Eventown

by Corey Ann Haydu

  Right away, I like her. She seems odd and kind and easy to be near. Friends at first sight, I think.

  “You’re going to love it here,” she says, so certain that I don’t bother to ask why she thinks that or worry that she could be wrong. She says it like it’s a fact, so I believe it the way I believed fractions and the American Revolution and the law of gravity.

  “I thought I didn’t want to leave home,” I say, already wanting to tell Veena all my secrets. “But I actually sort of like new places. Adventures.”

  “Adventures!” Veena repeats. She grins. Her eyes are bright. I can tell Naomi wishes I hadn’t said so much, but Veena makes it hard to be anything but happy around her. “I think I like adventures too,” she goes on. “You guys want to hang out in the backyard? It’s not very adventurous, but we have a pond with a frog in it. I need help catching him.”

  Naomi wrinkles her nose at the idea of a slimy frog, but I’m tempted to forget all about ice cream and spend the rest of the day chasing Veena’s frog.

  “Actually, we were on our way to get some ice cream,” Naomi says. “We visited once and had the best ice cream ever.”

  “But we don’t remember where it was,” I finish. There will be time for frogs later. Naomi needs ice cream now, so I want her to have it.

  Veena claps her hands together. The charms on her necklaces jingle and jangle against each other. “Well, I can help with that,” she says. “It’s vanilla-rose day!”

  I don’t know what that means, but it sounds wonderful.

  The ice cream shop is exactly as we remember it. Veena walked us here in five minutes, and I’m thinking Mom was right: no one needs a car here. Not when the best ice cream in the world is only a five-minute walk away. There are polka-dotted stools and wooden tables and a little bell that rings whenever someone enters or exits the shop. The walls are covered in yellow flowered wallpaper, and the whole place smells like a sugary garden. The people at the counter have striped shirts and jaunty chef’s hats and a little glint in their eyes, like they know we’re about to experience something truly special.

  Today’s Flavor: Vanilla-Rose, a chalkboard up front reads. And there it is, in a dozen containers behind the glass counter, soft pink ice cream with cream-colored swirls and sparkly clear sprinkles all over the top. Vanilla-rose ice cream. It looks like something made by fairies in the forest.

  “One scoop each,” Veena tells one of the women in striped shirts working the counter. The lady hands over three sugar cones and we eat them outside on a white bench.

  It tastes even better than it looks.

  It’s sweet and airy and simple. The rose makes the vanilla sweeter, and the vanilla makes the rose taste a little like raspberries, but softer, smoother. And the sugary sprinkles add this tiny crunch. I can feel them sparkling in my mouth.

  We swing our feet and laugh at nothing. We kick off our shoes and let the sun warm our toes. We watch Eventown residents walk in and out of the shop. They wave at Veena and she proudly introduces us as her new friends, Elodee and Naomi.

  My name sounds new here. In Juniper, people said Elodee and Naomi in this awful way, like they knew everything about what being Elodee and Naomi was like. Today my name sounds mysterious. Like I could be anyone from anywhere. Like Elodee is filled with possibilities, every one of them fantastic and fun.

  When we’ve had two cones each we head back home, and Veena chatters on the whole way. She doesn’t ask us anything about where we came from or why we moved here. And without TV or movies or the internet, we can’t talk about any of the things we talked to Bess and Flora and Jenny about. Instead we talk about favorite flowers and colors and cookies. She tells us a dozen of her favorite things in Eventown—the ice cream, of course, the library, the school, the park, the bonfires, the new butterfly house, the blueberries, the market, the sunsets.

  By the time we’re back at Veena’s house, Naomi and I are so excited about starting school that we almost wish we could begin tonight.

  “I’ll walk with you to school tomorrow!” Veena calls, waving goodbye with her mother, who’s given us paper cups of lemonade for the walk home. The lemonade is flavored with something special—mint or basil, I think—and it tastes like a perfect summer day.

  When we finally get back to our house, I go right for the kitchen. It was nice exploring the town, but I want to know what size the oven is and how high the counters are, and I want to plan how I will organize myself when I’m cooking and baking in here.

  It’s better than I could have imagined. The counters are shiny and there’s a full set of copper pots and pans hanging from the ceiling that the previous owner must have left behind. The stove looks old-fashioned—black and large and welcoming. It looks like a kitchen from a magazine.

  I step back to admire it all. “Wow. Where’d this all come from?”

  “Eventown tourism sets it up for new families,” Mom says. “That will be part of my job once a year too. Pretty special, right?”

  I’m too impressed to even nod.

  Mom and Dad hold hands, watching me take it in. They grin at each other, at me, at the way the copper pots and pans glint as the sun sets.

  “It gets better,” Mom says, barely able to contain herself. It’s hard to believe it could get better than this. She hands me a small wooden box. “They left this for you.”

  I open the box. Inside are dozens and dozens of recipes, maybe hundreds, written on butter-stained index cards. The writing is tidy and cursive. The recipes look well-loved and each recipe sounds amazing—cookies and pies and elaborate gourmet meals. There are instructions for Eventown’s Favorite Bacon and Eggs, Your New Favorite Turkey Club, Perfect Chicken Noodle Soup.

  “We might have told them a little about you loving cooking,” Mom says. “The town put it together for you.” She has happy tears in her eyes. For months, all the tears in her eyes have been sad ones. I give her a huge hug. Dad too. Naomi leaps into the fold and pulls out a recipe for fried chicken.

  “Dinner!” she exclaims.

  “Looks delicious,” Mom says, pulling away from the group hug. “Why don’t you come with me and we’ll pick up all the ingredients?” Naomi usually hates grocery shopping with Mom, but I know she wants to see more of the town, so she practically sprints out the door.

  “Perfect,” Dad says. “Leaves Elodee and me a little time to work on the garden.”

  I roll my eyes, but I don’t actually mind. The sun is a cozy kind of warm and the garden is beautiful already. I help Dad put the rosebush in its new spot. There are rosebushes everywhere, but he’s right: it’s nice to have one that’s just ours.

  “I’ll help you watch over it,” I say, because he looks sort of lonely, staring at it.

  I’ve said the right thing and unlocked Dad’s big, goofy, not-so-lonely-after-all smile. “It’ll be our rosebush,” Dad says. “Our project together. Taking care of this tiny bit of Juniper. We’re in it together, okay?”

  I say okay, even though it feels sort of wrong, because the rosebush was never mine. But it makes Dad happy to hear me say okay and to see me grab the watering can and give it a gentle sprinkling.

  “My little gardener,” Dad says, even though I’ve never been very good at gardening at all.

  When Mom and Naomi get back from grocery shopping, I get right to work, and the cooking comes easily. The instructions are clear, and following the recipe feels like a dance with the kitchen. The result is incredible. The chicken is golden brown, crispy on the outside and buttery on the inside. The slaw on the side is a little salty and a little vinegar-y and reminds me of Fourth of July picnics. I’ve never made anything this delicious. I’ve made things that are fun and messy and bizarre. But the recipes I invented in our old kitchen back in Juniper were never like this.

  As we eat, I forget every other bite of chicken I’ve ever taken. I forget every other meal I’ve ever had. I forget every moment, but this one, right here, in Eventown.

  8

  The Long Way


  Veena’s agreed to walk us to school, and Mom and Dad keep saying we need to jump right in and find our routine, so we are doing exactly that. The first day of third grade in Juniper, Naomi was so scared she cried on the bus, and I spent the whole time rubbing her back. The first day of fourth grade in Juniper, Naomi threw up in the bathroom before the first bell rang and I promised not to tell anyone. Our first day of sixth grade in Juniper, even I was nervous. Mom said we could stay home. We weren’t ready. We slipped into sixth grade a week later, and everyone pretended we’d been there all along.

  But my first day of sixth grade in Eventown, six months after my first day of sixth grade in Juniper, feels fine. Naomi seems so calm it might as well not be the first day of school at all. She’s dressed up as usual, in a pink dress with her hair in a high, bouncy ponytail. I put on a gray dress that I never wore in Juniper but that feels good here. I pair it with sneakers and keep my almost-red hair down and messy around my shoulders. People have trouble telling us apart, but I don’t really know why. Naomi is all smoothed out and fancy. I usually look a little messy even when I’m trying really hard to be neat.

  Mom starts to brush my hair for me, but she stops herself. She knows I’ll just shake her off. I like my hair like this. I like to not look exactly like my twin.

  For breakfast I make French toast from a recipe in the box. It is cinnamon-y and thick and it doesn’t go all soggy under the maple syrup. I can’t believe the taste. Not too eggy. Not too sweet. Perfect, again.

  “It’s a good sign for your first day,” Mom says, as sure as I’ve heard her about anything.

  Dad comes in from outside all covered in dirt and smiles.

  “Roses just love it here!” he says. “Look out the window, Elodee. Our rosebush is so happy in that Eventown soil.”

  Naomi tilts her head at Dad calling the rosebush ours, and I shrug in return.

  I look out the window as instructed, and he’s right. The rosebush almost seems like it’s tilting itself toward the sun. I swear it’s redder than before.

  “We’re a good team,” Dad says, and again Naomi’s face scrunches with confusion. I’m the chef of the family, not the gardener, and Dad has kept all his talk of soil and sun and watering cans to himself since last summer. It’s funny to have it all out in the open again.

  But nice too. He takes a big inhale and grins. “And what do I smell here? French toast? Smells spectacular. Did my favorite chef make that?”

  I nod.

  “How lucky am I?” he says, and serves himself some breakfast. He finally sees Naomi, who I think was feeling a little left out. “Omi, you look beautiful. All grown up.” Naomi blushes—at the compliment but also at the nickname. Another thing that’s gone unused for many months.

  We exchange more glances, but Dad’s good mood is infectious, and soon Mom and Dad are ushering us out the door with kisses and waves and have-a-good-days. The sun hasn’t quite finished rising, and the sky is rosy from almost-daylight, and Veena’s right outside waiting for us. March is warmer here than it was in Juniper, and I don’t miss my big down jacket or the way my ears feel itchy under a wool hat.

  Veena introduces herself to Mom and Dad, who look relieved we have a friend already, and she tells us everyone is excited for us to come to school.

  I like how straight her back is and how she looks a little dreamy-eyed. She has even more necklaces around her neck today. Some look like fake pearls and some look like real gold and one looks really heavy—a metal rose hanging from a leather cord. I want to touch it, but we’re not friends like that. Not yet, at least.

  Veena takes us the long way to school. “You’ll like it,” she says. “I always go the long way. Everyone does.”

  I laugh because it sounds like a joke, but Veena doesn’t laugh.

  Naomi looks puzzled. We dip into the woods, away from the main road. Veena’s voice drops to a whisper even though there’s no one around to hear us talk. “Don’t you think the long way somewhere is almost always prettier than the short way?”

  “I’ve never thought about it before,” I say.

  “I guess it is,” Naomi says. In Juniper there’s traffic in every direction from everyone trying to get somewhere else the quickest way possible. And then it ends up taking extra long to get somewhere because of how hard we’re all trying to get there quickly. It makes me laugh a little, thinking about it.

  “This is the best part,” Veena says. We’ve come to a bridge suspended over a miniature waterfall. Somehow, in the middle of the woods, rosebushes still grow wild, the roses fully bloomed and reaching toward the now-almost-fully-risen sun. It feels like the sunrise is longer and prettier here in Eventown. Like everything, even the way the sun moves across the sky, is better here.

  It’s so beautiful, I trip and stumble over the bridge. Dewdrops cling to the flowers and glint in the sun. Butterflies whisper around our shoulders, over the tops of our heads, and the pine trees are so tall I can’t see the tops of them; I can’t see where the woods end.

  Which is great, because I don’t want it to end.

  “This is how you get to school every day?” Naomi asks, staring at the waterfall. “Like, you don’t have a bus?”

  “Oh, like one of those yellow ones?” Veena asks.

  Naomi and I nod in unison.

  “I’ve heard about those, but we’ve never had them here. They can fit tons of people, and you’re all stuck in there until you get to school? Right?”

  I nod. “There’s gum on the seats,” I say.

  “Everyone pays a lot of attention to where you sit, and if you sit in the wrong place, people think you’re not cool,” Naomi says.

  “Sometimes you feel sick on the bus,” I add.

  “Oh, and it’s sort of smelly.”

  “And loud!”

  “Yes! Really loud! And then when it’s too loud, the bus driver yells at us or even pulls the bus over until we’re all quiet.”

  Veena is stunned. She sits on the bridge, right in the middle, her legs dangling off the thing, trying to process.

  “Why would they do that to you?” she asks.

  “It’s just—it makes it easier?” Naomi looks to me, like I know the answers to why we’ve done everything the way we’ve always done it.

  “It doesn’t sound easy,” Veena says. She gets up and runs to the other side of the bridge. She doesn’t seem to mind the way it swings and buckles from her footsteps. She isn’t scared, and, I realize, neither am I.

  I could walk across the bridge, and maybe that’s what I would have done back home, but I’m not in Juniper anymore.

  So I skip.

  9

  Where We Used to Live

  Three people compliment me on my dress before we’re even all the way inside the school. They like my dress and Naomi’s shoes and the fact that we look exactly the same.

  A boy with brown skin and huge glasses opens up his lunch box and offers us the world’s biggest peanut butter cookie. A girl with straight hair and a high voice gives us big hugs. “I’m so happy you’re here!” she says.

  “Their mom’s going to work for the tourism office,” Veena tells everyone we meet. “And their dad is going to be in charge of a bunch of the gardens. And they’re twins.” I love that this is all Veena knows about us, and that she seems so proud to show us off. The girl with the straight hair and high voice—her name is Betsy—is the only one who I don’t immediately like. She reminds me a little of Jenny from back home, and she’s almost too sweet. She has a lot of questions about Mom’s new job and the vacation we took here a few years ago.

  “I always wonder how people find us,” she says. “We don’t have that many people vacationing here, but when we do I’m always really curious why they came here and not, like, Disney World or something.”

  Something about the way she says the word curious makes me squeeze my hands into fists at my sides. When Naomi’s upset she gets very quiet and cries late at night when she thinks I’m not awake. But when I’m ups
et, especially lately, I get angry. And Betsy’s voice is making me angry. And being angry makes me even angrier.

  “Well, I’m sure I’ll be able to answer that soon. Since my mom’s job will be getting more visitors here,” I say. I’m not sure if this is exactly true, but it seems like something Eventown tourism would be in charge of. And she said she’d be in charge of some “exciting new initiatives,” which sounds like fancy-talk for making tourism better.

  “I didn’t know we wanted more visitors,” Betsy says.

  “I do!” Veena interrupts, and maybe I’m the only one hearing something less than nice in Betsy’s voice. Naomi says I’m too sensitive sometimes, that I notice things that aren’t really there. “There was a family visiting here last month and one of the boys was so cute. And remember the really nice couple over the summer, Betsy? They taught us how to make friendship bracelets. They said their vacation was just what they needed.”

  “What did they need?” I ask. I remember Mom and Dad saying something similar about our vacation here. I remember them saying it helped our family. I think it just put us in a good, relaxed mood. I could see Eventown doing that for pretty much everyone.

  Veena shrugs. “I’ll teach you guys how to make friendship bracelets, if you don’t already know,” she says, as if that’s the most important part of the story. And maybe it is, because Bess and Jenny learned how to make friendship bracelets at camp last summer and never showed us how.

  Betsy locks her arm with Naomi, and Veena does the same to me. Naomi looks over at me and beams. She loves belonging.

  “I’ve been hoping someone new would come,” Veena whispers to me.

  “You have?” We never liked new kids in Juniper. Sometimes they got so much attention from everyone that we felt jealous, and sometimes they were shy and teachers scolded us for not being more welcoming.

  “I want to show you everything. Everyone’s so nice here, but I’ve never had a best, best friend, you know?” Veena’s talking so fast I have trouble keeping up. I can’t be sure, but it sounds like she asked me to be her best friend. “I mean, everyone’s like best friends here,” Veena says quickly, like she’s said something wrong. “We’re all best friends, but I always want new best friends. That’s what I meant. My mom had a best friend a long time ago. She says someday she’ll tell me all her stories about it.” Veena plays with one of her necklaces. Red beads with a little broken heart at the end. It looks like the kind of necklace that has a pair, that’s meant to be locked with someone else’s necklace.