Eventown

by Corey Ann Haydu

  “I don’t know,” I say, and the not-knowing twists my insides a little. “I don’t remember.” Naomi bows her head, not remembering either, I’m sure. But we both know we should remember.

  “Oh,” Veena says. “Okay.”

  “So,” I continue on with the story, hoping maybe an answer will appear—maybe I’ll know why the Naomi and Elodee of the story were sad that day, that month, maybe even that whole year. “Naomi and Elodee had been sad for what felt like forever, but this night the sadness was a little further away. Maybe because of the rain.”

  “Probably because of the rain,” Naomi says. It’s there, on her face. It’s shining in her eyes. The way she loves the rain, the way it matters, loving something imperfect that other people don’t understand.

  It’s all right there on her face: her Naomi-ness.

  I’ve been missing it.

  “And when Elodee stepped outside, the rain was warmer than she’d thought it would be. Nicer. Gentler. And Naomi was laughing. Elodee thought she’d never been so happy to see her sister laugh.

  “‘What are you laughing at?’ she asked Naomi.

  “‘Sometimes the sky cries too,’ Naomi said. She looked a little amazed and a little overwhelmed and a little relieved.

  Naomi’s face shifts again. Her eyes fill up. The way they did that night. The way they did a hundred times or a thousand, before Eventown.

  It’s hard to keep telling the story, but I want to get it all out, in case it vanishes.

  “Elodee laughed with her,” I say, my voice a little shaky. “At the rain, at the sky crying, at the way it felt to be in her pajamas in the middle of a storm.

  “‘Drop your umbrella,’ Naomi said, and Elodee did. Elodee was usually the one who bossed Naomi around. Elodee was usually the one to do weird things. But this time, Naomi was the weird one.”

  Naomi smiles. She doesn’t disagree. So I go on. “Naomi handed Elodee a bucket.

  “‘I’m collecting rain,’ Naomi said. Elodee knew what to do. They had collected rain before. It had been a while, though. And it wasn’t the same as it was when they’d done it long ago. Something was missing.

  “Still, they collected rain. And when they were done, they put the buckets of rain in the garage, where they hoped it would stay for whenever they needed it.”

  “What’d they collect it for?” Veena asks, so enthralled with the story that she’s gripping her own knees, wide-eyed and a little flushed. “I mean you. What did you guys collect it for?”

  Naomi and I look at each other. Alone we don’t have all the memories, but between us there’s something like an answer.

  “They really didn’t know,” I say. Veena nods, like this nonanswer is enough. She wraps some of her necklace chains around her fingers, and I think maybe she wears them the same way we collected the buckets of water. A little unsure of the why, but positive that it is the right thing to do. “Anyway, they kept the buckets there. And sometimes, Elodee and Naomi would sneak down and stick their fingers in the water, making waves in it. They never went down together, though. They only went alone.”

  Veena’s face falls a little. She wants the buckets of water to have changed everything, I think. She wants there to be a solution to the way we hurt.

  But I don’t think things are like that, outside of Eventown.

  “It didn’t fix everything,” I say, as gently as I can. “But that one moment, when Elodee saw Naomi running in the rain after so long not seeing her smile or laugh at all—that moment was the most joyful moment of Elodee’s whole life. The end.”

  “And they all lived happily ever after?” Veena asks when the story’s done. She’s hopeful, I guess, that I just forgot to say the words.

  I don’t answer, though. Neither does Naomi. We look at the ground. We know that’s not how these stories work.

  “That’s the story of your happiest moment,” Naomi says. She’s thinking hard. I can see it on her face.

  “But there’s sad things in it,” Veena says.

  “Yeah,” I say. I’m thinking hard too. “I guess there are. But I think maybe—I think it’s the sad things that make it so happy?” The words don’t quite make sense coming out, but they feel true anyway.

  “I’m glad you held on to that story,” Naomi says. It sounds like it’s hard for her to say.

  I’m glad I held on to the story too.

  “See what I mean?” I say. “We need the rest.”

  Naomi doesn’t agree, but she doesn’t disagree either.

  Veena speaks in a voice so quiet I wonder if maybe she doesn’t want to be heard at all. “The Welcoming Center is closed at night,” she says. “It’s usually locked, but, um, usually people who work for the town have the key.”

  “Like Mom,” Naomi says, as if she’s been thinking it all along.

  “Like Mom,” I say.

  And we don’t have to say any more words, because we know without discussing it that we are going to get that key and we are maybe, maybe, maybe, going to find our stories.

  “Rain buckets in the garage,” Naomi says, sort of astounded, still, by the idea, by the story, by the fact that I remember anything at all. And maybe by the fact that she has little flickers of memory, too, deep below the surface. “It sounds nice.”

  We don’t say anything else.

  We don’t have to.

  34

  Bloom by Bloom

  At midnight, it’s still raining and Naomi and I are out in it, so wet I don’t remember what dry ever even felt like.

  Veena said she’d meet us at the biggest rosebush, and we all know, without saying it, that the biggest rosebush in the yard, the biggest rosebush in all of Eventown is the one we brought with us from Juniper. I stare at it now and try to remember the story of the rosebush. There must be a story of the rosebush. I don’t think we would have dragged it all the way here if there hadn’t been a story of a rosebush, just like I don’t think I would have wanted to make a jasmine–olive oil cake with white chocolate–pear frosting if there hadn’t been a cake story. But the stories aren’t there.

  All that’s left is the empty feeling of missing something I once knew.

  All that’s left is the way my heart beats in anger at the not-knowing, at the missing.

  “Do you remember—” I start, for the hundredth time probably. And for the hundredth time, Naomi sighs.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” she says.

  “But at recess—”

  “You want stories because you remember some,” she says. “If you didn’t remember any more stories, you wouldn’t need any more. You’d be like me. Like I was before the rain. I think the rain would stop. I think the flowers would shrink back down. I think our house would look like the regular houses. I think the town would go back to normal.”

  The town now isn’t normal at all. Weeds are everywhere. They are poking out of the rain-slick sidewalks. They are brushing up against buildings. The weeds aren’t the only thing that have moved beyond our house. The vines are growing all over the other houses and trees and buildings, and roses all over town have grown to ridiculous sizes and taken on beautiful new colors.

  At least, I think the colors are beautiful. The rest of the town thinks they are awful.

  “Roses are meant to be red,” I heard Mr. Fountain mumble to himself today.

  The town is an explosion of color and growth and normal things made strange and pretty things made wild and perfect things made unpredictable. It’s sort of a wonderland.

  “I like the town like this,” I say.

  “The story you told me made me sad,” Naomi says.

  “I thought you said it sounded nice.”

  “It did.” She pauses. She takes a big breath. “But the niceness made me sad. We’re here now. I don’t want to miss out there.” She pauses, like she doesn’t know how to say the next thing.

  “Naomi—” I start, but she shakes her head.

  “No, I don’t want to know anything else. I changed my mind. S
tories are just things that used to be happy once. I don’t want any stories, Elodee.” Her face breaks open, a whole world of feelings floating across it until she composes herself again. “I want blueberry pie and to play the cymbals and to eat the same three ice cream flavors and to hike to the top of the Eventown Hills and listen to waterfalls and do a good gymnastics routine and be like Betsy and her moms. I don’t want to be all complicated and weird and stuff. I don’t want to be like . . . like . . .”

  “Like me,” I finish for her.

  She won’t look at me.

  “Don’t go tonight,” Naomi says. “Go tomorrow. Tell your stories to Christine and Josiah. Let them go. It will feel better. I promise. You won’t have to tell me any more stories about rain buckets hidden in some garage somewhere far away. I don’t want to know about things like that. It hurts. And I don’t want to hurt anymore. Not even for a second.”

  Naomi doesn’t wait for me to answer, and that maybe makes me the most angry, the most lonely. She hangs her head and turns to the house, to the vines and the way they wrap and weave around each other. She doesn’t look back at me or the roses or the rain.

  The rain beats down harder after she’s gone. I go inside and sit at the kitchen counter, watching it all from the window. The lightning and thunder come faster, and the sound of thunder makes me miss my sister. It makes me miss my sister from a long time ago, who I remember in tiny sparks of stories—reading books in bed with me, building blanket forts with me, climbing onto a beam for the first time and falling right off, looking at me to make it better.

  I miss the something else too. Or the someone else. I don’t know. The thing that made Naomi and me make sense. I miss feeling whole, which I think is how I used to feel. Now I feel all full of holes. Holes where the stories used to be, and holes where something else used to be too. A love that I don’t know what to do with anymore. A family I used to be part of.

  A belonging. But not the way Naomi wants to belong. A different kind of belonging, that came with mistakes and it being okay to not fit in anywhere else but in my old home in Juniper.

  The thunder is so loud it hurts my ears. The lightning is so bright it lights up all the strange things happening to Eventown. Veena is nowhere to be found, and I’m starting to feel like she’s not coming. Every minute that passes is lonelier than the minute before.

  The loneliness twists and turns. It stirs itself up, like a really good cake batter, turning a bunch of ingredients into something brand-new and delicious, except the loneliness turns into anger and the anger spins and stirs itself into rage.

  Rage with nowhere to go. Rage without any stories that tell me why I might be angry. It’s an awful, hungry, aching sort of anger. I’d punch a pillow if one were out here. I’d yell at Naomi if she hadn’t left me all alone.

  There’s nothing out here to punch and no one to yell at. I turn around looking for somewhere to put the way I feel, and what I find is the Juniper rosebush. It’s sitting there, taller than the others. Thornier too. With shinier leaves and softer petals. The most beautiful rosebush in all of Eventown.

  But, like me, it maybe wasn’t ever meant to be here at all.

  Dad’s clippers are lying nearby—Mom’s always reminding him not to leave them outside—and I pick them up. He’s shown me how to use them before, but I’m not very good at it. Especially when I’m so upset.

  That doesn’t matter right now, though. I attack the bush with the clippers. I tear it apart clip by clip. Slowly at first, like I’m testing it to see how it feels. Careful to avoid the thorns. Then faster, not worrying about if I get hurt or what anyone will think, or why I’m doing it at all. I tear it all down, the whole rosebush, bloom by enormous bloom.

  And when I’m done, I drop the clippers and I’m breathless and empty for a really good moment.

  My palms forget to hurt for a second.

  I forget to hurt for a second.

  But when I look up at what I’ve done, it all comes back. Worse than before. Now I have to miss that last little bit of home too. My palms hurt and my arms are bleeding and the rosebush is gone and I’m all alone in the rain in a place where rain shouldn’t ever be.

  That’s how Veena finds me, ten minutes later, or maybe a hundred minutes later.

  “I’m all broken,” I say. “I’m all wrong.”

  She sits next to me. She smells like the rain. Or maybe the rain smells like Veena? I can’t tell anymore.

  “Are you crying because of everything you remember?” she asks. I’m scared she’s going to leave me all alone too.

  “No,” I say. “I’m crying because of everything I can’t remember.”

  35

  Hallway of Past Heartaches

  It’s a wet, messy, stumbling walk to the Welcoming Center. Veena and I hang on to each other and I wish Naomi were with us, too, but I try to focus on nothing else but getting where we need to get. Mom’s Welcoming Center key is in my pocket, and Veena asks me every few minutes if I still have it. We’re both nervous, I think. And nervousness is new to Veena. It doesn’t quite fit her, like a dress from the dress-up trunk we used to have back in Juniper, filled to the brim with Mom’s old clothes.

  I tell Veena a story about the dress-up trunk to pass the time, and she likes it. She likes all my stories, even the ones I can’t quite remember all of.

  “I know some stories,” she says when we’re almost there. The rain has slowed to a drizzle for the moment. It’s such a light mist that we’re in no rush to get out of it.

  “You do?”

  “Well. Sort of,” she says. “I have these. They’re not as big as stories. Mom calls them sparks. ‘All we have left are these sparks,’ she says.”

  I’m not sure what Veena’s talking about until she pulls out her collection of necklaces, hiding from the rain under her shirt.

  “My mom never totally let go,” she says. “My dad didn’t either. They gave up all their stories, but they found a way to keep a tiny bit of the past around.”

  I look at the collection. Dozens of charms. “Each one is a spark of a memory,” Veena says. “Not a whole story. Not much. But a little tiny spark.”

  “What’s this one mean?” I ask. I pick up a silver one that’s a shape I don’t recognize. It seems extra-heavy now that I know it’s a teeny-tiny bit of a story, right out in the open.

  “That one’s India,” Veena says.

  “Do they remember it?” I ask. Veena plays with the necklaces, and the charms make a sound like wind chimes.

  “Not much,” she says. “But some of the town—there are people who want to remember more. The ones who interrupted you at the Welcoming Center, like my mom. They want their stories back. A few families carry little sparks with them. Just enough to remember that there’s something worth remembering.”

  I hadn’t thought much about the other people who were with Ms. Butra that afternoon. It hadn’t occurred to me that I was part of a whole group of people who weren’t so sure about all of Eventown’s rules.

  “There’s always something worth remembering,” Veena says. She raises her eyebrows. It’s a little mischievous. A look I haven’t seen on Veena’s face before.

  There are so many parts of Veena I’ve never seen. There are probably parts of Veena that Veena has never seen.

  She squeezes the charms in her hands. The one of India must leave a mark on her hand. An outline of a spark of a story.

  I want to hear about every charm.

  I want to hear every story.

  It’s only a few minutes before we reach the place where all the stories are locked up. I haven’t been to the Welcoming Center since the day I got interrupted here. We circle the building, to make sure no one’s there watching it. We’re all alone, though. The rest of the town is asleep, dreaming, probably, of a sunny and perfect Eventown day. We try the key in a few different doors, and it doesn’t work until the very last one. It fits perfectly into that door, the one way in the back. A small black door that almost looks too small
for normal people to walk through. But the key clicks and we duck our heads and walk inside.

  It’s dark, darker than anywhere else in the whole town. Veena takes my hand, and we let the sound of her necklaces hitting each other be the only noise. We feel for something—a light switch, a flashlight, some tiny bit of light that can guide us. But for minutes upon minutes upon minutes there’s nothing. Finally when we’ve walked down what feels like the longest hallway in the world, we reach what I think is the room Naomi and I first entered into, the welcoming room with the banner and cake and the cozy fireplace.

  I know we can’t start a fire in the dark, but I remember the room had a pretty chandelier, too, hanging high above us. And I know there must be a light switch for it somewhere. So Veena and I split up and follow the walls of the room, until finally, with a whoop! Veena hits something that makes light fill up the room. It’s a warm light, a quiet light, the exact right light for this space. It’s the kind of light that makes you want to curl up and give away all your stories, I guess.

  “Wow,” Veena says.

  “What?”

  “I’ve never been here.”

  “You haven’t?” I ask, surprised until I realize of course Veena hasn’t been here. Veena doesn’t have a Before.

  “It’s pretty,” she says. “Comfortable. Like a home.”

  “It felt like home,” I say, “being here. It felt safe.”

  The word haunts me now. Today the Welcoming Center doesn’t feel safe at all. I’m scared of everything hidden here and everything we are deciding to do.

  But Veena looks calm, so I focus on her face and look around for clues of where to go next.

  “Where do you think they keep the stories?” I ask.

  “Could be anywhere,” Veena says.

  “Then I guess we better get to work.”

  I lead Veena into the storytelling room first. It lights up when we walk in, a few candles flickering themselves into light. The surprise makes me jump, and Veena jumps too. I have a hundred questions already, but I know Veena doesn’t have any answers.

  “This is where we told stories,” I say.