer has been about? Inevitability.
I need to know how to stop it. I’ve got five hours. And, essay or not, I need to do this without clicks, and whirs, and winces.
Click.
Whir.
Ow.
“Harrumph. Harrumph. Gottie.”
I look up to see Papa itching from one foot to another in front of the desk. Automatically, I cover my notebook with my hand.
“Nearly done. I’m just waiting for the computer to catch up,” I lie, nodding at the list on the other side of the keyboard.
“Ah, so.” He nods. Then pulls out the other chair and sits down opposite me, tweaking his trousers upwards. He’s wearing red Converse again, and his serious face—the one he had when he announced Thomas’s arrival. The one he had when he came out into the corridor at the hospital last September, and told us we could go home.
“Margot,” Papa begins, formally. Then he clears his throat and picks up Umlaut, fussing him on his knee. He’s brought the kitten to work? “Gottie. Liebling.”
I wait, fiddling obsessively with my pen and trying to arrange my face into the nonguilty expression of a teenager who isn’t half destroying the fabric of reality.
“Ned saw Thomas coming out of your room last Sunday. Morning.”
Oh. Unbelievable. And Papa’s waited nearly a week to talk to me! Grey would have marched in there and dragged us both out by our ears.
“Do I need to have a talk with you”—a series of harrumphs—“du Spinner, I do need to have a talk, about you and Thomas.”
I’m relieved as I realize Papa’s talk is that talk, the sex talk. Then shudder as I realize, ugh, it’s that talk. I can’t listen to this. I want to lie down in a dark room for several hours and vomit repeatedly. That sounds restful.
“It’s—fine—we’re not—” I babble, grinning brightly.
We’re really not—I don’t think. The wormholes have me lurching in and out of time, so I don’t know exactly what’s happened since the beach, the tree, the bath. He’s leaving, and he lied.
LIGHT BLUE TOUCH PAPER AND LEAVE, Grey wrote about me in his diaries. My temper isn’t as quick as his was—a fireworks show that faded after the first ooh. I stick to mine, stubborn and unforgiving. Resenting Sof for not understanding me anymore, resenting Ned for being happy, resenting my mother for dying. I don’t want to resent Thomas for leaving. But I don’t know what we are to each other either.
“We’re not…” I repeat to Papa. “And if we are, it’s new, brand-new in fact. And I know all the stuff. So, um.”
“Ah.” Papa nods. I’m hoping he’ll harrumph his way anywhere else so I can die of mortification, but he just sits there. I’m bracing myself for a rare telling off—the sort where he puffs up and starts hissing, like an angry goose—when he adds, “It’s good to make sure, because we—me, your mami—we didn’t know. Empfängnisverhütung.”
I nod warily. Obviously they didn’t know. Ned is empirical evidence of the not-knowing.
“And,” continues Papa, beaming, “we’re running out of bedrooms to put babies in!”
I make a harrumph noise of my own. “Papa, was that a joke? Because we’re still wrapping our heads round the duck one.”
“One of its legs is the same,” Papa chuckles, wiping his eyes at his favorite punch line. I roll mine (it hurts). Seventeen years of “What’s the difference between a duck?” and I still don’t get it, but it always has Papa—and Grey—rolling on the floor in stitches.
I make a little shooing motion with my pen, hoping he’ll go away so I can commune with my headache, but he just carries on giggling. I haven’t seen Papa laugh in months. It’s nice.
“We didn’t know with Ned, I mean. We knew the second time, obviously—when you were to arrive,” Papa carries on, oblivious to my grimacing. Maybe this is his plan: gross me out with conception talk so I’ll spend my time with Thomas crossing my legs. “But still.”
“Papa, I know,” I say, to hurry him along. I’ve already gone off the thought of the banana cake in my bag.
“Maybe you don’t,” he says contrarily. “I saw in your room, you’d put the picture of you and your mami. This is where the hair is from?”
I prod my hair self-consciously and one-shoulder-shrug, neither ja nor nein.
Papa looks down at Umlaut in his lap as he sucks air in round his teeth. “You know, you always were such a surprise.”
“A surprise?”
“Mmmm. I was deferred, you know? And Mami too, with her Saint Martins place. We were thinking to go back to London with Ned, then”—he makes a funny little whoosh noise, an explosion with his hands, sending Umlaut’s fur on end—“things changed. There was going to be a Gottie. So even though we knew,” he harrumphs, “knowing isn’t always enough. Which is why, maybe better that Thomas sleeps in his own room.”
I’m going from a surprise to being surprised. My whole life, everyone’s behaved as though this is the way it always was—that after Ned arrived and life veered off course, Papa and Mum decided: why not have a teenage wedding and another baby? Work for Grey at the Book Barn. Stay in Holksea. Forever. The only accidental thing was her death.
No one ever told me this wasn’t the plan. No one ever told me they had wanted more.
They never told me I’m what stopped them.
“What is it called—a carthorse?” Papa asks.
“Huh?”
“Your mami, she throws the stick over her shoulder and carthorsed, when she found out about you.” He nods to himself, remembering. I’m not the only one lost in the past. But Papa doesn’t need wormholes.
“Cartwheel,” I correct, thinking of a theory Thomas told me the other day, about why Papa’s English is still so loopy. He says Papa deliberately tries to sound foreign, so he can hold on to something of home. Now that I know that they were planning to leave this life, I think it’s for a different reason. It’s so he doesn’t have to admit that this is all real.
That he’s truly here, two blue lines and seventeen years later. I know Oma and Opa ask him to move back to Germany. Live with them, even. There was that fight about it, at Christmas, raised voices and closed doors. Maybe he will, now. I’ll be eighteen in six weeks—this time next year, I’ll be packing up to go to university. And Papa will be free.
As if he’s reading my mind, Papa says, “Nein. Not in ten million years. I never regret it, ever.”
He’s looking at me so fondly, so seriously, it’s embarrassing. And I wish he hadn’t told me this. Mum’s dead and Grey’s dead; Papa’s trapped here and it’s my fault. I was never meant to be part of this family at all. It’s so obvious I don’t belong.
Surely, somewhere, there’s a timeline where I don’t even exist.
I’m a wormhole away from losing it completely. I close my ears with a lurch of nausea: the pounding in my head is overwhelming.
“Have fun tonight,” Papa says. “I’m going to hide here. I don’t know what happened with you this year, Liebling, but now—it’s very happy. To see you in love. It’s gut. How can this not be a wonderful thing?”
After all that: it’s not a sex talk. It’s a love talk. I stare at my fingers, wishing Papa had talked to me last summer. Wishing my mami had still been alive to. I’d known enough to use condoms with Jason. I hadn’t known enough not to love him.
How can love not be a wonderful thing?
It’s a good question.
* * *
The Gottie H. Oppenheimer Principle, v6.0. I’m not supposed to be in this universe. All I’ve caused is trouble. The next wormhole will show me just how much. Unless I stop it.
Papa stays at the Book Barn after my shift finishes, saying he’ll come and check on the party later. The darkness follows me as I dawdle home the long way, through the fields, past the hay bales, thinking about how to fix time. About what the opposite of grief is.
On the way, I text Thomas—Meet me in the churchyard before the party?
He’s waiting for me, tucked between the tree and the wall. I watch him for a few seconds, wondering how he won’t be here in a couple of weeks. That we’ll never see each other again. On what stupid planet is that even possible?
“Couldn’t face the chaos alone?” he asks when I sit down next to him. He takes my hand into his lap, holding it between both of his. He’s right—whatever else is going on between us, the friendship remains.
“Something like that.” I frown. My head still hurts. What happened to the bottle of Grey’s hippie remedies? I need a bunch. “How about you?”
“I, uh…” He scratches his head, embarrassed. “Prepare to have your mind blown, but I’m not the Michelangelo I once was.”
“Huh?”
“A party dude,” he clarifies, but I’m still mystified. “I’m cool but rude, like Raphael. Seriously, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Heroes in a half shell? No? We need to get your house hooked up to Wi-Fi. You have pop culture holes that need filling. Then we could Skype, after I move…” he adds slyly.
“I’m not the life and soul either,” I say in response to this babble, hesitating, then leaning my head on his shoulder. He readjusts, putting his arm around me. My voice sounds sleepy as I add, “Maybe I don’t mind the outskirts.”
“Sabotaging the balloons, stealing the cake.”
“Baking the cake,” I correct. My neck cricks when I twist to look up at him. “How did the croquet thing turn out?”
“Croquembouche,” Thomas corrects. “I think Ned was a bit over-ambitious. And it’s meant to be a party for Grey, right? So I made a Black Forest gâteau.”
Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte. Grey’s favorite. “The best choice your mother ever made,” he always said, “was bringing a piece of Germany home with her.” I’d never seen him eat it without needing to be hosed down afterwards.
“Thank you.”
Gently, like he can sense my skull is about to burst, or maybe wondering whether I forgive him about Manchester, Thomas kisses me on the head. I could sink into this friendship like a comfortable sofa. But wouldn’t that miss the point of this entire summer? And Grey would kill me. It’s all through his whole life, all through his diaries, with their explosions of peonies and majestic goats. Take risks. Live boldly. Say yes.
Like a comet, I know: that’s how you stop a wormhole, that’s the opposite of grief—love.
Before I can think about it, I twist round to kiss Thomas—and boink my head on his. There’s a crack like thunder as we connect. Stars everywhere. Nothing spacetimey, just pain.
“Ow.” He rubs his jaw, looking at me with concern. “Are you okay? Of course you’re okay, your skull’s made of concrete.”
“Me?” I twist around and prod him in the ribs. “That’s twice now, you’ve chinned me.”
Then I flatten out my fingers and try to read him like Braille. Scrunch his cardigan underneath my hands. How are you supposed to be best friends with someone when they’re a hundred and eighty miles away?
“Third time’s the charm?” Thomas offers, jutting his chin.
We’re still laughing when we start kissing, messy and clumsy and happy. Dizzy and smiling and tentative, figuring out a way towards each other. I didn’t know it could be like this.
“Ready to face the death metal?” I ask, when I can finally speak.
* * *
We kiss-walk-stumble the couple of hundred yards home hand in hand, so by the time we get there, the party is in full swing. We stand in the driveway, hiding behind Grey’s Beetle. The hood is vibrating with noise. My skin vibrates too. I’m pulsating—with Thomas’s kiss, with Papa’s revelations. With what’s to come. My head has started to throb again. I can’t let go of Thomas’s hand; it’s tethering me to the world.
“Is there any way,” he yells in my ear, “that we can get to your room without anyone seeing us?”
I wish. From what I can see of the garden, this is not Grey’s party. No one’s in a toga, for starters. And his style of debauchery was much more aren’t-tea-lights-everywhere-romantic?-oops-I’ve-accidentally-set-the-rhododendron-on-fire. The hundreds of different-colored balloons pay lip service to that idea—I half expect to see Papa floating about up there—but ultimately this is Ned and his mates, rocking out.
“C’mon.” I lead Thomas into the melee. Immediately, we’re in a throng of people. Niall pushes a plastic cup of beer into my free hand and I accept it. He says to someone else, “That’s Ned’s baby sister.”
After that, “Heys” follow us through the garden as we push our way through clumps of people. And out of the corner of my eye, a pool of darkness follows us too. A kiss wasn’t enough.
“Heeey.” This comes from Sof, a vision in gold who bursts through the crowd to hug me. I let go of Thomas’s hand to hug her back, surprised by her warmth. When she peels away, I see her cheeks are flushed and both her beehive and eyeliner are wonky. She’s got a beer in each hand.
She peers at my own half-empty cup as someone bumps into us and we stagger sideways. I feel a sudden emptiness. “Gottie! You need to catch up! Where’ve you been?”
“The bookshop. And Thomas and I—” I break off. I’ve lost him in the crowd. “Where is everyone?”
“You see all these people?” she stage-whispers. I can smell the beer on her breath. “They are everyone!”
“People I know.” I only know her and Thomas and the band. “Ned.” Talking makes me wince, the headache building up steam with all the noise, and maybe Sof notices, because she says, “Drink.”
I follow her instruction, downing my cup like a shot, and she says, “Whoa, actually, slow down. You’re not used to it.”
Her fussing reminds me of last summer. We were both the same year, weren’t we? Both finished with exams, out of school uniform forever. I already don’t have a mum; I don’t not need another one.
“Seriously, where’s Ned?” I drop my empty cup on the grass. Under a nearby shrub, the darkness slides into view. A little bigger than before. I turn away, picking up an unopened can that’s sitting on the bench. Someone says “Hey” and not in a “Hello” way, and I shoot a glance at them: “What?”
“That’s my beer,” says a boy I don’t know, gesturing to the can I’m opening.
I stare at him. He has a weird chin and I don’t know who he is and I don’t care. “I’m the baby sister,” I explain.
“Gottie!” says Sof. “What’s up with you? Ned’s setting up.”
“I’m going to find Thomas,” I tell her, walking off, pushing my way through all these people I don’t know.
Behind me, I can hear her apologizing to the boy whose beer I took. Whatever. I fight my way to the kitchen, then beyond that to the bathroom.
Inside, I lock the door and stuff a couple of aspirin in my mouth, then chug the beer. That’s the plan anyway, but I only manage about two gulps. I’m not used to it. Sof’s right. How predictably annoying.
My reflection throbs, pale and tired, and my stupid, wonky haircut sticks up in all the wrong places, until I can’t see it anymore because the mirror is an untuned television. I turn away and put the toilet seat down and sit on it, closing my eyes, but that just makes my stomach lurch and someone’s knocking on the door anyway. I force myself to finish the can, then I go back to the kitchen.
I scour the fridge. Thomas’s Black Forest gâteau nestles pristine among six-packs. What would Grey drink? Something effervescent. I find an old bottle of sparkling wine at the back of the pantry and take a mug from the dresser. It’s a celebration, isn’t it? There should be champagne bubbles and dancing. Every year at this party, Grey would waltz me across the garden on his toes. I want to dance. I want to feel joy. I want to exist.
I go outside and no one’s dancing there either, so me and the bottle stomp around on our own for a bit in the flower bed, because it’s the only place there’s room. The darkness dances with me, hand in hand. We never got the yellow tulips in the end, for the funeral, and it doesn’t matter, except it still does.
I top up my mug, and wander round the edges of the garden, looking for Thomas. More people say “hey” as I pass them. Ned’s friends, boys in bandanas. When I reach the big stone Buddha, I stop and lean against it, gulping in air. It takes me a couple of seconds to realize I’ve basically joined Jason and Meg.
Great. Perfect. Unholy long division. Meg’s floating dreamily back and forth to the music, wearing ballet flats and generally being petite and adorable and not a great galumphing secret giant. She sees me staring and waves, cautiously. Her other hand is entwined with Jason’s.
“Gottie!” she calls out. “Isn’t this party insane? Can’t wait for later. I’m going to get drinks. You want?”
“Hi. No,” I shout, waving my half-empty bottle at her. I lost the mug, somewhere. She nods and moves off through the crowd. Then to Jason I say, “I wish you’d disappear down a wormhole.”
“What?”
“Nothing, I said ‘Hi.’”
Jason nods warily. I don’t think he can hear me, so I say experimentally, “You’re a monumental arsehole.”
“Yeah!” he shouts back. “Strong tunes!”
It’s not quite right, though. I don’t want to call him an arsehole. I want him to hear what I have to say, to acknowledge me—to acknowledge us. To admit that we really were something, once. I lean forward to shout it at him, grabbing his shoulder with my bottle hand, a bit more forcefully than I mean to. He staggers and steadies himself on my waist, then I cup my other hand to his ear and say, “We were in love.”
“What?” he shouts. Then looks around and leans into my ear, saying quickly, “Yeah. We kinda were. Listen, Margot. After Grey—”
“After Grey, you were awful to me,” I interrupt. I’m not sure he hears me. I’m not sure it matters. I kiss him on the cheek and walk away. I’m officially done.
Somehow I make it back inside, fight my way through the kitchen, collect something from the fridge, then carry my bounty through the sitting room, where people are lounging around talking. It’s quieter in here. Then somehow I’m outside Grey’s door. I haven’t been in here since Ned and I cleaned it out.
It’s practically silent, inside. I’m on the other side of the house from Ned’s stereo and all the people in the garden. I leave the lights off and tiptoe through the mess on the floor—it’s like a Thomas bomb exploded, scattering felt-tips and comics and cardigans everywhere. Travel Connect 4 on the piano. It’s not quite all the things he described in his Toronto bedroom, but it’s enough that it doesn’t feel like Grey’s room anymore.
Which makes it okay to climb onto the bed in my shoes, a piece of Thomas’s cake in one hand, the bottle in the other. Somehow, it’s almost empty. When did I drink that?
I put the cake on the duvet, then arrange myself cross-legged in front of The Wurst. I hold up the bottle, in a toast. That’s what Ned’s whole party is about, isn’t it? A toast to our grandfather. In the corner, darkness slides down the wall.
“What are you doing?”
Thomas is in the doorway.
“Hi!” I yell, then wince. Readjust to nonparty volume. “Sorry. Hello. I know this is your room, sorry.”
“That’s okay. What’s going on?” he asks, shutting the door. “I’ve been watching you and you seem a little…”
Unhinged. Out of control.
“Nothing’s going on,” I say. “I couldn’t find you.”
“You didn’t look very hard,” he says mildly, coming to sit next to me. “Every time I try to cross the garden to talk to you, you run away.”
Do I? I haven’t even noticed Thomas in the crowd. I’ve been keeping an eye on the darkness.
“If you’re still mad about Manchester, if you didn’t want to kiss me…”
“I did! I do! I’m running away from the wormhole, not you.”
Thomas frowns. “Are you drunk?”
The darkness climbs onto the bed, nestling in the shadows between the pillows. And I kiss him, really kiss him. Not like it was in the kitchen. Or sweet, like the churchyard. There’s darkness all around us now, so I kiss him like I want the world to stop. At least, I try to.
I launch myself, hands everywhere, pushing him backwards onto the bed. My arms are under his T-shirt, my mouth open and pressed to his closed lips. He’s not responding and I try harder, putting his arms under my vest, start fumbling with my own bra strap. The darkness slides closer.
Gently, he pushes me away.
“G,” he says, sitting up. “Don’t. What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing. What? Nothing. It’s fate, like you said. Don’t you want to?” I throw myself at him again in the half dark, try to put his arms round me. There’s so little time left.
“Slow down a second,” he says, holding me at arm’s length. “Hang on. You’re acting strange.”
He breaks off, and I fill the silence.
“We’re running out of time,” I try to explain. “You’re leaving, and, and…”
“Wait.” Thomas holds up a hand, as though I’m a runaway train that he’s trying to stop. His other hand digs in his pocket for his inhaler, and he takes two puffs. “Is that the cake?”
In the gloom, we both look at the slice of Black Forest gâteau I stole. It’s squashed from where I pushed Thomas into it.
“Sorry,” I whisper.
“Let’s just go back to the party, okay? I’ll get you some water.”
He holds out his hand. I take it and let him lead me out into the garden. The darkness follows us.
“Thomas, I…”
“We can talk properly, tomorrow,” he says, squeezing my hand. Not looking at me.
I nod as I stumble after him. There’s cake all over the back of his cardigan. Halfway through the crowd, the music cuts out.
“Weeeiiirrrd.”
“Just wait,” Thomas says as a guitar chord slices through the silence.
Ned’s voice echoes over my head as he yells, “Hello, er, garden! Let’s rock!”
“You knew about this?” I say to Thomas as the crowd surges forward, knocking me out of his hand. Ned begins to play. I’m confused—where is he? I can see Jason and Niall through a clump of people. This isn’t Fingerband. A girl’s voice begins to sing and I’m turning around, stumbling into people, trying to work out where Ned is.
Thomas grabs me and steers me through the crowd, spinning me round on the grass and when I stop spinning everything keeps whirling around me, I think I’m going to be sick, and then I’m not going to anymore, I’m just dizzy.
I look up and there, on the shed roof, is Ned, gold jumpsuit and eyes closed, bent over his guitar, hair streaming to the ground. Next to him at the mic, her gold minidress matching his outfit, is Sof. They look like a pair of C-3POs. Oh.
My brother has a new band. And everyone knew except me. They must have spent so much time practicing, to be this good. Is this what Ned’s been rushing off to all summer? And since when does Sof sing in front of anyone but me?
“Thanyouvermuch.” Ned Elvises out of the song. His guitar swings from its strap as he swaps it for his camera, takes a photo of the party. “I’m Ned, this is Sofía, together we are Jurassic Parkas. We’re not The Wurst band in the world…” He winks at the crowd. “I bet you’re all just glad it’s not Fingerband up here.”
Did he really just say that? I can’t stop staring at them. They’re twins. More brother and sister than he and I are. And I’m the one who made up Jurassic Parkas, last summer.
“Now we’re going to play: ‘Velocirapture,’” Sof growls into the mic. She doesn’t sound shy.
I turn and stumble away, pushing my way through the people cheering. My head is throbbing, I need quiet, I need …
“Ermahgahd, ermahgahd, ermahgahd!” Suddenly Sof’s croaking at me in the kitchen. I look up from the drink I’m nursing in the corner. My mouth tastes vomity but I don’t remember throwing up.
I don’t remember how I got here.
“Did you see me?” says Sof. She’s extra-raspy, grabbing my arms and bouncing up and down, it’s annoying, before jumping past me. “I’m so thirsty, ermahgahd, I might drink straight from the tap.”
I trail in her wake. Somewhere near, I’m aware Ned and Thomas have followed her into the kitchen. The half-destroyed cake is on the counter.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Ned’s stereo is blasting Iron Maiden, and I have to yell. It makes me sound angrier than I am—I just want to know why it had to be a secret.
“I’m sorry!” she yells back, reaching into the cupboard for an actual glass, not the plastic cups everyone’s drinking from. “What if I’d chickened out, or been terrible? I always told you I wanted to see what it was like to be in a band.”
“All your bands are imaginary.”
Sof yanks on the tap, which doesn’t budge. “I know—but”—she readjusts, shoving aside debris to put her glass on the counter, both hands on the tap—“you’d have wanted to hear us rehearse, and I could only do it if it was me and Ned alone, and—shit, this is annoying—I dunno, what if we were terrible?”
Ned hops onto the counter next to us, even though it’s disgusting—broken cups and drink spills, wet cigarette butts and weird sticky stuff. I suppose in spandex it doesn’t matter.
“You were brilliant,” he says, looking at Sof. There are ten thousand people in the kitchen but it’s just the two of them, in a bandmates bubble. Friends, conspirators. Swaps: I get dark matter, you take my friend.
You’re being a dog in the manger, says Grey’s voice in my head.
Yeah, but Ned’s MY brother, I argue back. And you’re dead, and I’m so, so angry at you about that.
“Who wants what?” says Thomas, catching up to us and plonking down a bunch of bottles, not looking at me. He didn’t want to kiss me. How stupid. How embarrassing! I laugh hysterically. Everyone ignores me.
“Is there any water? Even some pop?” croaks Sof. “Your tap is KILLING me!” She twists at it again, her knuckles white. The sink is full of darkness and I’m struck by how hugely unfair this is, that I’m the one who’ll have to face it.
“Budge over, Sof, it’s stuck.” She moves aside and Ned puts his full weight and both hands on the tap. “Scheisse. Thomas, can you grab me a wrench, or a knife, or something?”
“Wait a second,” I say to Thomas, holding him back. He flails, caught between me and Ned. “You couldn’t rehearse in front of me? You couldn’t even tell me? I’m the only one who’s heard you sing.”
“Sorry we didn’t tell you about the band,” says Ned, semipatiently, still trying to yank at the tap. Even over the music, I can hear the sarcasm, that he’s drunk. “Sof asked me not to. What happens at rehearsal stays at rehearsal—as I’ve told you a thousand times. You’d remember if you paid attention to anything other than yourself.”
He grabs a spoon from the drying rack and starts bashing the tap. I let go of Thomas’s arm. Am I selfish? All I’ve seen Ned do all summer is party, play guitar, and pretend Grey isn’t dead. But maybe I’ve got no idea what he’s been up to. Maybe he’s got wormholes too.
“I cannot believe you just said that,” I say to Ned’s back. “Hey! Look at me. You should have told me, you should have … She’s my friend.”
It’s Sof, not Ned, who turns on me. A hiss so low and furious I can barely hear the words. “I’m your friend? Are you joking? Gottie, you barely want me around! I can see it in your face every time I’m round here, and it sucks. You only reply to my texts half the time, you’re always with Thomas, you think the world revolves around you. Even when I was upset about Grey, you wouldn’t let me be your friend. Well, guess what? Ned did, and we don’t need your permission.”
“I’m not giving it!” I shout back, knowing I’m seconds away from being yanked out of time. Thomas is telling Sof to calm down and holding my arm, then Ned is yelling back at me.
“Gottie, shut up. You’re driving everybody crazy. You hide in your room for hours and you’re always daydreaming, you never listen, I fixed your bike, I try to involve you. And God, his car, you cleaned it—that was his STUFF, but you can’t deal with his shoes? And you disappear for hours when we need you, you’re so selfish, you eat all the cereal and drift around like you’re the only one in pain and Jesus, this fucking tap—”
Punk is blaring and everyone’s still yelling and I’m waiting for the wormhole to yank; it’s going to take me right now, surely. None of us notice the tap—the ancient, rusty, creaky kitchen tap, which I’ve been tightening with a wrench all year because it keeps leaking and Papa won’t deal with anything and I don’t know what else to do—as it shoots off the sink.
Silently, it rises up and up to hit the ceiling.
Followed by a geyser of water that threatens to drown us all.
“Fuuuck!” hoots Ned, as everything happens at once.
For a few seconds, the water rushes only upwards, as though there’s no gravity. Then it comes crashing down over our heads, soaking us, as everyone runs from the kitchen. Now it’s spraying every which way as Ned tries to stem the flow with his hand, only making things worse. It sweeps everything before it in a tide, cups and mugs and bottles crash to the floor. Then Thomas’s cake.
The four of us watch, drenched.
Frozen.
Then a bedraggled Sof catches my eye. And, unbelievably, she laughs.
After a second, I crack up too—and suddenly we’re all hysterical. I’m holding on to Sof and we’re staggering about, both of us shrieking as we keep slipping across the floor. The water’s still spraying and Ned’s still trying to stop it and giggling, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” and this strikes me as the funniest thing ever.
Every time I look at Sof I collapse into giggles. My legs are weak like noodles. And every time she looks at me, she does a startled-donkey snort. Pretty soon we’re unable to hold each other up and we hit the floor, taking Thomas down with us—which only sends us into further hysterics as we flap about, beached fishes. I can’t see where the wormhole is, and I don’t care.
Ned flops down into the water too, even though he doesn’t need to, straight onto the cake, which makes Sof cackle even more. Breathlessly, she snorts at me, “Look—at—at—” She’s laughing so hard it takes her ten attempts to add, “Ned!”
“Fuck you, Petrakis,” Ned says, splashing her with water. “Shit, my camera.”
It’s Thomas who finally calms us down.
“Ned, Ned,” he says, struggling to sit up as the giggles fade out. “Get towels from the bathroom, your bedsheets, laundry—anything, there’s a load in my, Grey’s, that room. G, is the shed locked? Is there a mop or anything? I can’t think, um … Okay, Sof, can you turn off the music?”
Ned helps Sof to her feet and they head off, following instructions. Thomas nudges me: “The mop?”
“Shed, yes,” I say, still faintly delirious.
“Right. Can you handle—this?”
I nod—I don’t have a choice—and he runs off, slipping in all the water on the floor and banging against the walls.
There’s a saucepan on the drying rack and I grab it, approaching the sink like it’s a rat I need to kill. I try holding it down over the tap but it just redirects the spray right in my face. Trying again, both hands now, I manage to use it to sort of deflect the spray back down into the sink. Half of it is still going all over the counter, the windows, but at least not me.
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.
“What happened, anyway?” asks Jason.
“Did you all go skinny dipping?” asks Meg dreamily. “Everyone’s wet.”
“With my little sister? Gross,” says Ned.
“Yes, we’re wet,” says Sof patiently.
“Did you know Gottie and Jason skinny-dipped?” says Meg, not listening. Too late I see she’s stoned, really stoned. In the glow from Jason’s cigarette, her eyes are tennis balls. “Jason told me they swam together in the canal. Like mermaids…”
Ned is staring at Jason. Sof bites her lip, glancing between me and Thomas—guessing he doesn’t know the half of it. He tight-smiles at me, like he’s not thrilled by this revelation, but he’s not quite allowed to be annoyed either. I can’t find my tongue; I think I left it in the kitchen.
“Mermaids,” Meg giggles, staring at her fingers like they’re brand-new. Then she looks up at us all, wide-eyed and full of wonder, and I know what she’s going to say before she says it. I can’t stop her. Here’s where my tiny white lie, a misunderstanding I could have cleared up days ago, comes back and destroys me. “They had sex.”
“Fuck,” says Jason. He stubs his cigarette out on the grass, then looks at me across the circle. We stare at each other for a long moment, in it together. But not, I suppose, anymore.
“Come on,” he says to Meg, starting to help her up. “Time to go home.”
“Jason.” Ned glowers at him, his hair crackling and huge. “Piss off, would you?”
“Ned,” Sof says softly, putting a hand on his arm.
Jason looks around at us all, staring up at him in a circle. In slow motion, he mouths a “sorry” at me, and ambles off into the darkness. Meg wobbles and Sof scrambles to stand up. We all do. I can’t look at Thomas. My head throbs.
Meg shakes Sof off and stumbles across to me. She leans right in, looking at my face. “You’re pretty,” she says, trailing her finger down my cheek. “Isn’t she so pretty, Thomas?”
“Come on,” says Sof, taking her arm. “Bed.”
She starts leading her away, Ned lumbering after them. Sof glances back over her shoulder at me, concerned. Then Thomas and I are alone under the apple tree. I can’t not look at him any longer.
“You lied to me?” he asks, his face barely visible in the dark.
“You lied too,” I say, and even though it’s true, I immediately want to chop off my tongue. I should be pointing out that me and Jason makes no difference—it doesn’t make me and Thomas a lie. In the grass, clumsy and new. How we were in the tree, when we held elbows. In the attic in the Book Barn, making promises to each other a long time ago. We can have all that, and I can have my summer with Jason too.
“Seriously? It’s hardly the same thing,” Thomas scoffs. “And I suppose everyone knows except me and, I’m guessing, Ned?”
“No one knew, that’s the point—”
“Then what? I don’t get it. You didn’t have to lie to me. It’s fucked up.” He runs his hands through his hair, then finger-quotes at me. “‘First everything.’”
“That’s not even what I meant!”
“Whatever,” Thomas says, not listening to me. “You know, I saw you with him earlier at the party? Before I came and found you, you were whispering together, and I knew—”
“Knew what?” I hurl my hands in the air, an imitation bat grab of frustration. “I’m allowed to talk to him! I’m allowed to keep it a secret, if I want. And you’re right; it’s not the same thing—running off to Manchester without telling me? That’s actually my business. Me and Jason is none of yours.”
I’m picking up steam, ready for a fight—I think I’m in the right here, I think I deserve one—but Thomas interrupts me.
“And when you kissed me earlier—in your grandpa’s room,” he emphasizes, full of scorn. “When you tried to do more, was it my business then?”
“I didn’t lie,” I say calmly, thinking back to the kitchen on Thomas’s first morning, weeks ago. How I’d tried to pick a fight, and he hadn’t let me. “At least, not how you mean. When I said first everything, I meant I’d never been in love before. Except that’s not actually true. And I don’t even think you’re angry I lied. I think you’re jealous that I’ve been in love and you haven’t.”
When I say that, he turns and disappears into the night.
Ned’s right. I am selfish. That’s what stops me from running after him.
I go to my room to wait. I know what’s coming next. Minus three, minus two, minus one. I strip off my wet clothes, dropping them onto the floor, not bothering with the laundry basket.
Exhaustion sweeps over me as I climb into bed and pull up the covers. I’ve lived ten lifetimes in one summer. But sleep doesn’t come. All the secrets and all the revelations and all the anger—me and Thomas, Ned and Sof—it all crashes over me in waves, smashing me onto the sand again and again. Drowning me.
“Umlaut?” I pat the duvet. Nothing. Even my cat wants nothing to do with me.
When I turn off the lamp, the light of the day, pooled in corners and hiding under the bed, slides out the door. There’s just the glow from the ceiling, the fluorescent stars Thomas sticky-taped there for me, that match no constellation at all.
I stay awake, watching them blink out, one by one.
Until I’m alone with the darkness.