The Square Root of Summer by Harriet Reuter Hapgood

Author:Harriet Reuter Hapgood
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781626723740
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press

Monday 4 August

[Minus three hundred and thirty-seven]

It’s midnight, or thereabouts. A Cinderella time. The witching hour. The mood is magical: dark and starry, hot and close. And I’m wide awake. Ever since I burst out of the past, back into the canal, I’ve got superhero hypersense. It’s like someone cranked the world’s volume up and it’s all blazing color. No more wormholes—I’m here.

It feels both better and worse than before: intense and alive, but farther from my grandfather than ever. Being here means letting him fade away. The diaries are just words on a page.

The kitchen door is open, and the night jasmine drifting in from the garden mingles with the lemon drizzle cake Thomas has just put in the oven. It’s his first practice run for the gluten-free promise I made to Sof. Papa went to bed hours ago. Ned’s finally given up and left us alone. And every inch of my skin is alive. Tingling.

“Here. It’s the best bit.” Thomas hands me a wooden spoon, the air stirring as he passes me on his way to the sink, our fingers fumbling.

I lick the cake mixture from the spoon and try to focus on the paper in front of me. I’m plotting the wormholes. Each time and place I’ve gone back to, and each origin point, gets a dot. If the timelines are converging—I want to know what they’re converging on. It’s ten days till Ned’s party. Twenty-eight till the anniversary of Grey’s death. And a week after that, Ms. Adewunmi is expecting an essay in her inbox.

Behind me, Thomas is washing up, the sink overflowing with bubbles. He hums over the rumble of our creaky plumbing, the ancient tap that I have to constantly tighten with a wrench. Bare feet tapping on tiles.

I smile and turn back to my work, choosing a new felt-tip and charting all those Thomas anomalies, too. The numbers in the churchyard, the way the stars went out in the garden and the rainstorm in the tree. After a moment, I pick up an orange pen and add one last dot—April, in the kitchen. Umlaut.

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