Mimi let out a shuddering sigh. “Very much. As much as I love Dinah. As much as I love you. Hazel, you are Lena and Miles’s big sister. It’s your right to love them. It’s your right to miss them. Don’t ever feel silly or selfish for being sad.”
My eyes stung. I blinked. “Okay.”
“And while we’re having a deep-and-meaningful, can I say something else about love?”
I nodded, even though I’d had about as much mushy talk as I could stand.
“It’s okay not to want to get married,” Mimi said.
“I . . .” I hadn’t expected her to say that. “I know. Obviously.”
Mimi continued, “It’s okay not to want romantic partners at all. It’s okay to want romance without sex, or sex without romance. And it’s okay to want neither.”
This was weird. I tried to wiggle my hands loose from hers, but she gripped them more firmly. “I’m not done. It’s okay to want a partner but no kids, or kids but no partner.”
“Okay. Okay. I get the picture.” I eyed the curtain separating us from the rest of the hospital, the rest of the world. Mimi was hooked up to multiple machines. She wasn’t wearing shoes, just ugly compression stockings. I could definitely run away from this conversation.
“Listen. Look at me.” Mimi’s voice was serious, but her eyes shone. “You don’t have to decide any of these things now. Life may surprise you. But whatever happens, whatever you decide is right for you, all of those things are okay. And when I say okay, I mean good. There are so many good ways to be in this world.”
It was one thing for your parents to say you could be anything you wanted when you grew up, but usually they meant you could be a wildlife activist or a writer for Smithsonian. This was different. Mimi was talking about who I was on the inside. Usually I liked people to say exactly what they meant so I didn’t have to guess, but I heard Mimi’s meaning as clearly as a beautiful old song I knew by heart: she’d always love me, no matter what.
For a second I thought I’d burst into tears. But I didn’t. I climbed onto Mimi’s bed, squeezing myself along the edge of the mattress. She made room for me, and I pressed myself into her and let her hold and rock me like I was a baby myself.
It was a strange week. Every day, Rowan picked me up after school so we could see Mimi at the hospital. Then Mom would show up, and we’d leave. Only Mimi and Mom had been allowed to visit Dinah so far. The doctors wanted to monitor her longer before letting more family visit.
“Not even for five minutes?” I begged.
“Not even for one,” Mimi said. “Sorry, babe. I know it’s hard. For what it’s worth, I can’t wait for you to meet her, either. I can’t wait until we’re all in the same room together, the way we should be.”
Normally at this time of year, we’d go out to Kowalski’s Christmas Tree Farm to cut down a tree, and Mom would go into a baking frenzy so we’d have dozens of cookies available when the holiday rolled around. And, of course, there was shopping. At this rate, everyone in my family was going to get a feather, because that was all I had on hand.
But then Saturday arrived, an entire week after the horrible day I thought I’d lose Mimi and Dinah at once. And even though Christmas was a few days away, I was going to get my first present, and I knew it would be the best I’d ever received. I was finally going to meet Dinah.
Rowan drove the two of us to the hospital to meet Mom and Mimi. We couldn’t all go into the NICU at the same time, so Mimi went in first with Rowan while Mom and I stayed in the waiting room. I was tempted to put up a fuss about not going first. But it occurred to me that if Rowan really went to Stanford next fall, there would be a whole lot of days I’d have Dinah all to myself, so I let it go.
The atmosphere in the NICU waiting room was different from the one in OB. Instead of joyous and full of anticipation, it was tense and worried. All the babies here needed help, whether they’d arrived too early or been born with a medical problem. There were still lattes, but there weren’t any balloons.
I pulled out my notebook to distract myself. I hadn’t added to the Guide to Misunderstood Creatures in the past week—there’d been too much to do at home, what with helping Rowan with the farm chores and housekeeping and dinner and all—but there was one more article I wanted to write.
Some people think Hazel Maud Brownlee-Wellington is a freak. She lives on a goat farm. She admires turkeys and cockroaches. She doesn’t care about video games, football, or impressing anyone. People look at the ways she’s different from them and not at the ways she might be the same. It doesn’t occur to them that like all humans (Homo sapiens), she wants to be accepted for who she is.
But there’s plenty Hazel has misunderstood, too.
She wants to be accepted for who she is, but who she is is constantly changing. She thought she could find a safe, dark place to sleep through the winter. But there’s no such thing as suspended animation for humans. Instead of hibernating, she metamorphosed.
Inside a chrysalis, a caterpillar dissolves into goo and is rebuilt into a butterfly. You wouldn’t know it was the same organism if you hadn’t seen what went in and what came out. It’s the opposite with Hazel. She looks the same—same glasses, same frizzy reddish-brown hair and freckles—but something’s different on the inside.
And she still hasn’t finished. Evolution can happen as fast as a flash of lightning, or slower than stones worn smooth in the river. But it never—
“Oh my God, Hazel,” Rowan said, bursting back into the waiting room, Mimi close behind. “Writing in that notebook again? Get your butt out of that chair and go meet our sister.”
I didn’t bother to finish my sentence, slapping my notebook and pen into Rowan’s hands. “Don’t read it,” I told him, but the truth was I didn’t care. Nothing mattered but meeting Dinah.
“Wait for me!” Mom called.
I bounced nervously by the door until she caught up. Inside the NICU, I thought we’d have to dress like surgeons: blue robes and hats, face masks and gloves. But I’d passed the mandatory health screening earlier in the week, and we just had to wash our hands really well.
“This way,” Mom said, leading me among the rows of sleeping babies, who looked like tiny diapered Snow Whites in their glass-walled beds. When Mom stopped, the expression on her face was soft and full of wonder. She held out her hand and drew me forward. “Hazel,” she whispered, “meet your sister. Meet Dinah Clarice.”
I stepped up to the glass and stared inside. A wrinkled brown baby with wide gray eyes blinked vaguely upward. White tabs stuck to her chest connected to a machine next to the bed.
“Can she see us?” I asked Mom.
“Not well,” Mom said, “but she knows we’re here.”
“She’s got hair already.” Rowan and I had been born as bald as eggs.
Mom laughed. “You can tell she didn’t get that from our side of the family.”
I stared a moment longer. I was iffy on God. I was definitely iffy on miracles. Yet after all we’d been through, I could think of no other word for the sight of Dinah lying before me, chest rising and falling, fingers curling and uncurling, eyes focusing and unfocusing and refocusing.
“Can I touch her?” I asked.
“Of course,” Mom said. She didn’t bother telling me to be gentle. She knew I knew.
I stepped up to the glass. My breath steamed against it. My whole body throbbed with the pulse of blood in my veins. I put my hands into the arm holes and stopped.
Go on. This is the happy ending you’ve been waiting for.
Except it’s not the end. It’s just the beginning.
Wrong again. It’s the middle. We’re twigs on a tree that’s been growing for billions of years, and we’ll keep stretching and branching and budding and leafing as long as we live.
I touched a finger to one of Dinah’s soft, tiny hands, and she squeezed me in a grasp far stronger than I ever could’ve imagined.
And everything changed again.
Author’s Note
People may experience attraction to individuals of any gender. That attraction may be sexual (relating to physical intimacy), romantic (relating to emotional intimacy), or both. Some people may not experience attraction at all—or they may, but to a lesser degree than most people, or under very specific circumstances.
That’s Hazel. She finds sex interesting scientifically, but the thought of having it herself is off-putting. She’s not especially interested in dating or marriage. As she puts it, mostly she wants a lot of dogs. Hazel is, at least at this time in her life, asexual and aromantic.
Asexual (“ace,” for short) describes a person who experiences little or no sexual attraction to others. Aromantic (or “aro”) describes a person who experiences little or no romantic attraction to others. These are normal, healthy, good ways to be. People who do experience sexual and romantic attraction are allosexual and alloromantic. These are also good ways to be.
People may be asexual, aromantic, both, or neither. They may experience attraction to people of different genders in different ways and to different degrees. They may choose to have relationships or to be single. Attraction is complex. It isn’t always black or white. Sometimes it’s in-between, or gray. Sometimes it changes over time, and sometimes it doesn’t.
As I wrote this book, I debated whether to use the words asexual and aromantic. After all, I wish I’d encountered them earlier in my life. They would have helped me better understand myself. In the end, I couldn’t figure out how to introduce them without delving into a lesson in H&HD. While I regret not finding a way to share these words with Hazel—though, knowing her penchant for research, she’ll discover them soon enough—I’m glad I could share them with you.
Perhaps, like Hazel, you already have a good idea of what your grown-up relationships will look like. Or perhaps, as has been the case for me, it will take you a long time and lots of experiences and questions along the way. Both ways are normal. Both ways are good. You’re never too young or too old to figure out who you are.
No matter what, I wish you lots of love—the love you share with family and friends, with future partners or children or pets, and, most of all, the love you give yourself. You deserve it.
Acknowledgments
Life is hard. So is writing a book. I wouldn’t survive either without the ongoing love and support of my family, friends, and colleagues. Hazel and I owe particular thanks to Lisa Cochran, Joanna Nigrelli, Ed Orloff and Julie Rogers, and April Repotski for sharing their professional expertise in the fields of medicine and goat farming; to Pamela Dell, Rebecca Dudley, Carol Coven Grannick, and Marie Macula for their feedback on the manuscript; to Chris Hernandez and the team at Harper for making this particular fiction a reality; to my agent, Steven Chudney, for taking care of business and talking me off ledges; and to Isiah Donato, for the red pandas.
About the Author
Photo credit Rebecca Dudley
LISA JENN BIGELOW grew up in Kalamazoo and still considers the Mitten State home. Dogs are far and away her favorite animal, but she’s also a fan of goats and skunks. (Her feelings on earthworms are complicated.) Lisa is the critically acclaimed author of the middle grade novel Drum Roll, Please and the young adult novel Starting from Here, which was named a Rainbow List Top Ten Book by the American Library Association. When she isn’t writing, Lisa serves as a youth librarian in the Chicago suburbs. Visit her online at www.lisajennbigelow.com.
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Books by Lisa Jenn Bigelow
Middle Grade
Drum Roll, Please
Young Adult
Starting from Here
Copyright
HAZEL’S THEORY OF EVOLUTION. Copyright © 2019 by Lisa Bigelow. Interior art © 2019 by Laura Bernard. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text 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 HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Cover art © 2019 by Laura Bernard
Cover design and hand lettering by Laura Mock
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019938811
Digital Edition OCTOBER 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-279119-1
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-279117-7
1920212223PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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