“Did he say that? Or did he clench his jaw and swallow so his Adam’s apple jumped, and say—” Ned looks away mournfully, the perfect Jason impression, and I stifle a giggle as he says, “‘Do you love me?’”
I know what me and Jason had, that it was love. But we didn’t have to be a secret. And he didn’t have to make me beg for him to talk to me after he left. So I say: “The dumm Fuhrt.”
“C’mere.” Ned twists me into more of a half nelson than a hug, rubbing his fist on my hair. “Too right. You don’t keep things like love a secret. Christ. You know who I sound like?”
We stand there for a bit, me bent uncomfortably double and breathing through my mouth. Then he rubs my hair again, and releases me. I gulp fresh air while he straps on a fanny pack and, amazingly, makes it look cool. Only Ned.
“I’ll have a word with Althorpe, tell him not to mess you around. But I’m gonna hang out at Sof’s today.”
“Why don’t you invite her here? Her mum will give you vegan food.” I don’t know much about hangovers, but instinct tells me I’m going to need pizza.
“Because Papa’s going to yell at you.” Ned grins, heading out the door. “I’ve already been through that, I don’t fancy another one.”
After he leaves, I take the garbage bag outside, then go back to the kitchen and wipe the counters with a dishrag and a squirt of something violently chemical that Grey would disapprove of. I force myself to eat a banana, make a pot of coffee. Then I put all the chairs back on the floor, sit in one, and wait for Papa.
I look at my hands, side by side on the table: this is what I did when I was little. Thomas and I would adventure, hell-bent on destruction, profit, or scientific inquiry (sometimes all three). When we got home, he would hide while I’d trot straight to the kitchen to await discovery, detection, punishment.
“Am I grounded?” I ask Papa as soon as he floats in, first checking his trademark red Converse won’t get wet.
It wrong-foots him, I can tell. “Ah, nein? This was Ned’s party, Ned’s trouble. He tells me the tap was an accident?”
“Yes.” I wait for the goose-hissing, but it doesn’t come.
“And the kitchen is cleaned up? Maybe you can call plumber, and Ned pays.” Papa pours himself a cup of coffee and sits down next to me. “I think I arrange the Book Barn shifts this time, until school starts again. Work together, no more fights. And maybe dinner as a family tonight, tomorrow, the next day…” He smiles. “I’ll cook. Or your brother. No more baked potatoes or cereal, please. You cook like your mami.”
“That’s it?”
“You want a punishment for having fun?” He wrinkles his nose. “If Grey had done this party, it would have turned out the same. I do think, is you maybe owe Thomas a sorry. I don’t know the details, what happened between you, but he was very upset when he left this morning—”
Papa’s still talking as I push my chair back with a squeak. I stub my toe on the table leg as I turn and shove open the sitting room door, run through to Grey’s, to Thomas’s room.
The door isn’t quite closed and it swings open under my hammering fists.
The bed is stripped, the Black Forest cake smears from last night, gone. There’s a neat stack of cookbooks on the piano, borrowed from around the house and the Book Barn. A faint smell of whiskey still in the air. And The Wurst, hovering over the emptiness like a sad blue penis.
“He knocked on my door very early.”
I turn around. Papa’s standing behind me, watching.
“He was all packed up, and he told me…” He hesitates. “He said he couldn’t stay here. That he was going to stay with a friend.”
“Who?” I’m Thomas’s only friend. Except for Sof and Meg and whoever he hung around with all the days I ignored him to dive into wormholes. He probably knows loads of people in Holksea. He did live here before, after all. “Where is he?”
“I checked that it was okay. And his mum knows. But, Gottie, Liebling.” Papa reaches out for me, offering his arms, but I’m already pushing past him as he says, “He didn’t want me to tell you.”
Sunday 17 to Monday 18 August
[Minus three hundred and fifty to fifty-one]
I hit my room running, yanking the patchwork off my bed, balling it up and throwing it next to the door. The bike-crash blankets join it—it’s summer, who needs wool blankets?—spilling out a million pairs of balled-up socks. Thomas’s socks. Umlaut pounces on one and scuttles off underneath the bed with it.
What next? Thomas’s cardigan is draped over the back of my chair, and I hurl it onto the laundry heap, yanking the chair over. I have to keep moving, keep doing something, otherwise I’ll think: Thomas hates me and Thomas is gone and—
I’m so angry.