The Last Tree Town

by Beth Turley

Now I’m the age I wanted to be back then. I go to that high school. And half the time, the sensors on those sinks don’t even work.

  14 Fairy Tales

  It’s dark. I can hear moving water out there somewhere. I follow the sound until my bare feet sink into cold sand.

  The dark lake in front of me stirs, and something rises like a sea monster. Daniella. Striped with seaweed and wearing a quinceañera dress, like Hispanic girls do for their fifteenth birthdays. But Daniella is only fourteen.

  She sits cross-legged in front of me. A scream lodges in my throat, threatening to explode. Broken bottles and chip bags float around in the lake behind her.

  “Will we ever be the same again?” I whisper. Her dress is crusted in sludge, spread out like a fan, as dark as the water. It’s big and blue like Cinderella’s. She reaches out her arm, covered in deep-green algae.

  I follow her finger to the center of my chest. I’m wearing a quinceañera dress too, pink like Sleeping Beauty’s. It’s sandy and soaked through to my skin. Itchy fabric hangs off my shoulders. The top part is too big for my body. I’m further from my quinceañera than Daniella. Further from Daniella than I’ve ever been.

  Wake up, wake up, wake up.

  My eyes open. I brush away the sweaty hair stuck to my forehead and pull my knees up to my chest. I grasp around in my head for other things to think about. Nachos or bird place mats or the Pythagorean theorem. It doesn’t work. I picture our muddy fairy-tale dresses. Daniella and I were magical once. But now our potions are drained, our capes torn, our crowns snapped in two.

  Everything is cursed.

  15 The Citadel

  I’m in the middle of the first Math Olympics assessment, and I can’t stop thinking about seaweed-covered gowns. About the last entry I read in Daniella’s diary—how badly she wanted to grow up, until she actually did.

  I wish we could go back to the way things were. Like on our trip to Puerto Rico, when we drove from Titi Celina’s to Old San Juan and visited the citadel at El Morro with Buelo and Buela.

  “What do you think?” Buelo asked me. He didn’t need a wheelchair or a cane.

  “It’s amazing,” I said. The hills around the citadel matched his accent. Soft and rolling.

  Someone flew a red kite in the middle of the grass. I tracked its string all the way up, to where the kite pressed into the sky. I didn’t know anything could be that blue.

  There were almost a hundred stairs in the citadel. Daniella and I walked down them, and Buela and Buelo stayed on a bench in the shade. We were covered in sweat by the time we reached the bottom. The stairs ended on a big stone ledge, with old rusted cannons at the edges and a black gate surrounding the whole thing. I imagined hiding in this fort while a war broke out beyond the walls.

  “Over here, Cass,” Daniella called to me from the gate. I stood next to her, looking out at the shimmering sea. It stretched out toward tree-covered islands in the distance.

  “It’s so pretty,” I said. But it was more than that. Everything was perfect. The kite against the clouds, the water, Daniella’s shoulder leaning into mine.

  I draw hills and stone buildings and stairs on my assessment, memories where I still believed I was good enough. But I forget how to feel that way now. I can only focus on the words in Daniella’s diary, and the things she said at Kindly Vines. My scarecrow hair. Daniella was the one to find me drenching my hair in gel that night after Communion class.

  “What are you doing? Your hair is supposed to be wet when you use this,” she said, taking the purple bottle out of my hand.

  “They couldn’t tell I was Puerto Rican,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “The girls in my class. They said I looked like a scarecrow.”

  Daniella put the gel bottle back in its place under the sink.

  “Those girls wish their hair was as nice as yours. It’s as fierce as a lion’s mane. The Puerto Rican part of you is there even if you can’t see it.” She turned the faucet on full blast and told me to put my head under the water. Her fingers worked through the hardened knots I’d made, until they loosened.

  I erase my drawings so hard that the paper rips.

  “Ten minutes left,” Mr. G says.

  There are five questions on the assessment. I’ve finished zero. I look around. Sage’s pencil moves quickly over the paper, her face scrunched up in concentration. Emilio counts something off with his fingers. Aaron taps on his desk. I try to read the first question again.

  -3+(-3)-3+(-3)-3

  I stare at the threes until they look like eights and hearts and fish. I forget if the sum of a bunch of negatives is eventually positive, or if it just stays negative forever.

  “Time’s up. Place your papers facedown on my desk on your way out. And try not to pat yourselves on the back too hard. I need you all uninjured for Regionals.”

  The only line filled out on my assessment is my name. I don’t want to turn it in. I’m supposed to be good at math, but nothing is like it’s supposed to be anymore. Mr. G smiles when I drop my assessment onto his desk. I rush out the door.

  “Wait up.” Aaron’s voice echoes behind me in the hall. I look over my shoulder.

  “What?” It comes out sharp. His face looks like I’ve stabbed him. I keep walking. He catches up to me easily with his long legs.

  “That was pretty tough,” he says. I don’t know if he means the assessment or the way I snapped at him.

  I’m tired of trying to solve problems. We’ve reached the front doors now. I see Mom’s minivan through a space between two buses, parked in a spot by a huge oak tree. Ben and Jac are already out by the car. We’re doing homework at my house tonight.

  Aaron wraps the straps of his backpack around his wrists. They look like twisted green vines in a garden. I think about Aaron’s North Sapling story, his Monopoly shoe buried under the dirt. The story distracted me from the mess inside my head.

  I need more distraction.

  “Do you want to come over?” I ask.

  His face loses its wounded look. He drops his backpack straps.

  “Sure. I’ll tell you about Elmtown.” We walk through that space between the buses, even though we’re not supposed to. The monitors always tell us we can get crushed as flat as a pancake.

  “You’ll have a bigger audience,” I say. Jac spins Ben in place by the minivan. She stops when she sees us.

  “Who are you?” Jac asks when we reach them.

  “Aaron. We have three classes together,” Aaron says.

  “What are you doing here, Aaron of three of my classes?”

  “I heard we’re visiting Cassi’s estate, Jac of the blue-haired.”

  Jac squints. Her hair is still as blue as it was the day we made nachos. I can only imagine the fights she and Uncle Eric are having about it when we’re not around.

  “Great. Now there’s two of them,” Ben says. He stumbles a little from the spinning but manages to open the minivan door. We all climb in. Mom watches us in the rearview mirror. Aaron sticks his hand out to her.

  “I’m Aaron Kale.”

  Mom shakes his hand.

  “He’s in Math Olympics with me,” I tell her.

  “Very nice. Do you have permission to come over, Aaron?”

  “My dad lets me do anything that might lead to a story.”

  I think twelve years of minivan rides with Jac has taught Mom to handle responses like that. She nods, adjusts her mirrors, and pulls out of the spot.

  “Your last name is a vegetable,” Jac whispers into Aaron’s ear.

  “Your name rhymes with ‘snack,’ ” he whispers back.

  Jac leans into her seat.

  “He can stay,” she says.

  16 Elmtown

  Buela is in the kitchen when we get home. She has her own key to our house. I joke with her about how she’s breaking in, but I actually love when she shows up unannounced. A pot bubbles on the stove. There’s a plate of sliced, flattened plantains on the counter.

  “Buela�
��s making tostones!” Jac announces. She says it like “toe stones.” I imagine having rocks where my feet should be.

  “Tosto-nes. Like ‘Yes, more tosto-nes.’ ” Buela used little memory devices like that when she was teaching me Spanish. She pats Jac on the head with a spoon. She isn’t Jac’s grandma, but Jac calls her “Buela” anyway. So does Ben.

  “What are tostones?” Aaron asks.

  “Fried plantains,” I tell him. “They’re like chips but a thousand times better.”

  Buela crosses the kitchen. She stops in front of Aaron and puts her arms up. He’s at least a foot and a half taller than my tiny Buela.

  “Come, come.” She waves her hands. Aaron bends down to hug her like this isn’t the first time they’ve met. It makes me feel warm. I take off my jacket.

  “Where’s Dani?” Jac looks around the kitchen like Daniella might be hiding behind the fridge or under the floor tiles.

  Buela shrugs. “No se. I walk in, she walks out. Barely a hello.” She drops a plantain into the hot oil. It sizzles like a loud burst of static.

  I watch the plantain sink to the bottom of the pot.

  “Sorry, Buela. Dad says she’s just adjusting,” I say.

  Aaron looks like he might ask a thousand questions that I don’t want to answer. Who is Daniella? What is she adjusting to?

  “Oh, I know. It’s not so long ago I was a teenager too.” Buela stirs the oil with her slotted spoon and smiles at me. I wrap my arms around her shoulders. She pats my hand until I’m ready to let go.

  Jac, Ben, and Aaron are already assembled at the kitchen table when I come over, textbooks and binders spread out in front of them. Aaron is in the spot next to me, at the hummingbird place mat.

  “Do we have to do homework, or can we just pretend? Because the next episode is about a haunted movie theater.” Jac pulls out her phone. I happen to know she has the documentary series loaded on there.

  “We have to do work.” I’m so not in the mood for ghosts. Then again, is anyone ever in the mood for ghosts? Do people wake up in the morning and think, Hey, I really feel like being haunted today?

  “Don’t be a baby, Cassandra.”

  “Don’t be a bully, Jaclyn.”

  She smiles at me. It’s scarier than all the episodes of the documentary series put together.

  “First, I have a deal to fulfill with Cassi,” Aaron says. “I’m supposed to tell her about Elmtown, Texas.”

  “Like from the country song?” Ben asks.

  “Yeah, actually.”

  Ben stands up. “I’ll meet you out in Elmtown. Say you won’t let me down.” He sings into an open yellow highlighter like it’s a microphone. Aaron looks both surprised and impressed at his outburst.

  “Pitchy,” Jac says. Ben swipes the highlighter across Jac’s arm. It leaves a line like the tail of a shooting star.

  “Elmtown is only known for two things. That song and the mountains,” Aaron says.

  Jac puts her phone back on the table. I almost sigh with relief. Aaron clears his throat.

  “It was the mountains that made Dad want to move there. He said there were lots of metaphors at the top. So we set out to climb one on a foggy day in April. He said we’d have to take the most challenging path. That it wouldn’t be much of a story if we didn’t—”

  “Ahem,” Jac interrupts. “If we’re telling campfire stories, I’ll need to grab a flashlight. Also, we’ll need fire.” Jac rubs two pencils together so hard, they might actually spark. I pull them out of her hands.

  “Shh. I want to hear about Elmtown,” Ben says. He leans onto his elbows.

  My best friends + my deal with Aaron = A giddiness inside me that makes my teeth chatter.

  “Dad said every obstacle was an opportunity for growth. He’d say that whenever we had to climb over a tree branch or an especially knobby root. I think he would’ve been glad if we ran into a bear, just for the sake of having an obstacle. Eventually we made it to the top.”

  Buela takes that moment to walk over with the finished tostones. She puts a towel on the table and the plate on top. The yellow discs shine with salt.

  “You are a wonderful storyteller. Like my husband,” Buela says. She sits down with us. “May I stay for the rest?”

  Aaron nods and takes a breath.

  “We were alone up there. I walked as close as I could to the edge and looked down. If I’d fallen, I would’ve slipped through miles of pine trees. It was cold out but the sun was warm, and I started to wonder if anything could convince a person more that everything would be okay.”

  Aaron looks at the hummingbird place mat. His cheeks turn red, maybe from the heat wafting off the tostones.

  “ ‘I can’t do it,’ I heard Dad say. I turned around. He was sitting on a rock with his shoulders slumped, glasses in his hand. I asked him what he meant. ‘I can’t describe it,’ he continued. He said he couldn’t put meaning into any of it.”

  I hear Buela sniffle. She has her hands clutched to her heart. Jac stuffs two tostones into her mouth but doesn’t say a word.

  “So I said, ‘We’re here together. Isn’t that all the meaning we need? Isn’t that enough?’ Then he put his glasses back on like he needed to see me better to say whatever he was going to say. And he said, ‘Sure, Aaron. Sure, that’s enough.’ ”

  Jac’s chewing and Buela’s sniffles are the only sounds in the kitchen.

  “Then what?” I ask in a quiet voice.

  “That’s it. That’s how the memoir chapter ‘Enough’ came to be. I think it’s one of the best. Can I try those?” Aaron points to the plate of tostones. Buela holds them out to him like a gift.

  “Beautiful story,” she says when he takes one.

  “Even better than the song,” Ben says. He starts singing the chorus again.

  I think about Aaron at the top of a mountain with his dad, about Daniella and me on the ledge at that citadel. Moments like that always feel so big and important. But maybe sitting at the kitchen table with bird place mats is big and important too, as long as we’re together.

  “These are incredible,” Aaron says to Buela. She beams.

  I add likes Buela’s incredible food to my set of Aaron Facts.

  17 Oral Hygiene

  I share a bathroom with Daniella. We redecorated it together two summers ago. It took us an hour to figure out how to use the plastic hooks to hang the butterfly shower curtain. I’m still not sure we did it right. In the basement Daniella found framed pictures of a beach in Puerto Rico. She tacked them to the bathroom walls.

  “Butterfly beach. That’s a theme, right?” she asked.

  I hung two yellow towels on a bronze bar. One for each of us.

  “Of course.”

  I’m at the sink brushing my teeth when Daniella walks in. Her pajama pants have turtles on them.

  “Sorry. Didn’t know you were in here,” she says.

  Her presence gives me an idea. I brush my teeth extra hard for a second so that the toothpaste bubbles in my mouth. I lean my head back a little.

  “Ishh okay. Cawhm in,” I gurgle.

  Daniella rolls her eyes. It’s not the reaction I wanted, but she does come in and takes her toothbrush from the left wing of the butterfly holder.

  We used to have gurgled conversations while we brushed our teeth, our mouths full of spit and foam.

  “Youwah loo ridiculoush,” Daniella said.

  “Wha?” I answered, my eyes watering from laughter and the taste of spearmint.

  “Youwah loo ridiculoush!”

  “So oo youwah!”

  Mom passed by in the hall with a laundry basket.

  “You are compromising your oral hygiene.”

  “Showwy, Mawm,” we said, and kept brushing, eyes still laughing and locked on each other in the mirror.

  Daniella brushes with one arm crossed over her stomach, her eyes on the ceiling. She doesn’t try to speak, just spits every once in a while. All my teeth feel pretty brushed now. I start to taste blood. But I k
eep going anyway, waiting and hoping for Daniella to catch my eye in the mirror and call me ridiculous.

  October 5

  Want to hear some bad combinations?

  Six a.m. alarms and not being able to sleep.

  Jenna talking about the homecoming dance and me not even wanting to go.

  Friends and fake smiles.

  Being near my family and reminding myself how I’ve let them all down.

  I want to be the person I used to be for them.

  For Cassi, Jac, Ben.

  They were always there. For random midnights, lazy Sundays, Chinese food in front of the TV. Holiday get-togethers and small, meaningless moments. The years where it was okay to pretend to be things we weren’t.

  They were a different kind of friends to me than Jenna or anyone at school. We were part of each other.

  In the back of my mind, I’ve always realized that I’m older. That they looked up to me. They depended on me to do the scary things first, like change in the locker room for gym class or fall in love. It was up to me to report back and say, “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  But I can’t be that person for them right now. Maybe not ever again. So it’s better to just stay away.

  18 Piñata

  The cafeteria puts out a calendar every month that lists the daily hot lunches. The October calendar is orange, and the O is a pumpkin. Pretty much every square has the words “fruit cup” and “milk” in it, except for Monday, October 8. That box just says Fiesta Day.

  The smell of spicy peppers and packaged seasoned meat hits me halfway down the hall. I look around. The cafeteria is decorated in all different Hispanic cultures. A banner that says FIESTA and a piñata hang from the ceiling. Miniature sombreros sit in neat rows on the tables. Jac and I get into the hot-lunch line.

  I see rice and pinto beans, beef in a deep red sauce. It looks like Buela’s food, but something isn’t quite right. The rice isn’t yellow enough. The meat seems spongy. The food is like me—it doesn’t look the way it’s supposed to. I walk past the prepared trays without grabbing one.