The Square Root of Summer
Harriet Reuter Hapgood
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PARTICLES
The Uncertainty Principle states that you can know where a particle is, or you can know where it’s going, but you can’t know both at the same time.
The same, it turns out, is true of people.
And when you try, when you look too closely, you get the Observer Effect. By trying to work out what’s going on, you’re interfering with destiny.
A particle can be in two places at once. A particle can interfere with its own past. It can have multiple futures, and multiple pasts.
The universe is complicated.
Saturday 3 July
[Minus three hundred and five]
My underwear is in the apple tree.
I’m lying in the grass, staring up through the branches. It’s late afternoon and the rest of the garden is lemonade sunshine, but under here it’s cool and dark and insecty. When I tilt my head back, the whole garden is upside down—and my laundry with it, festooned like the world’s saddest bunting.
Déjà vu flattens me, and I have the stupidest thought: Hey, Grey’s home.
When our clothesline broke a few years ago, my grandfather Grey was underneath it. “Balls and buggery to the flames of hell!” he roared, flinging the wet clothes into the trees to dry. He loved the effect so much, he insisted we repeat it every time the sun came out.
But Grey died last September, and we don’t do things like that anymore.
I shut my eyes and recite pi to one hundred decimal places. When I open them, the apple tree still blossoms with underwear. It’s a throwback to how things used to be—which means I know exactly who’s responsible.
Then I hear his voice saying my name, floating towards me over the bushes.
“Gottie? Yeah, still a total Mensa patient.”
Rolling onto my front, I peer through the trees. Across the garden, my brother Ned is coming out the back door. Six foot of stubble and snakeskin leggings, and a clothespin clipped to his T-shirt. Since coming home from art school a couple of weeks ago, he’s been making a pastiche of Grey’s summers: dragging our grandfather’s things out of the shed, rearranging furniture, playing his records. He settles himself on the grass, swigging a beer and air-guitaring with his other hand. Perpetual motion.
Then I see who’s following him and instinctively duck into the grass. Jason. His best friend and bass player in their band. He slouches slowly to the ground, where I stare a hole in the back of his leather jacket.
“It’s past seven,” Ned is saying. “Grots’ll be home soon, if you wanna say hi.”
I wrinkle my nose at the nickname. Kla Grot—little toad. I’m seventeen!
“It’s that late?” Jason’s voice is a low rumble. “We should call the others, have band practice here.”
No, don’t do that, I think. Shoo. It’s been one thing, having Ned home these past couple of weeks, bringing the house alive with music and noise and mess. I don’t want Fingerband here too, squawking their guitars all night and talking, talking, talking. Not when I’ve been an elective mute since September.
Then there’s Jason. Blond, bequiffed, blue-eyed. Beautiful. And, if you want to get technical about it, my ex-boyfriend.
Secret ex-boyfriend.
Ugh.
Aside from the funeral, this is the first time I’ve seen him since the end of last summer. This is the first time I’ve seen him since we were having sex in the sunshine.
I didn’t even know he was back. I don’t know how I missed it—our village, Holksea, is the size of a postage stamp. Barely enough houses for a Monopoly set.
I want to throw up. When Jason left for college, this was not how I pictured us seeing each other again—with me lurking in the shrubbery like Grey’s vast stone Buddha. I’m frozen, compelled to stay where I am, staring at the back of Jason’s head. It’s too much for my heart to take, and not enough.
Then Umlaut appears from nowhere.
A ginger blur through the garden, landing with a meow next to Ned’s cowboy boots.
“Yo, midget,” says Jason, surprised. “You’re new.”
“That’s Gottie’s,” Ned non-explains. Getting a kitten wasn’t my idea. He appeared one day in April, courtesy of Papa.
Ned stands up, scanning the garden. I try to blend, a five-foot-nine-inch leaf, but he’s already strutting towards me.
“Grotbag.” He raises one cool eyebrow. “Playing hide-and-seek?”
“Hello,” I reply, rolling onto my back and staring up at him. My brother’s face is a reflection of mine—olive skin, dark eyes, beaky nose. But while he lets his brown hair fall unbrushed around his shoulders, mine hasn’t been cut in five years, and is twisted up in a permanent topknot. And only one of us is wearing eyeliner. (Clue: it isn’t me.)
“Found ya.” Ned winks. Then, quick as a flash, he whips his phone from his pocket and snaps me.