When Naomi turns around, I sneak a look at the photograph of young Dad. For some reason, it makes me feel better.
“Do you think things always grow that way in Eventown?” I ask. I’m not ready to let it go.
“Why are you so obsessed with asking questions that no one wants to answer?” Naomi says. She isn’t using an angry voice, but her words are mean. “Why can’t you just leave things be?”
“I thought you would be curious too,” I say in a small voice.
“I’m curious why you can’t just make nice conversation. Or say who you think is cute. Or make a vanilla cake. Or stay quiet in class. Or see how happy Mom and Dad are here and that everything’s better and there’s no reason to worry about weeds or anything else. You’re making something easy so hard. Even a birthday party. Why aren’t you happy the way I am? The way Mom and Dad are?”
“I’m happy,” I say, but I know I’m not saying it loud enough for her to believe me. “I am mostly really happy,” I try again. “And when I’m not happy I try really hard to be happy.”
There’s a grip in my heart, and Naomi’s right here but she feels a million miles away, on a whole other planet, and she gets to be there with Mom and Dad and I’m stuck here, on my weird little planet all alone. I want to explain all of that to her, but every time I try to explain what is making me feel unsettled or weird, all I do is get further and further away. My planet keeps getting pushed farther into space, and I have no idea how to leap off it and be on their planet.
Sometimes, the only thing that makes me feel like I’m not all by myself on my weird planet is that photograph of young Dad. Sometimes I pretend I’m in that garden with him, able to be myself without anyone getting mad about it. I want to look at it again, right now.
But mostly I want Naomi to stop saying how different and weird I am.
“I guess I’m not upset,” I say. “I guess I’m happy too. I’ll forget about the weeds.”
Naomi relaxes. “Good,” she says. “You should be happy. I’ll cook something with you tonight, okay? Or bake something. We can make banana bread. You love making banana bread.”
I do. I love making banana bread. “Okay,” I say.
“It’s going to be a good day,” Naomi says. “Any day that Mom makes cinnamon rolls is a good day.”
“Even though they’d be better if I made them,” I say.
“Obviously,” Naomi says with a big grin, and I try to make Naomi grinning at me enough to make me grin too.
I am trying so, so hard.
The trying works. Pretty much. We do finger painting in art class, and I thought it was sort of for babies, but it ends up being really fun. I ace our vocabulary quiz, and there’s spaghetti and meatballs for lunch. And as if I get a reward for asking zero questions and being quiet about the weeds all day, Naomi asks Veena and Betsy to go to the ice cream shop with us after school.
“Ooooh, today’s flavor is chocolate-blueberry,” Veena says when we get there. I remember when we were on vacation here, there was a different flavor every day, each more magical than the last.
“I wonder how they come up with so many different kinds,” I say. “They have such cool ideas. Will they just try anything?” I’m imagining myself working here over the summer, someday, maybe as Junior Ingredient Decider or Ice Cream Maker in Training.
“What do you mean?” Veena asks. Naomi orders a scoop of chocolate-blueberry for each of us. They come in sugary cones and not a single drop melts off the top.
“The different flavors they have every day. How do they come up with them?” I take a lick of my scoop. It’s delicious and delicate and I could eat gallons of it. It’s a little familiar on my tongue.
“There’s only three,” Veena says. “Vanilla-rose, chocolate-blueberry, and maple-caramel.”
“Only three?” I ask. I look to Naomi, search her for disappointment or confusion, but it’s not there. She’s attacking her cone with a closed-eyes contentment I’ve rarely seen on her face.
“They rotate. One of those three flavors every day. All using the best Eventown ingredients. That’s what makes it so delicious. Everything’s fresh.” Veena laps at her cone, but I don’t return to mine.
Still, it doesn’t melt. Not even as I wait a full minute, then two, before licking it again. It stays cold and solid and still somehow creamy.
Perfect.
“Oh,” I say. “I thought—we all thought—we assumed there was a different flavor every day.” I think back to a few weeks ago when we came with Veena, and a few years before that when the whole family came. The shop is as perfect as it was in our memories, but I’m disappointed anyway.
As disappointed as the day we went to the library.
I lick my nonmelting ice cream.
“It’s like the library,” I say, hoping Veena or at least Naomi will agree with me.
“How is an ice cream shop anything like a library?” Naomi asks. She laughs and Betsy laughs, but I’m not laughing.
“It’s . . .” I can’t find the words. I know that the Eventown library is different from libraries back home and I know this ice cream place is different from what I thought it was in my mind.
I don’t remember all my stories from back home, or even all my feelings, but I remember enough to know that in Juniper we had many kinds of different ice cream flavors and that we had libraries filled with books and that those books were filled with words.
I look at Naomi. I want her to remember all the things I’m remembering. But the look on her face tells me that her memories are even blurrier than mine. That some of them are all the way gone. Maybe she has forgotten all our stories from getting ice cream back home. Maybe she’s even forgotten what it was like to read at the library, lying on the blue carpet in between the stacks, flipping pages and laughing or crying at what we found there.
I sort of miss licking ice cream off the side of my hand. I sort of miss worrying that it will drip to the ground, fall apart, melt too fast. I miss the race against time that was getting a cone. I look at Naomi. I want her to miss all that too.
But Naomi is lost in her cone.
I know, the way I sometimes know things about my twin that she doesn’t exactly tell me, that Naomi doesn’t remember the way melted ice cream used to make rivers on our hands. And she doesn’t remember our happiest memories at the Juniper Ice Cream Café.
So I keep those little scenes to myself, like a book no one else has ever read.
And I try to enjoy the ice cream, but the perfect flavor and the way it never melts doesn’t make me as happy as the things my heart remembers.
I look at the faces of my sister and friends.
I am starting to think it’s possible I am the only person in the whole town who has these sticky, strange, shuddering feelings.
Like the Juniper rosebush, I’m not quite fitting into this new place.
And like the Juniper rosebush, no one understands why.
27
Dandelion Invasion
On Thursday morning I make oatmeal and bacon for everyone and watch the dandelions that have taken over our yard. It is a sea of yellow outside, like the sun has dyed our whole yard with its brightest beams. It would be beautiful if it weren’t also a little scary.
“It’s a dandelion invasion,” Dad says, like we are suddenly at war with our plants.
“People are noticing, Todd,” Mom says in a voice that she thinks we can’t hear but of course we can.
“Betsy noticed the rosebush,” Naomi says.
“Everyone noticed everything,” I say, because we have spent three days of school trying to answer the question of why our yard has been looking so strange. Naomi started telling people that Dad was working on special flowers for the center of town, and I guess people believed that. Sort of.
Still, they are looking at us a little funny. In a way that makes me remember being looked at like I’m different, like I’m not the right person to be friends with, like I’m no longer in the club of normal kids with n
ormal families and normal rosebushes.
Naomi is very, very quiet about the whole thing. I can see her brain working, but I can’t see what it’s thinking.
“It’s like Juniper,” I say. “I remember sometimes people looking at us like this in Juniper.” I can’t remember why they looked at us this way, but I remember the way it felt after.
Lonely. So lonely I sometimes crawled under my covers and wouldn’t come out. So lonely I wished and wished and wished to be normal again.
“Don’t talk about that place,” Naomi says, sprinkling extra cinnamon on her perfect bowl of oatmeal. I made it because it’s comfort food and I thought we might all need comfort. “We’re here now.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I say.
Naomi looks at me funny. Mom does too. Dad only looks out the window. It’s going to be a long day. Maybe oatmeal wasn’t the right breakfast after all.
A vine winds its way over our window, splitting the morning view in two. We all gasp.
“Todd. Go cut that vine down, please,” Mom says. She sounds calm and looks calm, but I know there must be something more underneath all that ease. “This is fine, I’m sure. It’s a little odd, but I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation. There always is. Now, let’s not get distracted by these silly weeds. Get yourselves all ready for school, okay?”
Naomi and I nod, and I’m not scared, but I’m something else. I’m full of wondering. And questions. And I know that Eventown doesn’t like questions very much.
When we’re done brushing teeth and packing bags and shoving our feet inside shoes, we step out on the lawn, backpacks strapped to our backs, and take in the sight. The dandelions are relentless. No other lawns have dandelions. None of them have weeds of any kind. The grass of other lawns is green and short and even. It looks freshly mowed every day.
“You need to go back,” Naomi says.
“Go back where? Juniper?”
“No. The Welcoming Center. You need to go back there and finish.”
I thought maybe she’d forgotten, or at least finally given up on worrying about it, but it’s clear that’s one thing she hasn’t forgotten. “They haven’t said anything about it,” I say. I expected Christine and Josiah to stop by or find Mom and tell her to bring me back in. But it seems like they got so distracted by whatever argument they had with Ms. Butra and her friends that they don’t remember that I didn’t finish telling stories.
“Well, I’m saying something about it,” Naomi says. “Don’t you think it was weird? Mom and Dad made it seem like the Welcoming Center is a big deal. Betsy too. And if it’s a big deal and it didn’t go well, doesn’t that mean something?”
“There’s stuff you haven’t wanted to tell people too,” I say. “You kept those weeds a secret from Dad, and now look. And I said we should ask Veena about what happened with her mom at the Welcoming Center.”
“Veena’s not in charge,” Naomi says.
“Neither are you,” I say.
Naomi crosses her arms. I do the same.
“They’ll probably just have you go back and finish. It’s not a big deal.”
I think about the three stories I didn’t tell. My angriest time, my loneliest time, my most joyful time. They’re still clear in my head. I can turn them upside down and around and dream about them at night. The memories I did tell are gone. I can’t reach them. And I don’t want to make these last three vanish too.
“I’m not going back,” I say. I know before I say the words that Naomi won’t like them. That even worse, she won’t understand them.
“Yes, you are. You will after I tell Mom and Dad,” Naomi says. She looks the way she does when she’s called on in class and knows the answer but doesn’t want to say it because she hates speaking in front of everyone.
Sometimes I would jump in and answer for her. I’d get in trouble, but it was always worth it, for the way that she relaxed and smiled her sister-smile at me.
Now, though, Naomi won’t protect me the way I’ve always protected her.
“The stories I told them are gone,” I say. “I don’t want to let go of my happiest story.”
“Your happiest story will be one you have here, in Eventown,” Naomi says. “How could anything be happier than here?” She’s getting exasperated, her voice tired and urgent. Why won’t you agree with me already? the words under her words say.
I don’t know how to answer, because the happy story is so simple I think Naomi wouldn’t understand it. The memory is of the house smelling like a jasmine–olive oil cake with white chocolate–pear frosting and being awake when everyone else in the house was asleep. It was knowing everyone in the family was happy and full because of me. It was realizing I wasn’t worried about anything and it was sneaking downstairs for one more piece of cake and putting a Beatles record on Mom’s record player with the volume turned way down low.
I know without telling her that Naomi won’t understand any of that right now.
I know without telling her that Naomi probably doesn’t remember any of those things. The smell of the cake or the sound of the music or the way it felt to be in the house in Juniper on a night when nothing had gone wrong. There were lots of sad nights in Juniper, so the ones that were happy were like finding buried treasure.
I want to hold on to the map that leads me to those memories, to that treasure.
“I’m not ready to let go of all my stories,” I say, hoping if I say it with the right tone, with the right combination of words, Naomi will understand. But she doesn’t hear me. She sighs and, I think, wishes I were more like Betsy and less like Elodee.
She starts the walk to school, but I linger on the lawn for a moment longer and watch the vines continue to grow, covering more and more of our house.
I swear I can hear the rosebush growing another inch and more dandelions poke through the ground, brushing up against my sandaled toes.
Inside, I’m sure, the kitchen still smells like bacon and warm cinnamon and the best kind of home.
But outside.
Outside something is happening.
28
Twinness
There are whispers at school. The whispers are about us. I know, because I hear the words twins and new and weeds and roses. I hear the words different and strange and stay away.
They have seen our house. Maybe not all of them, but the ones who haven’t seen it have heard about it. Juniper was a small town, and Eventown is an even smaller town. And in a tiny town, it’s impossible to hide the things you hope no one notices.
People notice.
I remember from Juniper the way it feels to walk down the halls with people talking about me, but I don’t remember why they ever talked about us before. And not knowing the why makes the feeling stranger, wilder, more like the vines and the dandelions and the rosebush.
Naomi waves at Betsy and she waves back, but weakly. She looks almost sad. I didn’t know Betsy ever looked sad.
“Do you remember making people sad, in Juniper?” I ask my sister.
“Elodee. Please stop asking what I remember,” she says with a sigh as big as a stormy wind. “I don’t remember anything that you’re talking about. I remember a stupid white house and a crowded school bus and Dad working on the garden just like he does here, and you baking and cooking all the time just like you do here. And I remember the gym and the creaky beam and wanting to go to the mall all the time. That’s pretty much it. That was our life there. The end.”
“That’s not the end,” I say. “There’s more to remember.” I tell myself to stop talking, stop asking her questions, but I can’t. I need a teammate. I need her to feel what I’m feeling and remember what I’m feeling and not leave me out here by myself with the whispers and the wondering.
“Not for me,” Naomi says. Naomi wants out of this conversation. I can tell from the way she keeps looking over my shoulder, from the way her toes and elbows point away from me, her whole body practically twisting itself away from me. “We have e
verything we need here. The story of the day we ate the best ice cream. The story of the day a butterfly landed on my shoulder. The story of the day I fell in love with playing the cymbals. The story of the day we first ate jalebi. What else could you possibly want?”
I try to feel the same way Naomi does. I try to make those stories feel like enough. I stare really hard at all the things that are the same about us. Our hair, our eyes, our noses, our chins. It’s not enough.
Naomi runs ahead to get into class and I follow behind, taking tiny steps.
I get to my seat right when Ms. Applebet is taking attendance and everyone’s eyes are all over me when I raise my hand to say I’m here. Math class starts, and I can’t pay any attention to numbers and the ways they pile on top of each other and divide themselves up.
Veena passes me a note.
It’s okay, it reads.
I don’t understand, I write back. Veena takes her time writing me back. She pretends to consider long division, but I know she’s thinking through how to explain Eventown to me. She’ll scribble something down, then stick her tongue out of the side of her mouth a little, erase it, and write something else.
Naomi keeps glancing over at me, to make sure I’m not being weird, I think. Betsy doesn’t look my way. Other people are passing notes, and I feel like they must be about my family, but I try to focus on Veena’s fast-writing hand and nothing else. Definitely not long division or the fact that I suddenly notice Naomi and Betsy are wearing the same outfit—red skirts, gray T-shirts, black Mary Janes, shiny black rhinestone barrettes in their hair.
Twins.
Veena has to poke my arm to get my attention because my eyes are busy looking back and forth between Naomi and Betsy, checking out every new similarity. Each one breaks my heart a little. SHE’S MY TWIN, NOT YOURS! I want to yell.
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