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The Last Tree Town

Page 14

by Beth Turley


  I look around. My eyes find the quote calendar on her dresser. It’s still stuck on the same day in July. I need to tug Daniella out of the past, out of the days when she was sad. I walk over to the calendar and rip the pages off in big clumps. Days and weeks and months tear out into my hands with sharp, slicing sounds. I try not to read the quotes. I try not to think about Daniella being angry that I snuck into her room.

  She won’t be angry, I tell myself. She’ll be glad that we’ve made it out of the bad times.

  I take the stack of calendar pages to my room and hide the days in the drawer of my nightstand, where they can’t hurt anyone anymore.

  45 Regionals

  We take a bus to Regionals at Trinity Prep, a private school a few towns over from Mapleton. Aaron sits in the seat behind me. I look out the window. It’s split into two stacked segments like they usually are on buses, but I’ve never noticed how the bottom panel is more zoomed in than the top one. It’s the same view but different perspectives.

  I feel the back of my seat move when Aaron leans over it.

  “Do you ever feel like you’re watching two movies at once?” he asks.

  “What do you mean?” I turn all the way around in the seat. There’s writing on the gray leather. A heart with two names written in it. A phone number. The words “I was here.”

  “Like there’s two screens in front of you, and on one you’re seeing what’s happening now but the other screen is different. It’s showing a memory or something your imagination made up.” He points to the divided window like it might help prove his point.

  My heart beats faster. Had I been thinking about the window in my head, or screaming it out loud?

  “All the time,” I answer. “It’s like I can connect everything that happens to something else.”

  Aaron turns away from the window and looks at me.

  “Me too. It must be our keen mathematical minds.”

  He gets out of his seat and sits next to me. The bus runs over a branch in the road, and the bump pushes us closer together.

  I wonder if The Chemical Property of Life explains gravitational pull.

  The competition is in the auditorium. Five tables are set up on the stage, surrounding the moderator’s podium. Our table is on the left side. A big index card taped to the front says ELIZA T. DAKOTA MIDDLE SCHOOL MATH OLYMPICS, and there’s a name tag and program on each metal folding chair. My chair is at the end of the table, closest to the audience. I scan the program for the names of the four other schools competing. Only one of us will make it to States.

  “Huddle up,” Mr. G says, and we do. “You deserve to be here. Be proud of yourselves, and do only your best. That’s all I could ever ask of you.” There’s no joke in his voice or funny look on his face. He’s being serious.

  Determination settles beneath my skin. I want to do well for Mr. G, who still believed in me after the first assessment catastrophe. I want to do well for my teammates. I look out into the auditorium. The lights are still on, and the red velvet seats are starting to fill. I can’t find my parents or Daniella in the crowd. But I know they’ll be here. I want to do well for them, too.

  Mr. G leads us through some warm-up problems until the moderator taps the microphone. The sound startles everyone.

  “Sorry,” he mumbles. “Welcome to the Math Olympics Regionals. Let’s get started.”

  Mr. G gives us all a thumbs-up and then goes to sit with the other coaches. The lights in the auditorium dim. I take one last look out and hope to find my family before the audience disappears, but it gets dark too fast.

  “We’ll start with the timed questions,” the moderator says. “These questions resemble those on the assessments you’ve completed. My assistant is passing out the question, and on my mark, you will flip it over and work as a team to solve it. There are three minutes allotted per question, and five questions total.” After each team has the question, he adds, “Good luck, and go.”

  Sage turns the question over.

  If one cook flips a pancake every 10 seconds, a second flips every 20 seconds, and a third every 30 seconds, how many times will the cooks flip a pancake together in 5 minutes?

  A light goes off in my head.

  “It’s the bird problem,” I say.

  “The what?” Allie’s eyes shift toward the clock. Two minutes and twenty-six seconds left.

  “In the workbook, there’s a problem like this but with birds.”

  “Great. What was the answer?”

  My stomach sinks. I never solved the problem. My teammates stare at me.

  Aaron takes one of the allowed pieces of scratch paper and starts to draw straight lines.

  “We’ll make a time line,” he says. He breaks the line into ten-second increments and circles the spots where each cook flips his pancake.

  I think of the past few months as a time line. The night of the ugly-sweater party, the same night I saw the bird problem, would be way at the beginning. On this side of the time line, things are better. Daniella smiles, and Buelo tells stories. I can find the solution.

  We count up the places where the circles line up, and bring our answer (once per minute, five times total) up to the moderator.

  * * *

  When the timed-questions section ends, we’ve gotten all of them right. The lights in the auditorium brighten, and the audience comes into view again. I scan the whole place, all the way up to the balcony, but I don’t see my family anywhere. I’m not sure whether to be disappointed or worried, so I settle on both.

  “There’s a ten-minute break before the speed round,” Mr. G says. “Go stretch your legs and hydrate. You are athletes, after all.” He sounds proud. His tie has that picture of Albert Einstein with his tongue sticking out.

  I walk off the stage and out of the auditorium, and grab my phone out of my backpack outside the door. We had to leave our things out on a table so that we couldn’t use any devices during the competition. I look down. Messages from Jac and Ben stack up on the screen. I read the first few.

  Jac: DO NOT GO ON SOCIALS.

  Ben: Sorry, Cassi.

  Jac: SERIOUSLY, CASSANDRA, DON’T DO IT TILL COMP IS OVER.

  Ben: We can make the world’s biggest plate of nachos.

  Jac: PLEASE.

  Jac should know better than anyone else that being told not to do something makes you want to do it more. I close out the messages and open the first app I see. My hands shake so hard, I almost drop my phone.

  First I see a picture that Buela posted—three kittens in a basket. I don’t think that’s what Jac was warning me about. Then I see the video. The caption says when you totally lose it. A preview shows Daniella in the corner of a classroom. I think about the nightmare with the shell I couldn’t reach and the circles of Spanish colors on the wall.

  I don’t even have to press play. The video starts automatically, and when it’s over, it repeats.

  Naranja. Orange. The color of the desks in Daniella’s American Studies classroom.

  “Daniella, I asked you a question,” Ms. Murphy said. “In what year was the Declaration of Independence signed?”

  Daniella stayed quiet, stared down at the desk.

  “In what year was the Declaration of Independence signed?” Ms. Murphy repeated, her voice firm.

  Daniella stood from her chair in the back corner and pushed the desk over. Rojo. Red. The color of her face.

  “Stupid. Stupid. It’s all stupid.” Her voice was clear, even though whoever recorded the video was across the room.

  Amarillo. Yellow. The patch of sun Daniella dashed across to reach the bulletin board in the back of the class.

  She tore a world map off the wall. It was one of those detailed kinds where the capitals are pointed out and mountain ranges are sketched in. She tore it over and over and over.

  “You don’t teach us how to deal with anything, but at least we know when the Declaration of Independence got signed,” she shouted. “1776!”

  Gris. Gray. The color o
f the floor she fell to, surrounded by the world she’d ripped to pieces.

  I think about the video from Fiesta Day of the couple fighting in the cafeteria. The girl mouthing “How could you.” Everyone talked about that video for days, shared it all over social media. Now they’ll do the same to my sister.

  A bell rings inside the auditorium. Break will be ending soon. My team will settle in their seats and prepare for the speed round. I’m supposed to be the specialist. But I can’t go back in there. I can’t look out into the audience and see empty seats where my family should be, now that I know why they’re missing. Because even if we all smiled in Buelo’s room last week, even if Daniella snuck into Ben’s play, she isn’t better. Nothing is better on this side of the time line. On this page of the calendar.

  I dial Uncle Eric’s number. He answers on the second ring.

  “Cassi? Did you mean to call Jac?”

  “No. Can you come pick me up? I’m at Trinity Prep.”

  “Where are your parents?”

  My throat seals up.

  “What, Jac?” Uncle Eric’s voice sounds far away, like he’s covering the receiver. “Oh no. Really? Okay.” His voice comes back in clear. “We’ll be right there.”

  I sneak toward the exit, peeling the name tag off my shirt. It makes a sound like the world map tearing off the wall. I throw it into the trash. The moderator passes by me in the hall.

  “Sir, can you please tell Mr. Garrison from Eliza T. Dakota that Cassi Chord had to leave? Thank you.”

  I’m out the door before he can answer. I hide in a cluster of trees near the parking lot and wait. At one point, Mr. G pokes his head out the door. He looks left, right, left. Then he disappears.

  The video plays in my head again, all the way to the end.

  Brown and green and blue. Café, verde, azul. Colors of the earth and trees and water. All of it falling apart.

  * * *

  I sit between Jac and Ben in the back of Uncle Eric’s truck. Leslie is in the passenger seat. Her auburn hair is pinned up, and a briefcase sits by her feet. She turns her head toward me.

  “Can I ask you something, Cassi?”

  It occurs to me that I haven’t really talked to Leslie since Open Mic night.

  “Say no,” Jac whispers.

  “Sure,” I say instead.

  “Eric tells me this video is unlike your sister. Have you noticed any changes in her as well?”

  I think about closed doors, faded music. Sweatpants and soggy cereal in blue bowls. Unanswered Jeopardy! questions.

  “She’s been sad all year. Ever since my Buelo got sick and she started high school.”

  Leslie nods. “I’m asking you this because I’m a therapist. At Coastal Wellness. By the mall?”

  “I’ve seen that place,” Ben says. I have too. The sign is hard to miss. It’s bright white with the name written in blue cursive and three waves curling underneath.

  “We help people going through things, similar to Daniella.”

  “How?” It’s not Ben or I who asks. It’s Jac. She leans forward in her seat. Leslie’s eyebrows lift a little.

  “By talking,” Leslie replies.

  “I’ve tried to talk to her every day. She won’t talk back,” Jac says.

  “It can be hard to admit that there’s something wrong. And I know that what she’s going through is hard for you, too. Depression can make it seem like you’ve lost someone. But she’s still in there.” Leslie smiles. “I promise. We’ll figure this out.”

  I say the word “depression” under my breath like I’m whispering the answer to a math problem. Jac and Ben look like they’re in the middle of a serious scene in one of Ben’s plays. Leslie holds out her hand to us. She’s always been there—for Open Mic night, and on New Year’s, and at our house playing cards in the kitchen. And she understands what’s happening to Daniella. I take her hand, and Ben does too. We look at Jac.

  “Together,” I say to her. Jac stares at Leslie’s reached-out hand, takes a breath, and then links her fingers with ours.

  “I’m with you too. Just can’t take my hands off the wheel,” Uncle Eric says from the driver’s seat. I watch Jac catch his eye in the rearview mirror. He winks at her.

  Leslie turns back around. Jac and Ben and I keep our arms looped together like infinity symbols in the backseat until we pull into my driveway.

  46 More Writing on the Wall

  Daniella and I are on the love seat in the living room. We sit on separate striped cushions and stare at the ground. Our parents stand in front of us like they do when we’re about to get a lecture. I expect Mom’s eyes to narrow, but instead they fill with tears. Guilt swallows me whole.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” I say. “I shouldn’t have left the competition without permission.”

  Daniella grunts. “Well, I’m not sorry. I meant what I said. It’s not my fault someone decided to record it.”

  “You’re not in trouble,” Dad says. He rubs his forehead.

  “Really?” she asks. Dad nods warily and looks at Mom.

  “Daniella, I got a recommendation from Leslie for a therapist at her practice,” Mom says. “You have an appointment next week.”

  Dad rubs his face some more. Daniella straightens up.

  “No,” she says.

  I imagine the wall in her chest. The sharp, shattered pieces.

  “It’s gone beyond what you can handle on your own. We know you know that,” Dad says. Now that he’s stopped rubbing, I can see that his eyes are wet too.

  But how could she know, even if there were a chapter on it in The Chemical Property of Life?

  “Please don’t make me go,” Daniella begs. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Mom kneels in front of Daniella and holds her hands.

  “I am going to make you go. Because for too long I pretended that this wasn’t happening, and I’m sorry for that. I love you. Te quiero so, so, so much.”

  Daniella covers her face with her hands without letting go of Mom’s. I touch Daniella’s shoulder. Dad places a hand on her back. It feels like “Daniella is depressed” is written on the living room walls in big letters we can’t ignore anymore.

  Like our signatures in Jac’s room, or Mr. G’s digits of pi, or “I was here” on the bus seat.

  47 Spruce Landing

  Daniella’s meltdown video has 93,921 views when I get to school on Monday. The total rises to 186,177 by Math Olympics two days later. I walk into Mr. G’s classroom, and the stares I receive are like knives. Everyone’s eyes stay on me while I sit down, even Mr. G’s. No lesson is written on the whiteboard. The words “Congratulations, Regional Champs” are there instead.

  Sage raises her hand.

  “Mr. G, I don’t think it’s fair for Cassi to be here. She ditched us and did not contribute to our win.”

  “That’s not true, Sage. She was part of the first round.” His tie is black with a white swirl on it in the shape of a tornado.

  “Big deal. She was our speed round specialist.”

  I should open my mouth. Explain myself. But I never speak up like I should. If I’d tried harder to tell someone about the things in Daniella’s diary, maybe the video would never have happened.

  “That’s enough. We’re not in the business of kicking people out of Math Olympics.” Mr. G hands us all a sheet of paper. “These are the rules for States. They’re different from Regionals. Read up, and then we’ll review.” He doesn’t smile or anything when he gives me the handout. I picture his head sticking out of the doors at Trinity Prep, looking for me.

  Aaron slides a note across my desk like he did the first day I met him.

  Ignore them.

  Like we all ignored how bad things really were with Daniella. I slip the note under the list of rules for States and try to read.

  There are three rounds in the state-level competition: the round-robin, the timed questions, and the—

  “Stupid. Stupid. It’s all stupid.”

  Daniella’s vo
ice fills up the room. Sage has her phone out on her lap. I can see the screen, bright and blue, from here. I can hear the world map tearing. My jaw struggles under the weight of tears.

  186,178 views.

  “Turn it off. Right now.” I’ve never heard Mr. G’s voice sound like that. I crunch the rules for States and Aaron’s note into a ball and throw it onto the floor. I won’t ignore it. And I won’t be going to States.

  “You know what? You get what you want, Sage. I quit.” My backpack thumps against me as I sprint out of the room, out of the school building, all the way to the benches out front. It’s warmer today than when Aaron told me about Juniper. But I feel just as cold.

  I curl up on the bench, try to turn myself into a tiny speck. Tiny specks don’t cry. Tiny specks’ sisters don’t get depressed. Tiny specks don’t have to know who they are—they’re only specks. A leaf falls from the tree above me and lands on my arm. I squeeze myself tighter. I’m a speck. I’m a speck.

  “Cassi!” Aaron comes running. “Mr. G told me to get you,” he says when he’s right in front of me.

  “I’m not going back.”

  He picks the leaf off my arm and sits down.

  “We know why you left Regionals. Everything will be fine.”

  Todo estara bien.

  Sometimes words aren’t enough.

  “Sage still played the video in front of everyone.”

  “She’s just being mean. She got to do the speed round, so I don’t get why she’s even mad.” Aaron spins the leaf in his fingers by the stem, and then looks at me.

  “She’s mad because I held your hand at the Ice Plex,” I say.

  He reaches for my hand like he did during the friendship skate. He twines our fingers together, squeezes, and lets go.

  Maybe I’m a speck, but I’m a speck whose heart is swelling.

  “How can I help?” he asks.

  I think back to the start of our friendship. Our deal. It doesn’t feel like a deal anymore. I don’t need a set of Aaron Facts to feel like I know him. He’s woven into me the way Jac and Ben are.

 

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