The Mulberry Tree

by Allison Rushby

  “Year six!” a voice called out as Immy entered the hall to see chairs and tables had been set out. She groaned a silent groan as she realized there’d been no point in dawdling — she was going to have to line up with the other kids in her year. Reluctantly, she ran over to grab a tray and some cutlery with some of the other kids from her class.

  As they approached the servers, Immy copied the boy in front of her and ended up with a tray with macaroni and cheese, a baked potato, some corn, a slice of melon, and a box of apple juice. She followed him over to the tables, where he veered off and took the last seat at a table of twelve. The next-closest table — and the only other one she could see with a 6 on it — already had Caitlyn, Zara, and Erin sitting at it.

  Immy’s shoulders sagged as she realized what she was going to have to do.

  Riley, the boy from the village green, stopped to see what she was looking at. “Lucky for us, lunch is only fifteen minutes,” he said.

  With a sigh, Immy followed him and sat down, bracing herself for what would probably be the longest fifteen minutes of her life. She put her tray down a bit too hard, and the three girls, who’d been chatting, all looked up at the same time.

  Immy ignored them, sat down, and focused on her lunch. She didn’t lift her eyes from her tray, not even when she knew they were whispering about her.

  It felt like forever before the kids in the hall started to move off to scrape their plates and stack their trays.

  Immy followed their lead but then realized there was still another half hour of recess to go before they would head back into the classroom. She went to the bathroom and took a lot of time washing her hands. Hovering around the door to the playground, she could see Caitlyn, Zara, and Erin by the monkey bars. She recognized Ava, the girl she’d spoken to when she’d come to buy her uniforms, but Ava was playing hopscotch with some of the younger girls, and Immy could only imagine what Caitlyn’s crew would say if she tried something like that. She also saw Riley, who she thought seemed nice, but he was heading off with a group of boys to play soccer.

  She thought back to her old school in Sydney, where she had friends — friends she hoped to return to before too long. What would she have done if she hadn’t been able to sit with them? There’d been a lot of lunchtime activities at her old school — coding club, chess club, Amnesty International. But this school was tiny. They probably wouldn’t have things like that here. It didn’t take her long to remember another place of refuge, however. And she knew this school had one, because her teacher had pointed it out to her this morning.

  Immy turned and made her way toward the library.

  When she pushed open the doors to the small library, Immy was pleased to see that there were several other kids in there. Two were lounging around on beanbags, reading. A few others were sitting at a table, playing a board game.

  She breathed a sigh of relief. She could handle fifteen minutes of lunch and half an hour of recess in here. Things would be all right.

  “Hello,” someone said, approaching her. “It’s Imogen, isn’t it?”

  “Immy.” Immy nodded. It was the woman from the playground. The one who’d told Caitlyn, Zara, and Erin off.

  “I’m Mrs. Garland, the school librarian. I’m Jean Merritt’s daughter. Jean who lives behind you.”

  “Oh!” Immy remembered Jean telling her that her daughter worked at the village school. “Hello.”

  “I was wondering when you’d come in. Why don’t you have a look around? If you have any questions, just let me know.”

  “All right,” Immy said. “Thanks.”

  Mrs. Garland bustled off back to her desk and sat down at her computer.

  After a moment or two, Immy moved off, taking herself through the shelves, picking out books here and there and flipping through the pages. She did this for the next twenty minutes or so, watching Mrs. Garland out of the corner of her eye as she went. She couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d said to the girls, and she wondered how much she knew about the tree — probably as much as Jean did, which was a lot.

  It was strange, but the tree had seemed a bit quieter since the strange jolt it had given her. And since she’d found out about the rhyme. Maybe that’s all it wanted? To be left alone? For a moment, she considered letting things be, but then she thought of the tree outside her bedroom window and shuddered. There were only five more minutes of lunchtime left. She had to be brave and ask what she wanted to ask. On Immy’s list of how to find out more about the tree, one of the possible information sources she’d written down was the school librarian. The school librarian’s mother living right behind the mulberry tree was sheer luck. This was too good a chance to pass up.

  Mrs. Garland was sitting at her desk. Immy sidled on over, trying to look casual.

  “Oh, hello again, Immy.” Mrs. Garland looked up as she approached. “How can I help you?”

  “Well,” Immy said. “I was wondering if you have any books about mulberries.”

  Mrs. Garland’s eyebrows shot up. “Hmmm . . . that’s very specific. No, I don’t think we do.”

  “I was wondering . . . did you grow up in the house behind ours?”

  “Oh, no.” Mrs. Garland shook her head. “It was my grandparents’ house. My mother only moved back there when she sold our family home and needed something smaller. But she grew up there.”

  Immy wasn’t sure how much she could ask. “When she knew her friend Elizabeth?” She lowered her voice.

  Mrs. Garland shifted in her seat. “Well, yes . . .”

  “And the people Elizabeth lived with, where are they now?”

  “They were older, so they died some time ago.” She hesitated. “The house was kept in the family, though. It went to their nephew — Caitlyn’s father.”

  Immy glanced out toward the playground. She paused to think for a moment before continuing. “What you said the other day to the girls in the playground. I’ve been thinking about that. What did you mean?”

  “You heard me?”

  Immy nodded.

  “Well, let’s see. I suppose I was trying to explain to the girls that people are often afraid of what they don’t truly understand. You can see it throughout history. The banning or burning of books, the persecution of certain religions, of races . . .”

  Immy thought about the marks on the tree. “Do you think the tree is evil?” Her eyes were glued to Mrs. Garland.

  “I . . . I suppose I think nothing’s ever truly evil — all good or all bad, all black or all white. Life isn’t like that, is it?”

  For some reason, Immy’s thoughts turned to Bob. She saw him as something blacker than black. He’d been wrong — wrong to drive that car. That’s all there was to it. Immy shrugged, not wanting to think about this.

  “You know, if you’re interested in gardening, you should join our allotment club,” Mrs. Garland said, quickly changing the subject.

  “What’s an allotment?”

  “Of course, I completely forgot. It’s quite an English thing. Maybe you’d call it a community garden? Do you have those in Australia?”

  Immy nodded. She knew what a community garden was.

  “Well, the school has an allotment, and I run the club. We meet there on Wednesday and Friday afternoons, after school. We grow all sorts of things. Carrots, potatoes, herbs, rhubarb. The first meeting will be this Friday. Do you think you’d like to join?”

  “I’m not sure,” Immy said as the bell rang.

  Mrs. Garland stood. “Well, you think about it, and I’ll remind you later in the week if I see you.”

  “All right.” Immy started toward the door. “I’ll be here in the library, that’s for sure.”

  The week continued in pretty much the same way. The tree remained silent, but Immy knew it was watching her. She could feel it. At school, there were lessons, first break, lessons, lunch/hide in the library time, lessons, and then home. First break wasn’t too bad, because you were allowed to stay in the classroom and read a book or draw if y
ou wanted to. When it came to lunch, Immy simply scarfed down her meal as fast as she could and ran for the library. After three days of it, she figured she could stand doing this for a year. Hopefully her family would return to Australia after that. She guessed whether they stayed here depended entirely on her mum’s work.

  And whether her dad would ever work again.

  After quizzing Mrs. Garland, she’d tried to find out even more information about the tree. She’d asked her dad if they could go to the big library, in Cambridge itself, but he said it was a half-hour drive and that you then had to park in some sort of lot and take a special bus in. They’d have to wait until they had some free time on a weekend. Immy knew what that meant. It was all going to be too hard, as most things were for her father these days.

  On Friday, things were a bit different because Immy’s class was going to start swimming lessons for the year. Immy quite liked swimming. In Sydney, she’d been taking lessons at a university pool since she was six months old, and, slowly, she had worked her way up to two squad sessions per week during the summer. Her dad used to swim at the same time, but he hadn’t done that in a while.

  Immy wasn’t a great swimmer, but she enjoyed it. Even though there were plenty of kids who could swim way faster than she could, she didn’t care. She still liked to do all the laps written up on the squad whiteboard. She liked the fact that, in the pool, she could just concentrate on putting one arm over the other and practice breathing at the right time. She didn’t have to think about anything else. Afterward, her dad would get a coffee, and Immy would get an ice pop, and they’d sit on the café’s sun-soaked, wide wooden deck. Here they’d watch the swimmers go up and down, up and down, the tall palm trees swaying in the background.

  It was raining when Immy’s class got off the minibus at the small sports complex that housed the pool. Immy followed the other kids inside and then halted when she caught her first glimpse of where they’d be swimming.

  “Oh” was all she could say.

  This wasn’t the university pool.

  This pool was indoors. It was only twenty-five meters long, and it stank of chlorine. The air was thick and heavy, and it was hard to breathe.

  They continued on to the changing rooms. As Immy entered, she tensed, realizing it was going to be difficult to avoid Caitlyn and her friends in the small space. Immy swung her swimming bag onto a bench on the opposite side of the changing room from them and proceeded to get changed as fast as she could.

  She was about halfway through pulling her swimsuit on when Caitlyn began humming the rhyme about the mulberry tree under her breath.

  Immy’s worry turned into a sudden flare of anger. She was sick of Caitlyn. Yes, her dad had said something dumb, but when was she going to let it go? She was so mean. It was as if living in the shadow of the tree had made her a sour, bitter person.

  Maybe that was it. Maybe it had.

  There was more than one voice humming along by the time Immy grabbed her goggles and made her way out to the pool. Immy didn’t stop to check who it was. Probably Zara or Erin, she guessed.

  The instructor waited until their teacher had counted heads and made sure everyone was present. She then lined them up in four groups behind the four lanes, according to a sheet on her clipboard. Immy guessed the groups were sorted according to their swimming ability. Her dad had had to fill out a form, saying how good a swimmer she was and what she could and couldn’t do.

  Unfortunately, she was grouped with not only Caitlyn but Erin, too — the girl who’d told her the words of the rhyme. As they joined her, Riley’s name was also called out, as well as another boy, Will, who she hadn’t really spoken to yet.

  The humming started again.

  It continued as the instructor told them their group was going to begin by swimming a relay. Any stroke they liked — up and back, fifty meters each.

  “Who wants to go first?” the instructor asked.

  “I will,” Immy volunteered. Anything to get away from that humming.

  “Great,” the instructor said. “Up you get.”

  Immy climbed up on the block and pulled her goggles down.

  “Ready . . . set . . . go.”

  Immy dived in and swam. The water was too warm and felt soupy, but she didn’t care. She just swam, concentrating on one arm following the other and on taking deep breaths.

  She did a tumble turn, swam back again, and then slammed her hand against the tiles when she reached the wall once more. Immy looked up through foggy goggles to see a pair of feet narrowly miss her head as someone dived in.

  Caitlyn.

  Puffing, she pulled herself out the water and rejoined the others in her group.

  Who were all staring at her.

  “What?” she finally said.

  “That was . . . amazing,” Will told her.

  Beside him, Erin’s eyes were wide. “You’re really good.” Her gaze flicked nervously to Caitlyn, halfway up the pool, as if she might be able to hear.

  “Yeah, you’re pretty fast.” Riley nodded. “Faster than me, that’s for sure.”

  “And he’s the fastest in the whole school,” Will said.

  Immy frowned. “But I’m not some amazing swimmer. Back at home, I’m just . . . well, average, really.”

  “Maybe it’s all the swimming away from sharks you have to do in Australia.” Riley grinned. “Makes you quicker.”

  When the lesson was over, Immy raced to throw her clothes on so she could get back on the bus. She slumped down into a seat near the front, but there was no avoiding Caitlyn, who bent down and hissed at her as she walked past.

  “You really think you’re better than everyone in the whole village, don’t you?” she said.

  As Immy looked up at her, she caught something in Caitlyn’s expression. Something gnarled and dark and resentful that reminded her of the tree again. Saying nothing, Immy rolled her eyes, turned, and stared out the window. If she lived in Caitlyn’s house for too long, would she end up like that, too? She was beginning to regret talking her parents into renting Lavender Cottage. Maybe they should have waited and looked at places in town, where she could have gone to a bigger school. Found somewhere with a tree that wouldn’t eat her on her birthday.

  She paused. Did she really regret her decision? The thing was, there was something about that tree. She wanted to know more. Had to. Not just because she was still a bit worried it might steal her away, too, but because she wanted to know what had happened to those two girls. So, no, she wasn’t sorry they were living there. Not really. Finding out more about the tree was worth it, even if it meant putting up with horrible Caitlyn.

  Slowly, everyone else filed onto the bus. And of course no one would sit next to her. As more and more kids got on, the seat beside Immy began to look glaringly vacant. That is, until someone dropped into it with a whump.

  “So,” Riley said. “School, huh? Having fun yet?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m loving it,” Immy answered with a snort.

  “Look on the bright side,” Riley said. “At least you’re still here. At least the tree hasn’t taken you in the night yet.” He waggled his fingers in her face and made some spooky noises.

  Riley had to be the only person in the whole village who wasn’t scared of talking about the tree. Unfortunately for her, this was because he was new to the village as well. This meant he wouldn’t know as much about the tree as the kids whose families had lived here for generations did. Immy thought of something. “Do you ever go to the library in town?”

  “You mean into the city? Into Cambridge?”

  “No.” Immy shook her head. “Into . . .” She frowned, trying to remember the name of the nearest town.

  “St. Isles?” Riley guessed as the bus took off with a jerk.

  “Yep, that one.”

  “Sure. I catch the bus to the library all the time with my mom. We go most Saturdays.”

  “The bus?”

  “It goes from just up the road from your house. It takes
about fifteen minutes.”

  “And it stops near the library?”

  “Right outside it. Why?”

  Immy considered Riley for a moment. He could be trusted, she thought. “I want to find out more.” She lowered her voice. “About the tree. Its history.”

  “Hey, you know what they have there? This whole big wall of framed photographs. Old ones. The black-and-white kind. They’ve got some sort of historical society that the librarian is always trying to get my mom to join. She’s sort of interested because our house is so old and everything. You should go. To the library, I mean.”

  Immy sighed. “I can’t. I can’t tell my parents I want to go. They’d freak out if they thought I was thinking about the tree too much. I know they would.”

  “Well, we could go.”

  “What? On our own?”

  “Why not? It wouldn’t take too much time. What could go wrong?”

  Immy laughed. “My dad could kill me. That’s what.”

  “He wouldn’t even know. The librarian’s name is Mrs. Marsh. She’d definitely help you. She loves it when we ask her about any history stuff. She can go on all day! Look, when we get back to school, I’ll write down my number and give it to you. If you want to go on Saturday afternoon, just call me. Mom’s going to London for the weekend, and my dad wouldn’t notice if I said I was going over to someone’s house for a couple hours.”

  Immy just stared at him as the bus pulled inside the school gates and parked in the small lot. He was living in a dreamland. There was no way this was going to happen. Ever.

  As they filed out of the bus and walked back into the school, they passed by the library, and Immy saw Mrs. Garland talking to a student through the library windows. The library in Cambridge, or even in St. Isles, might not happen, but maybe she could try to get some more information from Mrs. Garland?

  After lunch, she made her way to the library.

  “Mrs. Garland,” Immy said as soon as she got there. “Is the allotment club still on this afternoon? I might give it a go after all.”