And I don’t want to let go.
“Ready?” He looks at me. His eyes aren’t muddy—they’re hazel.
I chew on my lip, considering. I like holding elbows with Thomas, eating cake and joking about The Wurst. Against all odds and expectations, I like him bouncing into my room uninvited, lounging on my bed and tickling Umlaut’s ears. I like re-becoming friends—and the something else there is between us, building like electricity in the air.
But inside this box is everything that happened, on the day he abandoned me. Am I ready to remember?
“It’s just a box,” says Thomas. “Bawk, bawk, bawk…”
Before I can think about it, I grab the lid and yank it, hard.
It’s empty. There’s a brackenish black smear as though slugs have been nesting in it, and the inside of the lid is sort of sooty and covered in illegible Sharpie scribbles, but otherwise, nothing. What an anticlimax.
“G, did you open this already?”
“I told you—I didn’t even know this was … whatever this is. What is it?”
I feel Thomas shrug next to me. “It’s nothing now, I guess.”
“What did you think was going to be in there?”
“I don’t know!” He sounds completely frustrated, like he wants to shake the tree so all the apples fall out, bonking us on the head till we get some answers. “We found a bunch of junk, then we did the blood pact. I left you here to get Grey, and when we came back the lid was closed. I always wondered…”
“What?”
“Nothing.” He shakes his head like a dog coming out of the sea. “Nothing. Maybe we opened it too soon, I don’t know.”
I twist to look at him, sliding one arm behind his back so I don’t fall out of the tree. With the other, I take his elbow again.
A month ago I didn’t want any memories of this summer. Now, I’m not so sure. I’m starting to remember that there are two sides to every equation.
“Thomas. Listen. It’s empty. So what? We can put something new in there. A time capsule of you and me. Who we are now.”
He turns to take my elbow. The shift means now neither of us can move without totally losing our balance. My face must be as serious as his as we look at each other. I want to ask, Who are you, really? Why are you back?
“So who are we now?” we both ask at the same time.
“Telepathy,” Thomas says. And his smile could light the whole fucking tree on fire.
The sky turns from sun to rain in an instant. Within seconds, it’s pouring.
Lightning flashes through the leaves, bouncing off Thomas’s glasses. Followed fast by a long, low rumble of thunder.
“G!” Thomas has to raise his voice over the noise even though we’re inches apart. “We have to get out of this tree.”
Lightning flashes again. I can barely see through the water in my eyes, but I nod. My arm is still tucked around his waist, his hand still on my elbow. If either of us moves, we’ll both fall.
“I’m going to let you go,” Thomas shouts. “Jump backwards. On three?”
Instinct says don’t wait, jump—I slide down the trunk, scraping my stomach on the bark. My topknot snags on a twig, tugging at my scalp with a sharp wince. There’s thunder again, then Thomas, tumbling down from above me, grabbing my elbow the minute he’s on the ground.
“You didn’t wait for three,” he yells, his other hand pushing back his soaking-wet hair.
“Neither did you!”
We turn, laughing, jostling, grabbing at each other’s hands in a race to my bedroom. Where Ned’s standing sentry in the doorway, arms folded, his fur coat bedraggled from the rain. He looks like Umlaut after losing a fight with a squirrel.
“Althorpe.” He scowls at Thomas, who drops my hand, which makes Ned scowl more. What’s his problem? “Just had a nice chat with your mum—she’s on the phone, wants to talk to you.”
*
After Ned practically frog-marches Thomas across the garden, I curl up on my bed with Grey’s diary from five years ago. Turn to the autumn, the winter, after Thomas left. I’m not sure what I’m looking for—clues, mentions of a time capsule, something. What I find is:
THE POND FROZE OVER, ICE-SKATING DUCKS
G’S HAIR IS GETTING AS LONG AS NED’S. SHE STILL LOOKS LIKE CARO.
I drop the diary on my bed, go and sit on the floor in front of my mirror. The photo of me and my mum is taped to its corner. My hair’s still wet from the rain, scrolled up in its topknot—and when I take out the elastic, it falls in damp waves all the way to my waist. A stranger looks back at me.
“What do you think, Umlaut?”
Meow?
I consider my reflection, my mum’s face in the photo. Who am I?