Sof’s sitting on the wall in a sundress, sipping something green and frothy. Hubble, bubble, toil and wheatgrass. Her hair is a cloud of curls that wobble as I approach. I’m unsure if it’s a nod of welcome.
I shake my own head, trying to focus on the present, and perch next to her, sweating in my jeans. My mind is still wrapped up in Jason, remembering how I’d felt in those early days, like my heart was expanding at a million miles a minute with a hundred new senses, till I was ready to explode. It takes me a moment to think of something to say, and eventually I have to settle for, “Do you mind if I get the bus with you?”
“’Course not,” she says. She sounds both wary and pleased. After a few seconds, she glances at me and adds, “You’re not biking?”
“I crashed my bike.”
“Oh, shit. You okay?” Sof turns towards me and I show her my ankle. “Eurgh. Put arnica cream on it.”
That’s Sof. Offering advice where none was asked for. But it’s meant kindly, and it’s the sort of hippie remedy Grey would suggest, so when she asks what happened, I say, “Went round the Burnham corner too fast. It’s not so bad.”
“You were at the Book Barn?” she asks lightly, no-big-deal, tearing a sheet of paper from her sketch pad and folding origami, fingers deft. She doesn’t know I’ve not been there since September.
“Yeah.”
We lapse into silence, something that never used to happen with us. We used to talk all the time, nonstop, about everything: boys, girls, homework, the infinite possibilities of the universe, which flavor milk shake was best to dip your chips into, whether I should let Sof cut my hair into a bob.
I’m digging in my book bag for one of the books I checked out—H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine—and noticing a cinnamon muffin has materialized in there since the wormhole, when Sof nudges me. She’s flicking her origami open and shut—a fortune-teller.
“Why does your bag smell like Christmas?” she asks. “Never mind: pick a color.”
“Yellow.”
“Gotcha.” Sof counts it out and unfolds the square, then pulls an exaggerated would-you-believe-it? face. “Gottie will come to the beach on Sunday.”
Summer vacation starts this weekend, and we always spend Sundays at the beach. Rain or shine, whether Ned and his gang go or not. It’s one of our friendship traditions, like making up stupid bands and songs to go with them, writing each other’s names on the soles of our shoes, or watching the same film while texting incessantly. Not that we’ve done any of those things since last year. Sof’s taking this bus ride as an olive branch.
“Okay,” I agree. Then I open my book bag again for the Mystery Muffin. It’s slightly squashed, but I hold it out as a further peace offering. “Here. I think Ned made it.”
Sof hero-worships my brother, because he sings in front of people and she wants to, but is too shy. Half the bands she makes up are for his attention—when she coined “Fingerband,” Ned high-fived her and she didn’t wash her hand for a week.
“You’re eating white flour?”
I look up. Standing in front of us, wrinkling her perfect nose at the muffin, is Megumi Yamazaki. Of Thomas-put-a-jellyfish-in-her-lunch-box fame. Her family moved along the coast to Brancaster, so we went to different secondary schools, but I’ve seen her around this year. If Sof’s from the fifties, Megumi’s the sixties, one of those weird, arty French films: striped T-shirt, short hair—and shorter shorts.
“Meg, you remember Gottie? Actually, weren’t you at kindergarten together? And now”—Sof indicates the switch with her hands, ignoring the muffin—“we’re in art and drama. I do the sets, Meg does the stardom.”
They beam at each other. Sof’s new crush? It seems to be reciprocated. And I don’t have the right to be hurt by her not telling me. Then Meg says, “I keep trying to get her to perform, but would you believe she has stage fright?”
Um, yes? She’s only ever done bedroom karaoke in front of me.
The bus arrives. It trundles slowly to a stop, but Sof still leaps up anxiously to flag it down anyway. Grey used to tease her: “Are you definitely a hippie, Sofía? You need to relax.”
I limp on after Meg and Sof, who are already curled up next to each other, feet tucked up on the seats, by the time I flop down opposite. Meg fishes out her iPod and I hope she’s going to plug in and ignore us, but instead she pops one headphone in her ear and another in Sof’s.
“Sorry,” Sof says to me. “Bus tradition.”
I nod and try to give them privacy while they whisper to each other. I break off a piece of muffin: it tastes like autumn, even though the sun is high in the sky.
“Sof, are we on for Fingerband tomorrow?” Meg murmurs.
“Ned’s Gottie’s brother,” Sof reminds her, with a glance at me. I hadn’t known the band was playing.