It’s blazing hot. The air is still and smells of salt and sea lavender, with the kind of endless sky you only get here on the fens, where the land is so flat it could prove Ptolemy wrong, and the blue goes all the way to the edges. Not that I’ve been anywhere else to compare. Perhaps Ned sees similar skies all the time in London. Perhaps Thomas left behind a Canadian sky as big as this one.
I want to see all the skies, not only the one I know. This is how you discover the universe.
“Do you hate it?” I rub my hand over the bristles on my neck, still not used to it.
Sof adjusts her lime sunglasses—they match her bikini—not looking at me as she croaks, “I don’t hate it. But I wish you’d told me about it first.”
“So you could tell me not to do it?” I half joke. “I know it’s wonky, I think Thomas got peanut butter on our scissors…”
Sof doesn’t answer, just stares out at the canal. The surface is a mirror: all that blue sky is underneath us too. We’re at the center of everything.
“You and Thomas. I haven’t seen you in weeks, but he’s cutting your hair with you—”
“I cut my hair. Thomas had nothing to do with it.”
“He’s in your house. He’s getting peanut butter on your scissors, working at the Book Barn … You barely reply to my texts, you never said you cut your hair.”
This isn’t fair. Sof’s abandoned me before to spend hours on the phone with girls she’s never met, going googoo-eyed over an Internet crush. Can’t she just be happy I’m happy? I don’t want to wade into a quagmire of conversation. I want to fast-forward through all the awkward like coming out of a wormhole, and emerge with us as friends and have everything be normal.
“It looks like it did when I first met you,” Sof mutters. “How it would have been when Thomas lived here before.”
“Thomas lives with us,” I say. “I can’t not see him. And didn’t you guys hang out in London with Meg?”
“You and Thomas are friends,” she says, finally looking at me—or at least, pointing her sunglasses in my direction. “Me and Thomas are friendly. Where are you and me?”
I stuff an apple slice in my mouth—it’s the texture of sea sponge—for something to do. When Grey died, Sof visited me every day, bringing magazines and chocolate and wide eyes full of question marks: are you okay, are you okay, are you okay? I started dreading the tap-tap-tap of her knock because I could feel her wanting—wanting me to talk to her, wanting me to let her in, wanting me to come to her. Wanting me to act a certain way. It was exhausting.
What if friendship has a best-before date, and ours has gone off?
“Bet they’d be a novelty one-hit band,” I say, nudging her. “Peanut Butter Scissors.”
No response.
“Surprise Haircut—quirky singer and a couple of nerds on keyboards.”
Nothing from Sof.
“Your Best Friend’s A Moron And She’s Sorry—me on Niall’s drums, scatting a song of apology.”
Sof smirks. Only a little. And she quickly pretends she didn’t. But it’s a start.
“My maybe-best-friend’s a dick. And it’s uneven at the back.”
“Hey, Sof.” I nudge her. “Do you want to come over this Friday? You could help me even it up. And Thomas makes really good cake…”
There’s a pause, then she asks “Gluten-free?” and I know I have her.
“Certified fun-free, I promise.” I give it a second, then make my next offer. “Want to know a secret? Something Thomas doesn’t know.”
“Depends.” She takes off her sunglasses and squints at me. Fondness fills me up as I think: I’m not ready for this friendship to be over. “Is it a good secret?”
“I had sex with Jason.”
Ned should be here to photograph the look on her face.
This is how it would go if things were normal between us:
“Wooowww.” Sof would scramble upright and wolf-howl into the air.
She’d use up the world’s supply of vowels. I’d tell her about me and Jason, how he’d done it before and I, very obviously, hadn’t. But how quickly that turns out not to matter. We’d talk and eat licorice till our tongues turned black, go over every detail.
There would be a thousand questions. Is that why you were reading Forever? Are you on the pill? Did I need her to talk me through the options? And Jason? Did he strike a pose halfway through? Sof’s head would go Exorcist, and I’d love her for all the reasons I couldn’t last summer: her enthusiasm, her exuberance, her nosiness, her put-on air of worldly wisdom. She’d peer at me over her poseur sunglasses and explain that there was no such thing as virginity and have I read Naomi Wolf and penetration is just a myth anyway and I know that, right?
What actually happens: Sof picks her jaw off the floor and a piece of nail varnish from her toe before croaking, “When was this? He’s going out with Meg.”
“This was before that.”
I can’t tell her how long before. This is the trouble with secrets—you can’t just reveal them and hope for normality. Even when exposed, they leave ripples in the universe, like a stone skimmed on the canal.
“You know he and Meg are going to be at Ned’s party.”
Even though it’s happening at my house, there’s no question—it’s Ned’s party, not mine. Thirteen days and counting down.