by K L Going
Evie could barely force the next words out of her mouth. “So is my seed one of the ones from your father’s trip?”
Maggie drummed her fingers on the counter, then glanced toward the back of the store, where Father was shopping.
“I can’t say for certain,” she said, sighing, “but knowing Rodney, I’d guess the answer is yes. But on my word, Eve, I still don’t think that seed took my sister anywhere.”
Evie’s eyes popped. “Where else could she have gone?”
“She could have run away like everyone said. People don’t simply vanish. Maybe Rodney only thought he saw her disappear, but really she turned a corner and ran because he’d caught her doing something naughty. You know how many twists and turns are in that orchard. Besides,” she added, “all you’ve got to do is look around Beaumont to see that no great life has been imparted here, or anywhere else for that matter.”
“But what about my seed?” Evie asked, her face flush. “It’s not just an ordinary seed. I’m sure of it . . .”
Evie was rushing so much she didn’t notice Father coming up behind her.
“Sure of what?” he asked.
Maggie and Evie exchanged glances, and Evie pleaded with her eyes for Maggie not to tell. Maggie sighed deeply.
“Sure there’s going to be snow soon,” she said at last, ringing up Father’s new saw blade. Evie grinned gratefully, but Maggie stared forward, deep in thought. The fingers of one hand hit the keys on the cash register as her other hand rested on the saw blade. She pulled away quick as a small gash formed on her finger. She wrapped it in her apron but not before a single drop of blood trickled down the blade.
Father reached across the counter to help, but Maggie jumped.
“Should have been paying attention,” she muttered. “If I’d been watching what I was doing . . .” She laughed nervously. “There’s nothing to worry about,” she said, looking straight at Evie.
Nothing to worry about.
But Maggie’s eyes said something different.
Father hoisted the saw blade off the counter, and Evie and Maggie followed him out to the truck.
“Wait,” Maggie said, just as they were about to get in. “I forgot your change. Eve, why don’t you run in with me and I’ll get it for you.”
Evie nodded, then she dashed away before Father could protest. When they were inside Maggie scooped Father’s change off the counter and folded it into Evie’s palm.
“Now I’m not saying I believe all this nonsense,” she said, “but stay away from that seed just in case. Promise you won’t plant it.”
Evie paused.
“Will you find a beautiful garden, Mom?”
“I hope so, Evie.”
“Then I will meet you there.”
She shoved Father’s change in her pocket and crossed her fingers tight.
“I promise,” she said, but she didn’t mean it.
Chapter Fifteen
One Giant Step
When Evie and Father got back home, it was too dark to go outside. Evie thought about sneaking out to the orchard right then, but the idea of being out there in the pitch black by herself sent chills down her spine.
Instead she lay in bed awake most of the night, tingling with the possibility that Mom was waiting for her in a beautiful garden, just like she’d said. She remembered the way she used to imagine her own garden—full of waterfalls and rainbows and animals of every sort.
“No vegetables?” Mom asked, curling beside Evie on her bed.
“Not a single one,” Evie answered.
Mom laughed. “I’d have vegetables in my garden. Plus, there would be an orchard just like the one Father works in, and a little house just like our house, and a little girl just like—”
“Hey, that’s not a garden!”
“Oh, but it is,” Mom said. “The world would be my garden, Evie, my love. The whole entire world.”
Evie drifted off to sleep imagining her mother’s arms circling around her. When she woke, she could almost feel the warmth of her mom’s form snuggled next to her. She reached out to the space where her mother would have been, only it was empty.
For a long time Evie lay still, waiting for the ache to subside. Then she spotted the box on her nightstand and ran her finger over its smooth surface.
“Will you take me to my mom?” she whispered.
From the corner of her eye she saw that her clock read ten A.M. She must have been dreaming all morning. Slowly Evie got out of bed and pulled on her clothes and shoes, then she washed her face and ran downstairs to the kitchen. She looked out the window but didn’t see Alex in the graveyard, so she stepped out the front door to find him.
She didn’t have to go far. Alex was sitting on the porch, his hair rumpled and his arms crossed.
“Finally,” he said. “I’ve been waiting all morning.”
“I was just going to look for you,” Evie said.
“That’s because I called you with my ghost powers.” Alex stood up. “Did you plant the seed yet?”
“No, but you’ll never guess what I found out about it.”
“You found out you could plant it somewhere other than the orchard?” Alex asked, but Evie only sighed.
“Stop being such a fraidycat. I talked to Maggie and it turns out the seed Rodney gave me came from the Garden of Eden!”
Alex narrowed his eyes. “Are you making this up?”
“It’s true,” Evie said, crossing her heart and spitting on the ground. “There were three of them, and Maggie’s sister planted the first one just before she disappeared. Rodney believed it took her away to someplace magical, and he must have been right.” She paused, leaning in. “Think about it, Alex. My mom said everyone has a beautiful garden waiting just for them, only we can’t find them until after we die. But maybe . . .”
“Who would want to find a pile of old vegetables after they die?”
Evie threw up her hands in exasperation. “It wouldn’t be a pile of old vegetables. Use your imagination! Everyone’s garden would be just the way they’d want it to be. There could be streams or mountains or white clouds . . .”
“Sounds like heaven,” Alex said, but then he frowned. “I thought your mother’s stories didn’t come true.”
“This one is different,” Evie said. “The seed isn’t something Mom made up. Maggie’s father found it on a real expedition, and it’ll be such an adventure when I plant it . . .”
Alex chipped at the paint flaking off the porch banister.
“I like adventures,” he said. “I always have. I’m the bravest person I know . . .” He stopped. “At least, most of the time.”
Evie hopped off the porch, heading toward the trees, and Alex followed. She counted the rows as she went, then divided by two to mark the center.
“X marks the spot,” she said, tying her new red scarf around a low branch. Then she stepped into the orchard. “It’s only one more step,” she said, turning back to Alex. “What difference could one more step make?”
Alex studied the trees ahead of him.
“Can I see the seed one more time?” he asked.
Evie took the box out of her pocket and slid off the lid. A gust of wind swirled around them, and Alex jumped.
“Don’t you want to know if it’s magic?” Evie whispered.
Finally Alex closed his eyes and held his breath. Then he took one giant step into the orchard. When he was across, he opened first one eye, then the other, and looked around wildly, but nothing happened.
“See?” Evie said. “That wasn’t so bad.”
He let out his breath in a loud whoosh.
“I knew it wouldn’t be,” he said, but his eyes darted anxiously.
Evie stuck out her hand. “No turning back until we’ve planted the seed on old Rodney’s grave,” she said. “Deal?”
Alex hesitated, but at last he placed his ice-cold hand on hers.
“No turning back,” he said. “Not even if we find a ghost.”
Chap
ter Sixteen
Signs
The sound of Father’s chain saw grew fainter as they walked, and in the back of her mind, Evie knew she and Alex were going farther away from the old house than Father would have allowed, but the trees went on and on, stretching toward the mountains with no end in sight.
At first Alex walked several feet behind her, glancing around nervously, but she felt him drawing closer the farther they walked. Evie kept her eyes on the path ahead, but she couldn’t help shivering with excitement when she thought of what might come next.
“Do you think maybe we’ll get to heaven through this garden?” Alex asked after a while.
“Maybe,” Evie said.
“I’d like to go there,” Alex whispered, and Evie shifted.
“What about your family? Don’t you want to stay here with them?”
“No,” Alex said. “It’s not like it was before. We used to do all sorts of fun stuff together—like my dad was teaching me to ski and my mom and I used to play Monopoly every day after school—but now they don’t even see me. It isn’t fair.”
“I know,” Evie said. And she did know. It wasn’t fair. But maybe Rodney’s gift would make things better.
“Alex,” she asked, her feet crunching against the brittle grass, “what were you like when you were alive?”
“Perfect. Just like now.”
Evie rolled her eyes. “For real.”
This time Alex thought it over.
“I could make anyone laugh, no matter what. And once I won a prize for writing the best story, and it got published in the school paper. Plus, I used to read all the time—even stuff Ma got mad about.”
“My mom and I read together every night,” Evie said. “Sometimes when she wasn’t around, I’d skip ahead to the end of the book, and then I’d pretend to be surprised when we got there.”
“Once,” Alex said, “I pretended I was lost for an entire day because I got in trouble in school, but really I was upstairs hiding under the bed the whole time.”
“What did you do to get in trouble?”
“I brought a whoopee cushion to class and put it on the teacher’s chair.”
Evie laughed.
“Did it work?”
“No,” he said, but he grinned impishly.
Evie tried to remember the last time she’d gotten in trouble. It was a strange thing to miss, but it had been a long time since she’d done anything fun that might have gotten her punished.
Finally she thought of something.
“Father and I ate half a batch of cookie dough once. We both got sick and Mom was furious.”
“Cookie dough was my favorite food,” Alex said. “Other than pizza and fried chicken and tacos and—”
“Hey! It’s not a favorite if it’s more than one.”
Alex laughed, but then he got quiet again.
“How long ago did your mom die?”
“It’s been ten months now,” Evie said.
“How can you live without her?”
Evie studied the darkened trees. “Sometimes I don’t want to.”
Alex nodded as if he understood. “I go home at night and sit by my parents even though they can’t see me. My mom’s so sad she says she wants to die, and I think maybe she will.”
“She won’t,” Evie said. “It just feels that way.”
“I try to tell her I’m right here, but she doesn’t hear me.”
Evie breathed out long and slow. “I wish my mom were here.”
“How do you know she’s not? Maybe you just don’t see her.”
“I’ll always be with you, no matter what.”
Evie shook her head. “I don’t think so. I asked her to send me a sign if she was nearby but she never has.”
“I’ve sent people signs,” Alex said. “Lots of them, but nobody sees them, either.”
“Really?” Evie asked, ducking under a tree branch. “What kind of signs?”
“Signs to tell people good-bye. So they won’t feel sad once I’m completely gone. I took out all my most secret stuff from my dresser drawer and brought it to the cemetery—like letters and a journal I wrote in—but my mom won’t come out here and my dad won’t leave my mom, so no one noticed and I put it all back again. Then I made my mom a present and left it outside her door, but she never saw it.”
“What sort of present?”
“A wooden heart that said ‘I Love You’ in the middle.”
Evie’s eyes watered. “That’s so sad,” she said, remembering her mother’s card. “But maybe your mom did notice and she was saving it for later.”
“Do you think?” Alex asked. Then he shrugged. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, only he didn’t look like he meant it.
They turned a corner and the ground sloped downward, then just as Evie was about to say something, her foot hit a square gray stone. It barely jutted up out of the ground and blended in with all the other rocks that were scattered throughout the orchard, but it would have been enough to send her sprawling if she hadn’t caught herself in time.
Alex stopped short.
“This is it,” he said, and Evie knelt down, tracing the letters on the stone with her finger.
R-O-D-N-E-Y C-L-A-Y-T-O-N.
“It is,” she said. It was like making up a story only to find out that each bit you made up was actually true. “Guess I should plant the seed.”
“No turning back. Right?”
Evie pulled out the box and opened the lid. A cold gale swirled about them, growing stronger by the minute.
“Something’s happening,” Alex whispered.
Evie leaned down to dig a small hole, fighting against the whirling wind. Her fingers froze as she dug into the dirt, but finally she turned her palm and dropped the seed into the ground. She covered the hole with the loosened dirt, and as quickly as it had begun, the wind stopped and the orchard grew eerily still.
They waited, straining to spot something that might be out of place.
“Do you think anything is different?” Evie asked.
Alex answered in a whisper. “I don’t see any other ghosts, if that’s what you mean.”
Evie felt her disappointment rising again.
It was just an old seed.
Then Alex straightened. His eyes widened in surprise and he knelt down beside Rodney’s grave, staring at the hard ground.
“What’s the matter?” Evie asked.
Alex turned to her and grinned.
“The seed . . . ,” he said. “It’s growing!”
Chapter Seventeen
The Tree
“Do you see it?” Alex asked, pointing at the spot where she’d planted the seed.
Evie looked hard.
“It’s right there,” Alex said, hopping back and forth from one foot to the other.
Evie squinted at the ground beside the gravestone, but she saw only the hard brown dirt and the dry stalks of grass.
“I . . . I can’t see anything,” she said, but Alex shook his head.
“You’re looking with your eyes,” he said. “You’ve got to look with something else, remember?”
Evie bit her lip. “I don’t know how,” she said, but as soon as the words had escaped she knew they weren’t true. Of course she knew how! She’d done this with Mom a thousand times.
Her heart beat fast against her chest and she squinted at the ground. Then she closed her eyes, breathing deep, and when she opened them . . .
She saw it.
A tiny green shoot was coming up out of the earth.
Evie’s breath caught. “I see it!” she hollered, and Alex danced in a circle. The shoot was growing fast, doubling in size in the blink of an eye. Evie felt like Jack must have felt as the beanstalk grew.
She thought of all her mother’s magical stories and remembered how she’d told Father she didn’t believe in magic anymore.
But maybe magic still believed in her.
The shoot grew as tall as she was, then twice as tall, then three times her h
eight! Already the first thin branches were beginning to sprout.
“It’s going to be a tree,” Evie breathed, remembering her vision.
“Then I bet it will be an apple tree,” Alex said, “but not a dead one. A real live one with apples and everything.”
The trunk of the tree grew thick, and each branch blossomed into hundreds of tiny white flowers. Bright red fruit formed before their eyes. Apple blossoms floated down until they blanketed the ground in a soft carpet of white petals. The air was thick with a clean, fresh scent, so different from the earthy cider smell that lingered eerily in the rest of the orchard.
“It’s really alive,” Evie murmured, holding out her hands as if she were walking in the rain. The air felt perfectly warm and crisp now, like a late summer day just before fall. “There’re more petals than there are blossoms, as if the buds are always growing new flowers, even after they’ve borne fruit.”
She reached out to touch the tree trunk but pulled her hand back at the last second. What if it wasn’t really there?
“I’ll do it,” Alex said. “Ghost hands won’t break the magic.”
He stepped closer and reached out both hands, pressing them flat against the tree. Then he grinned back at her.
“Come on,” he urged. “It’s solid.”
Evie took a step closer and stuck out one finger, running it gently against the bark. It was rough, yet soft at the same time.
“I bet I could climb it,” Alex said. He boosted himself up into the branches and spotted a cluster of apples. His fingers curled around one ripe red shape and he plucked it from the branch. That’s when Evie felt the first stirring in the pit of her stomach. She could hear Maggie’s voice in her head.
“She stared upward as if she were seeing something very beautiful, only Rodney saw nothing. Then she walked forward, and he called to her, but in a blink she had disappeared and no one has seen her since.”
Alex had the apple poised at his mouth.
“Wait!” Evie called.
“Why?” he asked. “I’ve already got it down.”
Evie thought of all the stories Mom had read her as a child. Stories with poisoned apples and lies that tricked human beings into disastrous mistakes. She thought of the lost Eve and the warning on the tomb. Which choice was she supposed to make?
