“Where did you think the food was coming from?” Thomas cocks his head, sitting down sideways in a chair. I sit the same way next to him, and our knees bump awkwardly; we’re both too tall. I still don’t know what to think of him.
“I thought Ned was going shopping,” I explain. “He’s a foodie—well, he lives in London.” We’re probably keeping Ned awake—his bedroom is off the kitchen. Then again, he might have gone out after the Fingerband meeting. He mostly gets in at dawn, dry-heaves in the garden, then sleeps all morning. A blur of glitter, guitar, gotta-go-bye out the door every afternoon.
“You think anyone who can bake more than a potato is a foodie,” Thomas points out, then leaps up with a stop-hand and a “Wait there!”
I sit, confused, till he returns from the pantry, piling ingredients on the table: flour, butter, eggs, as well as things I didn’t even know we had, like bags of fancy nuts and bars of dark, bitter chocolate wrapped in green paper. It reminds me of that first morning, a week ago, when he made me toast and jam and got Grey’s Marmite jars out of their shrine.
“The best way to learn what’s so great about baking,” Thomas says, not sitting back down, “is to do it. I want to open a pastry shop.”
He beams down at me, and I resist the unexpected urge to reach up and poke the resulting dimple.
“A pastry shop,” I repeat, in the tone I’d use if he suggested casual larceny. I can’t imagine the Thomas I knew in charge of hot ovens and knives and edible foodstuffs. Well, I can, but it would end in disaster.
“Ouch. Yes, a bakery. You’ve eaten my muffins—don’t even try to tell me I’m not Lord of the Sugar.”
…
“King of the Muffin.”
…
“Impresario of Flapjacks.”
I pinch my mouth into a hard line. He’s not funny. He’s a hobgoblin. We stare-off, and Thomas gives in first, cracking a smile and an egg into a bowl.
“Honestly? It’s fun, and against all odds, I’m good at it,” he explains. “You know how rare it is to find something that combines those two things? Actually, you probably don’t, you’re good at everything.”
Ugh. I hate that—as though an A in math means I’m figured out. Not everything comes easily. I don’t know the names of any bands. I can’t dance, or do liquid eyeliner, or conjugate verbs. I baked more than one hundred potatoes this past year, and I still can’t get the skin to crisp up. And I don’t have a plan.
Ned was born a seventies glam rocker, has wanted to be a photographer since he got his first camera. Sof’s been a lesbian since she could talk and a painter from not long after that. Jason’s going to be a lawyer, and now even Thomas—chaos theory incarnate—is opening a freaking bakery? All I’ve ever wanted was to stay in Holksea and learn about the world from inside a book. It isn’t enough.
“I’m not good at everything. You know The Wurst?” I tell Thomas, to prove it. “The painting above Grey’s—your—bed.”
“G, for the love of”—he bat-grabs the air, no, pterodactyl-grabs it—“why would you WANT to paint like that?” In a church-library-funeral whisper, he adds: “I can’t believe you never told me Grey did erotic art.”
“No, I—” The laughter comes so suddenly I can’t get the words out. Thomas must think I’m a complete loon, doubled over and wheezing, flapping my hands in front of my face.
“Wait, wait,” I squeak, before I’m gone again. This laugh is a burst of relief. Briefly, tantalizingly, reminding me of what it can be like—to be happy to the tips of your toes.
Thomas starts laughing too, saying, “G, it’s not funny! I have to sleep under that thing. I think it’s watching me.”
Which only makes me laugh harder, sucking in shallow breaths as I begin to verge on the manic. A kind of happy hysteria that threatens to overflow, spilling into something worse.
I suck in air, pushing the laughter and everything else down. Then explain, “No, I painted it. That got me a D.”
“G. You are joking.” He sits down opposite me again, astonished. And no wonder, if he thinks it’s a six-foot blue penis! Maybe it is, maybe I’ve got boy parts on the brain and that’s been my problem all along. I wonder if the Boner Barn has anything on Freud.
“Told you I was terrible,” I say cheerfully. I’d faked my laughter at the school exhibition, pretending to make fun of myself, but somehow with Thomas, it’s real. I’m terrible and it’s okay. “Your turn. Why baking, really?”
“Everyone says you have to be superprecise to bake—like your extra-credit thing, the time travel project. One calculation out of place and the whole thing would go wrong, right?”
“Yeah…”
“It’s hogwash!” Thomas announces gleefully. I’m charmed by his use of the word hogwash—it reminds me of the pigs at the fair. He points at the bowl. “Look at this—bit of eggshell in there, scoop it out with a finger, what the hell. Too much flour, forget the butter, drop the pan—it doesn’t matter how many mistakes you make, it mostly turns out okay. And when it doesn’t, you cover it with icing.”