If you are afraid, sad, tired, or lonely if you feel lost or strange if you crave stories and adventure, and the magic possibility of a forest path—this book is for you
Acknowledgments
• Zareen Jaffery knew exactly how to make Finley’s story shine and trusted that I could make it happen.
• Diana Fox wisely pointed to this idea out of all my others and said, “Write this one. This one feels right.”
• Krista Vossen, Hilary Zarycky, and Júlia Sardà
■ wildly talented artists with flawless taste (see: the look and feel of the book in your hands)
• The Simon & Schuster team, especially
■ Mekisha Telfer, lady knight
■ Katrina Groover, Karen Sherman, Bara McNeill—scholars three, patient and sharp-eyed
■ Justin Chanda, Anne Zafian, Katy Hershberger—mighty champions and heralds
• Tim Federle and Natalie Lloyd, whose endorsements mean the world to me. (endorsement: eleven-letter word for “thumbs-up, buttercup!”)
• Alison Cherry, Heidi Schulz, Corey Ann Haydu, Ally Watkins—faithful friends and early readers.
• Kama Lawrence and Dennis Pitman lent me their lawyerly wisdom.
• Matt (my love) gave me the idea.
• Mom (my forever anchor) gave me the courage.
• And mighty, unsinkable Battleship Legrand—how could I have done this without you? (I couldn’t have.)
■ Drew and Kelsey and Kyle—let’s never forget those tree-topped days.
■ Grandma and Grandpa—your house was our kingdom, your love our sword and shield.
■ Dad and Anna, fearless captain and first mate of our motley crew! Steer us steady and true. You always have, and you always will.
NCE THERE WAS A GREAT, sprawling forest called the Everwood.
Magic lived there, and it lit up every tree and flower with impossible beauty.
But even so, most people stayed far away from the Everwood, for it was said to hold many secrets, and not all of them kind.
According to rumor, the Everwood was home to astonishing creatures and peculiar, solitary people. Some were born in the Everwood, and some had wandered inside, whether they meant to or not.
No one in the Everwood got along, for they had no ruler to unite them, no neighborhoods or cities. They lived like wild things and kept to themselves, but they all loved the Everwood, and its strangeness, with their whole hearts. For it was their home, and it was all they knew.
Or so the rumors said.
Most people were afraid to enter the Everwood, but some brave souls made the journey anyway: adventurers, witches, explorers.
They never returned.
Perhaps the wild creatures who lived in the forest had trapped them there. Or maybe the Everwood’s secrets were so enchanting that those who made it inside did not care to leave.
Everyone who lived near the Everwood knew that it was home to two guardians. They were as ancient as the Everwood trees, and they protected the forest’s secrets from outsiders.
Throughout their long lives, the guardians had learned how to read certain signs: the wind in the trees, the chatter of the Everwood creatures.
One summer, not so long ago, something happened that would change the Everwood forever. The ancient guardians determined that soon a terrible Everwood secret—one they had kept hidden for years—would come to light. And if this happened, the guardians feared, the Everwood would fall. They would no longer be able to protect their forest. Its secrets and treasures would be laid bare. The people of the Everwood would lose the home they so loved and be forced out into the cold, wide world.
So the guardians studied their signs, desperate for hope—and they found it. A small, cautious hope, as clear to them as though it were a page in a book:
The Everwood might fall—but it could still be saved, even then. The trees whispered it; the birds sang it: A fall does not have to be forever.
All they would need to save the Everwood, said the guardians’ signs, was a queen.
1
WHY THIS SUMMER WILL BE THE MOST TERRIBLE OF MY LIFE
• I will be spending the entire summer at Hart House with my estranged grandparents. (estranged: nine-letter word for “kept at a distance”)
■ My cousins will be there too, off and on. That’s what Mom and Dad tell me. “Oh, they pop in and out, Grandma says.”
♦ I hate when people “pop in and out.” Popping in and out is not very list-friendly behavior.
• Mom and Dad are taking me to Hart House because they are “having problems” and “need some space to work it out.”
■ This, I assume, is a euphemism for divorce. Or at least something leading up to divorce. (euphemism: nine-letter word for “term or phrase, seemingly innocuous”)
• I will be far away from my bedroom at home, which is the only place where I can be entirely myself.
• There is a heaviness pressing down on me that makes it difficult to breathe.
IT’S TRUE: I AM FINDING it difficult to breathe. A heavy feeling inside my chest squeezes and pulls.
I rest my head against the car window and watch the world outside race by. Pale green prairie grass and the wide blue sky. Old barns with peeling paint and lonely houses surrounded by cows instead of neighborhoods.
I imagine I am running through the tall grass alongside the car—no, I am on a horse: a white horse with a tail like a banner.
A horse from the Everwood.
Nothing is fast enough to touch us.
Mom is obsessively switching radio stations. I think she probably has ADHD, which is a term I have learned from listening to kids at school. Mom has a hard time sitting still and is never satisfied with a radio station for longer than the duration of one song. Her work as an interior designer is perfect for her; it keeps her hands busy.
Dad is talking about things that don’t matter:
“I wonder if this summer will be hotter than last summer.”
“What’s a seven-letter word for sidesplitting?”
“I’m not sure I can get behind the new tone of this station.”
They like to pretend I don’t sense the stiffness between them, that I don’t notice how much more they’ve been working lately, even more than usual.
They like to pretend I don’t notice things. I think it makes them feel better, to lie to themselves and to me.
Which is kind of insulting. I may be a lot of things, but I am not stupid.
For example, I recognize how strange it is that I have never met my grandparents. I do know Mom’s parents, and her brother, though they live so far away that I hardly ever see them and they might as well be strangers.
But when I ask about Dad’s parents—Grandma and Grandpa Hart—Mom and Dad fumble with their words, offering explanations that don’t explain anything much:
“Well, Grandma and Grandpa are always so busy. It’s a matter of scheduling.”
“We’re always so busy, your dad and I. You know that, Finley.”
“I don’t know, Fin,” Dad often tells me. “Your grandparents and I . . . we’ve never been close.”
Through my observation of the world, I have concluded it is not normal for a girl to be kept away from her grandparents, her aunts and uncles, her cousins, as if they could hurt her.
Testing myself, I inhale slowly. The heaviness inside me has faded.
I can breathe again.
I glance at the back of Dad’s head, at Mom’s eyes in the rearview mirror. She must be nervous; she has never met Dad’s family either. She is staring hard at the road, sitting perfectly straight, not paying attention to me.
So she and Dad didn’t notice a thing. Good.
I am safe. For now.<
br />
(I will not think about Hart House, or about how my cousins will stare at me, or about pretending it isn’t weird to spend a summer with my grandparents after years of not knowing them.)
(No, it isn’t weird at all.)
I cannot keep thinking about these things. That is a recipe for disaster.
I check the reflection of Mom’s eyes. Still glaring at the road, Mom?
Yes. Good.
I am safe.
I flip past my pages of lists and to the portion of my notebook reserved for stories about the Everwood.
I don’t know what I will write about today.
Perhaps about the Everwood’s evil cousin forest, the Neverwood, and their terrible, thousand-year war. Or maybe about the various Everwood witch clans, and how people say you can tell them apart by the smell of their magic.
Rhonda, my next-door neighbor, and probably the closest thing I will ever have to a best friend, says I am a huge nerd.
She is probably right.
Given my father’s love of crossword puzzles, his job as a literature professor at the university, and my preference for books over people, I’ve acquired an impressive vocabulary for an eleven-year-old.
But when my parents sat me down to explain where I’d be going this summer, and why, all the words seemed to fly right out of my head.
I hope I can find them again soon.
My notebook—the latest in a series of twelve—has loads of blank pages in it, waiting to be filled.
And if I’m going to keep my grandparents from discovering my secret, I will need to write.
A lot.
HE IS COMING.
She is coming.
It was the beginning of summer. There were soft breezes in the air, and the Everwood was using them to speak.
The ancient guardians used spells and charms to weave a golden cage around the secret at the heart of the Everwood.
But still the secret grew and darkened, deep underground. It reached for the roots of the great Everwood trees like poison. Someday it would rise. Someday, soon, it would escape.
But those who lived in the Everwood—the witches and the goblins, the barrows and the fairies and the wood spirits—knew nothing of this. They turned their faces to the trees and listened, as they did every day.
Today the message was different.
She is coming, whistled the Everwood winds.
She is coming, rustled the Everwood leaves.
“Who?” the creatures of the forest asked. “Who is coming?”
The little orphan girl, groaned the trees. She carries a great sadness inside her. We must put our hope in her nevertheless.
And the guardians stood at the edge of the wood and gazed into the sun, waiting.
2
WHEN WE MAKE OUR WAY down Brightfall Lane and Hart House comes into view, I see a curtain fall over Dad’s face, closing him away from me.
He is driving now; Mom switched with him at a gas station at the edge of Billington, where Grandma and Grandpa Hart live.
Dad told her outside while he filled up the car, “I want to be the one to drive up to their door. I don’t know, it feels like it ought to be me.”
I don’t understand why that’s such a big deal.
Hart House is enormous and white, the largest house I have ever seen in real life. Hidden by a sea of green leaves, it sits back from the road, the only house at the end of a long driveway lined with trees.
Our car and this house and these trees feel like the only things left in the world.
For the next two and a half months, this will be my world.
I want to leave, I try to say, but my voice doesn’t seem to be working.
As we drive up to the house, we see Grandma standing on the wraparound front porch beside a column, waving.
Dad squares his shoulders and plasters on a smile. Mom does the same thing—straightens her blouse, puts her chin up and her shoulders back.
I hope I am not so obvious when I try to hide myself.
I want to tell them about the stones piling up in my stomach. That my thoughts are tangled and wordless.
My brain does not like being brought here against my will. It is shouting at me to make Mom and Dad turn the car around.
Grandma Hart steps out the front door onto the porch.
Dad shifts the car into park. His hands grip on the steering wheel hard.
“It’ll be okay, Lewis,” Mom says quietly. “You’re doing the right thing.”
Does she think I can’t hear her? What will be okay? What right thing?
My chest is knotted up. I feel like a person standing in the middle of a crowded street. The person is screaming, but nothing is coming out, and no one’s paying attention anyway.
Grandma stands there, on that porch the size of our apartment, holding up a pitcher.
Everything looks like a painting: blue sky, white house, bright flowers.
How can the world look so perfect when I feel so broken?
• • •
There are so many of them.
A swarm of Harts: They all have their own faces, but each face has a piece of me inside it. Almost everyone’s hair is thin and blond, like mine, but none of them have Mom’s freckles, like I do.
I catalog as much information as I can while Grandma gives me and my parents a tour of the house:
Seven bedrooms, five bathrooms, two living rooms, a dining room, a parlor, a kitchen, a sunroom, a rec room. A dark study with glass doors. This is Grandpa’s private space. Children aren’t allowed inside unless Grandpa says so.
I am used to an apartment in the city. This house is a planet.
I hear whispers, bare feet slapping on wood floors, bodies moving throughout the house. Some of my cousins are following us. Some of them scamper away and others take their place. I see adult women. My three aunts.
There are smiles, and hugs that are honestly painful to me because I’m not accustomed to strangers invading my personal space.
The Harts are a storm, and I am its bewildered eye.
I wonder what they are saying about me.
I feel like I’m being dragged through a fun-house mirror maze that reflects distorted versions of myself.
I see two little kids, much younger than me. A girl my age, another one a little older, and a teenage girl.
The teenager is inside a bedroom, lying on her bed, playing on her phone. She glances up as we pass her open door. Her hair is a waterfall of gold rushing over the side of her bed. She looks irritated that we have disturbed her peace and quiet. She does not get up.
“And this is where you’ll be staying, Finley,” says Grandma, opening a heavy white door. “This is your father’s old room. We don’t use it much.”
“It’s lovely, Candace,” says my mother. I can see her work self take over.
(Gwen Hart of Gwen Hart Designs! Your one-stop renovation destination!)
Mom silently critiques the paint colors, the fabric choices, the arrangement of the furniture. Over the bed hangs a miniature chandelier made of crystal and dark brass. Against one wall stand shelves full of books organized in alphabetical order by author. The curtains are lace, and the rug is white.
The wrinkle between Mom’s eyebrows vanishes. She approves.
I wish the wrinkles inside me could disappear so easily.
“It looks so different,” Dad says quietly.
Grandma fluffs a pillow, not looking at him. “I redecorated some time ago. I didn’t think you’d mind. We weren’t sure you’d ever come back, so I thought, what did it matter?”
Dad rubs the back of his head and says nothing. The room is full of secrets—on Dad’s face, hanging in the air like clouds of dust—but I don’t know how to read them. Dad looks smaller than he ever has before.
“Don’t you think this is a beautiful room, Finley?” Mom’s eyes are wide. Say something nice. Quick.
“Yes. It’s exquisite.” (Nine-letter word for “mighty fine.”) I try to smile, but it feels all wr
ong, like someone else’s smile is being sewn onto my face. “Thank you.”
Grandma’s smile has been plucked from the pages of a magazine. She could be an actress. A ballerina in silk and pearls with piles of soft white hair.
Four of my cousins hover at the door—the girls around my age, the two little ones.
I feel like a creature at the zoo being gawked at. I roll my notebook into a spyglass.
“Kennedy,” says Grandma to the oldest girl, “why don’t you come say hello to your cousin? Where are your manners?”
“Hi, Finley.” Kennedy wraps me in a hug. She is tan and blond and perfect. She looks like she has leaped right out of the ocean; she smells like vanilla. “I’m so excited to finally meet you.” She turns to the other kids. “We all are.”
I am probably supposed to say something, but all I can think about are these five pairs of strange eyes staring at me. This house that smells different from mine and is far, far too big.
Mom and Dad will be gone soon. They are going to leave me.
My brain has yet to stop screaming. It bashes against the walls of my head in protest.
I can’t help it: I start to cry. Not loudly or anything; I am not one for fits. One minute I am not crying, and the next minute tears are sliding down my face, and I wish they weren’t, but I can’t stop them, and that makes me cry even harder.
I don’t want to be here. This place is all wrong.
Grandma’s mouth goes thin. She turns away from me. “I’ll go put on some tea.”
Dad says, “She’s just overwhelmed. This is all new for her.”
“Yes,” says Grandma, “I suppose it would be. Tea is the thing. We’ll have tea and get her washed up.”
I hear my cousins: “Is she all right?” “What’s wrong?” “Why is she crying?”
Grandma: “She’s only tired. Come, now. Don’t stare.”
I am sitting on my bed, and Mom is holding me, telling me things:
“Please stop crying, sweetie. Please.”
“The summer will be over before you know it, and then we’ll be back to get you.”
“You have to be brave. This will be fun. I promise.”
Some Kind of Happiness Page 1