Eventown

by Corey Ann Haydu

  “It’s different every day,” I say. I imagine savory cakes or cupcakes with peanut butter frosting or goat cheese in the center. Fruit brownies made from strawberry jam. Caramel bread with slices of apple on top. Basil-and-orange popsicles. Cookie-dough scones. I want to bake them all.

  Naomi nudges me. “Earth to Elodee!”

  I grin. “Sorry.” Naomi just laughs. She’s used to my food daydreams by now. “I was thinking about what might be the best thing to bake.”

  “Probably something from the recipe box!” Naomi says. It’s not what I want her to say. And when Naomi says the wrong thing, it’s worse than when someone else does. When I was littler I thought a twin was a promise to always have someone understand you.

  But lately I have to realize, over and over, that that’s not really true.

  “Don’t forget about the berries,” Naomi says, reaching her hand out to the bush in front of us. I do the same, and we each pick a berry. They’re enormous, larger than two or three regular blueberries put together. The color is deep and shiny—a blue that wants to be purple. Naomi raises her eyebrows. I raise mine right back. We pop the first pick in our mouths instead of into our baskets, and the taste is unbearably beautiful. Sweet and tangy and so sure of itself. It tastes like we are eating the color itself, not the fruit. We are eating blue-purple, and it tastes so good I almost don’t want to turn it into pies and muffins and pancakes. I almost don’t want to pick blueberries at all anymore. I wouldn’t mind sitting in a patch of sun and devouring them by the handful until my mouth is blue and my legs are lazy.

  “It’s like the book,” I say.

  “What book?” Naomi asks. She’s having the same experience as I am. Her jaw is relaxed; her eyes are hungry for more.

  “That picture book we used to have. About blueberries. About how amazing it is to pick them.”

  Naomi leans her head back and closes her eyes. Normally, she’d remember every title in our huge bookcase back home.

  “Did we bring that book with us? About the blueberries?” I call to Mom, still leaning against the tree, laughing with the teachers.

  “Hm? I don’t know, sweetie,” she calls back. She sneaks a berry into her mouth and smiles like it’s a secret we share.

  “What was it called? The blueberry one, Mom.” Mom walks over to me and shrugs and tucks some hair behind my ear.

  “Oh, who knows?” Mom says. “You two had so many books.” She takes a blueberry out of my basket, grinning at the taste when she puts it in her mouth. I notice the past tense. I remember seeing shelves of books left behind, but I assumed we’d brought along our favorites. We’ve always had a house filled with books. So many that we can forget the titles of even our most favorite ones.

  Now I have a sneaking suspicion we might not have packed any of them. Not even the ones we loved so hard the binding is broken and the pages are stained. I suddenly miss every single one of them.

  “Blueberries for Sal,” Naomi says at last.

  “Yes!” I say. “Do you know that one, Veena?”

  “I only care about blueberries for Veena!” Veena says.

  “Maybe we can pick it up from the library later,” I say, turning back to the bushes. I pick another berry, almost eat it, but put it in my basket instead. Then another. Each one is warm in my hand and delicate, about to burst.

  “Oh, the library! I want to go to the library!” Naomi says. We passed it the other day and it was every bit as beautiful as we’d remembered—a huge stone building with skylights and towering bookcases and potted flowers in every window. We even caught sight of an enormous fireplace inside, with big overstuffed chairs circled around it.

  “It’s a special place,” Mom says. “I’m learning all about it at work. One of the best attractions here in Eventown. It’s under renovation now, but as soon as it’s open we’ll go.”

  We nod and try to think of other books we’ll check out of the library while we return to our berry picking.

  “You guys are so funny,” Betsy says. “You’re, like, obsessed with books.”

  “We love stories,” I say.

  Naomi’s quiet. If Betsy doesn’t like books and stories, Naomi won’t want to either.

  “You’ll love the Welcoming Center if you like stories,” Veena says.

  “They have books there?” I ask.

  “They have all the stories,” Betsy answers. Veena is quiet. Naomi and I look to Mom, a few feet away.

  “Are we going to the Welcoming Center soon?” I ask. “It might be even better than the library!”

  “Soon,” Mom says. “I promise.”

  I hope it has the story of Eventown and why it’s so different from other places, because I have so many questions. I want to know the story of Veena and of Betsy and of Mr. Fountain and of blueberry hills and why there are perfect sunsets. It’s hard to know much of anything if you don’t know all the stories of a place and the people in it.

  When our baskets are full, Veena and Betsy have made their way back over to us, and Mom kisses our cheeks in front of everyone and we’re not even embarrassed about it.

  “You taste like blueberries,” Mom says.

  “The air tastes like blueberries,” Naomi says, and it’s so true it makes me smile.

  It’s the best day of school I’ve ever had.

  I feel guilty for the thought. Maybe I’m not supposed to have a great day of school. Not yet.

  I tell the guilt to go away, and try to be like Naomi, like Betsy, like Veena.

  The taste of blueberries is wild and bright in my mouth, and I tell myself that nothing else matters.

  12

  The Taste of Green

  I make blueberry pancakes Saturday morning, of course. They are fluffy and thick. A little like cake and a little like a biscuit and a little like something else entirely, something new.

  I wonder if I could make blueberry pancake bread. Or blueberry-chocolate-applesauce cupcakes. I imagine bringing boxes of them to school and being celebrated as the best baker in Eventown. The idea makes my toes scrunch up with excitement.

  Dad’s already gone by the time we’re up and eating breakfast, which seems impossible because the sun is still rising in the sky. Dad didn’t used to be an early riser, but I’ve noticed that in the week that we’ve been here, he’s up early. I take my pancake out to the rosebush he has been calling “our rosebush.” It fits right in with the Eventown rosebushes. The petals look like velvet, the blooms are bigger than they ever were at home, and somehow even the plant looks as happy as the rest of us.

  I pick up the watering can that Dad keeps in the garden and water the rosebush.

  “Hey, another gardener!” someone calls from next door. Mom’s spent time with the neighbors, Maggie and Victor, and I know they have a son in high school, but I haven’t seen him before.

  “My dad’s the gardener,” I say. “I’m just . . . I’m helping.”

  “You look like a professional to me,” the boy says. He has long legs and a goofy smile, and right away I want to be his friend.

  I giggle. It’s a giggle I haven’t heard myself have for a long time. “I’m Elodee,” I say, “the professional rose-waterer.”

  “Baxter,” the boy says. “I’m still only an amateur, sadly.”

  I giggle again. If Naomi saw, she’d say I have a crush, but I don’t.

  “It’s all in the wrist,” I say, and demonstrate by watering the grass that is so green it doesn’t need a drop more of water.

  “Ohhhh,” Baxter says. “I thought it was in the legs.” He jumps up and down while watering one of his rosebushes. My giggles keep coming out, a whole waterfall of them. It feels great, then, all of a sudden, it hurts.

  Naomi would hate the hurting. I think it’s okay, sometimes, for a memory to hurt.

  “You have a lot to learn,” I say, trying to stay light and giggly, but my heart is aching inside and it feels like it must be visible on my face and even in my elbows, my neck, my shins. “I gotta go back inside.” />
  “More pointers tomorrow?” Baxter asks. I can tell from the way it comes out all natural that he’s like this with everyone, not just me, and that hurts a little too.

  “Sure,” I say, but I’m not sure I’ll come out and water the rosebush at this time tomorrow. It’s hard to tell if I want to see more of Baxter or less. It seems like I should be able to know what I want, and the not-knowing makes my shoulders tense and my neck tighten and my face get hot with anger. I head back inside, and I want to stomp my feet and punch a pillow, but Mom and Naomi are still happy with their pancakes and the morning sun and I don’t want to feel bad all alone.

  I get another pancake. It helps, but only a little.

  “Can we visit Dad at work?” I ask. “I want to bring him some of these pancakes. He likes them cold, remember?”

  Dad is designing a garden in the center of town, and I want to see what he’s come up with. Plus, I just want to be near him after talking to Baxter. I want the whole family together.

  “That sounds wonderful,” Mom says. She serves herself two more pancakes, drowning them in syrup.

  “And then the library?” Naomi asks.

  Mom doesn’t respond as quickly. “Well, it’s a little different from our library back home,” she says. “It’s still closed right now. But the good news is there are dozens of wonderful places for us to spend the day. I don’t think you girls have seen the biggest waterfall in town yet, have you? It’s on the top of the tallest Eventown hill. Or there’s a butterfly house that Veena’s mother, Ms. Butra, works at. It’s a new addition to the town. Quite an experience, from what I’ve heard.”

  In Juniper, there was a lot of silence. Hours of it. Days of it, sometimes. Sometimes when I got to school my voice would be scratchy from all the not-talking I was doing. So it’s a shock to hear Mom so excited about a simple weekend activity.

  I’m still catching up with all the things Mom’s saying, but she keeps going. “And maybe after the butterflies, we could go look at the place where we’re thinking of holding the first Eventown Carnival. It’s my new initiative. A way to include tourists in the town fun, but also make tourist season a little more contained. So much to show you girls!”

  “Contained?” I ask.

  “The town wants a set tourist season every year. Since the weather is always so nice, usually there are visitors year-round. We’re hoping the Eventown Carnival will bring the visitors all at the same time. Make things simpler.”

  “How?” I like talking about Mom’s and Dad’s jobs here in Eventown. I like the way they both get excited about their work and how when they’re talking about it they don’t seem worried about things like my tangled-up hair or my bedtime or my math test.

  I like how Mom’s eyes shine. I like how Dad has to pull up photos of different flowers to show me, even though they all look sort of the same to me.

  Mom doesn’t answer this question, though. “Such a curious cat, my Elodee,” she says instead. “I think you’ll understand so much more about the town after we take you girls to the Welcoming Center. You may have a lot of questions right now, but I think you’ll find things are actually really simple here.”

  “Good,” Naomi says. She doesn’t like big crowds or complicated friendships or asking too many questions or my most intricate recipes. She likes cheese pizza and a perfect cartwheel and taking the same walk to school every morning with Veena. Simple.

  “How about we go to the butterfly house today, okay?” Mom says. “Ms. Butra can’t stop raving about it. It’s one of the first new attractions in years and years here. It’s a new Eventown tradition. And this town loves traditions.”

  I wait for Naomi to squirm or roll her eyes or say no. I wait for Dad to appear and sigh and say he’s too tired. But that doesn’t happen. Naomi says it sounds great, and I agree, and I bet even Dad would think the butterfly house here in Eventown sounds like exactly the right thing to do today.

  The center of town is bustling. Friendly faces are everywhere, but I just want to see my dad’s smile. There’s a big yard in the center of town where Dad will be designing his first garden. For now, though, it’s mostly just green with a few patches of fruits and vegetables and herbs growing in the center. I’m curious right away about what delicious fresh things might be growing here.

  Kids from school wave to Naomi and me, and when we say we’re going to see the butterflies, they get every bit as excited as Mom was when she talked about them.

  “I’ve gone every week since it opened,” Charlie says. “And I’m going to go every week until forever.” I laugh a little, but Charlie is serious about the butterfly house, so I turn serious too.

  “It must be pretty amazing,” I say.

  “The butterflies are like fairies,” he says. “Like magic.”

  “We’re going to do a whole unit on them in science class this year!” Autumn, another fifth grader, says. She’s on the balls of her feet, bouncing.

  “Are they like . . . really magic?” I ask, because I’ve never seen anyone so excited about butterflies before. “Are there hundreds of them? Or really big ones or something?”

  The girl leans close to me. “We’d never seen butterflies before Veena’s mom came up with the idea,” she says. “My parents saw them when they didn’t live here. But there weren’t any in Eventown. So for us they’re sort of like magic.”

  I’d been so in awe of everything Eventown does have, it hadn’t occurred to me that maybe there were some things Eventown doesn’t have. Would I have noticed the lack of butterflies, though? I’m not sure. I love them when I see them, but otherwise I don’t think about them at all.

  I’m about to ask Naomi if she’d ever noticed a lack of butterflies, but before I get a chance, Dad sees us. He’s talking to a group of gardeners and people in fancy suits, but as soon as he notices Mom, Naomi, and me, he waves.

  “My girls!” he says when he’s made his way over to us. “What are you all doing here?”

  “We brought breakfast,” I say. “It was too good not to share.”

  “And we wanted to see what you’re working on,” Mom says.

  “I’m talking them into peach roses,” Dad says. “Peach roses and long grasses with a gazebo in the middle, covered in vines. Maybe a pond. Lily pads. All that.”

  “Frogs?” I ask, thinking of Veena’s backyard and the frog she’d promised us.

  “You never know,” Dad says, but I don’t think he’s envisioning frogs for the garden. Maybe frogs are best in backyards. I don’t know as much about making things beautiful as Dad does, after all. “Now. Let’s see this breakfast you brought.”

  I hand him the cold pancake. I want it to be as delicious for him as it was for us this morning. He takes a big bite, and when he does he shuts his eyes tight like he’s trying to see the taste as clearly as he feels it. I love watching Dad eat my food. Even when it’s weird or wrong or too out there, Dad closes his eyes and thinks about it for a long time.

  “Now that’s a pancake,” he says. “This is maybe the greatest pancake of all time. Hall of Famer. And I’ve got just the thing for your next creation.” He heads back over to the group of gardeners and speaks to one, who goes to one of the patches I’d noticed earlier. He picks something from a vine.

  Dad carries it back to me with a sneaky grin on his face.

  When he shows it to me, it’s a green strawberry.

  “It’s not ripe,” I say.

  “It is. It’s just green,” Dad says. “Another Eventown specialty. Even better than blueberries. Have a taste.”

  I take it and bite in. It’s delicious. Tangier and airier, somehow, than a red strawberry. “What do you think?” Dad asks.

  “I can taste the green,” I say.

  “Yes! Me too!”

  “I think it would be good with basil. And maybe whipped cream? Or maybe I can even make some sort of sauce with it, for fish? Or green strawberry bread. Or soup! Green strawberry soup!”

  “You’re a genius,” Dad says. He looks
so happy out here in the sun, surrounded by growing things and us.

  “I bet there’s some green strawberry recipes in the box, too,” Mom says. I don’t respond. I don’t care what’s in the box; the point is for me to figure out what to do with this shocking new taste.

  “I can’t believe this is just growing right here in town.”

  “Better than a boring old supermarket, right?” Dad says.

  “So much better,” I say. I don’t even want to think about the Juniper supermarket with its freezing-cold aisles and screaming kids and cranky shoppers and fuzzy announcements about deals on frozen meals over the intercom system.

  We don’t need to remember any of that, I think. “Let’s never think about that market again,” I say.

  Dad tilts his head and opens his mouth to say something but doesn’t.

  “Let’s forget about supermarkets and cars and microwavable meals and the people in Juniper who gave us those stupid sad looks all the time,” I say. The things I want to forget spill out without even trying. I didn’t know how mad I still was at those memories until I compared them all to this moment right here, with green strawberries and fresh air and everyone treating us like we are fun to be around.

  “You can forget it if you want,” he says, suddenly very serious. “But you tell me if you ever change your mind about what you want to remember from home, okay? You can always tell me. Even if it’s something I don’t remember.”

  After all the happiness, he’s looking a little sad. A little like he misses some things about Juniper. Maybe even some of the awful parts of Juniper.

  “It will still be there,” he whispers, words meant only for me.

  But I don’t know what the words mean.

  “And we’ll be right here,” I say, not knowing what else to say. Dad looks at the grass that will someday be his garden and the dozens of happy families strolling through town, doing nothing in particular. He looks at cartwheeling Naomi and laughing Mom, her hair shining in the sun, and he looks at me, green strawberry juice probably stuck to my lips.

  “Right here. In our new home,” he says in a voice that could be a hundred different things.