The Last Tree Town

by Beth Turley

  “Aren’t you going to get something?” Jac asks.

  “Not hungry.”

  A wire is strung above the register, with the flags of Spanish-speaking places attached. The Puerto Rican one is in the middle. Jac perches a miniature sombrero on her head when we sit down next to each other. It’s a burnt berry color, like her hair.

  “Why is your hair still blue, Jac?” I ask. I pick up a few strands and rub them between my fingers, like that might reveal the truth. The strands stay quiet and dark.

  She spears a pinto bean.

  “You really want to know?” she asks.

  “Now I’m nervous, but yes.”

  Jac grins. The green beans on her tray shrivel up even more than they already were.

  “I’ve been dying it over and over again.”

  “Jac!” I don’t know what I was expecting. Of course she has been. “You’re going to get in so much trouble. Stop doing that.”

  She ignores me and picks up her plastic knife.

  “I’m serious, Jac. Promise you’ll stop?” I demand.

  If Uncle Eric finds out, she’ll be grounded for life. When we all got in trouble for writing on Jac’s wall, we weren’t allowed to see each other for a week. The Chordays are already down one member. We can’t lose Jac, too.

  “Okay, okay, I promise. Do you want my Leslies?” Jac asks. She points with the plastic knife to her green beans, made “Spanish” by mixing them with salsa. Apparently Jac despises Leslies as much as she does most vegetables. I think about the bad combinations Daniella wrote down in her diary. Green beans and salsa should be included on the list.

  Before I can answer, Ben and Aaron walk over with their own hot lunch trays and sit across from us. Aaron takes the spot in front of me. He started sitting at our table the day after he told us about Elmtown.

  “Did you see it?” Ben asks.

  “See what?” Jac scoops up a few of her “Leslies” and puts them on Ben’s tray. He hunches over his tray so she can’t do it again.

  “The video,” Aaron answers for him.

  I look around the cafeteria and see lots of bowed heads, the classic sign of looking at a forbidden cell phone.

  “I haven’t seen anything,” I say.

  “Here.” I feel something nudge my knee. I look down and see Aaron’s phone outstretched. Our fingers brush accidentally when I take it, which for some reason feels like I’m being shocked. I add electric fingers to my set of Aaron Facts, and then hold the phone between Jac and me.

  She presses play on the video. I see the Eliza T. Dakota cafeteria, a table like the one we’re sitting at now. The camera shifts to the end of the table, where an eighth-grade boy and girl are standing, facing each other. They’re yelling, but I can’t hear for sure what they’re saying. I think the girl’s mouth forms “How could you.” Then she picks up a scoop of the same rice we’re eating now and throws it at him.

  “Oof,” Jac says. “No bueno.”

  I click off the phone and put it next to Aaron’s tray, so there won’t be any accidental contact this time. He slides it quickly off the table and into his lap.

  “Get it?” Jac asks. “No bueno. ’Cause it’s fiesta day.”

  “I get it,” I say.

  A group at a table nearby starts to laugh. Someone shouts, “Ooh, she got him!” I’ve seen that same couple walk down the hall with their arms linked. The boy was in my Metals class last year and stamped the girl’s name into the hooks he made.

  What was going on that no one could see?

  One of the lunch monitors clears his throat into a microphone. “We’re going to start the piñata.” He holds a wooden stick in his hand. “Line up if you want a go.”

  I stand up.

  “You’re trying it?” Jac asks.

  “Yeah, why not?”

  The lunch monitor wraps a bandana around my head when it’s my turn. Everything goes black. I regret getting in line, start to panic at the idea of swinging out of control.

  “Three tries. Good luck.” He puts the wooden stick in my hand.

  I step forward and swing. The stick slices through the air without making contact. I steady myself, adjusting to the blindness. My next try grazes what might be the edge of the piñata. Maybe the donkey’s confetti tail. I swing again as hard as I can, feel the wooden stick dig into the cardboard body, hear the candy rain to the ground. A swarm has already attacked the stash by the time I pull my blindfold off, including Jac. The little sombrero hangs off the back of her neck by its string.

  “Go grab some. You broke it,” the lunch monitor says.

  He nudges me toward the chaos, but my feet don’t move. The piñata lies on its side, bleeding sugar-free lollipops and fruit snacks all over the floor, its mouth a little bit open like it wants to ask me, How could you?

  19 Tangles

  My hair likes to tie itself up. I know everyone’s hair does that and that’s why conditioner exists, but mine is so thick that the knots form in deep, hard-to reach places. Splitting it into sections helps, but even then I still miss spots.

  I stand in front of my mirror and brush. The bristles make a horrible sound when they rip through. In the reflection, I can see my door open wider. Mom steps in.

  “That sounds like it hurts,” she says.

  It does.

  “Uncle Eric is going to make Jac cut her hair off if the blue doesn’t come out. Maybe I should do the same thing,” I say.

  Mom comes over.

  “You got this hair from me. As thick as anything.” She takes the brush and gathers up a chunk of my hair. She works the bristles through the knot. It pulls, but not as much. “Still very beautiful.”

  I look at Mom in the mirror. She has dark, glossy hair, cut short to her ears. I’ve seen it long only in pictures.

  “Your hair was like this too?”

  “I’m sure I’ve told you that. Your Buela had to brush it for me all the time.”

  I imagine Mom standing with Buela in front a mirror like this one, experiencing that same tug from a painful knot. Did she ever feel the way I’ve been feeling lately? That everything was changing too fast?

  “I guess I forgot.”

  Earlier today when we went to see Buelo, Mom tucked a white blanket up under his chin. Her face looked like she was remembering something, maybe being twelve like me, walking with Buelo through the zoo in Mayagüez. Mom said they lived close enough that sometimes she could hear the lions roaring from her backyard.

  She keeps brushing. Soon the bristles glide through the strands without catching on anything. Mom puts the brush on my dresser. Her other hand rests on my arm.

  “Todo estara bien,” she says. I can’t tell whether it’s the look in my eyes or the knots in my hair that make her say that.

  “Are you sure?” I ask.

  “Yes.” She kisses the top of my head. “I’m sure.”

  For a second I feel less tangled.

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  She walks out of my room and leaves the door a few inches more cracked than it was before. I run my hand through my hair. It might shoot out sharply sometimes, and it’s not dark and shiny, but it’s still thick like my mom’s. The thought makes me smile.

  Lesson Four of Math Olympics: Equality means that two things are mathematically the same. Even if I’m 4+1 and you’re 2+3, we both still equal 5. It’s that simple.

  20 Extra Time

  Daniella and I used to take the bus together. Now she leaves twenty-five minutes before me. Every morning I wake up earlier than I have to, so we can still have our breakfasts together at the kitchen table.

  Today she sits at the toucan place mat with a bowl of Lucky Charms. Daniella only eats the marshmallows, which I think is madness, since the plain pieces are equally as good, but at least it’s something about her I can still recognize.

  “What are you wearing to the dance?” I ask her.

  “How did you know about that?” She talks through a mouthful of cereal.

  I panic.

/>   Daniella x Finding out I read her diary = Breakfast alone from now on.

  “Ben’s tap class is at the high school this session. He saw a flyer.”

  “Oh. Well, I don’t know yet.” She takes one last bite of Lucky Charms and then puts her backpack on. I wonder what’s inside. Maybe The Chemical Property of Life. Through our living room windows, I see her bus drive up. It slows to a stop at the end of our driveway. Daniella heads for the door.

  “You’re going to look beautiful,” I say to her back. Her curls are pulled up into a messy bun.

  “Thanks, Cass.” Her voice gets caught in the closing door.

  I dump my own cereal bowl into the sink. All that’s left of our sister breakfast are soggy rainbows and the sound of a school bus pulling away.

  21 Be Better

  I fill up my water bottle in the wing near the shop classes, the fountain closest to study hall. Daniella bought the water bottle for me at the education store in the mall. It’s green with the words “Eat. Math. Repeat.” on it.

  “Can we talk for a second, Cassi?” a voice asks from behind me. I turn and see Mr. G. His face looks serious. I wish he’d make a joke or do a bad impression, but he doesn’t.

  “Okay.” I forget that I’m filling up a water bottle. It spills over and my hand gets all wet.

  The sound of hammering carries down the hall. When I took Metals last year, I liked it a hundred times more than I thought I would. Maybe because there was so much math involved. I helped everyone in class convert their measurements. Except for Jac, who wanted the legs on the table she made to be uneven. She got a C+. I still use my table for the little figurines Titi Celina sends me. I have a frog and a cactus and a mermaid holding a pearl.

  “I don’t want you to think I’m disappointed when I say this,” Mr. G says. But he wouldn’t say that unless I’ve done something disappointing. “I had to count up the answers on the assessments to send in to the Math Olympics peeps, and I noticed you didn’t do yours.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. I stare at the floor.

  “There’s no need to apologize. I don’t want you to be any better than your best, Cassi. But I know that wasn’t it.”

  A drill starts buzzing in the Metals room.

  “What if it was?”

  What if I’m not that good at math? What if it just seemed like I was because I can add things up fast and convert millimeters into inches in Metals class?

  “Hey there. That’s a personal foul.” Mr. G karate chops the air like a referee. It makes me look up. A smile tugs at my cheeks. “Unnecessary roughness. Fifteen-yard penalty.”

  Mr. G waves his hands like he’s shooing me. I start to back away. My ballet flats squeak on the linoleum floor.

  “Stop!” I’ve traveled the assigned fifteen yards and end up next to the Metals workshop. I look inside. A new set of students is working on their tables. I want to tell them how it felt to put something together with my own hands, piece by piece. That there are 25.4 millimeters in an inch. Mr. G whistles through his fingers.

  “I believe in you, Cassi,” he shouts down the hall. The signal to switch classes goes off, and a crowd forms between us. Mr. G gives me two thumbs-up above everyone’s heads.

  It’s completely embarrassing and exactly what I needed.

  22 Juniper

  The second Math Olympics assessment goes much different from the first. I keep my mind on the numbers, where it’s supposed to be. Lesson Seven of Math Olympics is written on the board—Focus, focus, focus. There’s not a single doodle on my paper when I finish.

  Mr. G gives me a look when I put my assessment on his desk. His eyes seem to ask, How did it go? I try to nod back in a way that says, Great and Thanks for everything at the same time. My phone buzzes in my back pocket when I get into the hall. I read the message from Mom.

  Running late. Library meeting. Be there soon.

  I find an empty bench outside and think about Buelo. He’d like to be sitting out here, even if the wind is cold. I hope we go to see him soon. I hope we can sit together outside on the patio at Kindly Vines when the weather gets warm, away from the smell of sickness and the get-well balloons.

  “It’s like Juniper, Maine, out here.”

  I look up, and Aaron is there. He sits on the bench next to me. His legs stretch out so much farther than mine. “It gets below zero all the time. It’s the only tree town I got to pick.”

  “Why did you choose somewhere so cold?” I ask.

  “They have the largest aviation museum in New England.”

  I settle in for another story.

  “Planes are cool but don’t seem worth the frostbite,” I say.

  Aaron laughs.

  “They were worth it in fifth grade. I made models and everything. When my class took a field trip to the museum and Dad volunteered to chaperone, I didn’t even care that he brought his notebook with him. Because I was going to see what put planes up in the sky.”

  Wind cuts him off. It grazes my cheeks like shards of ice. We burrow deeper into our jackets.

  “There was this one display of the inside of a cockpit. It looked like an interactive display, one where you could go in and press the buttons and stuff, but there was a velvet rope around the whole thing with a sign that said DO NOT TOUCH.”

  “Did you steal a plane, Aaron?” My voice is muffled by my collar.

  Aaron doesn’t laugh this time. His face is bright pink with cold.

  “Dad started to step over the rope. The kids in my group were laughing, but it made me nervous. You’re not supposed to cross those ropes. It’s pretty much the number one rule of museums. He climbed up the display and sat right in the pilot’s seat. He moved one of the levers, and it popped off in his hand.”

  Aaron fidgets with the zipper on his jacket. “Dad still had that lever in his hand when the security guard caught him. He got kicked out. He couldn’t be in the building for the rest of the trip, so my group got absorbed into the other ones. It was hard to focus on the planes after that.”

  The late buses start hissing, signaling the last call to get on.

  “My dad ran a red light once,” I say, even though it’s nothing compared to what Aaron just told me. At least it makes him smile a little. He has a dimple in his cheek.

  Aaron stands up from the bench. “That was the first time I realized that my whole life had become Dad making decisions and me having to deal with the consequences, even if it seemed fun at first.”

  “That’s kind of a sad story,” I say.

  Aaron shrugs. “Some stories are like that.”

  I think about what Daniella used to say about sad songs. That they can make you feel understood. Maybe that theory can apply to stories, too.

  “Why couldn’t your mom stop him from dragging you around?” I ask.

  The color drains from Aaron’s face. The first bus in the line starts to drive off.

  “Shoot. I have to go.” He runs all the way to Bus 39.

  I might have to add a set of Aaron Secrets.

  23 Homecoming

  Daniella wears a red dress to homecoming. Mom tied a French braid in the front of Daniella’s hair and pinned it back into her curls with a sparkly clip. I’m sitting on the couch, eyes fixed on the shiny streaks of bronzer on Daniella’s cheeks. Dad is in one of the recliners watching a football game. Daniella stares out the front window, waiting for the flash of Jenna’s mom’s headlights.

  “Your first high school dance,” Mom murmurs. She lifts her camera and takes a picture of Daniella pulling the curtain back.

  “It’s not a big deal,” she says. She sits next to me. Her dress poofs up around her.

  “Are you sure Jenna can’t come in to take pictures?” Mom asks.

  “We’re already running late. We’ll take some there, I promise.”

  Mom frowns but doesn’t push further; there’s a line drawn in the carpet that she can’t cross.

  “At least take one with your sister,” she says. She makes a clapping motion, telli
ng us to move in. Daniella sighs under her breath.

  “Come here, Cass,” she says, and wraps her bare arm around my shoulders.

  Does she know how many days it’s been since we sat like this? Because I’ve lost count. I smell her coconut-mint body spray.

  Mom snaps the picture. I try to see us like the camera lens does. A girl with bronze cheeks and a red dress on her way to a high school homecoming. Another girl with dull hair and sweatpants, who stood in a corner during the Welcome to Middle School dance. Would the camera even guess we were sisters?

  The window lights up and a car horn beeps outside. Daniella lets me go. She slips her sandals on by the door. They’re shiny and black with a little cork-colored wedge heel. I have the same pair. We bought them in one of the shops in San Juan, and then kept walking, arms linked, down the cobblestone streets, the plastic bags bumping against our legs.

  “Have fun,” Dad says, and stands up from the recliner, like he couldn’t bear to look at her until the last minute. His eyes are glossy when he hugs her. “My high schooler.”

  Daniella steps out onto the front porch and waves good-bye.

  “I want to hear everything!” I call after her.

  The door closes before I can tell if she heard me.

  October 21

  I’ve noticed that my feelings aren’t a constant thing. There are seconds when I almost feel better. I’ll get super interested in a reading Ms. Murphy assigns for American Studies, or randomly excited about the ugly-sweater party Jenna is planning for December.

  I think about inviting Cass into my room and being a real older sister again. I could tell her about how bad the music was at homecoming last night, but that it didn’t matter because everyone sang along anyway.

  Those are good seconds.

  And then a thousand-pound weight crashes down on my head, and I remember.

  I remember that Buelo lives at Kindly Vines. I remember the way his face contorted when we moved him in. I know Buela and Mom feel bad that I was there that day. We visited him last week, and Buela handed me a bundle of smiley-face balloons to carry down the hall.