by Beth Turley
“I’m supposed to start trying to be more open. I used to think I’d be bothering people if I talked about my feelings. Alice says that’s not true.” Daniella opens to a page near the back. She looks up at me. “I’m sealing this with a padlock.”
I nod, thinking about something I didn’t before. Maybe the wall in Daniella’s chest didn’t fall to let the sadness escape. Maybe it fell so that other people could get in.
Daniella takes a breath like she’s letting something go, and starts to read.
May 1
Alice wanted me to close my eyes and picture a happy place. I didn’t at first, because that’s what everyone says to do. If it were that easy, wouldn’t we all be closing our eyes and going somewhere else all the time?
“Trust me,” she said. She says that a lot. I’m starting to.
So I closed my eyes. I tried not to think about much at all. I let my heart decide what happy place to take me to.
I ended up at the biggest bioluminescent bay in Puerto Rico. Buelo and Buela brought us there on our last trip. We took a boat out onto the water at night. I stood at the edge of the boat with Cassi. Waves lapped up against the side. The breeze was cool and smelled like salt.
“I see it,” Cassi said, and pointed.
The water stretched out for miles. Hundreds of speckled organisms glimmered under the surface, like stars.
I remember thinking that the sky and the sea looked the same.
I remember thinking that even in the deepest, darkest blackness, there’s light.
50 Lesson Thirty-Two
I take deep breaths outside Mr. G’s classroom on Wednesday. Aaron fans my face with his hand.
“Are you sure about this? There’s a reason we’re mathletes and not writers,” he says.
“Says the expert storyteller.”
I push the hair away from my face. The school still hasn’t turned the air-conditioning on, so I’m sweating through my shirt. I wish we were in Juniper’s zero-degree weather, or the snowy garden in North Sapling.
Sometimes when I’m around Aaron, I have to stop my brain from counting down the seconds. It’s hard not knowing if one day we’ll run out of time, and then he’ll be off to another tree town, even though his Dad promised this would be the last one.
“If your dad tries to get you to leave, we’ll do a skit,” Ben said two weeks ago, when they first opened the pool at Lakeside Townhouses. “About how we’ll all fall apart if you leave us.”
“Or maybe we’ll just hide you,” Jac offered. We stared at her.
“Where are you going to put me?” Aaron asked.
Jac smiled. The turquoise pool water turned chilly. “You’ll see.”
Sage and Allie walk past us and through Mr. G’s door. Sage’s eyes are still arrows, but Allie kind of smiles. Mr. G is finishing writing his lesson on the board. Lesson Thirty-Two of Mathematics: If all else fails, start over.
“Okay. I’m ready,” I say.
We walk in. Aaron goes to his desk, and I head for the front of the class. Mr. G looks surprised but makes it all exaggerated, with his hands over his mouth and his eyebrows lifted.
“Cassi, you came back.”
“I want to say something to the club,” I explain, before I can talk myself out of it.
“Please, go ahead.” He bows and puts his arm out like he’s giving me the floor. Everyone’s eyes lift up to meet mine.
There are notebooks on everyone’s desks, a lesson on the whiteboard about starting over. I breathe deep and try to be brave, like Ben at the Open Mic and Aaron when he told me about Spruce Landing.
“I’m not good at telling stories, but I am good with numbers. The video of my sister has been viewed roughly three hundred thousand times. I estimate that if each person watches it about three times, then one hundred thousand people have seen my sister hit rock bottom. Out of those people, zero of them will understand why she did what she did. Because you can’t know everything about a person by looking at them. If you had to list things about me just by the way I look, you probably wouldn’t say that I love math. Or that I have a Buelo with dementia and a Buela who calls me “Fantasma.” And I can guess with ninety-four percent certainty that you would not say I’m Puerto Rican. But I am. All those things are true. I have two halves of me, and the way they add together makes me who I am. Cassi Chord.”
I start to feel the weight of everyone’s eyes on me. Aaron nods at me to keep going. Sage’s stare isn’t so sharp.
The door rattles. I look over and see Jac and Ben watching through the narrow window built into the wood. They drop to the ground. I swallow a laugh and keep going.
“I’m sorry for abandoning you all. I was the speed specialist, and I should have been there. You’ve calculated by now that I saw the video for the first time at Regionals. That’s why I left. This group has become another important part of me, and I don’t want to lose it. So I hope you can all forgive me, because in case you can’t tell, I really, really want to go to States.”
Mr. G has a fake license plate from Hawaii in the back of his room, with the word “Aloha” written on it. I remember learning once that “Aloha” can be used for either “hello” or “good-bye.” I wait in front of Lesson Thirty-Two for my teammates to decide what it means.
Summer, Again
51 Founders’ Day Fireworks
Jac, Ben, and I lie on the hill outside Lakeside Townhouses for the Founders’ Day fireworks. Jac’s camouflage comforter is soft, and the weather is my favorite kind, where I’m comfortable in a hoodie and shorts. There were times this year when I didn’t think we’d find our way back here, to the million stars of a Mapleton summer night.
The sound of laughter drifts up from the bottom of the hill. Daniella tosses a football to Jenna. Two boys stand in between them and try to break up her pass. I know she won’t sit with us this year, because things aren’t exactly the same as they used to be.
Someone else is missing too.
“They’re going to start soon,” Ben says. He was in the Mapleton Community Theater production of Cats this afternoon. There are thick black whiskers still painted on his face.
“I think they’re going to start right meow,” Jac says, and grins. She’s added raised eyebrows to her signature smile. I haven’t told her, but it’s more goofy than scary now.
“You’re better than that.” I give her joke a thumbs-down. I think Aaron would too if he were here.
From our spot on the hill, I can see the stretch of water where they’ll set off the fireworks, dark except for splashes of moonlight. I can hear my sister’s laughter.
Someone sits next to me.
“You’re late,” I say.
“Sorry. Dad and I were recording a radio interview,” Aaron says.
“Our little celebrity.”
Mr. Kale found a publisher for his memoir. It’s called Out There, In Tree Towns, Growing. It didn’t end up being what he’d planned. It’s about a father and son who searched for someone in five tree towns and found home instead.
“I was supposed to be the famous one in this group. Look at my commitment,” Ben says, and points to his pink painted nose.
“If I have to wear that, then I don’t want to be famous,” Aaron replies. The sides of our hands touch on the camouflage comforter. I smile into the dark, my heart buzzing.
Aaron has his state championship pin fastened to his hoodie. I keep mine in my bedroom on the table I made in Metals, next to the newest figurine from Titi Celina. An elephant, for Buelo. Because elephants never forget.
The first firework goes off. It’s blue, and so big that it takes up the whole sky. A few more follow, green and yellow and purple. They shine and then fade into smoke that looks like ghosts. I’m not so afraid of fantasmas anymore. The fireworks are turning into crooked hearts when Daniella steps into my view.
“Hey,” she says. She sits down in front of me and leans back, her head landing in my lap.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“It’s tradition.” She says it like it’s the most obvious thing.
There might always be pieces of my sister that are sadder than the rest, like deep blue shards in a stained-glass window. This past year will be a part of us. A part of our story. But it’s not the whole story. We have lots of chapters left to go. And one day, maybe fifty years from now, we’ll be able to look back and see how this year fit into the equation of our lives.
I gather a section of her hair and tie it into a braid. When I get to the bottom, I untie it, and begin again.
Acknowledgments
Cassi and Aaron have had a place in my head since 2014. Their story has changed a lot since then. Would you believe it if I told you that this book used to take place at camp? Or that Aaron held a huge grudge against Cassi? Or that Jac’s hair changed color through magic? I have many people to thank for helping me take my (bad) ideas and turn them into the story about friendship and family and belonging that I always wanted to write.
Thank you to Krista Vitola, my amazing editor, who guided me to the true heart of this book and stuck with me while I worked to dig it out. I am so thankful for your encouragement and vision. Thank you to Catherine Laudone and the rest of the team at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. Thank you to Bara MacNeill, Jenica Nasworthy, and Morgan York for your careful copyedits. Thank you to Krista Vossen and Ira Sluyterman van Langeweyde for designing and illustrating a cover that made me cry the first time I saw it and several times after that.
I am endlessly grateful to my agent, Zoe Sandler, for your guidance, positivity, and support.
Thank you to my sensitivity readers, Melissa J., Christina K., and Camellia M., for your openness, and for working with me on Daniella’s experiences. Your empathy and honesty shone through in your feedback.
My family stands by me through everything, and the process of writing this book was no exception. Dad, Mom, and Crissy—we are a team. I’ve been blessed with a big group of cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents who all made me want to write a book about family.
I could never say thank you enough to my friends. There have been brunches attended, trips taken, new seasons of shows watched, pizza eaten, big life steps made, and small, perfect moments spent together. I will resist the urge to list your initials like an AIM profile from 2005, but you know who you are.
Thank you, God, for making it my dream to write books.
And thank you, reader, for visiting this tree town. I hope you enjoy your stay.
Author’s Note
My papa, Tito Velez-Rivera, taught me Spanish in a song. Through him, I learned how to say “pencil” and “teacher” and “door.” I learned te quiero mucho. And he continued to say te quiero mucho, even as his memory failed.
Being Puerto Rican has been as much a part of me as being a writer. I wouldn’t be who I am without the Spanish-language masses I went to on Sundays, or my nana’s rice and beans. But in some ways, it has felt like an invisible part of me. It has left me wondering how one minute I could be in a kitchen with my family, who speak in voices that sound like yelling if you aren’t used to it, a pot on each burner and pernil in the oven, and the next, I’m somewhere no one would guess where my family came from. It has led to surprised looks, awkward moments, and unsteady check marks in boxes. But more important, it has led to so, so much love.
I had to learn to feel like I belonged when I was sure that I didn’t. I had to learn that it was more important to be out in the sunshine than to turn tan from it. And this doesn’t just apply to heritage. There are so many things to feel not enough of. Cool enough, smart enough, popular enough. I wrote Cassi’s story because in the end, it was the strength inside her and the people around her, both sides of her family and the family of friends she created on her own, that helped her see that she was exactly who she was supposed to be.
And you are exactly who you’re supposed to be.
I try to remember that the way I remember my papa’s song, teaching me to say “pencil” in Spanish.
More from the Author
If This Were a Story
About the Author
PHOTO: JANELLE MEDEIROs
Beth Turley is a graduate of the Creative and Professional Writing MFA program at Western Connecticut State University. She lives and writes in southeastern Connecticut, where the leaves changing color feels like magic and the water is never too far away. She is the author of If This Were a Stroy and The Last Tree Town.
Visit us at simonandschuster.com/kids
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Beth-Turley
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Also by Beth Turley
If This Were a Story
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2020 by Beth Turley
Jacket illustrations copyright © 2020 by Ira Sluyterman van Langeweyde
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Turley, Beth, author.
Title: The last tree town / Beth Turley.
Description: First edition. | New York City : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, [2020] | Audience: Ages 9–12. | Audience: Grades 4–6. | Summary: Struggling with her Puerto Rican identity, her grandfather’s memory loss and transfer to a nursing home, and her sister’s depression, seventh-grader Cassi joins the Mathletes at school, finding comfort in numbers and in her new friendship with Aaron.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019028314 (print) | LCCN 2019028315 (eBook) | ISBN 9781534420649 (hardback) | ISBN 9781534420663 (eBook)
Subjects: CYAC: Sisters—Fiction. | Depression, Mental—Fiction. | Mathematics—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Puerto Ricans—United States—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.T875 Las 2020 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.T875 (eBook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019028314
LC eBook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019028315