Eventown

by Corey Ann Haydu

  The kisses don’t seem to reach us.

  And by the time the girls are all the way down the road—without a look back at us—Mom’s saying it’s time to go, and Dad’s checking on the rosebush in the trailer for the millionth time, and I can feel our old life forgetting us before we’re even gone.

  5

  Made of Roses and Hills

  There’s a split in the car—me and Mom are chatting away, trying to ask Dad and Naomi questions, singing along with the radio, listing things we remember about Eventown: Wooden fences. Vines on the houses. Bumpless roads. Tall trees. Big smiles.

  I remember the incredible farmers’ market with its rows and rows of vendors selling everything from roses to raw honey to goat cheese.

  “And apple cider,” Naomi says. “The apple cider was my favorite.”

  We all take a deep inhale of remembering—it was sweet but not too sweet. It was served hot with a dollop of whipped cream on top. We all thought it was strange for there to be hot apple cider in the warm weather, but the people in town were all drinking it, so we did too. And it was a surprise delight, to be as warm inside as we were on the surface of our skin.

  “Apple cider year-round,” Dad says, shaking his head like the very concept is both absurd and wonderful. “What a funny little town it is.”

  The memory turns a little sad, like memories sometimes do, and we fall into silence.

  “I need a break,” Mom says when the road has been straight and empty for miles. In the last few months, Mom has often needed a break when she’s in one place for too long. She needed a break in the middle of Naomi’s last gymnastics competition, and she needed a break in the middle of her own birthday party. She needed a break when we all went to the movies last weekend. When she takes a break, she goes to the bathroom or to a closet or all the way outside where she can pace back and forth and stretch her arms and massage her shoulders.

  We stop at the next rest stop and Mom wanders off, behind the gas station.

  Dad fills up the car, and Naomi practices her favorite beam routine on one of the horizontal logs at the tops of the parking spaces. Beam is Naomi’s best apparatus. She has this sort of dramatic flair to her landings—you can see the work she puts into it and the pleasure she gets from doing it well. Some people like to watch athletes who make it look easy. Naomi isn’t like that. The effort is all over her face, in every part of her body, down to her scrunching toes. And when she perfects a routine, she doesn’t shrug it off. She beams, she jumps up and down in the air, and her joy bursts out of her and makes everyone watching smile too. Even now, on the log, she manages a beautiful back walkover, landing on the pavement. It isn’t perfect, but it’s powerful and sure. She grins on her landing. She adds a few beats of dance moves—a leap and a dip and a twirl of her hands.

  “I like it,” I say, and I mean it. Watching my sister is fun, and since we are identical I can pretend it’s me up there, all graceful and elegant and strong.

  I am the brave one out in the world, but Naomi is brave when she is doing gymnastics.

  She does two back handsprings on the pavement even though she’s only supposed to do them when there’s a mat underneath her. Right now, I swear I can see her heart pounding with adrenaline through her sweatshirt.

  I wish that she could be so fearless when we’re at school or at the mall or basically everywhere else. It feels lonely to have to be brave all on my own. It feels even lonelier to have to be brave for Naomi, who sometimes pulls me aside in the middle of the day when she’s scared or nervous or sad. In those moments I try to give her a little of what I have, or remind her to treat the whole world like a gym. A place where you jump and leap and don’t look down so you don’t lose your balance.

  “That’s not how the world is,” Naomi says. “In the world, I don’t want everyone looking at me.”

  So because I’m her sister, I try to make them look at me instead.

  Naomi’s finally in a good mood, so I zip up my lonely feelings and try to imitate her on another one of the logs. She laughs, and I know the rest of the trip won’t be as quiet as the first part.

  It turns out I’m right. Naomi asks a zillion questions about Eventown School when we get back in the car, and Dad reads aloud from a pamphlet about the school. Mom seems extra-happy after her break, too, tuning the channel to some talk radio show she likes, while Dad hands out snacks from the gas station—pretzels and string cheese and bottles of chocolate milk. It’s starting to feel like a real road trip, the fun kind we used to have when we drove to Washington, DC, and Niagara Falls and deep into the woods on an ill-fated camping expedition that we’ll never forgive Dad for.

  We stop at a diner a few hours later and order grilled cheese sandwiches, and I think of Bess and Jenny and Flora at the mall with their pretzels and feel a pang of sadness at the way the goodbye went. Mom must notice because she orders a second plate of fries, this one with melted cheese and gravy on top, and she reminds us that when we were in Eventown there were bonfires and an enormous library we never got to explore and cute cobblestone streets.

  “Remember those berries we picked?” Mom says. “Biggest blueberries I’ve ever seen. I wonder if Dad might be able to grow some berries on our property.”

  “And that beautiful restaurant in the middle of town, remember? Big skylight. Armchairs instead of dining chairs. Wasn’t there even a fireplace?” Dad says. His smile makes me smile.

  “There was!” Naomi says. Suddenly, we’re all smiling. It feels sort of like a miracle, the four of us grinning at once for the first time in forever.

  When we leave the diner, we share Eventown stories the rest of the drive, until we start seeing signs for the town. The trees get larger. The roads get windier. I think I can smell the roses and pine trees and enormous blueberries.

  A sign at the border of town reads: Welcome to Eventown, Made of Roses and Hills! The welcome sign in Juniper says Welcome to Juniper, Life Happens Here.

  Mom used to joke that someone very literal came up with the Juniper town sign. “Welcome to Juniper. This is a town,” she used to say, passing the sign. “Welcome to Juniper, a place where people are.”

  I see her light up at Eventown’s sign. It’s wooden with a rose carved into the place where the o in Eventown would be. There’s nothing to make fun of with this sign, and for a moment it makes me sad. I’ll miss Mom’s joke.

  Over to our left, I think I see a herd of deer. Maybe there’s a special word for a group of deer, but I don’t know what it is; maybe in Eventown I’ll learn. We roll down the windows and listen for the sound of crickets humming.

  The smell of roses is thick. It smells the way velvet feels—soft and pretty and relaxing.

  The parts of me that felt sore from hours in the car now feel loose and calm.

  “Home sweet new home,” Dad says in his goofy Dad voice, while Mom honks the horn at the hills that shield Eventown from the rest of the world.

  6

  Too Much

  The houses are all the same.

  It’s the first thing I notice when we drive up to our house, which, like every other house, is large, stone, and covered in vines. The vines are growing small purple flowers, and they wind up and down every wall.

  “Everything matches,” I say, and I can’t decide if I love it or think it’s weird. It looks beautiful but also overwhelming, to be in a town of identical houses.

  “It’s a quirky little town,” Mom says.

  “I love stone houses,” Dad says.

  “I love the vines!” Naomi says. So I decide to love it all too. Quirky is a good thing. We need some quirky.

  In the front yard there’s a huge tree with a white wooden swing hanging from it. The ropes holding the swing up are vine-covered, too, and it looks like something from a dream.

  “Great work, honey,” Mom says, kissing Dad right on the mouth. It’s not my favorite thing, seeing Mom and Dad kiss, but right now I don’t mind it. It feels like it’s been a long time since I’ve had
the opportunity to be embarrassed by their kissing and cuddling.

  “Isn’t it the prettiest place you’ve ever seen?” Dad says. His back straightens with pride, and it’s been forever since I’ve seen that too. He looks taller. More Dad-like.

  Every single house on our street has large windows and a lawn filled with rosebushes. Our old house was small, cool, all beige and tan and cream-colored. No vines growing anywhere.

  “Where are everyone else’s cars?” I ask. I don’t see any in the driveways and I don’t hear them in the distance.

  “The whole town is walkable, so there’s no need for cars. You know how you loved that weekend in New York City, walking everywhere? It’s like that here.” Mom can’t stop beaming. Naomi and I both get carsick, so getting rid of the car seems like an okay idea. Better than giving up the TV, at least.

  “What if we need to leave the town?” I ask, thinking of trips back to Juniper or seeing our grandparents in Virginia or taking another road trip to Montreal or Vermont.

  “Oh, we can always get a car if we need it. We can rent one from the town. And it will be extra-easy for me, because I’ll be working right in the main Eventown offices!”

  Mom smiles every time she brings up her job with Eventown tourism. It’s as if it’s a brand-new thing every time the thought crosses her mind. The joy never dulls. It’s nothing like the way she talked about her Juniper job.

  I wish everything were like that. Other happinesses get worn out—Christmas presents that aren’t so exciting come February, birthday parties that are sort of boring by the end, wonderful moments that seem sad a year later when everything has changed.

  “And Dad’s going to work on all the fantastic gardens around here.”

  “These Eventown folks love roses almost as much as I do,” he says, winking in my direction. I never totally understood Dad’s job, but I know he planned different public parks and designed the little garden in front of the Juniper Mall. And I know that they didn’t always listen to his best ideas. And he used to complain about not getting his hands dirty in his corporate job.

  I bet he’ll get his hands dirty with all that Eventown gardening.

  “They grow all their own vegetables too,” he goes on, “in public spaces so you kids can stay involved. I’ll get to design all kinds of neat new gardens and parks.”

  “You’ll grow and I’ll cook,” I say. It’s a thing we used to say, and I know before it’s out of my mouth that I shouldn’t have said it. I can’t help it, though. Words and phrases from before pop up into my head all the time, and I sort of like saying them out loud.

  “That’s right,” Dad says with an expression that’s trying to look more like a grin and less like a grimace.

  “Can we go for a walk now?” Naomi asks our parents. She’s good at changing the subject.

  I’d hoped to spend the rest of the afternoon on that perfect swing, but Naomi’s so lit up with excitement at the idea of a walk that I couldn’t possibly say no. I match her smile and we do our twin thing—move very close to each other, get matching expressions on our faces, jut our hips in the same direction, and flutter our eyelashes while saying, “pleeeeeeease” in unison.

  It works every time. Mom cracks a smile and Dad shakes his head like we are simply Too Much.

  He used to call us Too Much with that particular smirk all the time.

  He doesn’t do it now, even though I’m begging him to with my eyes and the way I’m leaning my body toward him and blinking my eyelashes extra-hard.

  “Dad and I need to get this car unpacked and turn it in and do some paperwork at the Welcoming Center,” Mom says. “Maybe you and Naomi could explore a little on your own? What do you think, Todd?”

  “Don’t we have to be welcomed too?” I ask.

  “Of course,” Mom says. “But not today. Parents get welcomed first. You two have to check out the neighborhood for us. Let us know where all the best places are.”

  Dad looks a little jealous. He loves exploring. I know he’s already wanting to scope out the prettiest place for a rose garden, a vegetable patch, a willow tree drooping over a field of wildflowers. “Do you think we need to do the Welcoming Center stuff right away?” he asks. Mom nods. She’s always taken paperwork very seriously. She likes to keep it all in little files with color-coded Post-it notes. I bet she’ll do a lot of that kind of thing at her new tourism job.

  “Well, all right then,” Dad says. He looks extra-hard at his rosebush, wondering, I’m sure, when he’ll have a chance to replant it. Dad loves that rosebush as much as Mom loves organizing and color-coding.

  Naomi’s doing a little dance from foot to foot, like she has so much energy it can’t be contained, and I’m trying to soak up the scent of roses and blueberries that’s thick in the air.

  “I want to make a cake based on the way this place smells,” I say, thinking of a blueberry cake with rose frosting and real petals and fresh berries on top.

  “How delicious!” says Mom, who hasn’t eaten dessert in six months. “Doesn’t this place smell wonderful, Todd? We don’t need our old little rosebush. This place is absolutely covered in roses.”

  “But this one’s ours,” Dad says.

  “Okay, okay,” Mom says with a little laugh. She bends down to kiss our cheeks and send us on our way. “You two have fun. You deserve it. And when you get back we’ll have something to eat.”

  “Can I make dinner?” I ask. Lately I’ve been making a few dinners a week all by myself. I like watching my family’s faces when they take a bite they find especially delicious. Part surprise, part pride.

  “I think that would be just wonderful, don’t you think so?” Mom says.

  Everything in Eventown seems wonderful to me.

  7

  Friends at First Sight

  We know where we want to go first. We know without having to discuss it. We know without even looking at each other.

  We need ice cream. And we need it from the Eventown Ice Cream Shop, which we’ve talked about ever since we visited it a few years ago.

  What we don’t know is how to get there.

  We start off down the road the way we came in, and the town is abuzz with kids on bikes and parents sitting on their front porches, pouring lemonade from crystal pitchers, tilting their faces in the direction of the sun.

  Naomi does a cartwheel at the end of the road, and it’s full of bounce. I’ve always been scared of being upside down, but I suddenly want to try one too. I lift a knee up and remind myself that Naomi and I are identical, so my body must be able to do a cartwheel if hers can. I throw my legs up and over myself, and I’m sure it looks all wrong, but it feels great, my heart leaving my body the instant I’m all the way over, then joining me again when I’m upright.

  “You did it!” Naomi says.

  “Sort of.”

  “No, you did! You really did! I never thought I’d see your legs up in the air.” Naomi throws her arms around me, then hooks her elbow with mine so that we can walk in sync. “That cartwheel was a good sign,” she says, whispering like she doesn’t want the people of Eventown to know. “I think I’m going to love it here. It doesn’t even look real, you know? It looks like a fairy tale.”

  I look around, and I’m seeing exactly what Naomi’s seeing. A golden light instead of the harsh sun or gray clouds of Juniper. Pine trees everywhere, so tall they practically reach the sky, so tall it’s hard to see the tops of them. Inviting stone houses and the stillness that comes from a town without cars.

  “It’s definitely a fairy tale,” I say. “Like Hansel and Gretel.”

  “But without the witch.”

  “Let’s hope,” I say. “Can’t you see Little Red Riding Hood skipping through here with her basket of food?”

  “But without the wolf,” Naomi says.

  This was something we’d misplaced, too—our easy back-and-forth, talking about something and nothing at once. Everything becoming a game. And like that, we’re walking in sync, our arms swinging in t
ime with each other, keeping a rhythm to a song only the two of us can hear.

  “You kids visiting?” a woman in a buttery-yellow dress on the next street asks. She has long black hair to her waist and brown skin and a striped straw coming out of her glass of lemonade. On her head is a big floppy straw hat, like Mom wears on vacation.

  “Um, no, actually, we live here,” Naomi answers.

  “We moved in today,” I say.

  “And you’re twins!” the woman says. Our twin-ness makes people happy. It always has. Sometimes it’s annoying, being asked a hundred questions about it, but today we move closer to each other, shoulders touching, and don’t mind the way this straw-hatted lady is looking at our matching faces. We nod. “Well, isn’t that delightful,” she says. “You’re about the age of my daughter, Veena. I bet she’ll be excited to meet you. Veena!”

  A girl who looks a lot like the straw-hatted woman, but two heads smaller and with about a million necklaces around her neck, bounds out from the backyard to the front.

  “Oh!” she says upon seeing us. Her smile is wide and real and impossible not to return.

  “These two girls are new here,” her mom says. “I’m sorry; I didn’t even ask your names.”

  “Elodee and Naomi,” I say.

  “You look the same but different,” Veena says instead of hello. She tilts her head and takes in Naomi’s ponytail and my messy tangle of almost-curls. “I like your hair.”

  “I like your necklaces,” I say.

  “I like your house,” Naomi says.

  It’s been a long time since we’ve had to make new friends, and it’s a little awkward, but exciting too. Veena doesn’t know anything about us. She doesn’t know anything about our family or Juniper or the last year.

  I take my first breath as this new Elodee, the one who isn’t being boxed in by all the things everyone knew about me. I think Naomi does the same.

  “We haven’t had someone new our age in a long time,” Veena says. Her excitement seems like it is still right below the surface of her skin, making her wiggle a little when she talks to us.