“How did you know I was going to get you a donut?”
Miren shrugged. She lifted up her hand, like she was reaching out to take her donut, but Stanly didn’t have one to give her. He’d left the bag in the cafeteria. Miren’s hand collapsed back down by her side.
“Maybe you should rest now, Mir-Bear. You look sleepy.”
Miren blinked and scrunched up her forehead. “Bye-bye, Stanly. I’ll miss you.”
“Don’t you mean goodnight?” Stanly said.
Miren closed her eyes. Her hand felt cold in his.
“Mir-Bear?” he said, and that was when the machines started to screech.
White coats surged through the doorway and pushed Stanly aside. He wanted to tell them that it was too late, that Miren was gone, but they had already wheeled her into the hallway toward the emergency room.
Stanly watched the doctors take Miren away. He touched his face with numb fingers. The swinging doors banged open and shut. The lights overhead turned gray, like someone was slowly dimming the bulbs. Stanly might have stood there in the hallway forever if he hadn’t seen a white shape disappear through a door off to his left.
Stanly ran after Princy, punching open the door to the stairwell. Footsteps click-clacked in front of him. Stanly hurled himself forward, taking the stairs three at a time.
“Get back here—!”
He wanted to yell at Princy, call him the worst names he could think of, but Stanly’s throat had turned to ash.
He pounded down floor after floor until he finally reached the bottom. A door slammed in front of him. He shoved it open and came out into an underground parking garage.
He didn’t see Princy at first, but then he heard the tap-tap of his bones hitting the pavement. He saw Princy running up the ramp leading to the street.
Stanly raced after him. His thighs burned and needles poked into his lungs, but he didn’t care. Princy reached the sidewalk and slipped into a crowd of people. Stanly had to find him. He crashed into a man carrying a newspaper, knocking the coffee out of his hands. The man yelled at him, but Stanly couldn’t hear. White noise rushed between his ears, like an avalanche.
He caught sight of Princy, first behind a newsstand, and then over by the bus stop. People cursed and screamed as Stanly shoved his way through the crowd. He almost caught what he thought was Princy on the other side of the bus stop, but it was only a poster advertising DentalFrost toothpaste. A big white dollop sitting on a bristly white brush.
Stanly scanned the crowd. A breeze caught his face, and he realized that his cheeks were wet. Had he been crying?
He looked across the street, and that was when he saw Princy slide into a dark alley. He ran after him.
“Stanly, stop!”
Mom caught him in her arms and pulled him out of the intersection just as a cab screamed to a halt. The cab driver honked and peeled away.
“What were you thinking? Why aren’t you inside? God, Stanly, you could have been killed.”
Mom dug her nails into Stanly’s arms.
“What’s wrong?” Stanly didn’t answer. “Stanly, talk to me, is everything okay? Why are you out here?”
Stanly knew his mom would only get angrier if he didn’t say something, but he couldn’t make the words come out. He shook his head, and then he crumpled onto the sidewalk.
“Stanly, tell me what happened!” Mom was yelling, but Stanly could barely hear her.
Tears filled his nostrils and choked the air from his lungs.
“Is it Miren?” Mom said, her voice like glass. “Is she okay?”
Stanly shook his head, and then Mom was the one who started to cry.
They held Miren’s funeral on a Thursday. It had rained the night before, but that morning the sun came out and made the leftover raindrops sparkle. Stanly didn’t remember much about the funeral, except that he kept looking around for Princy, but he was gone.
Dad didn’t make it back for the service, either, but he sent Stanly an email.
“Stan the Man, I’m so sorry about what happened. I wish I could be there for you and Mom, but my flight just got canceled. They can’t get any more flights out until tomorrow. Trust me, if there was any possible way I could make it there I would. You guys are the most important people in the world to me. I hope you know that. Love, Dad.”
Stanly wanted to be angry, but he wasn’t. After what had happened, being angry didn’t seem that important.
Mom said she was too sick to attend the funeral, but she insisted that everyone go on without her. Ms. Francine said it was because she couldn’t accept the fact that Miren had died.
“These things take time,” Ms. Francine said, burying Stanly in her fuzzy sweater.
She came to stay at the house after the funeral. Dad kept saying he would come, too, but there was always a case or a meeting he couldn’t miss.
“Some people love with their whole heart, like you and Momma,” said Ms. Francine one afternoon over a pot of steaming borsch. “When bad things happen, it hits them right in the center of their chest.” She pressed a bony finger into Stanly’s rib cage. “Other people, like this papa of yours, keep love tied to the end of a long stick. That way, even if their heart gets broken, they never feel it inside, in the place where it hurts.”
“He doesn’t even care,” Stanly said.
“The heart has a way of coming back home, whether we like it or not. Someday, this papa will blink and find his heart sitting back inside his chest, where it always belonged. That day, he will care about the hurt he caused you.”
“Today, it’s up to us?”
“Good thing Ms. Francine cares more than a hundred papas.”
And it was up to them, Stanly and Ms. Francine, to take care of Mom the best way they knew how. She hadn’t eaten or come out of her room since that last day at the hospital.
“Love is like that, too,” said Ms. Francine, “but don’t you worry, little Stanly. One day, Momma will wake up and see.”
“See what?” Stanly said.
But Ms. Francine just winked and went back to stirring the borsch.
Ms. Francine ended up staying for two whole weeks. During that time, Stanly would go sit with Mom on her bed sometimes, but she never once came out into the living room or talked to anyone.
At some point—he couldn’t remember when—he started sleeping outside in the tent. The house was too stuffy and too full of Miren’s things.
Stanly was out there one night, lying on a blanket, looking up at the stars, when he heard soft footsteps disturbing the wet grass. His heart caught in his chest. He turned around, half expecting to see a skeleton creeping up behind him, but it was Mom.
She sat down on the blanket and put an arm around him. She didn’t say anything. They sat like that for a long time, watching the stars. They must have fallen asleep, because some time later, Stanly woke to the sound of tinkling music.
He blinked, unable to process the scene before him. Miren leapt through the air, wearing a gown made of flowy white fabric that looked like clouds. She danced and spun and pirouetted, her hair glittering in the moonlight. And she wasn’t alone.
Someone held her hand. Princy whizzed and pranced and flew alongside her. He was wearing a red velvet vest with puffy gold sleeves. Miren danced with him and smiled. Smiled so wide her whole face glowed.
“I see her,” Mom said.
Stanly looked over to find that Mom had woken up beside him. Her eyes followed Miren’s and Princy’s fluid, sweeping movements.
“Do you hear that?” Mom said, looking puzzled. “It sounds like music.”
“It is,” Stanly said.
“I don’t understand.” Mom scrunched up her forehead, just like Miren used to do. She looked deep into Stanly’s eyes. “She’s really gone, isn’t she? My little—”
She couldn’t finish. The word caught in her throat. She buried her head in Stanly’s shoulder and cried for the first time since that day standing in the street outside the hospital.
Mom st
arted eating again after that. She came out of her room and washed her hair, and a few weeks later she found a job as an assistant manager at JoJo’s Coffee Spot.
It was around that time that Stanly got a letter in the mail. He stood on the curb and opened it, wondering who on earth could be writing to him.
“Dear Stanly, thank you for entering the Young Discoverer’s Prize annual contest. Each year, we receive dozens of entries from all over the world. We regret to inform you that your entry was not selected as one of this year’s winners … ”
Stanly skipped down to the bottom of the page, where someone had added a handwritten note: “Your image got great feedback! More likes than any other entry. Unfortunately, the picture was too blurry for any of the judges to make out. Better luck next time.”
For some reason, that made Stanly laugh. So hard he swallowed his cinnamon gum.
“What’s wrong?” Mom said, waiting for him by the garage door.
“Oh, nothing.” Stanly crumpled up the letter and tossed it in the big green garbage can next to the house.
Later that week, Stanly helped Mom pack up all of Miren’s things, except for Ashleigh and Stripy Pony and all of her pictures. They put those on the mantel over the fireplace. He went back to school after that. He’d missed a lot of work, but he made it up eventually. The rest of that year passed in a blur. They flew down to Florida for Thanksgiving, and before school started in January, Mom came into Stanly’s room one night and asked him if he’d like to move to Florida.
He didn’t want to at first. It felt kind of like leaving Miren behind, but then he remembered how much Miren had loved the beach that one time they’d visited Uncle Morris for her birthday.
“I think she would like it there,” he said, and Mom hugged him and nodded like she knew just what he meant.
Jaxon came over a few days later to help Stanly pack. They put some stuff in boxes, but mostly they played Skatepark Zombie Death Bash and talked about everything but the fact that Stanly was leaving and they’d probably never see each other again.
“You know they’re making a Darby Brothers’ movie,” Jaxon was saying, “and it’s coming out on the last day of school, so we should definitely … oh.”
For a moment, Stanly had that feeling like when you rip off a Band-Aid, only this time the Band-Aid was covering his whole body and Ms. Francine wasn’t there to give him cookies from a tube to make the sting go away. “We can still watch it, though, when it comes out online. I can call you, and you can tell me all the parts that don’t match the books … except, my computer’s a piece of junk … ”
“I might have a solution for that.” Jaxon pulled a crumpled gift bag from his Darby Brothers’ Just-in-Case investigator’s backpack and handed it to Stanly. “It’s a going-away present.”
The thing inside looked thin, like a book or … “An iPad?”
“The same one you found buried in your backyard. I cleaned it up, though, and it still works like new. That way we can talk and stuff without waiting for your computer to load.”
Stanly woke the screen and a picture stared back at him. Jaxon, Stanly, and Miren posing in front of the ice-cream shack at Lazlo’s Pizza and Mini-Golf. He gripped the iPad so hard his fingers went numb. The picture changed; now it showed Miren holding her gardening tools, bars of sunlight warming her face. In the background, Ms. Francine and Uncle Morris hunkered over a smoking grill. Jaxon had taken the photo the year before, at Miren’s birthday.
More pictures flashed on the screen. Miren, Mom, and Dad at kindergarten graduation. That year Miren had dressed as a tomato for Halloween, and Stanly and Jaxon had gone as lumpy cucumbers. Stanly drew in a long breath and slid down so his head was resting on his beanbag chair. A gentle weight pressed on his chest and held him there.
“I can delete the pictures if you want,” Jaxon said, picking at his fingernails. “They were Mom’s idea anyway. Sorry, Stanly.”
“No.” Stanly forced the words through the sticky wall at the back of his throat. “It’s perfect.”
Ms. Francine came in just as Jaxon was leaving. She was wearing the scarf Stanly had bought her as a kind of reverse going-away present, fuzzy wool with a goat eating grass stitched on one end.
“So this is goodbye,” she said as Jaxon and Stanly stood on the porch, staring at their feet. “Why so sad? You will see each other again. Close or far, what does it matter? By now you should know, little Stanly, that the ones you hold dear never leave you.” She patted the locket hiding under her blouse. “They travel with you wherever you go. You keep them here … ” She tapped Stanly’s chest. “… and here, in your head.”
“I guess so,” Stanly said, but her words made him feel lighter, like the pressure on his chest had lifted and he could breathe again.
A week later, Ms. Francine helped them pack up all of their things in a big moving van, and Uncle Morris flew down so that he could do the driving. Jaxon stood on the curb, waving goodbye, a real goodbye this time, and so did Ms. Francine. Stanly hated to admit it, but he was going to miss her stories about goats and her woolly sweater and maybe even her borsch. On the way to Florida, they sang songs and played car games, and Uncle Morris told so many fart jokes Stanly said he should probably get a world record.
On the second night, they stopped at a Happy Trails gas station to stretch their legs. Stanly and Uncle Morris sat on the hood of the van, staring up at the purple-streaked sky. Mom went inside to buy snacks, and when she came out she said, “Here you go, little Stanly.” She handed him a cup full of steamy liquid. “Eat your cocoa before it gets cold.”
Mom and Stanly laughed, while Uncle Morris shook his head and looked at them like they were crazy. The whole thing would have made Stanly sad if Mom hadn’t already told him Ms. Francine was planning on visiting the next summer, and making them borsch every night. Whether they liked it or not.
It took three days to get to Uncle Morris’s house. It was three times the size of their old one, and only a few yards away from a big, sandy beach.
“Go ahead, kiddo, check out the water.”
Stanly flung off his flip-flops and ran across the sand. The beach stretched so far on either side he couldn’t see the end of it. The ocean crashed in front of him and made him think of Miren’s night-light, the one that looked like rolling waves. He splashed in, just enough to get his feet wet. The water was warm, even though it was the middle of winter.
He dug his toes into the cool sand, and his big toe hit something hard.
A lump filled his throat. He fished around for the hard thing and pulled it out of the water.
It was small and white and about the size of a finger bone. He wiped the wet sand from the sides, his stomach dropping.
When the sand came away, he saw that it wasn’t part of a finger, but instead a shell. The kind that’s hollow inside and swirled to look like a unicorn’s horn. A blast of cold wind slapped Stanly’s face. He let it wash over him, and then he turned around and called back toward the house.
“Come on, Mom, Uncle Morris, let’s go swimming! Last one in’s a rotten nobody!”
Stanly dunked his head under the water. He opened his eyes just for a second, and even though the salt burned, he imagined he saw Miren down there waving at him.
Just Miren.
And she was smiling.
My agent, Brianne Johnson, is a fearless advocate who brings a little magic to everything she touches. I am so lucky to be working with her and the entire team at Writers House.
One of the best days in my life was the day I received an email from my editor, Mallory Kass, expressing her passion for this book. No one will ever be able to match her love, enthusiasm, and dedication. I am so grateful to Mallory and everyone at Scholastic who have worked tirelessly to bring this story to life.
To all of my writer friends who have helped me along this journey, I would have been lost without your fellowship and encouragement.
Finally, to my misfit, soul-sister puppy, Hera. Although you may not be
able to read this, you bring light wherever you go, and I thank you for your kind soul and constant companionship.
Kim Ventrella is a children’s librarian and a lover of weird, whimsical stories of all kinds. She lives in Oklahoma City. Skeleton Tree is her debut novel.
Copyright © 2017 by Kim Ventrella
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
First edition, October 2017
Jacket art © 2017 by Lisa Perrin
Jacket design by Yaffa Jaskoll
e-ISBN 978-1-338-04272-6
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
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