Eventown

by Corey Ann Haydu

  I nearly tell Mr. Fountain about the interruption at the Welcoming Center, since he seems so confused and maybe that’s what’s making me do all the wrong things.

  The song keeps playing itself in my head, and it makes me smile. A story pops into my head about a time I came up with a dance to it and performed it for my family and everyone learned the dance and we did it all night long.

  Maybe that story was my most joyful story. Or one of a lot of joyful stories.

  I don’t think I want to tell it to Christine and Josiah.

  For now, I only want to tell it to myself.

  “I like the anthem,” I say. “But I thought you might like our song from home—”

  “Elodee.” Naomi’s voice is very strong and very clear. There is a not-very-Naomi-like urgency to the way she’s saying my name that tells me it really matters to her that I be quiet.

  I wonder if she’s forgotten the song. She didn’t light up when I started singing it. She didn’t join in or look nostalgic for all the stories of the nights we listened to that song with our family. I wonder if her memories, like mine, are melting like butter in a pan, changing form, boiling down, some of them disappearing completely.

  I don’t want her to forget it. I don’t want to forget it. Since the Welcoming Center, some things feel far away and splotchy, and it’s okay, I guess, but uncomfortable too. That song is something I love, something that makes me happy. And forgetting feels a little like a loss.

  I want to say all of that to Naomi and to Mr. Fountain and his beard. I want to say it to Veena and Betsy and anyone who will listen and explain and help me understand why some of the stories in my head are splotchy and hazy and water damaged. I want them to help me understand why the stories I told Christine and Josiah are already gone and the ones I didn’t get to tell them are thumping around in my body and no one else’s.

  But I don’t.

  Mr. Fountain plays the anthem on his piano and the tune is so light and lovely and sweet and easy that I get a little lost in it and the way it makes me feel. I feel nice again.

  Nice is a small feeling. A contained one.

  “It’s a beautiful song,” I say.

  “It’s the most beautiful song,” Naomi says.

  And it is.

  It is the most beautiful song.

  23

  A Book of Nothing

  Mom picks us up after school. She used to do this at home sometimes, too, and it always means something fun. She comes with a grin and a plan for adventure. Once we drove to her favorite lake and had a picnic. Once she drove us to a water park even though it was a little too cold for a water park.

  The cold made it even better.

  I don’t think it’s a water park or a picnic today, though. Mom’s still in her work clothes—heels and a pretty gray skirt and a prettier pink blouse. Naomi and I use our twin powers to silently agree not to tell Mom anything about music class or Mr. Fountain or the mistake I made.

  I give Naomi a thank-you look.

  She grimaces, like she’s not sure it’s the right decision.

  “The construction on the library is done,” Mom says, hugging us hello. “It opens back up tomorrow, but they said I could bring you girls by today. You can explore a little bit. What do you think?”

  Naomi and I light up. Back home, we used to stay at the library for hours, reading whole books on the floor, leaning against the stacks. Veena said the Eventown Library is enormous. And cozy. And her favorite thing in town along with every other thing in town.

  “Is the fireplace working?” I ask.

  Mom nods.

  “Can we stay for a long time?” Naomi asks.

  “Absolutely,” Mom says. Naomi and I practically skip the whole way there. We stand outside the building for a few minutes before going in. Mom tells us everything she knows about the library. When it was built and what materials were used and all the little details that make it special.

  “It’s really a place for the whole community to come together,” she says. “It’s probably the most beautiful building in the whole town. And do you see those roses carved into the stones? And the way it looks like a huge house, instead of a regular library? It’s supposed to really be like someone’s home.”

  She’s right. It looks like someone could live here, and I can’t think of anything better than being able to live at a library.

  Inside, it’s even better. The stacks of books reach all the way up to the ceiling, and they’re all leather bound with gold engraving on the spines. Even my favorite books are bound this way, and I don’t miss regular covers at all. These make every book look like an artifact, look special.

  “Wow,” Naomi and I say together. We look at each other, laugh, and then say it at the same time again, drawing the middle ow sound out longer. “Woooooooooowwwwwww,” we say.

  “Pretty special, huh?” Mom says. “We really believe it could be a destination library. Not that destination libraries really exist in tourism, but they could! It’s something we’ve been talking about a lot at work. Reaching families who are looking for a different kind of vacation. Homey. Safe. Special.”

  Back home, Mom never lit up when she talked about her job. She complained about runs in her stockings and her boss’s late-night emails and her officemate’s tuna fish salad and her lack of vacation days. But here Mom bounces on her toes when she talks about work. She sparkles.

  It’s contagious. Soon Naomi and I are bouncing on our toes and sparkling too. We run up and down the long aisles of red-and-gold carpeting. We lie on our backs and stare up at the skylight. We brush our fingers along the spines of books. We gather a few up in our arms and bring them to the fireplace. We want to cozy up in front of the flame Mom has started. We want to read for the whole rest of the afternoon and evening.

  Naomi likes books about animals and magic and I like books about people and food, so we go to the cooking section and the animal section and the fantasy section and choose titles that sound right. We have a mix of everything we love, and we lie on our stomachs and bend our knees so that our feet face the ceiling. We rest our chins on our elbows and open one book each.

  I turn a page.

  Then another.

  Another.

  Another.

  They are blank.

  I flip through the whole book. Every page is blank. It is a book of blank pages. A book of nothing.

  “This is so weird,” I say. “Mom, you should tell them this book is blank.” Mom’s too far away to hear me, though. She’s busy sorting through the stacks, lining up and rearranging books and making it all look perfect.

  I pick up another book.

  Blank pages. Over a hundred of them.

  My heart beats louder and I look at Naomi. She’s staring at blank pages too. She isn’t flushed or freaking out, though. She’s calm about it. She looks a little baffled but not very worried.

  “Naomi?” I say. “Are you seeing this?”

  I open another book from our pile.

  Blank.

  Another and another, all blank.

  “Are we supposed to write in these? Are they like journals?” It wouldn’t be quite what I wanted, which was to get lost in someone else’s story, but as days pass and the stories I have from my own life get blurrier and more waterlogged, writing some down for safekeeping doesn’t seem like a terrible idea.

  “Oh! No!” Mom says, finally hearing me. “Don’t write in those!”

  “But where are the stories, then?” I ask.

  “Well, it’s not that kind of library,” Mom says gently.

  “It’s sort of interesting, right?” Naomi says.

  “. . . No?” I say. I don’t understand what she’s saying at all. It’s not interesting to have a library full of blank books. It’s not interesting to use books as decoration. It’s weird. It’s terrible. It’s . . . wrong.

  “They’re so pretty,” Naomi says. “And the whole place is kind of magical. I guess it’s meant more as a place to hang out and be
together and not get all lost in reading, you know?”

  “What are you talking about?” Heat rises up and flushes my face.

  “I’m trying to see the good.” Naomi shrugs. “I don’t feel like getting all worked up about something.”

  “Well, I don’t either, but there’s something to get worked up about, so I don’t have a choice!”

  “Okay, deep breath, Elodee,” Mom says. “Let’s all take deep breaths.”

  “I’m breathing fine!” I say. But my heart won’t stop thumping. Mom puts a hand on my back. It’s meant to calm me down, and it works. It always works. Mom’s hands are strong and they don’t shake and they’re always a little cool. I’m so glad that hasn’t changed. “It’s different. I know. And different can be overwhelming. But I think it’s special too. A place you’ve never been before. A place unlike any other. An adventure. Right?” She smiles, and her smile softens me the teeny-tiniest bit. Then just a little smidge more.

  “But where will we get real books, that we can read?” I ask in a small voice. I don’t want Mom to stop being so excited, but I’m nervous I won’t be able to share that excitement with her.

  “We all have so many stories inside of us,” Mom says. “Every single day is a story! Especially here in Eventown. Don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. My brain is feeling mushy from all the strange things Mom’s saying and the fact that Naomi doesn’t seem as worried as me. Little bites of anger nip at me, still, but they feel wrong here. They make me feel uncomfortable and tight and they don’t stick to my heart. I feel lost. I don’t know which feeling to settle into, or which feeling is settling into me.

  “We moved here to be something new and different,” Mom says. “If we wanted a regular town like Juniper, we could have stayed in Juniper. But we’re on an adventure. We’re somewhere a little more special. If everything was exactly what you expected it to be, it wouldn’t be so special, right?” She’s giving me an extra-special, extra-long look. She wants me to see only the good, the way she does here.

  Naomi nods along. “It’s nice, Elodee,” she says. “It’s not the same as . . . as the other place . . . but it’s really nice here. Magical.”

  I know Mom wants me to be like Naomi right now, and I want to be what Mom wants me to be, so I try to nod and smile, too, but it hurts a little. It feels a little like pretending.

  We sit and listen to the fire crackle. I love the sound and the smell. After a while, my heart beats its regular rhythm. The rug is cozy, my sister is nearby, Mom is happy, and still the smell of roses drifts into the room, even here, even with the fire going.

  I want the niceness, the coziness and warmth to be enough. The way it is for Mom. The way it is for Naomi. I want to fit in with them and feel all the same things in all the same moments. It would be less lonely to feel the same way as the people I love most.

  Stop being lonely! I tell my heart. Feel the right way!

  It tries. It really, really tries hard.

  Before we leave, though, I peek at a few more books. Just to make absolutely sure I didn’t miss something. Maybe, I think, a few of them have words. Maybe, I think, there’s one tiny poem or just a beautiful sentence somewhere in this enormous building.

  But every book I open up is the same.

  Blank.

  24

  Faded Freckles

  I’d almost forgotten about our birthday when Dad asks us over dinner that night what we want to do for it.

  “Oh!” Naomi says, and I can tell she’d forgotten too. “What do people do for birthdays here?”

  “Probably exactly what they do everywhere else,” I say. I don’t want to think about what everyone else thinks we’re supposed to do. I want to come up with something that we’ll love. Twelve seems like a really important birthday. A grown-up birthday.

  “We can do anything you’d like,” Mom says.

  “Within reason!” Dad says, laughing.

  “Within reason, yes,” Mom says, rolling her eyes at Dad. “No elephant rides or skydiving, okay?”

  “No trips back to Juniper,” I say. I mean to say it in the same joking way Mom and Dad are saying things, but I must do it wrong, because everyone falls silent.

  “Gross. Why would we go back to Juniper?” Naomi says.

  “I was kidding,” I say, blushing. I wait for someone to say something, anything else so that we can all forget the bad joke I made.

  “How about a tea party?” Mom says. “Something a little grown-up for such a grown-up birthday?”

  Naomi and I smile the same smile at the same moment. It feels good to agree so fully about something as important as your twelfth birthday.

  “That sounds perfect,” Naomi says.

  “You and me with Veena and Betsy?” I say.

  “Yes! With little tiny sandwiches. And that tea set in the cupboard!” Naomi and I are talking quickly now. We’ve always loved our birthday.

  “We can set up outside. A picnic tea party,” I say.

  “Should we wear dresses?”

  “Yes, and maybe hats.”

  “Do people wear hats at tea parties, Mom?” Naomi asks. I bet my eyes are as shiny as hers. I bet her heart is beating as excitedly as mine.

  “I think they do,” Mom says. “We can find some special ones for you.”

  “Maybe I’ll pick some special flowers for the hats,” Dad says.

  “Veena and Betsy will love it,” Naomi says. She sighs a big, happy sigh, and I do the same. “It’s going to be perfect.”

  And for once, I’m sure that it is.

  It’s hard to fall asleep, thinking about our tea-party birthday. I think it’s going to be our best birthday party yet—better than roller-skating or makeovers or the year we went on a scavenger hunt all over Juniper. Those were all little-kids’ birthdays. This one will be different. A fancy Eventown party with the best friends we’ve ever had.

  “Are you up?” I whisper to the top bunk. I want to ask Naomi if she has any more ideas for food or cake or if we should organize any games.

  But Naomi, somehow, is breathing heavily. Probably dreaming of our party. I sit up in bed. I can’t stand lying there with my mind running all over the place. Maybe I’ll be able to sleep if I go take a look at the tea set and write down a few more ideas.

  I sneak downstairs. The house in Eventown doesn’t creak. It’s easy to silently tiptoe through it. It’s sort of nice, being up by myself, and before I go to the tea set I sneak a glass of milk and a chocolate chip cookie for a midnight snack that I can eat while I look at the moon.

  The whole world feels right.

  When I’ve finished the cookie and the moon starts to get boring, I head to the cabinet with the tea set. I know it’s on the highest shelf because it’s the most breakable, delicate thing in the house, and Mom always puts fragile things up high just in case.

  I drag the step stool over to the cabinet, and I can’t reach the whole set, but I hook my finger around one of the teacups. I pat the shelf blindly to see if there’s anything else I can reach, and my fingers find a glossy slip of paper.

  I almost don’t bring it down. I know that aside from fragile things, Mom and Dad sometimes put other important things on top shelves. Credit cards and letters and sometimes even presents that Naomi and I aren’t supposed to see until our birthday or Christmas. Still, I can’t resist. Maybe it’s a birthday card for us. Maybe it’s a special recipe they’re saving for a rainy day.

  I slide the teacup off my finger and onto a low shelf, and look at the paper in my hand.

  It’s not regular paper, I realize. It’s shiny photo paper.

  A photograph.

  I try to remember if we brought any photo albums with us. Back in Juniper, Mom would keep the photo albums on the coffee table so that anyone who wanted to could flip through them and see all the best memories of the last few years. But in Eventown we only have a vase of roses on the coffee table. No photo albums.

  We also don’t have any family
photos hanging on the walls or set up on the mantel. Nothing stuck to the fridge, either. I try to push away the feeling that there’s something strange about that. Maybe we haven’t unpacked our photos yet. Maybe Mom’s keeping them somewhere else and if I ask her about them tomorrow it will be no big deal at all.

  But something tells me that this might be the only photo in our Eventown home.

  Something tells me photos are like the six tales we were supposed to tell at the Welcoming Center—meant to be forgotten.

  I flip the photo over.

  It’s a picture of a boy a few years older than me. He has long legs and light brown hair and a funny, smirky smile. He’s in a garden, using his hands to dig a new place for a little, not-yet-bloomed flower.

  His nose is sunburned and he has eyes like mine. It’s not a picture I’ve seen before. But it’s a picture that feels like home anyway.

  I can’t place who it could possibly be. The person looks both familiar and not familiar. My heart responds to his face, even though my brain has nothing to offer. I like the boy in the picture even though I can’t think of who it might be.

  “Oh!” I say to myself at last. “Dad!” He has Dad’s shoulders and nose and love of flowers, clearly. He looks a little like me and Naomi and a little like Dad and even a little like Mom. It must be a photo of Dad when he was young.

  I’ve always liked seeing pictures of my parents when they were my age. So it makes sense that I would like this photograph and half recognize the person in it.

  I look at it again and smile at the way younger-Dad’s smile is toothier than his smile now, and his arms and legs are skinnier. I could put the photograph back in its rightful place, on the highest shelf, but I like it too much to let it go.