bedroom.
Sof doesnât speak for a minute, then turns pointedly to Meg and says, âDramatical Grammatical.â
Meg doesnât look up. Sheâs texting rapidly, her rings flashing in the sunlight.
âAll-female hip-hop collective,â Sof tries again, nudging her. âWeâll rap about romantic dramas and punctuation.â
The way it used to go, Iâd come up with lyrics, or a supporting act. But thatâs obviously not what Sof wants. Playing our game with Meg and not meâsheâs making a point.
Meg frowns, somehow graceful as she slides her phone into her ridiculously tight short-shorts pocket. âWhat are you talking about?â
Sofâs still not looking at me, but I can feel her bristling. The bus is practically vibrating. When I canât bear the tension anymore, I address the seat in front of me.
âCheating on me is impermissible. Gonna leave her dangling like a participle.â
Silence. Then: âNever mind,â Sof rasps to Meg, who flicks her eyes back and forth between us, confused. Sof was my friend first , I want to yell, like Iâm five years old. Only Iâm allowed to know she has stage fright! She tells everyone else she has adenoids!
Grey would say Iâm a dog in the manger.
I go back to staring out the window as the countryside blurs by, green and gold. A few minutes later, the colors reassemble into trees and fields as we pull up at the Brancaster stop.
âThis is me,â says Meg, standing up. âNice to see you again, Gottie. Weâre going to the beach on Sunday. Youâre welcome to come.â
Itâs an invitationâto something Iâm already part ofâbut it makes me feel left out.
Meg saunters off down the aisle. Sof stands up too, gesturing after her. âI ⦠we ⦠art project,â she mumbles, dropping something in my lap. âFor you.â
She darts off. Through the window, I see her catch up to Meg, polka dots flying. As the bus trundles on, I look at what she gave me: the paper fortune-teller. Under every single fold, sheâs written: remember when we used to be friends?
When I get home, Thomas and Ned are playing a very Grey version of Scrabble in the gardenâminus the board, half the words are lost in the daisies. I think I can see D-E-S-T-I-N-Y, but it could equally be D-E-N-S-I-T-Y.
Thomas smiles up at me.
âG,â he says, âwant toââ
âNope.â I stomp past them, leg throbbing. Iâm suddenly, irrationally, furious. I want to turn back the clock. I want a do-over on this whole year. Because Iâm pretty sure I fucked it up.
Thatâs twice now Iâve found Jason at the end of a wormholeâand with him, the girl I used to be.
Thatâs the world trying to tell me something.
I grab a pen and write on the wall above my bed, in big, black, marker-pen letters:
The Minkowski spacetime equation. Itâs an âI dare youâ to the universe. I wait for a screenwipe, like in the kitchen yesterday, or a wormhole. Anything to take me away from this crappy reality.
Nothing happens.
Â
Friday 9 July
[Minus three hundred and eleven]
On Friday night, we eat fish and chips in the garden, straight from the paper, drinking ein prost! to Thomasâs arrival with mugs of tea.
I pick at scraps of batter, barely speaking except to say, âPlease pass the ketchup,â until Papa drops the bookshop bomb on Thomas that heâll be working Tuesdays and Thursdays. âUntil your mother arrives. Oh, Ned,â he adds, âGottieâs suggestion is you do Wednesdays and Fridays.â
Ned glares at me, and I say innocently, âI volunteered for Saturdays.â
Iâm half hoping Ned will laugh and threaten some childish revenge, but our sibling simpatico is out of sync.
âHmmm,â he says, before peppering Thomas with questions about the music scene in Toronto, naming nine thousand Canadian