A Taxonomy of Love

by Rachael Allen

  Hope: very cool

  Janie: Right? Pretty much every girl at work wanted him. I think he actually dated quite a few of them before I got there. Anyway, he’s still in South Africa, and I’m still in Haiti for the next two months, which means I haven’t seen him in FOREVER. And did I mention he is AMAZING??

  Hope: that’s awesome :)

  Janie: Thanks <3 I can’t wait to see him again, but I’m also really busy here, so it’s not like I’m sitting around all pathetic and mopey. I’ve made a ton of new friends.

  Hope: oh, yeah, i loved the pics you sent of your team and the solar panels. and the pictures you drew, especially the one of the little boys holding hands. that’s my favorite.

  Janie: Thanks. I’ll send you more soon.

  11:18 PM

  Janie: You still there?

  Hope: yeah

  Janie: You need to get to bed?

  Hope: in a little bit. i don’t want to say bye yet

  Janie: Me neither.

  Janie: But we are running out of things to talk about.

  Janie: Hmmm . . .

  Janie: What are you doing? Right. Now.

  Hope: sitting on my window seat with the window open and leaning against the screen. there’s some kind of flower growing up the trellis

  Janie: Pretty.

  Hope: jasmine, maybe?

  Hope: it smells really amazing

  Hope: well, when i can smell it

  Janie: :)

  Hope: i wish you had gotten to see the new house

  Janie: Me too.

  Hope: i can’t imagine starting a new school year without you. how am i supposed to get dressed in the morning???

  Janie: By sending me pics of any and all outfits.

  Hope: i don’t know if i’m looking forward to it. i’m worried i’ll be Luna Lovegood again. plus, there’s this girl across the street, Bella Fontaine, who’s an 8th grader and also a real Bring In The Cheese Haters. <— That’s an acronym.

  Janie: *snort*

  Hope: oh! the wind started blowing, and i can smell the flowers again

  Hope: i keep pushing my face against the screen trying to smell them better

  Hope: it would be really bad if i pushed too hard and fell out. i wonder who would miss me. do you ever think about stuff like that? like, am i ever going to do anything that matters or makes a big difference in the world?

  Hope: sorry that’s weird

  Janie: Are you kidding? You do good things for people every day. And I love that you think about things like this, but also don’t get too hung up on stuff like your place in the world just yet. You’re just getting started.

  Hope: ok.

  Hope: thanks :)

  Janie: And Hope?

  Hope: yeah?

  Janie: I would miss you. Every second. Of every day.

  Hope: i would miss you every second too

  Part Two

  14 years old

  A TAXONOMY OF ALMOSTS

  Fact: Janie Birdsong has been here for five days, and my brother is already a lovesick, sniveling mess.

  “Are they back yet? I think I hear a car.” Dean pings from window to window like a puppy. Hope and Janie went out to get groceries over an hour ago, and I think he has been counting down the minutes.

  I snicker, but I kind of feel bad for the guy. Having a crush on a Birdsong sister is no joke.

  I flip through my Magic cards. “Do we think Janie is more of an Elf Warrior or a Pixie Queen?”

  “I dunno.” He pushes aside a curtain. “I really thought I heard something.”

  “I’m also getting a bit of a Charging Badger vibe.”

  Dean waves his hand like he’s swatting away a mosquito. “Dude, grow up. Nobody cares about your stupid Magic cards.”

  Before I can say anything back, there’s the unmistakable crunch of tires on gravel. A silver Honda Civic pulls up by the cabin down the dirt road from ours. My family has a couple hundred acres that start at our house and spread across fields and forests to a man-made pond and two wooden cabins that my grandaddy built with his own hands. He and Mimi used to live out here, and it’s always where we spend the week of Fourth of July. Only this year we invited the Birdsongs. So, it’s like we’re still next-door neighbors, only now we’re on vacation.

  Dean’s already outside, hovering. “Oh, cool! You got peach tea. Did you go to Granger’s? The tea’s unbelievable, right?”

  I swear, if Janie said she thought it sucked, he’d be all, “Me, too!” But she confirms that peach tea is, in fact, the nectar of the southern gods, so no one has to renounce their heritage or anything. Dean helps them bring in their bags, and as fun as it would be to just watch and mentally mock him, I go over and help, too. As I pick up a gallon of milk, my head jerks to the side in a tic. It’s a new one. We always joke at camp about catching each other’s tics and taking them home. Not that it works that way, but sometimes it feels like it. I’m always worried I’ll catch one of the swearing ones. Echoing is bad enough because sometimes it looks like I’m making fun of people.

  “So,” Janie says as she shoves the empty canvas grocery bags into the cabinet under the sink. “What are we gonna do? Go canoeing? Wrestle a bear? I need to be fully indoctrinated in your cabin ways.”

  “Hmmm . . .” I look at my brother. It has to be just right. My head jerks to the side a few times. “Four-wheelers?”

  He nods decisively. “Four-wheelers.”

  Dean and I tear off to the garage like little kids because the Raptor is newer and faster. We have a butt war over the seat (Dean wins—jerk), and then we drive the four-wheelers up the hill and to the dirt road between the cabins where the girls are waiting. Dean is in front of me, trying a little too hard to look like some kind of dark and mysterious motorcycle gang leader, if you ask me. He comes to a stop in front of the girls and rakes a hand through his blond hair.

  Janie claps her hands together. “Oh! I love ATVs! We rode them in South Africa.”

  My brother looks slightly crestfallen that this isn’t her first rodeo.

  I try to figure out a nonobvious way to make sure Hope and I end up on the same four-wheeler.

  “How fast do they go?” Janie asks.

  Dean’s bravado recovers quickly. “I bet I could hit seventy if we had a good straightaway.”

  (He has never gone over thirty-five.)

  “And I don’t want to brag, but I got the fast one, so you should ride with me.”

  Janie shrugs. “Okay.”

  Which means Hope is with me. I don’t grin maniacally or pump my fist in the air, so I feel like I’m doing a pretty good job of being cool about it.

  She steps up beside my four-wheeler. “So, how does this work?”

  “You can sit behind me.” I gesture to the part of the seat I’m not sitting on. She puts her foot in the footrest and swings her other leg over. The insides of her legs are pressed against the outsides of mine.

  “Okay,” she says.

  “Okay. So.” For a second, I forget everything I know about riding four-wheelers. “So, there’s bars. These, um, bars by your legs here.” I point to them. “And you can hold on there. But it’s kind of awkward, so if we get to going fast or make any sharp turns, you can, um, you can hold on to me.”

  “Should I be worried?”

  “What?”

  Hope taps the sticker under the handlebars.

  “Oh.” My heart rate returns to normal. The sticker has a sixteen with a circle around it and a line through it that says: OPERATING THIS ATV IF YOU ARE UNDER THE AGE OF SIXTEEN INCREASES YOUR CHANCE OF SEVERE INJURY OR DEATH.

  “Nah, we’re okay. I’ve been driving this thing for years. And my tics ease up a lot when I’m driving, too.”

  And then it’s almost like my stepmom can smell that our lives are about to be in danger, because she pokes her head out of the screen door. “You better be wearing helmets,” she calls.

  We both groan. “Aw, come on. It’s like ninety degrees,” says Dean.

&
nbsp; “I don’t care and neither does traumatic brain injury. Wear your helmets.”

  She goes back inside without bothering to watch us, because she knows what’s going to happen next: We put on our helmets. (Grudgingly.) We give one to Hope and Janie, too. And then we’re off.

  Hope holds on to the bars, and I ease on the gas, gradually picking up speed. Dean guns it so that Janie has no choice but to wrap her arms around him. I roll my eyes.

  Hope laughs behind me. “THIS IS AMAZING! How fast are we going? It feels like we’re flying! It’s got to be, like—”

  “Fourteen miles an hour.”

  “What?! That can’t be right. Seriously, I think your gauge is broken and we’re actually going, like, sixty-five.”

  “I know. It’s crazy, right?” I yell because it’s harder to hear the person in front over the sound of the engine (like a lawnmower on steroids). “It’s too bumpy out here to go really fast, but just wait’ll I get her up to eighteen.”

  We follow the path as it cuts through pine forests and fields of yellow and violet wildflowers. It’s been a while since it rained last, and the four-wheelers kick up clouds of red dirt that sting our eyes and throats. I can’t follow too closely behind Dean because if I do, we will literally be eating his dust. Plus, it’s kind of nice being alone with Hope. I point things out to her: brambles of wild blackberries, the creek where Dean and I used to catch crawdads and pan for gold, tree stands that hang from trees every now and then like deranged Christmas ornaments. They look like someone stapled a chair or a tiny platform to a tree and then hung a ladder off the bottom. They’re for sitting in and shooting at deer. Mostly, they’re pretty simple, but my dad has this one that is basically a tree house for grown-ups. He and Dean built it so they could hunt better, but it seems like whenever Pam sends me to get them for lunch, all they’re doing is eating beef jerky and laughing.

  Hope points at something black and round. “Is that a trash can?”

  “It’s a rain catcher. The deer hang around here more when they don’t have to go too far for water.”

  “So, you attract the deer here with water, and then you shoot them?” Even though she’s sitting behind me, I can tell she’s wrinkling her nose.

  “Well, it’s illegal to have them within so many yards of a tree stand because that’s just like shooting fish in a barrel.”

  “Oh.”

  “My dad’s really big on following all the rules about hunting and safety and stuff.”

  She’s silent behind me. I tic-sniff several times.

  “And it’s not like he and Dean are just killing for sport. We eat everything they bring home.”

  “It’s fine, Spence.”

  “Okay.”

  I don’t know why I feel so defensive. I don’t even like hunting. My dad runs the hunting and outdoor supply store off 75. My grandaddy owned it, and his grandaddy owned it, and someday Dean is going to own it. But only after he goes to college on a baseball scholarship like the kind my dad dreamed of getting before he tore his shoulder.

  I focus on steering the four-wheeler down into a small creek bed and up the hill on the other side. It’s not the easiest thing, and I feel Hope’s arms squeeze around me quick. Today is possibly the best day of my life.

  We stop a few times to get off the four-wheelers so we can look at things. Old wells that are half-filled in with dirt but could still reach water if you dug them out. The remains of a row of Depression-era shacks.

  Hope and Janie zip together every time the engines stop. Did you see those wild hog tracks? Can you believe how hot the seat gets after a few minutes? Are you checking your phone AGAIN?

  Janie flushes and shoves her phone in her back pocket. “I was just checking to see whether Max got my last e-mail. We haven’t talked in—”

  “A few days. I know.” Hope rolls her eyes.

  “Well, things were kind of tense when I left because I spent my last night in South Africa with my friends, so I just want to make sure we’re good.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Hope walks in the other direction, lips buttoned up tight.

  Janie comes over and stands next to me while I’m looking at what’s left of a building foundation. “So, you used to come here all the time as kids?”

  I nod. Even though she smiles at me a lot, she makes me nervous. I want so badly for her to like me.

  Dean jumps in. “Oh, yeah. Spencer and I used to scavenge what’s left of these shacks for glass bottles and other little stuff like that.” He talks and talks and talks and talks.

  Hope is still inspecting a rock in the foundation with something like wonder.

  “Hey, there’s a grove of beech trees up the hill right there,” I say. “You wanna go see them?”

  “Sure.”

  We walk away from where Dean is still regaling Janie with stories of our youth.

  There’s a tree to our right. Its pale trunk is dappled with gray like a pony, and the branches spread skyward with a kind of queenly magnificence.

  “You can tell they’re beech trees because of their smooth gray bark,” I say. “They’re the best trees to carve in.”

  We get to the top and I lead her to the biggest one, the oldest, the mother of all beech trees. It is covered in writing. “See those initials?” I say. “Those are my great-great-uncle Clint’s. He was born in 1890.”

  Hope traces the CB with her fingers.

  I point at another set. “And here’s my mom and dad.” I lower my voice. “We don’t really point them out if Pam’s around.”

  Hope smiles her secret-keeping smile.

  “And here’s Dean. And my granddaddy. And me.” I tap the SB at waist level that stands for Spencer Barton.

  Hope’s eyes travel up and down the trunk. She grins. “You literally have a family tree.”

  I grin back. “You want to put your initials in it?”

  She shakes her head. “No way. Your stepmom’s not even on it.” She surveys the grove. “But maybe we could start our own tree.”

  So we pick one. A skinny beech with young green leaves and a trunk that’s only as big around as a can of soup. I take out my pocketknife and carve an SB and then Hope carves an HB. There’s no plus sign or heart or anything, but I like how our initials look next to each other.

  “Hey, Spence, where does your mom live?” Hope is looking at the sky when she asks me.

  “I don’t know.”

  We never really talk about my mom. Well, I never bring her up, and Hope has always politely steered around her, even though I suspect she’s always wanted to ask me questions.

  “She’s a singer,” I finally say. “My parents met and fell in love at a show of hers in Athens. She had to run away from home to be a singer, so I don’t even know if I have, like, grandparents or uncles or anything.”

  “What was she like?”

  A slow smile settles over my face. “The best. She used to take us in the bathroom at restaurants just before my dad hit the point where he’d get grumpy and yell, and we’d have these bathroom dance parties where we’d get all our sillies out so we could behave at the table.”

  Hope grins.

  “And we look alike. Dark hair and dark brown eyes.” Sometimes I think that’s why Dean is my dad’s favorite. He can’t stand the look of me. “And Mimi says we act kind of alike, too. She says we’re dreamers.” My breath catches, because I remember it isn’t just the good things we share. “She didn’t fit here, either.”

  Hope touches my shoulder. “Spence, you—”

  Dean and Janie start yelling for us, so I don’t get to find out what Hope was going to say. I take the knife from her and tuck it in my pocket fast, because I don’t need to guess how long Dean would tease me about carving our initials into a tree (for all eternity, it’s a given).

  “One sec!” Hope calls back.

  She moves down the hill in short flying leaps, each time grabbing a new tree to steady herself against the steepness. She pauses in front of a tree trunk almost entirely covered in skin
ny white mushrooms, and I stop short so I don’t run into her.

  She turns. “We don’t have to tell anyone,” she says. “About the initials.” It’s almost like a question.

  Her secret-keeping smile comes back, and it makes me think there are other things she wants to do and not tell anyone about.

  “No, of course not.”

  I shove my helmet on as soon as we get back to the four-wheelers because I can feel my face getting hot.

  “Hey, do you wanna try driving?” I ask.

  “YES.”

  I teach her how to push the gas with her thumb and how the brakes are just like bicycle ones. After a few jerky starts, she gets the hang of it. And after a few more minutes, she really gets the hang of it.

  “I AM THE QUEEN OF THE WILDERNESS!!!” she yells as she races up an easy hill. Then, when we get to the top, she says, “Ruh-roh.”

  There are some pretty steep drops here, and on the other side of the dry creek bed, lots of places where you have to do a sharp climb or slalom around some trees.

  “Oh. I kind of forgot this is one of the trickiest places to ride,” I say.

  Dean sputters up beside her. “You might not be able to handle it,” he says.

  He takes off down the hill with a wild animal yell. Janie had her arms around him before, but now she’s slamming against him with every bump.

  A fact about Janie: Her boobs. They are massive. And I’m pretty sure my brother’s back is now intimately acquainted with their topography.

  Hope turns her head. “Do you think I can handle it?”

  I lower my voice. “You got this. Go easy on the downhills, shift your weight opposite the turns and obstacles, and lean forward and speed up to gain momentum on the uphills. And, um, I should probably put my arms around you this time.”

  “Okay,” she says.

  She gets so still, statue still, while she’s waiting for me to do it. It’s all very precarious. Not the terrain, Hope handles that like a boss. The part where I have to figure out where to put my hands. Definitely not anywhere near her boobs, but I can’t go too low, either. There is not a lot of space to work with, people! I settle on somewhere over her belly button, but her body is still soft in a way that feels dangerous.