The Square Root of Summer Read Online Free Page A

fiddling with cupboard doors and pulling things open. There are more books inside a chest of drawers. After Ned opens the wardrobe, he lets out a long, low whistle.
    He doesn’t say anything, just stands there staring as if he’s seen something … odd. As in disappearing-notebook-hole-in-the-universe odd.
    â€œHave you found Narnia in there or something?”
    â€œGrots.”
    â€œWhat is it?” I take a step into the room, keeping my eyes on Ned and not the rest of it—the photographs of our mum everywhere. The huge painting on the wall above the bed.
    â€œGrots,” Ned says again, not looking up, talking to the wardrobe. “Fuck. Gottie. His shoes are still in here.”
    Oh. There’s that swarm of locusts.
    â€œI know.”
    â€œCouldn’t face it, huh?” Ned gives me a sympathetic look, then turns to sit on the piano stool. When Grey was steamed on homemade wine, he’d leave his door open and tunelessly pound out music hall hits. “It’s not the melody that counts, it’s the volume,” he’d boom, not listening to our many declarations otherwise.
    Ned runs his hands up and down the keys. The notes emerge in a series of muffled plinks, but I recognize the song.
    Papa’s left a stack of flattened cardboard boxes on the bed. I walk round to the other side so I don’t have to see the painting, and start assembling them. I’m careful not to touch the bed itself, even though it’s covered in a dust sheet. This is where Grey slept. In twenty-four hours, Thomas is going to erase his dreams.
    â€œMan, this is going to take forever!” Ned exclaims, even though he hasn’t done anything yet. After a final ten-finger kerplink on the piano, he spins round idly on the stool. “You shouldn’t have to be in here, doing this. It’s Papa’s grand plan.”
    â€œDo you want to tell him that, or shall I?”
    â€œHa.” He bounds past me to a book stack and starts shuffling through it—not so much organizing as rearranging. Fiddling. Flicking through and reading bits of things. He glances up at me. “Grotbag. What do you think Thomas did?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” I frown at the box in front of me. I’m trying to line up the books perfectly perpendicular, but one of them has warped pages from being dropped in the sea, and it’s wonkifying everything.
    â€œYou know,” says Ned. “To get sent back here. Banished to Holksea.”
    â€œBanished?”
    â€œC’mon, there’s no way this settle-in-for-the-summer story holds up,” Ned continues, juggling a book. “It’s so last-minute—the flight must have cost a fortune. Nah, it’s punishment for something—or getting him away from whatever he’s done. I bet he’s pulled a Mr. Tuttle.”
    Mr. Tuttle was Thomas’s hamster. A furball who escaped at bedtime seventeen nights in a row, until his dad worked out what was going on and bought a padlock. “Oh dear,” Thomas would sorrowfully declare, having opened the cage not five minutes before. “Mr. Tuttle has got out again . I’ll sleep over at G’s in case he’s there.” His bag would already be packed.
    â€œC’mon,” insists Ned. “ You know what Thomas was like.”
    Huh. It hasn’t occurred to me to wonder why he’s been sent home so quickly.
    A hammering on the bedroom door breaks my thoughts wide open.
    â€œYo, Oppenheimer! Answer your phone much? I’ve been looking all over, have you seen the time—” Jason stops when he sees me. There’s a pause as he literally shifts and readjusts: stepping back and leaning against a bookshelf by the door, arranging himself just so, before he smiles lazily and amends, “Oppenheimer s .”
    My throat plays rock-paper-scissors and settles on rock .
    â€œGottie.” He meets my gaze this time, blue eyes searching mine