Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World

by Ashley Herring Blake

  “Ivy, go!” Layla yelled, her chestnut hair sticking to her face. Hail the size of golf balls fell from the sky, and Layla screamed, covering her head. When her sister reached her, Ivy wrapped her arms around Layla’s waist, her pillow sopping wet and smooshed between them. They dragged themselves to the cellar, which was nothing more than a dirt room underground, built a century ago to store canned goods and potatoes. The entrance was a wooden door in the grass, and it shook and rattled against Ivy’s palm as she wrapped her fingers around the handle.

  Before she could get it open, a horrible screeching sound exploded behind them. Layla and Ivy turned in time to see their van lifted off the ground. It spun and the metal crumpled and then the whole thing disappeared into… nothing.

  There was nothing there. Ivy scrunched up her eyes, trying to see, but when she did, she wished she hadn’t.

  Because there was something there. It was dark and huge and swirling, and it wanted to eat Ivy’s whole world. If she drew it, she’d use nothing but dark charcoals and twisting lines that fell off the page.

  “Inside, girls!” Dad yelled as he and Mom rushed up next to them.

  Ivy yanked on the door, and it yawned open, revealing a little staircase descending into the dark. She went down first, but her ankle twisted on the last step, sending her sprawling over the dirt floor. Through the pillowcase, the corner of her notebook dug into her ribs.

  “Move over, Ivy!” Layla screeched. Ivy scrambled up, her ankle screaming at her as she scurried into a corner so Mom and Dad could get into the cellar.

  Dad set Aaron into Layla’s arms before he ran back to shut the door. Ivy hugged her pillow to her chest, catching one more glimpse of that huge nothing looming up in front of her father. Then the door slammed shut and everything went dark.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Undone

  Ivy used to think this cellar was magical. Back when Layla was a person she could trust, they’d open the cellar door and stretch out on the grass near the opening and make up stories about what was hiding down there in the dark. They weren’t allowed to go in. Mom was worried that the door would close on them and get stuck and that no one would know where they were for hours and hours. Ivy remembered arguing with her, telling her that being trapped in a dark dungeon would be an adventure.

  Well, it wasn’t. It was damp and smelled like dirt and rotten potatoes, and Ivy’s clothes were soaked, and she couldn’t stop seeing that nothing swirling closer and closer. Who knew adventures could be so terrifying?

  Above them, the door rattled and the sky roared. It wasn’t a beautiful sound. It was ugly and had teeth behind it as the train chugged on and on. Ivy didn’t know what it was running over and crashing into and ripping apart. She didn’t want to know. She just wanted to go back to bed. She wanted her treehouse on top of a mountain.

  Next to her, she thought Dad was holding Aaron again. She couldn’t really see anything, but she heard him singing softly to keep her baby brother calm. Somewhere in the dark, Mom probably had her nose smooshed against Evan’s head. Her headlamp, abandoned on her glass-covered bed, sure would have come in handy right now.

  Layla fumbled for Ivy’s hand. Ivy grabbed on, and she was so relieved that tears stung her eyes.

  “Ivy,” her sister said, squeezing her hand even tighter.

  “Yeah?” Ivy’s voice sounded tiny, and she could barely hear herself over the noise outside.

  “Should we make this a Harriet story? Maybe it’s not really a tornado. Maybe it’s really the magical north wind come to transform us into…”

  Layla’s words trailed off like she was waiting for Ivy to fill in the next line. They used to make up stories all the time. Mom had written and illustrated the Harriet Honeywell books, a chapter book series, for the past four years. She would always brainstorm with Ivy and Layla, letting them spill all their ideas into her lap. The first book was even dedicated to “My brilliant girls, without whom Harriet would never have been born.” Stories, written and drawn, were in the Aberdeen girls’ blood.

  But Ivy didn’t want to make up stories with Layla anymore.

  “This isn’t some fairy tale,” Ivy said after a few seconds. “This is serious.” She pulled her hand away from her sister’s, thinking she’d feel triumphant and grown up. Really, Ivy just felt lost. She laced her own fingers together and squeezed, but it wasn’t the same as Layla’s hand in hers.

  “I know it’s serious, Ives.” Layla sounded exasperated and hurt, and it made Ivy’s stomach feel sour. She never talked to Layla like that. She knew she sounded like Mom when they used to get in trouble for playing hangman during church. Ivy didn’t know how to be around her older sister anymore. Not since Layla and Gigi stopped being friends.

  “This will be over soon,” Dad said. “Then we’ll go back to—”

  But he never got to say whatever they might have gone back to because the loudest sound Ivy had ever heard exploded outside.

  A crunch and a smash and a crumble and a boom.

  Ivy clapped her hands over her ears and colored the sounds in her head. Carbon black and clear glass, the deep russet of their front porch. Squeezing her eyes closed, she shook her head, her hair tickling her arms. Those colors were scary, so she brushed them over with fuchsia starbursts and flowers with cobalt stems and a house nestled among gold-and-emerald-striped branches. She made a whole new and beautiful world, even as she worried that her own world was coming undone.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Gone

  It was over in a blink. All that noise turning into an eerie silence. Ivy’s lungs seemed to have stopped working, and she knocked a fist against her chest to get them started again.

  “Dad,” Layla whispered. “What was all that?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. His breathing must have just started up again too, because it sounded raspy and quick.

  They sat for another few minutes, but it felt like five hours. Mom was totally silent, invisible in the dark. Ivy wanted to crawl into her lap, but her lap was pretty full with Ivy’s baby brother right now, just like it always was.

  “Is it over?” Ivy asked.

  “I think so,” Dad said. “Stay here. Let me check.”

  Ivy heard rustling as her dad stood up. Aaron squawked a little, and Layla shifted next to Ivy, so she knew her sister was holding him now. No one spoke, and Ivy was sure they all held their breath while the cellar door squeaked open. The storm siren got louder. It was barely any lighter outside, but Ivy made out Dad’s silhouette against the greenish-black sky.

  He climbed the steps, but stopped when his shoulders were out and pressed his fingers into the grass. His head turned this way and that. The storm siren wound down, like a balloon deflating on a slow leak. Ivy waited for a sigh of relief, a laugh, anything to tell them it was okay.

  But none of that happened. In fact, a whole lot of nothing happened. Dad stood frozen on the third-to-top step, staring in the direction of their house.

  “Dad?” Ivy asked. Mom shushed her. Dad stayed on the steps but tangled both his hands in his dark hair.

  “Dad?” Layla asked. No one shushed her.

  He didn’t move, his hands still on top of his head.

  “Daniel?”

  Mom’s voice seemed to snap him out of it. He released a huge sigh and turned, his eyes roaming over Ivy and Layla until they landed on Mom.

  Then he said a silly thing. A wild thing. An impossible thing.

  “It’s gone. Everything. It’s all gone.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Rubble

  Gone was not a word Ivy thought she would ever use to describe a house. A person, maybe. Summer vacation. The last of the chocolate cake. But not a house. And certainly not her house.

  Dad was the funny one in their family, always trying to get her more serious mother to laugh. He called it his mission in life, to make his girls smile. So Ivy really hoped that was what he was doing when he said gone.

  It’s gone. Everything. It’s all gone. />
  Possible translation: That rickety shutter on the living room window that always smacked against the house whenever the wind blew was gone. Then they’d all laugh over how Mom couldn’t nag him anymore about replacing it.

  But Ivy didn’t think he was trying to be funny this time. He wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t grinning in that way that made the corners of his eyes wrinkle up.

  Slowly, silently, her family climbed out of the cellar. Ivy was the last one. No one helped her, and her ankle ached, protesting her weight. She could already feel it swelling against the top of her shoe. She hugged her damp pillow and limped over to where her family stood, staring at the house.

  Or at least, where the house used to be. Her dad was right. Gone was the perfect word to describe what Ivy was seeing right now.

  Because there was nothing there. Nothing house-shaped, anyway. Just rubble. Just a mess. Just wood and that pink insulation stuff and tiles and clothes and food, all the colors of their world thrown together like a giant had had a temper tantrum. The stone porch steps were still there, right where they should be. So was the back wall of the sunroom, and part of a wall in the dining room with its rosebud wallpaper. Other than that, nothing. Even the brick chimney was crumbled, a pile of rust red and gray. Behind it, the sky was starting to lighten into a pale lavender, the clouds almost soft looking now. The whole storm was here and then gone.

  Just like their house.

  Ivy craned her head up, up, up to where her little attic room should be. There was nothing but a pinking sky. Some of the trees were cut in half, as though a huge pair of pliers had snipped off the tops. It was impossible to tell if any of the other houses around them had been hit too. The Aberdeen house sat on two acres of land. Their closest neighbor was Ms. Clement, a nice old lady with dyed red hair who always slipped Ivy a butterscotch candy whenever they ran into her in town, and she lived about a quarter mile away.

  “Oh my God,” Layla said, and Aaron squirmed against her chest. “Oh my God, oh my God.”

  “Okay, let’s not panic,” Dad said. That was his favorite phrase. Let’s not panic when Mom’s blood pressure got really high near the end of her pregnancy. Let’s not panic when Aaron wouldn’t stay asleep for more than thirty minutes at a time during the night. Let’s not panic when Mom had to push back the next Harriet book deadline because she was so tired, she couldn’t think straight.

  “This is the perfect time to panic, Dad,” Layla screeched. “We have no house. Where is our house?”

  “Panicking won’t make our house come back,” Ivy said, even though she kind of agreed with Layla. Panicking seemed like the perfect thing to do.

  Layla glared at Ivy, but Dad just kept staring at the yawning pile of junk where their house once stood. Mom stared too, her mouth hanging open. Even like this, with her light red hair a mess and her nightgown all covered in dirt, she was pretty. Ivy felt a little twinge of longing for her mom to look at her and tell her it was okay, but she was quiet. Everyone was.

  Ivy looked away, back into the sky.

  “Did anyone grab their cell phone?” Dad asked.

  No one answered. Ivy didn’t even have a cell phone. Thirteen was when Layla got hers, Mom and Dad said, and thirteen was when Ivy would get one too. But now, no one had anything except Aaron and Evan’s diaper bag.

  “Is everyone all right?” Mom asked. “Layla?” She turned and ran her eyes over Layla’s form.

  “I mean, my body is fine, if that’s what you’re talking about,” Layla said.

  “Ivy?” Mom asked wearily.

  Ivy thought of her ankle and nodded. It was no big deal. Not compared to their pile of a house.

  Mom let out a breath before she started checking the twins for marks or bruises, lifting their arms and inspecting their feet.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” Mom said when she seemed satisfied that no one was hurt. All their heads snapped toward her. She’d always been the captain of their ship. “We’re going to go through the house… the mess… and see what we can find that we can use. Look for clothes and food, only what we actually need.”

  She looked around their yard and pointed to a pile of blue plastic near the oak tree that must have blown out of the old barn. Branches and leaves covered its surface. “Layla, go shake out that tarp, and we’ll put everything we find over there.”

  “Hang on, I don’t want the girls near the house,” Dad said. “There might be some electrical issues. Maybe even a gas leak or something.”

  “Oh,” Mom said, deflating. “I didn’t think about that.”

  “We can still walk around the outside of the…” He frowned and his bottom lip actually wobbled as he waved toward the pile that used to be where they lived. His hand trembled. “See what we can find there.”

  “Okay.” Mom rounded her shoulders back gently, trying not to wake Evan. Ivy couldn’t believe he could sleep through all this. “Yes, let’s do that.”

  “Why don’t you go sit down with the boys, Elise,” Dad said.

  “I can help. I’ll put Aaron on my back. Where’s the other carrier—”

  She clapped a hand over her mouth. Tears welled in her eyes, but she squeezed them away before they could slip down her cheeks. The other carrier, along with everything else they owned, was certainly nowhere to be found.

  “This can’t be happening,” Mom whispered. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  Dad took Aaron from Layla and walked with Mom over to the tarp. He kept blinking and shaking his head, opening his mouth for words that never came. Ivy and Layla shook out the tarp, and then Mom sat down, her back against the oak tree. Ivy gave her the pillow to use however she needed, but she barely looked at Ivy, mumbling a thanks.

  Instead of springing into action, they all sank down next to Mom. Ivy folded her legs and stared at her lap for a few seconds. She didn’t want to look at their ruined house, but it was hard not to. It was like a wreck on the side of the road—it tugged at her eyes like a magnet.

  She wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that. She felt like crying, except that no one else was crying and she didn’t want to cry alone. Plus, tears wouldn’t help. They’d only make everyone feel worse, adding a whiny cherry to the top of this horrible sundae, so she stuffed her tears down, all the way down to her toes. It was easy, something she’d gotten used to doing in front of her family for the past year. It had been her job to keep Mom relaxed while she was pregnant, and worry-free after the twins were born.

  Ivy stood up and limped over to the remains of their house. Her ankle throbbed, but she kept going. The air was damp and quiet and had a hint of that clean, green smell she used to love after spring rainstorms. Except now it was mixed with wood and metal and a sort of cloudy scent, like spring had caught a cold. Her eyes skittered through the mess for something familiar, any clue about where her room might have landed.

  What a ridiculous idea—where her room might have landed. A hysterical laugh bubbled into Ivy’s throat, but she forced it down. No one would understand why a laugh was the best thing right now. Much better than all this silence.

  Finally, she saw something—the blue comforter from her bed. Maybe her bedside table wasn’t too far off.

  “Ivy, what are you doing?” Layla called.

  “Just looking,” Ivy said, but she stepped on the rubble, right where it started arcing up into a little hill.

  “Ivy, stop,” Dad said, but Ivy took another step.

  “Ivy Elizabeth!” Mom yelled.

  “I just need to find something!” Ivy called back.

  “Find what?” Layla said. “We need to find everything!”

  Ivy moved forward a bit more, inching here and there to avoid the gaping holes between planks of wood and broken furniture. She tried not to think about how she was stepping all over their house. All over her entire life.

  She set her bad ankle on the edge of what looked like the bathroom sink she and Layla shared. The chrome faucet was still flecked with dried toothpaste.
Before she could go any farther, someone lifted her by her armpits.

  “I told you to stop,” Dad said, setting Ivy on her feet in front of the tarp. “It could be dangerous.”

  “I just needed my—”

  “What, your stupid brush pens?” Layla said.

  Ivy looked down, biting her lip so she didn’t cry.

  “Oh my God, that’s it?” Layla asked. “You’re worried about your pens right now?”

  “Layla, easy,” Mom said softly, but Ivy didn’t think her sister heard.

  “I mean, really, Ivy?” Layla said. “Look around you!”

  Ivy didn’t look around her. She didn’t look at anything except her dirty red sneakers, her swelling ankle. She knew it was silly to worry about her pens right now, but she couldn’t help it. They were nice pens, artist quality and fancy. You could refill the ink and replace the nibs, and they came with a blender pen. They cost a hundred and ten dollars for a pack of thirty-six colors. Ivy saved her allowance for seven months to buy them. Plus, they were hers. Her tools to create… well… her whole world.

  This one certainly wasn’t real anymore, if it ever was.

  Ivy finally glanced up at her sister, but Layla was no longer looking at her. She was looking at the house, and tears were finally spilling out of her eyes. Ivy took a step forward because Layla was still her sister and sisters needed each other when things like this happened. But just when Ivy lifted her arms to hug her, Layla turned and collapsed next to Mom. She buried her face in Mom’s lap, her shoulders shaking silently. Mom had Aaron in her lap now too, but she managed to smooth her fingers through Layla’s hair, murmuring to her softly.

  Ivy stood and watched. And then she stood and not watched because looking at her family felt really lonely right now. Dad was next to her, but he was staring at the house, his hands on his hips. Every few breaths, he let out a gigantic sigh, over and over again.