Eventown

by Corey Ann Haydu

  I’m missing the old photographs of Mom as a chubby baby and Dad going to prom that we used to look at all the time, back in Juniper. And I’m worried those photos are gone. So I have to hold on to this one, just in case.

  I bring it upstairs with me. I can’t stop looking at the faded freckles, the red nose, the hands digging in dirt. I don’t want to stop looking at it. So I fall asleep with the photograph in my hands.

  When I wake up in the morning, it’s fallen right against my heart.

  25

  My Stupid Heart

  I feel twelve when I wake up two days later, on Saturday morning.

  “Do you feel twelve?” I ask Naomi when she’s climbed down from her bunk.

  She stretches. She wiggles her fingers. She coughs.

  Finally, she smiles.

  “Yep!” she says. She barrels downstairs. I wait an extra few seconds before following her. Long enough to open up the drawer of my bedside table and take a look at the photograph I found the other day. It’s become a ritual the last few days. I like to look at it in the morning and at night.

  I’ll ask my dad about it soon.

  But not yet. Right now, I like it being mine.

  Mom’s brought us chocolate croissants and hot chocolate and chocolate doughnuts for breakfast, and I bet the whole town can hear Naomi and me squeal with excitement at our all-chocolate breakfast.

  “I thought it might be a nice new tradition,” Mom says with a grin.

  “I didn’t know you could start new traditions,” I say.

  “Sure you can,” Mom says. “How do you think they become old traditions?”

  “This is a perfect new tradition,” Naomi says. “Let’s keep it.”

  I nod and take a big bite of doughnut. “Yep,” I say with a full mouth, because on your birthday no one’s going to stop you from talking with your mouth full. “Let’s keep it.”

  Dad sings a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday” at the top of his lungs and uses all different voices—a monster voice and an old lady voice and a little baby voice. Mom sings it regular, and that’s nice too.

  “Happy birthday, Omi,” I say to my sister, using the special nickname like I do every year.

  She looks at me a little funny.

  “Happy birthday, Elodee,” she replies, instead of calling me Elo, the way she’s supposed to.

  “We’ve got a lot of getting ready to do!” Mom says. She brings out two new dresses for us and they look perfect for a tea party. Naomi’s is pink and flouncy, and mine is light green with lace at the bottom. Dad brings out our flowery hats—he’s made four. I choose a yellow one and Naomi chooses a pink one, and we leave a blue one and a purple one for Veena and Betsy. They have roses in the front and ribbons in the back and they’re a little ridiculous but also really beautiful.

  I make a huge array of sandwiches—BLTs with extra-crispy bacon, and chicken salad with apples and celery, and peanut butter and jelly with homemade blueberry jelly from our never-ending supply of blueberries.

  I resist combining the sandwiches, even though I’d like to put bacon on the peanut butter or apples in with the BLT. I keep them all normal.

  Naomi picks some roses and puts them in a vase in the middle of our picnic blanket, with the beautiful tea set. We don’t like tea, so we fill the teapot with fresh orange juice and set out four cups and saucers.

  “Wow,” Dad says when he comes out to the backyard in his gardening gear. “Now, this is a picnic. Those are some lucky friends you have.” He wanders from rosebush to rosebush, checking on each of them while we wait for our friends to arrive. I watch him, waiting for him to notice the new blooms on the Juniper rosebush. He hasn’t said anything about it since Baxter pointed it out to me and Naomi at the beginning of the week, so I’m hoping he knows exactly how to fix it.

  He pauses when he gets to its spot on the lawn. He leans over it. Crouches down and looks at the roots, looks back and forth from that rosebush to the others. “Huh,” he says.

  “The rosebush okay?” I ask.

  Dad tilts his head, and I can tell he’s trying to communicate with the bush. He said once that if you listen, plants tell you what they need. I don’t think he meant that they literally speak words to him, but I know he needs quiet to be able to do his work. So I go very quiet.

  I know it looks different, but the rosebush looks sort of beautiful too. It looks like all the roses want to be on that one bush, like it’s the best bush to hang out on. And I love how big the petals are. How bright too.

  “I don’t think it needs more water,” Dad says. “I—don’t know what it needs. Maybe I should pick off some of the flowers? There’s a lot of them.”

  “That’s okay, right?” I ask.

  “Of course,” Dad says. “The soil here is fantastic. It’s easy to grow pretty much everything. I’m sure it’s just loving Eventown as much as we are.”

  Before I can ask any more questions, Veena and Betsy bound out to the backyard and Naomi yips with excitement, and Betsy oohs and ahs over our picnic setup.

  “Happy birthday!” they call out in unison, as if they’re twins too.

  Betsy hands us each a pair of barrettes like the kind she and now Naomi are always wearing. Veena has a fancy mixing bowl for me and a gymnastics figurine for Naomi. For once, the present-getting part doesn’t feel as important as the actual party part of our birthday.

  We settle onto the picnic blanket, and Naomi hands out Veena’s and Betsy’s hats. They each clearly fall in love with the oversized brims and good-smelling flowers.

  “These are so cool,” Veena says.

  “Dad made them,” I say, not wanting to brag but also wanting them to know that we know our dad is kind of amazing.

  “I love the teacups!” Betsy says. They are white with red roses painted on them. Delicate and almost small enough for dolls to use instead of humans.

  “Naomi’s idea,” I say, and Naomi beams at me. Finally, I’ve said something that she likes.

  The girls say hi to Dad, and he sort of covers the rosebush with his body.

  “You have a very nice home,” Veena says to Dad, and I can tell it’s the kind of super-polite thing her mom reminded her to say. The word home gives me a funny pang in my chest.

  Juniper felt like home for a long time, but then it changed because so many other things changed. Eventown doesn’t feel like home yet, but I like it here. But if Juniper’s not home anymore and Eventown’s not home yet, does that mean I don’t have a home right now?

  My skin aches at the thought. My feet sweat. I shiver my shoulders a little, in the hopes that I can shake it off.

  Feel normal, I tell my heart, and it tries to listen, I think.

  “We love our new home!” Naomi says.

  My stupid heart is making me want to yell at her. We haven’t agreed that this is home! I want to cry. We’re not ready! Why are you leaving me behind? You’re the worst sister in the world!

  “So, what’s being twelve like?” Veena asks. I don’t know when she’ll turn twelve, but I guess she’s still eleven. I’m about to answer, but Betsy butts in.

  “It’s sort of like you feel calmer,” Betsy says. “And I grew an inch on my twelfth birthday. I wonder if you guys grew.”

  I don’t think it’s possible that Betsy grew an inch all at once. But I think of the little rosebud that popped up in front of my eyes and change my mind. Maybe it is possible.

  “Do people or, like, other things grow more quickly here?” I ask.

  “Probably,” Betsy says. “Everything’s better here.”

  “Do you think I’ve grown an inch today?” Naomi asks. She stands up very, very straight and pulls me up to stand back-to-back with her.

  I can tell that we are exactly the same height still. We’ve lined up like this a billion times before.

  “I wish I was a twin,” Betsy says. It surprises me. I didn’t think Betsy thought anything about her life was imperfect.

  “It’s pretty great,” I say.


  Naomi nods, but she doesn’t say anything.

  I tell my heart not to hurt.

  Veena’s brought something sticky and orange and delicious called jalebi for dessert, and as soon as she brings it out everyone asks her a bunch of questions about it. We all try it at the same time. After a few bites of jalebi, I feel fine again. It tastes a little like fried dough but with more flavor.

  “Now, that is a dessert,” Dad says. In his voice I hear how bad we all know my last attempt at cake was. I don’t feel embarrassed, though. I wait for my heart to flip and my skin to flush, but nothing happens. In fact, when I think about how I normally might be embarrassed about a failed cake, I can’t seem to remember if I ever felt embarrassed about one before.

  Or the last time I was embarrassed at all.

  I can’t remember, either, the story I told at the Welcoming Center. My most humiliating moment.

  “What kind of dessert did we have at our eleventh birthday?” I ask Naomi. “Do you remember?”

  Naomi stuffs more jalebi into her mouth and shrugs.

  “The bakery in town makes amazing cakes,” Veena says, and I get the feeling she’s trying to change the subject. “Mine was decorated with my face last year. It was sort of creepy, actually. But cool!”

  “I got an ice cream cake for my twelfth birthday,” Betsy says. “Rose-vanilla. Obviously.”

  “Oh! Like we had a few weeks ago! That’s so funny,” I say.

  Betsy squints at me like I don’t make any sense at all to her.

  “I had an ice cream cake one year,” I say, “but it melted and I totally freaked out. I was, like, seven, so I freaked out all the time.”

  Betsy doesn’t stop her squinting. “So did you guys go to the Welcoming Center yet?” she asks.

  Naomi and I nod.

  “Oh, cool!” Veena says. “What was it like?”

  Naomi looks at me, and I look back at her. Now would be the moment we could tell Veena and Betsy about getting interrupted by Veena’s mom. Now would be the right time to ask why her mom was there, and if it was okay that I didn’t finish telling my stories.

  But Naomi’s face tells me not to say anything. I know the face well. It is her let us fit in face, her don’t cause a stir face.

  I give the tiniest nod back. I won’t tell Veena if Naomi won’t tell our parents.

  “Really good cake,” Naomi says.

  “Yeah, but they should serve jalebi there, instead of cake,” I say so that I don’t say anything else. Betsy laughs like it’s the funniest idea in the world, but I don’t see what’s so funny. The jalebi makes me feel very welcomed. And I keep discovering new layers of taste. “Does this have lemon? And roses?” I ask.

  “Yes! There’s lemon juice and my mom dips them in rosewater. I guess it’s a family tradition.”

  “What do you mean? Does your grandmother make jalebi too?” I ask.

  Veena shrugs.

  “Is she still in India?”

  Veena shrugs. I should know enough to stop asking questions, but once they start I can’t stop them.

  “Do you think you’ll visit India someday?”

  Naomi nudges me with her foot and Betsy pretends she didn’t hear.

  Veena finally stops shrugging. She looks right at me, like she’s seeing something new on my face—a new constellation of freckles, a new difference between my face and Naomi’s.

  Naomi changes the subject to Chase, the boy she and Betsy both think is cute, but Veena doesn’t take her eyes off me.

  “That would be so cool,” Veena whispers, under the din of Naomi and Betsy’s Chase-chatter.

  Then, as if she never said a word, she says something about the color of Chase’s eyes and how many times he looked at Naomi in music class, and I wonder if that tiny moment ever happened, and why wanting to go to India someday would ever be a secret.

  Betsy asks me who I think is cute, but I don’t think any of the boys are cute. I say there was someone in Juniper who I thought was cute, and right away Betsy says she has to go to the bathroom instead of asking me about them. When she’s all the way in the house, Veena leans over and motions for us to come closer. We scoot closer on the blanket, our knees touching. Veena whispers.

  “Betsy’s one of the only other kids in town who wasn’t born here,” she says. “A lot of our parents were born outside of Eventown. But Betsy’s the only kid who came from some other place when she was really little. Since we only take one new family a year, a lot of them are grown-ups or babies, but usually there’s not someone our age. And we’re not supposed to—talking about other places isn’t really—maybe you shouldn’t mention Juniper. Even though it sounds really cool. And interesting. But I think the less you talk about it the easier it will be.”

  “The easier what will be?” I ask.

  Betsy comes back before the question gets answered. She doesn’t sit back down. “Veena. We need to go,” she says. She sounds like a teacher. A principal, even. Stern. In charge.

  “We just got here,” Veena says.

  “We need to go. Now.” Betsy jerks her head toward my dad and the rosebush. Dad is picking roses from the bush, but it doesn’t seem to be helping much. It looks incredibly crowded. Somehow, since Veena and Betsy got here, the rosebush looks even more brilliant, bigger, less like everything else around it. And Dad circling it over and over doesn’t seem to be making anyone more comfortable.

  “It’s just a rosebush,” I say, so quietly they might not hear me. And maybe Betsy doesn’t, but Veena does. Her eyes find mine and her fingers wrap around her necklaces.

  “Maybe we can stay . . . ,” she says, but Betsy tugs on her arm. I see the exact moment when she gives in to the pull. “Tell your dad to go visit my mom and dad. They’ll know how to help,” Veena says. “Don’t worry. And happy birthday!” They vanish down the road so fast I don’t even have time to say thank you.

  They’ve left behind their hats too. The hats look silly, all of a sudden, abandoned in the middle of our yard. They’re all wrong for a twelfth birthday.

  Naomi glares at me. “You aren’t following the rules,” she says. “The Welcoming Center. The questions. Even your stupid cake.”

  “I don’t control how roses grow, Naomi,” I say. I’m tired of her giving me this look every time something goes wrong.

  “You’ve been weird since the Welcoming Center,” she says. “You’ve been different.”

  I shake my head and try to unhear her.

  “Dad?” I call out. “What’s going on with the roses?”

  “I’m sorry, girls. I’m trying to fix it. It’s turning out to be a little tricky.” He goes inside to find something else to help the rosebush and I lean close to it to see if I can figure out what it needs, why it’s already grown higher than it was this morning, why there are so many blooms I can barely see the stems.

  Naomi joins me. She doesn’t say anything, but she stands so close I can hear her breathing, I can feel her seeing what I’m seeing.

  And what I’m seeing is a little strange.

  Weeds. Not already grown ones. But brand-new weeds, crowding right around the base of the bush, sprouting and growing and spreading before our eyes.

  I reach for Naomi’s hand, but she pulls it to her chest and doesn’t let me have it. There are only five weeds growing, and they are skinny and almost easy to miss. But the way they grow is so fast, so insistent, so incredibly strange, that I can’t tear my eyes away.

  I look all around the other yards that I can see from here. I don’t see a single weed. I don’t see anything else growing like it’s in fast-forward.

  Baxter is outside doing his homework. He waves and I wave back. Naomi waves, too, but she’s focused on the growing weeds.

  Lickety-split, she pulls them from the ground and stuffs them in her pockets. She kicks dirt over the places they sprouted from. She stomps her feet into the ground a little, demanding nothing else grow there.

  She doesn’t look at me or say a word.

  She
watches the ground another moment, to make sure nothing new grows. Nothing does. Her pockets are full, and Baxter’s straining to get a look at what in the world we’re doing. But the moment’s over before he catches it. As if it never happened at all.

  26

  Only Three

  “Maybe we should tell Veena about the weeds,” I say to Naomi when we wake up Monday morning for school. “She said her parents could help.” It’s been on my mind since Naomi shoved the weeds in her pockets on our birthday. We haven’t spoken about them at all. We haven’t spoken about our failed birthday party either. Instead we tested each other for our vocabulary quiz, and we went on a hike with Mom and to the market with Dad to pick up more green strawberries and a whole entire pound of maple fudge.

  Then we ate so much maple fudge that we should have gotten sick, but instead we just got happy and silly and played a two-person game of tag in the yard as the sun spent hours sinking behind the Eventown Hills.

  It was a great weekend, except every once in a while I’d think about the look on Betsy’s face when she saw the rosebush, and the abandoned party hats and the sadness of a party that stops before it’s supposed to, and the look on Naomi’s face when she shoved the weeds into her pockets, and a thousand questions popped into my head.

  “Why would we tell Veena?” Naomi asks. “Why do you want to tell Veena every little thing?” She’s laid her outfit on the ground, and when she rolls out of bed she puts it on right away like she doesn’t want to be seen in the fuzzy yellow pajamas we both have.

  “It was weird, don’t you think? And Veena sometimes explains stuff when something seems weird.”

  Naomi’s outfit is perfect. Her purple tights match her purple T-shirt and her gray skirt looks pretty with her gray cardigan. I put on flowered leggings and a flowy green top that I tie with a pink belt. It doesn’t match, but I think it matches the town—all green and flowery and colorful.

  Naomi wrinkles her nose at it.

  “Can’t you wear something else?” she says. “Those leggings are weird.”

  I ignore her. Because if I didn’t ignore her I might say something mean, like that sometimes I wish she could be different than she is too. Naomi’s always wishing I were more like Betsy, I think. And sometimes I’m wishing Naomi could be someone sillier and stronger and nicer to me. Someone who gets why floral leggings and a green top go together better than an all-gray-and-purple outfit. Someone who gets why it doesn’t matter if it all matches anyway.