Eventown

by Corey Ann Haydu

  But that would only make me weirder, and it would make Naomi more upset with me, and it would make me even lonelier.

  So I swallow it all down and shiver a little from how big and pulsing those feelings are, and I open Veena’s note.

  The houses here are like you and Naomi—twins. Imagine if Naomi’s hair turned blue and your eyes got bigger and Naomi’s nose shrank down to a little button nose and your chin got all pointy. You’d be scared, right? Because you’re used to being the same. It’s like that here. Your lawn isn’t the same anymore. And no one knows why. But it has to mean something is wrong. If Naomi suddenly wasn’t your twin, it would mean something’s wrong, right?

  I read Veena’s note three times. Then three more.

  Naomi has my eyes and hair and chin still. We’re the same height and have the same hands, and anyone passing us on the street would still smile at our twinness.

  But.

  But. So much else isn’t the same. And so much never was the same. And Veena’s right. It makes me feel weird, to see the differences, to have to live with them.

  I understand, I write back. And I almost pass it to her with nothing else, but I think about our lawn, and yes, it’s strange and different and a little frightening to some people, but the shock of yellow dandelions was exciting too. Can’t something be both unsettling or scary and beautiful? I write more after a lot of thinking about not-math,

  I wish everyone loved seeing an enormous rosebush, because it’s pretty. And seeing plants grow in front of your eyes is cool too. I mean, it’s sort of scary. I get it. But back home everyone would think the big roses were the best ones.

  I watch Veena read my note. She gives me a sad smile and writes one last note. This time, she just holds it up in front of her face so I can see it.

  You’re not back home, though.

  29

  A Little Bit of Saltiness

  “Betsy’s going to come to my gymnastics meet today,” Naomi says after school. “You don’t have to.”

  “Oh,” I say. “I want to.” Naomi looks everywhere but at my face. “Unless you don’t want me to?”

  “Maybe not today,” she says at last. “I bet you want to do something else anyway. Bake or something.”

  “You don’t want me there,” I say. It isn’t a question, so I don’t phrase it like one.

  She doesn’t want to say it. Saying it will change everything. So instead Naomi adjusts her skirt, which matches Betsy’s skirt. I raise my eyebrows. “You have a new twin now,” I say.

  Naomi rolls her eyes. “It’s for fun.”

  “You’ve never wanted to dress like me,” I say. It’s true. Even back in Juniper I’d sometimes want us to dress the same and confuse our friends, and Naomi always wrinkled her nose and said no, that it would be weird.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says. “You’re being weird. We’ll hang out tonight, okay? Look at the stars and eat cookies? Maybe tell Mom and Dad about the Welcoming Center thing and you needing to go back? Then you can come to my next meet.”

  I don’t want to watch the stars and eat cookies in our wild garden of a yard. And I definitely don’t want to tell Mom and Dad or talk about telling them anymore.

  I nod anyway. Naomi won’t listen to all the other words I want to say.

  Besides, I don’t need to watch her do the same gymnastics routine as every other girl on her team. There’s nothing exciting about that. There’s nothing stressful or joyful or heart-thumping about it. She’ll be perfect, they’ll be perfect, and no one will win or lose.

  I won’t be missing much at all.

  Veena skips the gymnastics meet with me and invites me over to her house, so I go. Ms. Butra greets us at the door with jalebi. We devour three pieces each before even saying hello. That’s how good jalebi is.

  “This is amazing,” I say.

  Ms. Butra smiles. “Veena says you love cooking too.”

  I nod. “It’s easier here,” I say. I wait for some sign from Ms. Butra, some indication that she understands what I’m saying.

  “That’s true,” she says. “Certain things are very easy to cook here. But not everything.”

  “It took my mom years to make jalebi here,” Veena explains.

  “And it’s still not right,” Ms. Butra says. She has a sort of funny look on her face, like she’s remembering something. It makes my heart leap. No one here ever looks like they’re remembering anything at all. Ms. Butra squints at me, like she’s looking for the answers to how to make the perfect jalebi, but I have no idea of course. “Has that happened to you here?”

  I nod, thinking of my cake. Veena nods, too, remembering our afternoon together.

  “Cooking and baking certain things comes from the stories of our lives—recipes passed down from generations before, or things we made when we were celebrating a certain occasion or feeling down about something or spending time with a favorite person. I made jalebi back in India. And I don’t remember much about India. Not much at all.”

  Ms. Butra is speaking in a soft voice and I know from the way she’s choosing her words that she’s telling me a secret. She’s saying things to me she doesn’t say to everyone. “Do you remember much from your life before Eventown?” she asks, and I know it’s a big question.

  It might even be a dangerous question.

  I nod.

  “If you can even remember a little, you can start to bake the things you want to bake. I remembered rose water and getting a squeeze of lemon in my eyes and someone’s hands that were darker than mine and more wrinkled. That was almost enough to make the jalebi the way I wanted to.”

  “But not quite enough,” I say.

  “No,” Ms. Butra says. “Not quite.”

  “Elodee tried to make a special cake,” Veena says.

  “A special cake,” Ms. Butra says, like it’s the most wonderful thing she’s ever heard. “Well, maybe I can help. Let’s make a cake.”

  “Right now?” I ask.

  “I don’t see why not,” Ms. Butra says. “What kind of cake are we making?”

  For a moment I feel nervous to tell her. But I trust Ms. Butra and her jalebi. “Jasmine–olive oil cake with white chocolate–pear frosting,” I say, wanting her to taste the words in her mouth, the way I do.

  Ms. Butra grins. “I knew I liked you,” she says. “Let’s get to work.”

  Ms. Butra’s kitchen is chock-full of ingredients, but she sends Veena’s dad out for jasmine and pears.

  “Now,” she says before we begin. “Don’t tell me the stories you remember, but hold them in your mind and maybe something will come to you. And if it doesn’t, that’s okay too. We’ll do the best we can. It’s going to take time to find the taste you want.”

  I close my eyes. Like Ms. Butra, I see hands—bigger than mine but not too big. I hear music playing in the background, but I know we can’t play any here, so that won’t help. I see eyes that are blue like mine but darker. And I see a tiny green bowl of sea salt on the counter.

  “Sea salt,” I say. “For the pears, I think. They need sea salt.”

  “Wonderful,” Ms. Butra says. “One ingredient at a time.”

  We start baking. This time I bake the pears instead of putting them on the stovetop, and I sprinkle sea salt on top. I mix a little salt into the cake mixture as well and go easier on the olive oil. We try to make a jasmine jam and a jasmine powder and a jasmine broth, but none of it is quite right.

  We try adding other spices to jasmine, and I like the way it smells mixed with thyme, so we go with that.

  Ms. Butra is confident in the kitchen. She handles everything gently, and I try to imitate the way she stirs, the way she chops, even the face she makes when she tastes a little bit from a bowl or pan.

  At some point she notices me watching her. “You’ve got your own special way in the kitchen,” she says. “Do it your own way.”

  Veena overhears and smiles at me. We all do it our own way, and when we mix the flavors we ea
ch taste it and add new things to the mix. Same with the frosting. We play and experiment and talk about what very, very little I can remember about making the cake before, and soon it’s ready for the oven.

  I know it won’t be right. But I also know it will be better than before.

  We paint watercolors of cake while we wait for it to come out of the oven, and Ms. Butra looks through the necklaces on Veena’s neck. She gives me one with a birthday cake charm.

  “Maybe this will help you remember,” she whispers into my ear. “You never know.”

  “I thought I’m not supposed to—”

  “Some of us don’t agree,” she says. I wait for her to say more, but she doesn’t.

  When the cake comes out of the oven, it doesn’t taste right. It’s sweet in the wrong places and the frosting isn’t thick enough and thyme was the wrong herb for sure.

  But the sea salt. The sea salt is right. That little bit of saltiness reminds me of a checkered apron and oven mitts shaped like ducks and the way it felt to peek in the oven when the cake wasn’t done yet, to see if I could watch it turn from batter into something delicious.

  It tastes terrible, mostly.

  But good, too, for the way it reminds me of before.

  Good, for how wrong it is. How imperfect.

  How uneven.

  30

  The Vines

  We don’t wake up Friday morning the way we usually would—by light streaming in our windows and welcoming us into the day.

  We don’t wake up that way because no light streams in. We wake up to Mom and Dad bursting through our door. They are both in pajamas with messy hair and startled faces. There is no smell of bacon or French toast or even roses. Something is blocking out the Eventown smell.

  “It’s ten!” Mom says. “It’s ten and it’s dark in here and the windows are completely covered. Completely, completely covered.” Mom’s voice is funny, like it’s been flattened by a very heavy object. I think it’s how surprise sounds here in Eventown.

  “What are you saying about windows?” Naomi asks groggily, but I think I already know. I can feel the way things are shifting, the way I used to be able to tell if it was going to rain, back when we lived somewhere with rain.

  “The vines,” Mom says.

  “They’ve grown over the windows,” Dad says. “They’re quite persistent. They’re sort of, well, taking over a little. I can’t quite seem to figure out what to do about it. I had to cut through the ones covering the doorway just to get outside this morning.” He looks disappointed in himself, like he’s supposed to know, like maybe he isn’t such a great gardener after all.

  I hold his hand and hope that makes the feeling dull.

  Mom leads us all outside so that we can look at the house. My stomach is rumbling, asking for food, and a part of me doesn’t want to see the way things are changing. Naomi keeps glaring at me.

  “What?” I whisper.

  “Things are getting weirder,” she whispers back.

  “I can see that.”

  “Things started getting ruined after the Welcoming Center. I keep trying to tell you that.”

  “Oh my god, you’re obsessed,” I say, but when I think about it, I think she could be right. Everything was predictable and normal and perfect until that strange, imperfect, unpredictable moment when my Welcoming got interrupted.

  “Don’t you think we should go back to the Center? Just in case?” Naomi says. Her whisper is urgent now. “Maybe we should tell Mom and Dad and see what they think. I bet they’ll say you should go back.”

  “What if this isn’t so awful?” I say. “What if this isn’t everything getting ruined?”

  We both look up at the house and down at the yard.

  It doesn’t look very ruined to me.

  Because everything is growing.

  Not growing. Exploding into being.

  The roses are now as big as my head.

  The bushes are the size of cars, but no one here knows much about cars.

  And the vines. The vines are crawling all over every inch of our house now. Covering the windows. Wrapping us up in green and wildness and newness.

  I can’t help but smile. It’s beautiful. Bright and strange and magical, too. But no one else is smiling. Not Mom, who looks off into the distance; not Dad, who frowns at the roots, at the leaves, at the whole garden; and not Naomi, who is nudging me with her elbow, which feels sharper than ever.

  “I’m scared,” she says. “I’m scared it’s our fault, somehow. We’re the new people. We’re the difference.”

  I nod. I know that feeling. Sometimes it seems like almost anything could be my fault. The thought, the vines, and Naomi’s face make me tired. She’s never going to see the chaos on our front lawn as beautiful. I don’t think Mom and Dad will either.

  I give up.

  “Okay,” I say. “Okay, fine.”

  Naomi’s shoulders relax. Keeping a secret has been hurting her more than I thought.

  “Mom?” she says. “Dad?”

  They turn to her.

  “Elodee has something to tell you. Something about the day we went to the Welcoming Center.”

  “You tell them,” I mumble.

  Naomi takes a deep breath, looking at the vines and the rosebush.

  She looks very hard at the rosebush. I wonder what she’s looking for, why she seems to be lost in its branches and petals for a moment. But then the moment is gone, and she lifts her chin. “Elodee didn’t tell all six stories,” she says. “The day we were welcomed, her time was interrupted. She didn’t finish. So she has three stories left. Big ones. Stories she was supposed to give away. She’s holding on to them.”

  Naomi’s words are completely right. I am holding on hard to my stories. I don’t want to give them away. I don’t want to lose them.

  I’m even a little bit happy that something prevented me from doing the thing I was supposed to do. The thing everyone who lives here does. The thing, I guess, that would have helped us fit in.

  What was an accident is starting to feel like something bigger. Something more. I’m different from Naomi. I’ve been feeling different from her. And maybe this is why.

  Maybe my stories, my memories, are bigger than I thought.

  “Elodee?” Mom says. “Is that true?” I nod. I don’t know what to say. Aren’t they mine, the stories? Aren’t they mine to tell or not tell, to let go of or to hold on to forever?

  Dad looks at me with a different look than Mom.

  I can’t place it at first.

  It’s not a frown or a smile. There’s a crinkle in his eyes that isn’t exactly a sparkle but is maybe a glint. A warmth. A brightness.

  It’s the look he got once when he thought Naomi was hurt after a meet, but she popped back up and stuck her hands in the air and grinned at the judges. The edges of the memory aren’t clear. I can’t remember who I was there with or what her routine was or even what the gym looked like or what apparatus she was on. But I remember the joy of her being okay.

  It’s the look he got when there had been a threat at our school and he came to pick us up to find out that it had all been a prank.

  It’s the look he got when the rosebush first blossomed.

  The look he got when we entered Eventown, when we crossed the border and saw the trees and smelled the pine and blueberries and roses.

  Relief. It’s the look of relief.

  No one else has that look. Maggie and Victor and Baxter on the other side of the house are out on their lawn, frowning. Across the street people have their hands over their mouths, their eyes wide. But here on our lawn, Dad is relieved that I remember some things. He’s glad I didn’t let go.

  The weeds inch from our lawn to Maggie and Victor’s.

  And right then, as the weeds and vines and roses reach out to new places, find their way to the street, introduce themselves to our neighbors, it starts to rain.

  31

  Thunder and Lightning

  The first drop of rain h
its Naomi. I’m sure it’s the first drop because she feels it a full ten seconds before anyone else reacts at all. The drop hits her square on the nose, and her voice breaks out louder than it’s ever been.

  “Oh!”

  “What?” I ask.

  “I think it might be rain?” she says. “Somehow?”

  I remember a hundred stories of playing in the rain with Naomi. Me with an umbrella and her without. Me in a raincoat and her bare-armed. “You love rain,” I say.

  Naomi looks at the sky, waiting for another drop. I think she almost remembers. I think she almost takes a tiny step closer to me and away from a perfect girl who belongs in Eventown. I think she is almost a girl from far away with knotted wet hair and a cackling laugh and feet that stomp in puddles so hard that the water hits other people in the face. I think she is almost Naomi who loves the rain and doesn’t care who knows it.

  “I did,” Naomi says now, the memory somewhere in her brain still too. “I did love the rain, didn’t I?” She looks genuinely confused, stuck between the remembered love and the empty blank space of lost memories, things she must have said in the Welcoming Center or things that were lost because of the spreading, waterlogged forgetting that happens after.

  “Maybe you still do,” I say, and I hold my hand out to catch the next drop for her, but instead it hits Baxter. He jumps and looks around, as if there’s someone doing it to him, instead of it coming from the sky.

  “It’s cold!” he says. “It’s cold water!”

  “Don’t worry,” I call out to him. But Baxter only looks back at me with disgust. He shakes his head. Wipes the raindrop from his forehead. He whispers something to his mother that makes her nod gravely. I am positive that whatever he’s said is mean. I didn’t know people were ever mean here in Eventown, but I recognize the looks they give us and the way they make me feel.

  The last solo drop lands on the rosebush, and it responds as if it’s been thirsty its whole life. It shoots up an entire six inches and three more head-sized roses bloom.