Eventown

by Corey Ann Haydu

  More flowers are growing too. Not only roses. Daisies. Tulips. A sunflower is making its way up the side of our house. A patch of pansies is erupting by Baxter’s feet. Across the street, a few lilies are coming in. The rain is unearthing a whole garden of new flowers, and I love it for an instant before I remember how much our neighbors hate it.

  The rain rushes down, going from one drop at a time to an entire storm in what feels like only seconds.

  “Rain,” Dad says, like the memory of it is almost but not quite there for him.

  “It doesn’t rain here,” Mom says, trying to understand both the truth of that sentence and the truth of her now-soaking hair all at the same time.

  More neighbors rush onto the streets. They are drenched almost instantly, the rain so wrong for Eventown not just because it’s falling at all but because of its intensity. It pounds hard, so hard it hurts my eyes, and I huddle close to Naomi because when things are turning entirely upside down I don’t know what else to do.

  Soon, too soon, there are twenty people on the street, and they are rushing into our yard.

  Then there are thirty.

  The water rushes the streets, drowns the plants, and the sloshing sound brings back more memories. Naomi and me in matching pink galoshes. An older boy with long legs, like Baxter but not, helping us gather rain in a bucket for a magical potion. An afternoon spent inside, painting rainstorms on poster board with finger paint and glitter while the world got wetter. Three sets of kid-legs splashing in puddles, with Naomi’s splashes the most excited, the fastest, the loudest.

  I want to tell the crowd all these happy moments, everything rain brings—wet hair and wet socks and cozy days and Naomi’s delighted smile and even maybe the bad things, like angry moms who get caught with bags of groceries in a downpour or cars having to move more slowly or ruining your new sweater because it gets all stretched out from the storm. A canceled birthday picnic. Thunderstorms so windy they knock out electricity. Slipping and falling in wet grass, getting your pants all muddy.

  But instead we are all in silence on our yard. The town is gathering here, in front of our house and our rosebush and our confused faces, as if somehow we know why rain has come to Eventown today.

  Veena and her mom and dad join Naomi and me. Betsy and her moms keep their distance with a group of angry-faced neighbors.

  “It’s like science class,” Veena says. “We learned about this last year. Will we see the big flash of light in the sky soon?”

  “Lightning,” I say.

  “Yes! Lightning! And the other one? The noise?”

  “Thunder,” Naomi says. Naomi loved thunder best.

  Someone, some person I think we loved, called us Thunder and Lightning sometimes. Naomi got Thunder because she loved it and because when she stuck a landing in gymnastics she was met with thunderous applause. I was Lightning because, this person said, I wasn’t afraid of being seen.

  “Do you remember Thunder and Lightning?” I whisper to Naomi.

  She doesn’t answer.

  Soon there are fifty Eventown residents crowded around our house, and still no one has said a word. They watch in awe; they shake their heads; they sigh and screech and look at each other, waiting for someone to do something, but no one has any idea what to do.

  I am maybe the only person in the whole town who truly remembers rain.

  There is a flash of lightning in the sky. Bright and brilliant and unmistakable.

  My heart jumps. I still feel like that lightning. Unmissable, not like anyone else, too bright, all wrong for the sky, all wrong for the town.

  Something to fear.

  The lightning makes the whole town scream in terror. They rush into homes, but not ours.

  Veena and her mom stay in our yard.

  Betsy and her moms do too.

  “What have you done?” Betsy’s tall mom says to Mom and Dad. “What are you doing to our town?”

  “We don’t know anything about this,” Mom says. Her voice shakes, though. She remembers what Naomi told her. I can see the possibility shadow her face. She knows something strange did happen in our Welcoming. She knows we might not be 100 percent normal.

  She stands in front of me, shifting ever so slightly to protect me. I wonder all of a sudden if my difference is visible on my skin, in my eyes, on my face somewhere.

  Dad bows his head. He swallows and says nothing.

  “You’re holding on to your past,” Betsy’s blue-eyed mom says. “We’ve seen it before. Not like this. Never like this. But some people”—she looks at Veena’s mother and Veena’s necklaces—“hold on. Some people think they can have a fresh start while still holding on to their past. But it doesn’t work like that. You can be here, or you can be out there. But you can’t have both.”

  Betsy’s blue-eyed mom sounds like she’s speaking in code, but Mom and Dad seem to understand. They nod gravely.

  “We want a fresh start,” Mom says.

  “Do you?” Betsy’s tall mom says.

  I wish I could decode the conversation better, but the words are as blurry and hazy as some of my memories of life before Eventown.

  Veena’s mother puts an arm around me and another around Naomi. Veena straightens her back and bites her bottom lip.

  Betsy cowers in the rain, shivering and waiting, I think, for another terrifying bolt of lightning.

  “Christine and Josiah will be by later today,” Betsy’s tall mom says. “I’ll make sure of it.”

  She looks right at me, like she knows the secret stories I didn’t tell, the stories I want to hang on to, even though, I guess, I’m not supposed to hang on to anything at all.

  “I’m sure you will,” Ms. Butra says.

  “They’re kids,” Mr. Butra says. I haven’t heard him say much of anything before. Veena’s dad is usually just quiet and calm. He looks different in the rain. “Kids this age don’t come here very often. Asking them to give up so much at their age seems complicated at best.”

  “It’s not giving up,” Betsy’s tall mom says, rolling her eyes. “It’s gaining. Gaining a new life.”

  “And losing an old one,” Ms. Butra says. Her husband nods.

  I find myself nodding, too, even though I don’t totally understand.

  With a sigh and an eye roll, Betsy and her moms decide they are done with the conversation and leave, but the things they’ve said stay. We all head inside: Veena and her mother and father, Naomi and me and Mom and Dad. Mom makes hot cocoa and Dad offers thick blankets to everyone’s shivering shoulders. Mom closes the curtains, tired, I guess, of looking at the storm.

  We can still hear it, though. The rain. And sometimes the thunder.

  We can see the lightning.

  There’s no stopping it.

  32

  Homemade Umbrellas

  It rains all weekend.

  We are quiet inside our vine-covered home. No one comes to speak to us. The Butras ask if we’d like to come over to their house, where it’s less hectic, but Mom says we’re fine, this is fine, the Butras don’t need to worry about us.

  “But I am worried about you,” Ms. Butra says. Mom smiles and shakes her head at the very idea.

  “We’re all in this together,” Mom says. “The rain will stop. The plants will stop growing. Everything will be fine. It has to be, doesn’t it?”

  Ms. Butra doesn’t answer.

  Christine and Josiah don’t come by even though I’m sure by now Betsy’s moms have reported us to them. By now they have remembered that I wasn’t properly welcomed. By now, I’m sure, they have come up with a plan to deal with me and my untold stories.

  It seems like Naomi and I should come up with a plan, too, but we don’t have one.

  It feels like we are waiting for something to happen, but nothing happens. We don’t do much. I make rainy-day foods like pot roast and grilled cheese and three different kinds of soup and warm chocolate cake and the most delicious chili any of us has ever eaten. Naomi paints pictures of regular-size
d roses. I paint the rain and Mom asks me to please throw the paintings away.

  Mom has never asked me to throw a painting away before. I’ve forgotten a lot, but I am almost positive I would remember that.

  We wait and wait and the rain doesn’t stop and no one knocks at the door and it feels like the house is shrinking or maybe the world is growing. Or maybe that’s just how it feels when vines and flowers are flooding your town.

  On Monday the rain still hasn’t stopped.

  Mom has fashioned an umbrella out of a broomstick and a garbage bag and she says she’ll walk us to school just in case.

  “In case of what?” I ask.

  “Don’t you think you’ve asked enough questions?” Naomi says, and the words are mean. We are all on edge in the rain. I want to fix it, but I don’t know how. So I say mean words back.

  “Do you think you’ve asked enough questions?” I say.

  “Girls. Can you please try to get along? Please? For your father and me?” We look for Dad, but he’s been in the yard all weekend, pulling out weeds that just grow back.

  I don’t think I’ve asked enough questions at all, but I don’t want Mom and Naomi to keep giving me the looks they’re giving me, so I stay quiet.

  “And Elodee,” Mom says, “we’ll be going back to the Welcoming Center tomorrow.”

  I knew it was coming, but it still makes my breath stop.

  “I don’t really want to,” I say. Naomi huffs. Mom closes her eyes for a moment like she needs to gather all her strength to have this conversation with me.

  “I think when you get there, you’ll be happy,” she says at last, and Naomi nods and the flowers outside keep growing and the rain pounds and pounds and pounds on the roof.

  I don’t have anything to say to that, so I stay quiet.

  Everyone in Eventown is walking to school with their parents. Some of them have homemade umbrellas like ours. Some have wrapped themselves in plastic wrap or hold buckets and pots and pans and big mixing bowls over their heads. I think some of them must have been in rainstorms long ago, before moving here, but I don’t think anyone really remembers the way it feels or that it’s not dangerous or bad. I don’t think anyone but me remembers splashing and playing and the way puddles are actually pools of pure joy.

  We all get to the doors of the school around the same time, and for the first time ever, the parents go in with us, like they are going to start attending school too. Like Mom’s about to take a math quiz or Ms. Butra is going to turn in her vocabulary homework.

  “Everyone to the music room,” Mr. Fountain says, greeting us at the door with a somber look on his face. I wonder if he’s spent the morning playing “The Eventown Anthem” on his violin or maybe, just maybe, hearing the music of the raindrops and composing an entirely new anthem from that sound.

  I wish that were true, but I know it’s not.

  We settle in the music room—all the parents, all the kids, Mr. Fountain, Ms. Applebet, Christine, Josiah, and other teachers from other grades who I’ve seen around school, usually smiling and humming and handing out compliments about someone’s dress or hair or latest paper.

  Christine and Josiah are clearly the ones in charge. They look over all of us—our wet hair, our disheveled clothes, our makeshift umbrellas, our collection of buckets and trash bags. We do not look the way people in Eventown look. We don’t even look the way people in Juniper usually look. We are all one big mess.

  “We are going to return to our regular schedules,” Christine starts instead of saying hello or welcome or anything a person would normally start with. “But we wanted to check in and let you all know that we are working on the situation, and it should be resolved shortly. Meanwhile, this is a wonderful opportunity for all of us to learn a little about our history, and where we came from.”

  “The hurricane!” a boy from our grade calls out.

  “Yes,” Josiah says. “Exactly. This isn’t a hurricane. But it’s a good example of the way weather can impact a community. A good reminder of why we left places with bad weather. Of why we are all here, and what we gain by living in Eventown.”

  A roomful of people nods.

  “We will be meeting with each family in the next few weeks to make sure Eventown is still the right fit for everyone here,” Christine says.

  They look extra-long at me and my family before Josiah picks up where Christine left off.

  “In the storm that brought Jasper Plimmswood here, so much was lost. This storm, our storm, will not destroy anything. Especially not our town and the way things work here. On that we want to be clear.” Josiah’s voice is warm and fills up the room. “We will make Jasper Plimmswood proud. And when the storm is over, we will have a fresh start. As always.”

  A roomful of people nods, again.

  “This is the first rain in Eventown,” Christine says. “And it is also the last. Of that we can be sure.”

  Everyone nods once more. But I don’t nod and Veena doesn’t nod.

  Eventown has a plan. Our not-nodding means that we have to have a different plan.

  33

  The Sky Cries Too

  We are at the window watching the rain fall. It’s recess time, but we can’t go out for recess, so most everyone is painting watercolors of what they would be doing at recess if it were a regular sunny day, but Veena, Naomi, and I are at the window watching the storm. I can’t get Christine and Josiah’s certainty out of my head. Or the way everyone nodded. Or the way they looked at me, like having memories was the worst thing a person could do.

  Most everyone seems miserable about the rain. But I think I see something else on Naomi.

  Maybe, if you love something enough, being near it can change everything.

  Maybe, if you love something enough, it matters more than fitting in and belonging and being safe.

  I think I can almost see Naomi loving the rain again. I can very nearly see her wishing she were in it right now. I’m careful, though. I don’t ask her if she remembers this storm or that one. Instead, I try to let her realize herself how pretty the sound of raindrops is. I try to let her remember, the way I remembered adding sea salt to baked pears.

  She doesn’t have to remember everything. She only has to remember this one thing, I think.

  “We need them back,” I say.

  “Need what back?” Naomi asks. Veena doesn’t ask. I think she already knows.

  “The stories,” I say.

  There is a pause like the eye of a storm. Maybe it is the eye of this actual storm, the Eventown Storm, one that might be taught in Eventown history classes in fifty years.

  “I don’t know what that means,” Naomi says. But I think she does know what it means, because she looks scared.

  “Once upon a time,” I say, quietly so that no one else in class can listen in, “there was a girl named Elodee and another girl named Naomi, and they looked exactly the same, but otherwise they were completely different.”

  “What are you doing?” Naomi interrupts, but Veena only leans in to hear better.

  “I’m telling you a story. A story you probably told them or a story that’s connected to a story you told them. A story you can’t remember. A story I do remember because I didn’t give it away.”

  Naomi looks like she’s about to argue with me, but she seems to change her mind somewhere in between a thought and a word. She sits back.

  “Elodee loved the sun,” I say. I want to find the perfect words. I speak extra slowly, to make sure they come out right. “She loved sitting in it and running underneath it and watching it move from one side of the sky to another.”

  “Everyone loves the sun,” Naomi says. But she doesn’t sound so sure.

  “That’s what Elodee thought too!” I go on. “But Naomi was different. She loved the rain. She actually loved it so much that during one super-big storm, in the middle of the night, she snuck downstairs into the rain. No one heard her. No one but Elodee.”

  Veena and Naomi both giggle a little. It�
��s funny to speak in the third person about myself. I let myself smile too.

  “Elodee was really, really special. She always knew exactly where her sister was.”

  “I bet Naomi had that same special skill,” Naomi says, smirking a little.

  “Maybe,” I say.

  Ms. Applebet wanders over to us, interrupting my story.

  “Girls? You don’t want to paint?” she asks. We shake our heads fast, even Naomi. “Hm. Well. Maybe you’d like to step away from the window? I was thinking of closing the blinds. Let everyone get a break from that awful rain.” She whispers rain like it’s a bad word.

  “We don’t mind the rain,” I say. Naomi blushes and Veena looks nervous, but neither of them disagrees with me. We’re getting braver, the three of us. Maybe.

  “Well,” Ms. Applebet says. “Well.” She doesn’t seem to know how to finish the sentence, so she leaves it be and walks to the other side of the room.

  We turn back to the window. The rain is making moving patterns on it, little dances of drops and streaks. I wouldn’t mind watching it for one hundred recesses.

  “Keep going,” Veena says. “I like this story.”

  “Yeah,” Naomi says. “Keep going.” I could hug my sister for wanting to hear more, for not wanting to run away from one of my stories of the life we used to have. So I keep going.

  “Well. So. Elodee’s special skill told her that her sister was outside in the rain. And sure enough, when she looked out their bedroom window, there she was. Her twin sister, all wet and ridiculous, running around in a rainstorm. Elodee knew their mother and father would try to get Naomi out of the rain. They would tell her to come inside. So Elodee snuck downstairs, as quiet as could be, grabbed an umbrella, and met her sister outside.”

  Naomi smiles. Maybe, just maybe, she remembers.

  “Naomi and Elodee had been having a hard time lately,” I say. My voice hitches, but I don’t know exactly why. “A very hard time.”

  It’s Veena who interrupts the story now. “Why?” she asks.

  I look at Naomi and Naomi looks right back at me. The answer isn’t there.