“Except Mimi hated it,” I said. “She spent all of shavasana—that’s corpse pose, where you lie on your back, just breathing—thinking about the brief she needed to write. She decided she’d be better off spending her lunch breaks getting a caffeine boost.”
“Then how—”
“A few days later, Mom happened to stop for some tea at the same café where Mimi was working. Tried to bribe her back to yoga class with a free trial period.”
“And it worked?”
“Nope. But Mimi said if Mom wanted to see her that badly, why didn’t they go out for dinner sometime?”
Carina laughed. “Sounds like love at first sight.”
“Mimi says it’s mad love,” I said. “That it had to be, to have brought her way out here to the sticks. But she’s still in the city almost every day, so it’s not like she’s cut off from civilization. Not that being cut off from civilization would be such a bad thing, in my opinion.”
Carina took another blissful look around the pasture and nodded. “At the moment, I can’t disagree.”
The rest of the afternoon flew by. Eventually we went back to the house, and Carina met my whole family. We chatted over the double-chocolate caramel brownies, zapped just long enough in the microwave to make them gooey again.
Somehow it came up that Carina loved Legos, and Rowan offered to show her some of his old Lego robotics sets, and she got way more excited than I ever expected a would-be cheerleader to get about robots. My room was a letdown in comparison, though Carina did admire my feather collection. Then the two of us took Arby for a walk in the woods, and I showed Carina how to identify the fox tracks we found in a muddy spot—not so different from Arby’s, except they went in a straight line like a cat’s. When Marta came to pick up Carina, Mom let her choose a bar of soap to take home.
Carina thanked me for the fun afternoon and seemed to mean it.
That night I tried to call Becca. I planned to ask her how training was going—to be polite, even if I didn’t personally care about it. Maybe I could tell her about Carina coming over, and the brownies, which had been as amazing as they sounded. I bet Becca and I could replicate them at our next sleepover, if we did a little research first.
When I got no answer on either her phone or the Blumbergs’ landline, I didn’t think much of it. The Blumbergs were social butterflies compared to my family, and their Saturday nights were often spent eating out, going to the theater, or visiting colleagues or friends from synagogue. But even if Becca couldn’t talk, she could usually sneak a few quick messages. I went on our ancient family computer (actually only used by Mom and me, since Mimi had a laptop and Rowan had several PCs in varying states of functionality) to see if I could catch her.
Becca Blumberg was active 3 minutes ago. I’d just missed her.
Hey, I typed, hoping she was still paying enough attention to her phone to hear it chime. But as I waited, the number of minutes kept going up.
I scrolled through her recent activity. Today alone, she’d been tagged in over a dozen photos. Over and over I saw her wearing a maroon Osterhout Otters T-shirt and gold shorts, stretching and dancing and jumping with the other girls on the cheerleading team. Her face alternated between concentration and exhilaration. I hadn’t seen her so excited since her bubbe took us to see Wicked in Chicago.
My heart twinged. I’d been part of that experience. Her happiness now had nothing to do with me. Proving it, the compliments and in-jokes spilled off the screen in the comments section.
Becca had shared a photo captioned, It’s official!!! It showed the entire team wearing its uniforms. Even though she was my best friend, I had trouble picking her out. She blended in. I clicked to like it and wrote, Great job!!! which meant using three more exclamation points than usual. I pretended not to care that only fifteen minutes after she’d posted it, I was the tenth person to comment. My comment would soon be buried. I’d be lucky if she saw it at all. Understanding hit me like a boulder: in the last three weeks, Becca had become popular.
I wished I hadn’t told Carina to leave her purse in the house when we’d seen the goats. If she’d had her phone, she could have taken photos of the two of us having fun. Without pictures to prove it had happened, it felt almost like a story I’d made up to feel better about losing my best friend to Kirsten Van Hoorn and the Osterhout cheerleading team.
Chapter 10
My stomach did somersaults as I entered the cafeteria on Monday. I wasn’t sure why. I sat in my usual spot, uncurled the top of my lunch bag, and pulled out my sandwich, but I didn’t feel like eating it.
As Carina came into view with her tray, my stomach did another flip, and then I understood. I was anxious. What if she’d changed her mind about Saturday? What if she’d decided she didn’t like me and my family and our goats? What if she set her tray in the middle of the table and didn’t say hello?
“Hey,” she said, smiling.
Just like that, my appetite zoomed back. I unwrapped my sandwich. “Hey.”
Then came a third voice. “Hey.”
Carina and I whipped around to see who’d spoken, even though there was only one possibility.
“Nice shirt,” Yosh said.
I looked down. I was wearing a Rowan hand-me-down, a souvenir from a Science Olympiad competition. It had a small hole in it, thanks to one of the goats (Ixchel, if I remembered correctly), and didn’t seem like the sort of thing anyone, much less Yosh, would compliment. So he had to mean Carina’s. Her T-shirt had two cartoon characters on it: a boy in a green tunic and peaked hat, like Peter Pan, and a princess in a pink gown and tiara. Both characters had pointy ears, blond hair, and blue eyes.
“Thanks.” Carina sounded as surprised by Yosh’s sudden attention as I was. “You like Legend of Zelda?”
“Big-time. What’s your favorite game?”
“Oh.” Carina looked flustered. She still hadn’t sat down. “It’s super old, but I guess I’d say A Link to the Past. I like the story and the puzzles and um . . . when Link turns into a pink bunny. That probably sounds stupid.”
“Not at all,” Yosh said. “Bunny Link is really cute. I like the weird games, myself—the weirder, the better. Though I like the timed quests, too. Nothing like a ticking clock to get the adrenaline going.”
“I can’t stand those!” Carina said. “They make me feel like I’m going to have a heart attack.” She caught my eye and smiled sheepishly. “What about you, Hazel? Have you ever played Legend of Zelda?”
I shook my head. “I’m not really into video games.”
Yosh rolled his eyes. “Let me guess. You’re too busy reading the encyclopedia.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Carina looked back and forth between us. “You two know each other?”
“Unfortunately,” I said as Yosh said, “Does anyone ever really know anyone?”
He ignored my glower and raised his hand in a little wave. “I’m Yosh.”
Carina ducked her head. “Carina.”
“Want to see my sketchbook? I’ve got some Zelda stuff in here somewhere.”
“Oh! Sure. Cool.”
She turned her back on me and moved toward him. I went cold. This. This was why I should have kept my “Do Not Disturb” sign firmly in place. Carina had known Yosh for all of a minute, and she was already choosing him over me. Without meaning to, I started squeezing my sandwich. Goat cheese oozed out at the crusts, and a slice of tomato plopped onto the table.
Then she called to me, “Don’t you want to see, Hazel? Come on.”
“I’m not sure I’d be welcome,” I said.
“Oh, relax, Hazel Brownlee-Woebegone,” Yosh said. “I don’t bite.”
I hesitated only a moment longer. I was curious to see what Yosh spent his lunch periods drawing. I picked up my backpack and lunch bag and slid them down the table.
Yosh flipped through his sketchbook. “This is when Link first meets Naydra,” he said, pointing out a drawing of the blond boy faci
ng off with a giant green dragon.
“Oh my gosh. I love that part,” Carina breathed. “Wow. You got everything right. Naydra’s frills are perfect! Wait, go back, go back—is that the Great Deku Tree?”
“What else?” Yosh said, sounding pleased.
Carina turned to me. “The Great Deku Tree is this giant talking tree that protects the forest spirits. It’s always sending Link on quests.”
“Oh.” I didn’t understand how Carina and Yosh could get so excited about made-up characters in a made-up place in a made-up game, and I especially didn’t understand how they could get so excited about a made-up talking tree.
“But you’re lucky,” Carina said. “You practically live in a forest yourself.” She took an enthusiastic bite of her burger and turned to Yosh. “Hazel and I both went to Osterhout, but we didn’t become friends until now. I hung out at her place Saturday. You should see it—”
This was it. Carina was going to tell Yosh all about the farm and the skunk-crossing signs, and soon the entire school would be calling me something awful. And what if he said, I can do you one better! She’s obsessed with earthworms, too! My sandwich went even flatter between my fingers.
“Her family has goats!” Carina continued. “Ten of them, plus a guard donkey. Can you believe it? She has two mothers. One is a lawyer, and one has her own business selling soap and lotion and things out of the goats’ milk. And they have a really cute dog, and a big yard with a pickup truck that’s almost a hundred years old that the goats like to climb on!”
If Kirsten had been saying all this, it would have been a comedy bit to make Yosh bust a gut. Every detail would have become a reason to ridicule me. Somehow even having a cute dog or a mom who was a lawyer would be hilarious, coming out of Kirsten’s mouth. But Carina wasn’t making fun.
“Interesting,” Yosh said. He looked me over curiously, like I was an unfamiliar insect he’d just noticed. Not gross or poisonous, necessarily, but definitely unusual.
“You should come over to my place next time,” Carina told me. “I’ll teach you how to play Legend of Zelda. It’s really fun. There are all these games in the series, but the premise is always the same. You play Link, this guy who goes on all these quests to rescue Princess Zelda. And there are all these puzzles to solve and monsters to fight and secret artifacts to collect—”
“You know,” Yosh interrupted, “I have this theory that Link and Zelda are actually the same person.”
Carina went very still, an odd look on her face. “Really?”
“Sure. I mean, look at them. They’re basically identical. Switch their clothes, and they’d totally pass for each other. Don’t you think so?”
“I guess.” Carina frowned. “Honestly, I’ve wondered the same thing sometimes.”
“What I haven’t figured out is how,” said Yosh. “Time travel? Portal from an alternate dimension? Cloning?”
“I haven’t figured out that part either,” Carina said. “I just hate the thought of Zelda sitting around waiting to be rescued. She barely ever gets to fight for herself.”
“But if Zelda and Link are the same person, then she’s rescuing herself.”
“Yes!” Carina’s smile was huge. “It’s like she goes through all these trials in disguise. But when it’s over, she gets to be herself. A princess.”
Yosh looked at her thoughtfully as he flipped to another page in his sketchbook. And I realized he knew about Carina. Whether he’d heard us talking that first time or found out some other way, he knew. But did she know he knew? And how did it make her feel?
I wasn’t used to sharing friends. Becca had always had other friends—not kids from Osterhout, but kids from her synagogue and her parents’ colleagues’ kids. But she rarely saw them during the week, so mostly I’d had her to myself. Until this fall, of course.
And now I had to share Carina with Yosh. If anyone should have been the third wheel, it was Yosh, who’d elbowed his way into our friendship. Instead he steered our conversations, with Carina zipping eagerly behind. I wobbled off to the side, hitting every puddle and pothole.
They talked about Legend of Zelda. They talked about Dungeons & Dragons. They talked about scary movies, YouTube channels I’d never heard of, and some kind of snack called Pocky, which Carina described as a cookie, if cookies were shaped like sticks and dipped in yogurt. Carina did her best to include me, but I still spent the whole week trying to catch up.
I didn’t connect with Becca except to trade a few messages. She was too busy. Any hopes I’d had of rescheduling our canceled sleepover were dashed when she wrote, Rosh Hashanah starts Sunday which means I get to spend all weekend cooking and cleaning, whoooooo. Obviously, she wouldn’t be able to spend the night at my house, but I thought she might ask me to come over and help. She didn’t.
My weekend wasn’t relaxing, either. It was the almost-anniversary of Lena’s and Miles’s deaths—Lena three years ago, Miles two. The timing was a coincidence, but it didn’t feel like one. It felt like it meant something. Last year, my moms had decided we couldn’t let the anniversaries go by without some kind of remembrance.
Weather-wise, Sunday was beautiful—bright blue sky with cotton-ball clouds. It was warm enough to wear a T-shirt and jeans, but not hot enough to make me sweaty the second I stepped into the sun. A soft breeze tickled my neck under my ponytail. I didn’t trust it, though. Lena and Miles had both died on beautiful days.
After a special breakfast of fruit salad, eggs, and chocolate-chip pancakes that Mom made—except Mimi had only toast and a cup of decaf—we went out to the memory garden.
Mom came up with the memory garden idea back when Gaga died. We’d each chosen a flower to plant. The pink and purple dahlias were Mom’s. The yellow and orange roses were Mimi’s. Rowan had picked snapdragons, and so had I. He’d accused me of copying, but I really did like them best. Rowan was the one who’d taught me to pinch them at the base of their frilly heads to make them open their jaws and roar. Anyway, now there were twice as many of his favorite. Why was he complaining?
Mom made us stand in a circle, hold hands, and breathe in unison. She hadn’t left her yoga instructor past completely behind. I’d grown up with her making me breathe with her when she thought I was getting too upset. She called it a restoring breath and had different mantras to go with it. My favorite was Peace in me, peace in you.
This time, though, there was no mantra, only the sound of our breathing, the birds and insects, and Kali leading the herd in an earsplitting rendition of what might have been the “Hallelujah” chorus. Once in a while, Pax joined in with a screech like rusty machinery.
When Mom had decided we were properly in tune with the universe or whatever, she said, “We stand together as a family to remember Lena and Miles. They are part of our family, every moment of every day. They are our daughter and son, our sister and brother. Nothing changes that. We feel their presence with us as we go to work and school, when we eat dinner together, and go to bed at the end of the day.”
Mimi was already sniffling, but she didn’t let go to wipe her eyes and nose. Instead she gripped my hand harder. I assumed she was doing the same to Rowan on the other side.
Mom continued, “Don’t you doubt for a second that Lena and Miles feel our love. Our bodies may not be able to cross the border between Life and Death until it’s our time, but our souls know no boundaries. Love knows no boundaries. Lena and Miles didn’t have a chance to live on Earth, but they live in our hearts. They were loved from the moment they began to grow in Mimi’s uterus, and they are loved now. They will be loved for eternity.”
Most memorial services probably didn’t use the word uterus, but that was my family. If we meant the word uterus, we said the word uterus.
On the other hand, Mom didn’t use the word Heaven. Mimi believed in God and Heaven the way they were written about in the New Testament, but Mom’s beliefs were more Nature-y. She believed when we died our pure essence was released back into the universe—like when you
blew out a candle and the flame turned into smoke, dissipating into the air. The atoms were all still there somewhere, but their configuration had changed, and you couldn’t see them anymore.
I wasn’t sure what I believed.
Mom said, “Let’s stand here a moment, holding Lena and Miles in our hearts. If you feel moved to say something, go right ahead and say it.”
We stood in silence, and I wondered what I could say, or if I should say anything at all. The only thing I could think to say was, Please, Lena and Miles, if you’re listening and have any kind of pull from beyond the veil, could you please make sure Baby #3 makes it? Or, Please, Lena and Miles, if the worst happens, can you please catch us when we fall? But Rowan would kill me if I said something like that. Also, it wasn’t about remembering Lena and Miles. It was about using them. That didn’t seem ethical.
So I didn’t say anything. Neither did Rowan. Neither did Mimi. Even with my eyes shut, I could tell she was really crying now. I sneaked a look, and sure enough, her cheeks shone. Her eyes weren’t shut either, so she caught me looking.
I whispered, “I’m sorry.”
I meant sorry for sneaking a look, but also sorry she was crying, sorry about Lena and Miles, sorry I didn’t know what to say that would make things any better. Sorry all the words I could think to say would only make things worse.
Mom broke the circle and stepped forward to hug Mimi. Rowan and I got out of the way as Mom rocked Mimi in her arms. “Let’s get you back to the house,” Mom said in a low voice.
Rowan watched them, forehead creased, as if deciding whether to follow. Instead he turned to me and said gruffly, “Come on. Let’s go water the goats.”
“I didn’t say anything about Lena and Miles,” I said, staring at my feet.
“It’s okay. You didn’t have to.”
“I was afraid I’d say something bad.”
“I know. Me too.” Rowan sighed. “Come on. It’s getting hot.”
Chapter 11
September drew to a close. In H&HD, Mrs. Paradisi clapped her hands and said, “That’s a wrap on nutrition and exercise. Next up: relationships.”
Hazel's Theory of Evolution Page 8