“Okay,” said Jasper. “Now we have our plan. Let’s paint. You want to start on the door, and I’ll try to figure out the vines?”
“Sure!” I said, kneeling down to open the brown paint. And then we didn’t talk anymore for a while, just painted in the hot kitchen. Mosquitoes buzzed around us, and at one point the paint sloshed on the floor and we had to clean it up as best we could. But we didn’t say a word. We didn’t have to. It was perfect. A perfect afternoon. If we dripped now and then, it didn’t matter. If the painting turned out horribly, who cared? Nobody else would ever see it. Nobody else mattered at all. That was the beauty of the Vine Realm, where we were the only people who existed in the whole entire world. Just us, the hot still summer air, the heavy smell of roses, and the occasional dill pickle. All of the sad things were outside. All of the people who had disappeared. All of the things they weren’t saying to me. All of the hard, sharp memories, far away. We were making something new, all our own.
That night at dinner, over fish and peas and potatoes—which is possibly the most boring dinner in the world—my mom looked at me across the table, and asked, “What’s that on your neck, Leah? It looks very . . . green?”
My hand went to my neck, and I rubbed at the mark. Sure enough, I had a big smear of dried paint I hadn’t noticed. I’d been so careful to bring the leftover paint home and put it back where it belonged, with all the other art supplies, and I’d scrubbed my hands carefully, but I hadn’t thought to look at my neck.
“Oh, I was just . . . painting,” I said. Then I scooped up some peas and shoved them into my mouth. To give myself a chance to think of a good story. Only I couldn’t think of one.
“Painting what?” Dad looked up and set down his phone.
I swallowed the peas, and when I opened my mouth, somehow the truth slipped out. “A mural,” I said, and then shoveled in a too-big bite of mashed potatoes. They were the kind that came from a plastic microwave carton and tasted like it, like salt and Saran wrap. I could barely swallow the awful bite, but I kept my eyes on Dad. I watched him carefully.
“A mural, huh? That’s interesting. . . .”
He was staring at me, so I stared right back. I waited, to see if he’d say any more. But he didn’t. We both just sat there, and I found myself wishing, intensely, that he’d tell me right then about the mural in the garage. About the cornfield and the boy. Did Mom know about it? We were both totally silent, eating our gross potatoes. It’s funny how you can be not lying and also not telling the truth in the very same moment.
Mom was oblivious. “Now, that’s a fun thing to do! How creative.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I saw another one, that someone else had painted, and it gave me the idea.”
“Great,” said my dad, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “That sounds great.”
“Where is it?” said Mom. “Your mural?”
I glugged down a sip of fizzy water as I scrambled mentally to think of the next thing I should say. “Oh, it’s just at my friend’s house. On her bedroom wall.”
“What friend?” asked Mom.
This was the most interest they’d shown in anything I’d done for as long as I could remember. Though, to be fair, it was also the first interesting thing I’d done that they knew about in the same amount of time. I guessed there wasn’t much to ask me about lounging in my leggings and watching TV.
I prepared to lie. “Oh, just . . .”
Then I looked at Mom and Dad. They were both staring at me. And listening—really listening. For a moment, it made me want to cry, seeing how much they wanted to hear about my day of mural painting with some imaginary friend whose name I was about to make up.
Then it happened. I opened my mouth, and out came the truth again. “Her name is Jasper. I think I told you about her before, that day we went swimming?”
Mom nodded. “Oh, yes, but I guess I didn’t catch her name. I’d have remembered that. Jasper. How unusual, for a girl.”
“Yeah, well, I met her at the farm, taking a walk. She’s just moved to the neighborhood. She’s really nice. We’ve been hanging out.”
I sat back, instantly regretting my words. What had I done? Talking about Jasper with my parents was like telling grown-ups about Narnia. It felt like Jasper would disappear now, like I’d betrayed her and ruined everything. The secret was over. It felt like the Vine Realm might suddenly fade. Like I’d go back tomorrow and find no hole in the kudzu, no house there at all.
But amazingly, Mom just smiled. “I’m so glad you have a new friend,” she said, picking up her dish and taking it to the sink. “I know you get bored when Tess isn’t around.”
Dad followed her lead and stood up too. “Well,” he said. “That was delicious, but it’s dart night, so I need to get moving.”
“Okeydokey,” called Mom in a false cheery voice. “Have fun!”
“Will do,” said Dad, and he turned to go.
But as he left the room, keys jangling, Dad gave me a long, careful stare, as though he was thinking about something, hard. It made me wonder. About how often my dad really played darts.
And sure enough, when I peeked outside, an hour later, I saw a very faint crack of light coming from under the garage door. The thinnest sliver, as if someone had shoved a blanket under the door, hoping they could hide from sight completely. If I hadn’t known to look for it, I might not have noticed at all.
That night in bed, I couldn’t sleep, or even lie still. I was all tangled up in thoughts and bedsheets. I thought about my father’s dart nights that he wasn’t going to, and the cornfield on the ceiling. I thought about my mom sitting in the living room with her glass of wine, alone and clueless. Then for some reason, I thought about Sam, throwing toilet paper into the air.
That thought made me want to curl up in a ball, so I pushed it away and tried to imagine what Jasper was doing, alone in the Vine Realm, soothed by the twinkle lights on the floor and the mural on the wall above her. I tried to imagine what it felt like to go to sleep in a house alone, without parents to tell you anything or expect anything from you. If you didn’t have to pretend you were a family when you didn’t feel like a family. If you didn’t have to constantly try to figure out what to say to the people who knew you best.
I knew Jasper’s situation would freak my parents out, that they’d be upset if they found out I’d spent my summer in an abandoned house. In some part of my brain, I knew there were words for what was happening to Jasper. Runaway. Homeless. But the more time I spent with her, the less crazy it seemed that she could take care of herself. Jasper was so wise, so smart. She seemed to know everything there was to know. She seemed to have things under control.
In five years, I’d be going away to college myself. That wasn’t very long. In five years, I’d be living alone too. In a room of my own, where I could paint on the wall and eat all the pickles in bed and stay up as late as I wanted, with no rules. Just like Jasper. Was this really so different from that? Five years wasn’t so much.
I turned over and closed my eyes, tried to imagine I was with her, there, in the Vine Realm. She was probably still awake. Sitting on the top step of her stoop, staring up at the stars. While I was tucked neatly into my bed. I pictured the splintered wood and the tall grasses swaying in the breeze. I closed my eyes and settled into my pillow. When I took a deep breath, I could almost smell the roses.
Flaming Brains
“What’s it like at night?” I asked Jasper the next day. We were walking her trash to the dumpster down the street, behind the church on Woodland. The day was overcast and cooler than usual. It felt like rain, but so far, no drops.
Jasper shrugged. “At night I’m asleep. I go to bed early, because it’s so dark in the house. And then I usually wake up early too.”
“Like camping?”
“I guess so,” said Jasper. “I’ve never been camping before.”
“Seriously?” We stopped to throw the lid of the dumpster open, and a wave of cooking summer trash rot enveloped us. We both wrinkl
ed our noses.
“Yep,” said Jasper. “Have you been camping a lot?”
“Not a lot,” I said. “And not lately. But we used to do it. Sam was in Cub Scouts, and we’d go on these big family trips with the pack. My dad used to joke that Sam was the only Jewish Boy Scout in America. It’s like a thing . . . that Jews don’t camp, I guess. A joke people make. I’m not sure why. Maybe because we lived in tents in the desert for forty years or something.”
“Is it fun?” asked Jasper. “Camping, I mean.”
“It’s nice to be somewhere different,” I said. “It’s like you’re outside your regular life. The rules are different. It’s nice to wake up outside. You don’t take showers. And Mom always used to let us have Froot Loops.”
“What’s so great about Froot Loops?” asked Jasper.
I shook my head. “It wasn’t really about the cereal. More that Froot Loops were a thing Sam and I weren’t allowed to eat at home. The point was that all the rules broke down in the woods. Food was different. Bedtime was different. My parents were different too. They would lock their phones in the car and forget they existed. My dad would play guitar by the fire, sing these cheesy songs—and, wow, is he a bad singer—but it was nice. Nobody cared. Sometimes, my mom would sit in his lap. I never saw her do that at home, ever. Outside life is . . . outside. Outside everything, I mean.”
“So,” said Jasper, “basically, when your family goes camping, you all turn into wood elves?”
I laughed. “Yeah, pretty much. My mom’s hair used to be super long, like I picture an elf having. Now it’s short, like pixie short. She walked into a Great Clips and cut it off the morning of Sam’s funeral. But before, it was the kind of hair you notice on the street. She could sit on it.”
“Whoa!” said Jasper. “She really was a hippie poet, huh?”
I shook my head. “Not since I can remember, really. She mostly looked like other moms, just with super long hair. But whenever we went camping, she would do this thing, where she’d put it in two long braids. And then when we went on a hike, I’d collect things, and we’d stick them into her hair.”
“Like twigs and rocks, you mean?” Jasper made a face. “Squirrels?”
“No, silly! Like flowers and leaves,” I said. “Beautiful things. She’d let me weave it all into her braids. So the longer we hiked, the more she’d turn into this amazing elf queen. I loved it, seeing her like that. Once, I found a locust shell, and I touched it to her braid, just a little bit, and it clung there, like that. Holding on to her. She was so happy, she kept it there all day.”
I stopped walking for a minute. That memory seemed so very far away now, so impossible. I tried to imagine what Mom would do if I tried that today, if I held up a locust husk to her. I was pretty sure she’d flinch.
“Anyway”—I took a breath—“when I tried to take the locust shell out later, it shattered, just broke right apart, in my fingers.”
“Ugh,” said Jasper.
But it wasn’t ugh to me, that memory. It was beautiful. “It was so easy to pick it up and put it there, that husk, but there was no way to take it out without breaking it.” I sat and thought about that for a minute.
“Ugh,” said Jasper again. “So then she had dead locust bits in her hair? I think the Vine Realm is plenty of outside for me. You can keep your snakes and bugs and locust shells.”
“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “But the thing is, somehow bugs are different when you’re camping. You just have to believe me about that. And s’mores are delicious, and flaming brains are fun.”
“Well, we don’t need to sleep outside to eat marshmallows,” said Jasper. “What’s a flaming brain?”
“It’s when you set newspapers on fire,” I said.
“Where I’m from that’s called pyromania,” said Jasper.
“No,” I said, laughing. “It’s not like that. You fold them up in a special way and they float. Up into the air, which is all dark and everything. They fly. Like magic lanterns.”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever you say, pyromaniac!”
“It’s hard to explain it,” I said, “but I could show you, if you want. What if—what if I came over after my parents go to sleep tonight? I’ll bring the stuff we need, and we can make a fire.”
Jasper raised an eyebrow at me. “How about we don’t set a fire at the abandoned house where I’m sleeping.”
“What if we don’t do it at the house?” I said. “What if we go over to the farm? There’s a fire pit there. Totally safe.” I couldn’t believe what I was suggesting. I’d never even thought about sneaking out before. But it was exciting, having something I knew about and Jasper didn’t.
“Sure,” said Jasper with a shrug. “It’s not like I’ve got other plans.”
That afternoon, before Mom and Dad came home, I assembled my supplies. We didn’t have all the stuff for s’mores, but I found a bag of marshmallows and a stack of newspaper. I grabbed a thick old quilt to sit on, and a big box of matches. Then I rummaged in the closet under the stairs until I found the camping lantern. But just as I was fitting everything into a mesh beach bag, I heard a clap of thunder.
I ran to the window as the storm swept in. The sky was suddenly dark as dusk, and rain spattered the porch. Not a crazy summer storm that might be over soon. The kind of heavy, steady rain that goes on for days sometimes. Soaks everything, ruins entire weekends.
“Perfect,” I said out loud. “Just perfect.” There was no way we could start a fire in the storm, and I’d be soaked by the time I got to Jasper’s if I tried to walk.
That’s when Mom’s car pulled into the drive, and I had to scurry to my room, to stash my supplies in the closet.
It rained all through dinner. It rained as I loaded the dishwasher. It rained as Mom and Dad silently watched some boring documentary on the TV, and I hid in my room, trying to decide whether to sneak out after all. It would definitely be better to wait until another night, but now Jasper was expecting me, and I didn’t want to let her down.
Then, just as Mom and Dad were doing their nightly routine of locking the doors and turning out the lights in the house, the rain suddenly stopped. At first I thought it was my imagination, but when I raised the window above my bed to check, all that met my face was cool night air.
“Good night!” I sang out more cheerfully than usual, as Mom walked past my door.
“Leah!” said Mom. Like she was remembering me. She stopped for a minute in the doorway, turned to look at me, standing there beside my bed.
Then she did a funny thing. She stepped into my room and walked across to me. She reached out a hand and set it on my forehead. It had been years since she’d come into my room at bedtime, really. But now she stood there, looking at me. I realized we were almost exactly the same height. Her eyes were looking into my eyes.
“Oh, my girl,” she said in a soft voice. Her hand fell away. “Time for bed.” She leaned over, pulled back the covers, and motioned for me to climb in.
And it was like the little-girl part of me woke up and remembered what to do, like I was on automatic pilot. I crawled into bed and closed my eyes. I felt the cool sheet cover me.
“Mom?” I said as I turned over onto my side. “I’m not a little kid.”
She smiled. “I get that.” She patted my head and leaned down to kiss me at the hairline. “I just . . . wanted to.”
“Okay,” I said.
She walked to the doorway, but then she turned around again. “Hey,” she said. “Do you remember how sometimes I used to tell you a story at night?”
“Sure,” I said.
“And do you remember that sometimes I would have trouble finishing the story, and so you’d take over and finish it for me?”
I nodded.
“Do you remember any of those stories?”
I shook my head slowly. “I don’t . . . think so,” I said.
“Yeah, me either,” she said. “But I know they were some of my favorites. I wish I could remember them
now.” Then she reached up and turned off the light. “Good night, Leah. Try to get to sleep.”
For the first time all day, I felt guilty about sneaking out. How had she done that? It was like she’d sensed I was going to do something bad and came in to show me she was thinking about me. Like some weird mom superpower had kicked in. A guilt-inducing bedtime tuck-in mind trick.
But Jasper was waiting, and I wasn’t going to let her down.
I set my alarm for midnight and plugged in my earbuds. When the chime went off, I woke up straight away, but I lay there for a while, just to be sure the house was quiet. Then I got busy, stuffing my bed with piles of dirty clothes, and stepped back to survey my work. It didn’t look like me at all. It looked like a bed stuffed with dirty clothes. Still, it was better than nothing.
I grabbed my beach bag from the closet, and as quietly as I could, I crept out of the house, closing the front door so slowly behind me that it didn’t make a sound.
Out in the street, I ran. The night was damp and dark, and more silent than normal. I’d never been alone at night like this, and I was a little scared. On Woodland, there were streetlights that cast an odd yellow glow and threw shadows everywhere, but once I was on the gravel road to the farm, the lights disappeared.
The rain had gone, but the sky was still overcast, and the moon barely showed at all behind the clouds. I was lucky I knew the way so well. I didn’t stumble once, though my heart was pounding.
When I got to Jasper’s door, I rapped lightly and then tried the knob, but it wouldn’t open. So I knocked harder, and almost immediately, Jasper’s face popped into view, behind the makeshift curtain she’d fashioned out of a towel. She looked excited.
“Hang on!” she said, and I heard a funny rasping, dragging sound before the door opened to let me into the twinkle-light fairyland of the Vine Realm at night.
“What was all that?” I asked, stepping into the kitchen. “That awful noise?”
Jasper motioned to two big cinder blocks and a piece of wood. “It’s not perfect,” she said. “But the door doesn’t lock, and so I rigged this up. Just in case someone tries to come in at night when I’m sleeping.”
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