Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World

by Ashley Herring Blake

  Ivy thought about offering to go to Ms. Clement’s house or maybe the Vance family on the other side of the woods, but she didn’t want to go alone. She wasn’t even sure she could go alone with her ankle hurting the way it was.

  “What do we do now?” she asked, hoping her dad would know. He had to know. Someone had to know.

  But he didn’t answer, and when Ivy looked up at him, a few tears made their way down his dirt-streaked cheek.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Rescued

  The sun rose higher and higher, burning away the leftover clouds, and the sky went from lavender to too-bright blue.

  “Dad?” Ivy slipped her hand into her father’s. “Daddy?”

  Finally, he blinked and took a shaky breath. He squeezed her hand once and then let her go, wiping his face on the crook of his arm.

  “We need to call for some help,” he said, turning back to Mom and Layla. “I’m going to head over to Ms. Clement’s, make sure she’s okay and see if we can use her phone.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Ivy said, desperate for something to do.

  “No, sweetie, you stay here,” he said.

  “Please, I can help.”

  “Ivy, do what Dad says,” Layla snapped.

  Ivy scowled at Layla but didn’t say anything. She turned away and sat under the oak tree.

  Dad had just started jogging toward Ms. Clement’s house when something rumbled from the driveway. Ivy looked up from where she was tearing leaves and gathering them into a little useless pile. Layla was still lying in their mother’s lap, but she turned her head toward the noise.

  Dad stopped and turned back, running toward the big silver truck bouncing up the gravel driveway. The driver was Xandra Somerset, a doctor who’d moved to Helenwood last summer. She was Mom’s doctor, which meant she was a woman’s doctor, but Ivy couldn’t remember what that was called right now. Her daughter, June, who was Ivy’s age, sat in the passenger seat, gaping at Ivy’s nonhouse.

  Another family—the Wayburns, who lived about two miles away and grew peaches—sat huddled in the bed of the truck. The youngest Wayburn, a toddler named Harris, wailed in his mother’s lap.

  Dr. Somerset stopped near the oak tree and parked the truck. She stared at the house for a bit too, then opened the door and got out.

  Ivy stood up and limped closer.

  “Hi, Daniel,” Dr. Somerset said with a sigh. “Anyone hurt?”

  He shook his head. “The Wayburns?” Dad asked, waving weakly at a shocked-looking Graham Wayburn.

  “They’re safe, but their house looks about like yours,” Dr. Somerset said. Her eyes had dark circles under them, but Ivy remembered from the few checkups she went to with Mom that there was always a bit of a shadow there.

  Dad swore softly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Do you know if Ms. Clement is okay?”

  “She’s fine. Missed her house completely, but it was bad, Daniel. The tornado went through downtown too.”

  “Is anyone seriously hurt?”

  “No fatalities reported yet, but there are a lot of injuries. Some of them severe. June and I have been driving around trying to relieve the paramedics a bit and pick people up. Everyone who needs shelter is gathering at the elementary school.”

  “Right,” Dad said, nodding at the ground. “Shelter. Okay.” But he didn’t move, just kept blinking at the wet grass.

  “Do you have a car?” Dr. Somerset asked.

  Dad frowned and looked around.

  “The van’s gone,” Ivy said when he kept staring at the spot where their only car used to be. Right before Mom had the twins, their other car, an ancient CR-V, broke down, and Ivy’s parents had decided it wasn’t worth fixing. It was only about a twenty-minute walk into town, so they sold it to Trevor Kingston, who sold it for parts or something. Ivy thought they planned on getting Layla a car eventually, but eventually got swallowed up really fast by other stuff. And now this.

  “Okay,” Dr. Somerset said, nice and calm. “Are the twins all right?”

  “I think so,” Dad said. “Elise tripped on the way out of the house holding Aaron, but he was bundled up pretty tight. Could you check on him, though?”

  “Of course.” Dr. Somerset waved to June, who got out of the truck carrying a big gray messenger bag. She handed it to her mom and smiled at Ivy. It was a wobbly kind of smile, like she had no idea what to say, which was just fine with Ivy. She didn’t know either.

  Dr. Somerset walked over to Mom and squatted down. Layla finally sat up. “Have you nursed recently?”

  Mom shook her head. “I need to.”

  Dr. Somerset dug a stethoscope out of her bag and checked both boys over. “They look just fine,” she said, flipping the stethoscope behind her neck. “Let’s get everyone into the truck.”

  Ivy breathed a sigh of relief as her family started moving. At least one thing was fine. Her ankle ached, but there was no way she was mentioning it with everything else going on. She could walk; that’s all that mattered. She took her pillow from her mom and ran her hands over the hard outline of the notebook inside. Still safe.

  “Wow,” June said, standing next to Ivy. “This is awesome. I mean, just totally incredible.”

  Ivy turned toward her. “Excuse me?”

  June waved her hand at the heap of a house, her mouth open and eyes wide. “Just look at it.”

  “Yeah, I can see it.” Ivy’s voice snapped and popped, but she didn’t care. This was awesome? Was this girl serious? “So, me losing my house is… cool?”

  June’s dark eyes got even wider. “No! No, when I said awesome, I meant, like, inspiring great awe. Daunting. Even fearsome. That a cloud of wind could do all that. It’s terrifying and awful.”

  Ivy blinked at her. “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry,” June said, looking down at her feet. “This always happens to me.”

  “What does?”

  “My words. They sound right in my head, but when they come out of my mouth, it’s not what I meant at all. My mom says I need to think before I speak.” She glanced back at Dr. Somerset, and something sad flickered in her eyes, but Ivy was too distracted by the word awesome to care what June might be talking about.

  “I’m sorry about your house,” June said. “Really.”

  Ivy blinked at her some more.

  June was in Ivy’s homeroom at school. Her pixie-cut hair was dark and usually had a few little braids woven in somewhere. Ivy didn’t know how she braided hair that short. June wore these cute dresses with leggings and talked a lot in class. Like, a lot. Sort of like the way she was babbling right now about awesome and daunting. And she always had the most bizarre lunches. Piles of vegetables and what looked like rice, but smaller. Ivy thought it was called keen-wa or something, and it was always in a giant glass container with one of those rubber lids. Not that veggies were an odd choice, but that’s all June ever ate. Ivy had never seen her with a juice box or a cookie.

  So basically, June Somerset was weird. Not that weird was bad. Weird was just weird. But Ivy was too scared about where her family was going to live—how they were going to live—to figure out anything else about June, so she just said “Thanks” and followed her family to the truck.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Home for the Night

  The truck bumped along the roads toward the elementary school, swerving around debris from the storm. As they headed into town, the houses got closer together, and the damage looked scarier. Huge tree branches lying on ripped-apart roofs, windows shattered, bikes and toys and trash scattered over lawns. A shredded tire lay in the middle of the road near Clayton Avenue.

  Mom and Layla sat in the back seat, each holding a twin, so June was next to Ivy in the truck bed, every movement knocking their shoulders together. Ivy crushed her pillow against her chest, tracing her finger over one corner of her notebook. The Wayburns’ youngest kid still hadn’t stopped crying, but Ivy didn’t mind. She was actually sort of jealous that he could cry like that and didn’t have to wor
ry about making things worse for everyone else.

  “Are you okay?” June asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ivy said.

  June bunched her hands in the folds of her gray-and-white-striped tunic dress. “I just thought I should ask because you don’t look okay, but when I think about it, asking whether or not you’re okay seems really stupid right now. Of course you’re not okay.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “It’s okay to not be okay. Most people don’t think so, but I do. It has to be okay to not be okay all the time, don’t you think?”

  She was making Ivy dizzy.

  “It was so fast,” Ivy said, as her little farm disappeared behind a hill. “One minute, I was thinking about…” Ivy trailed off and gnawed on her lower lip.

  “What?” June whispered, leaning closer to Ivy. She smelled like oranges and clean clothes. Ivy probably smelled like dirt and more dirt.

  “Never mind,” Ivy said, swallowing hard. Those few minutes before her dad busted into her room were like a dream, just like her picture of the two girls in the treehouse, holding hands, thinking they were safe and on some adventure—but it ended up being a disaster. Ivy hugged her pillow tighter and shook off the thought.

  They pulled into Helenwood Elementary School’s parking lot, already packed with cars. The building was made of red brick and two stories tall. Ivy had liked going to school there. It always seemed full of magic with its white columns on the front porch and tall flagpole. Now, though, it looked different. It was a shelter. Ivy was pretty sure she was going to hate this building forever from here on out.

  They had to step around a lot of tree limbs on their way to the gym, but there didn’t seem to be any more damage than that. The sky was still clearing, the clouds rolling back to reveal the blue underneath. Funny how that blue was always there, even when the rest of the earth was screaming and breaking into pieces.

  “You’re limping,” June whispered to Ivy as they made their way up the sidewalk toward the gym’s main doors.

  Ivy shrugged and tried to even out her steps, but every time she pressed down on her foot too hard, tears bloomed in her eyes. She wiped them away and fell back behind her family so no one would see. Mom was already worried about the twins and the house, and Ivy didn’t want Layla fussing over her. June slowed down to match Ivy’s steps.

  Inside, the gym was chaos. There were at least fifty people, and all of them were wearing dirty pajamas and had the same shocked expression on their faces as Ivy’s dad. Families grouped together, claiming spaces on the shiny lacquered floor. People like June and her mom, people with clean clothes and neat hair, passed out blankets and pillows and what looked like the brown bag lunches Ivy got at school when she went on field trips.

  Dr. Somerset led Ivy’s family over to an empty space near the back wall and helped Mom sit down.

  “You can get some clothes to change into over there,” she said, pointing to the other side of the gym, where the clean people were handing stuff out. “There should be some things for the babies too. I need to check on a few other people, but I’ll be back soon.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Somerset,” Dad said. He scrubbed his hand over his stubbly chin. “I don’t know how… I… Thank you.”

  Dr. Somerset smiled and squeezed his arm. “It’ll be okay.”

  He nodded and took a deep breath like he really believed her. But Ivy knew better. It’ll be okay was just something people said when they didn’t know what else to say and things were really, really bad. It was exactly what Dad said before they ran for the storm cellar. But no one really knew what would be okay and what wouldn’t.

  Dad mumbled something about finding a phone to call the insurance company while Dr. Somerset started toward another family. June followed, calling out to her. Dr. Somerset stopped and pulled her daughter close, pressing the back of her hand to June’s forehead. June shrugged her off and said something Ivy couldn’t make out. Dr. Somerset looked up, her weary gaze landing on Ivy, a frown wrinkling her eyebrows.

  They started walking toward Ivy.

  Ivy backed up and turned around, placing her pillow next to Mom and kneeling to tickle Aaron’s feet. He cooed at her, but it turned into a whine.

  “I need to feed them,” Mom said. She dug into the diaper bag and pulled out a burp cloth and a big sheetlike thing that looped around her neck that she used when nursing in public.

  “Ivy?”

  Ivy glanced over her shoulder and saw Dr. Somerset.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked.

  “No. No, I’m fine—”

  “She’s limping,” June said. Ivy glared at her.

  “What?” Mom said, her eyes finding Ivy. She picked up Evan and dipped him under the nursing sheet, cradling him against her chest. “Honey, what happened?”

  “Nothing. I twisted my ankle a little in the cellar. It’s not a big deal.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” Mom asked. “Layla, you didn’t see this?”

  Layla, who had picked up Aaron, tilted her head at her sister. Ivy looked away. For the past year, Layla was usually the one Ivy went to when she had a headache or cut her toe while playing outside barefoot because she hated putting on shoes. Part of her don’t-stress-Mom-out plan of action. About a week after Aaron and Evan came home from the hospital, Ivy started her period for the first time. Mom had turned into Zombie-Mom, so Layla got Ivy pads and stood outside the bathroom door, talking her through the whole thing.

  “I don’t know,” Layla said, kissing Aaron’s cheek. “I guess Ivy’s old enough to look after herself.”

  There was a tinge of hurt in her voice, but Ivy ignored it. She waited for Mom to disagree with Layla, to say that Ivy wasn’t that old, because if twelve wasn’t old enough to stay up past nine thirty on a school night, then it certainly wasn’t old enough to fend for herself in a tornado.

  But Mom didn’t say anything like that. She sighed and peeked at Evan through the neck of the nursing sheet.

  “Layla,” she said, “why don’t you go find us some more blankets and clothes. I’d rather not lay the boys on this dirty floor. And maybe a few granola bars or something.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Layla glanced at Ivy’s ankle one more time before walking away with Aaron.

  “Let me take a look,” Dr. Somerset said. She motioned for Ivy to sit down and Ivy did, her throat suddenly all thick and annoying. Dr. Somerset untied Ivy’s sneaker, but didn’t take it off. She poked at Ivy’s ankle and moved her foot around until Ivy sucked in a sharp breath.

  “That hurt?” Dr. Somerset asked.

  “A little.”

  “Nothing’s broken,” she said. “It’s probably just a sprain. I’m going to wrap it, but leave your shoe on, okay? If you take it off right now, you might not be able to get it back on until the swelling goes down. We’ll find some ice for it. June, could you?”

  “Yes, I can do that!” June said, weirdly excited, and took off in search of ice.

  Dr. Somerset started wrapping Ivy’s ankle in a beige bandage. She was quick and efficient and didn’t say another word. She was like a rock, while June was all water.

  Five minutes later, she finished and left, promising to check back later. Mom rubbed Ivy’s back, but her touch was uneven because she kept moving around and adjusting Evan while she nursed. Eventually, Ivy scooted away a little so her mom didn’t feel like she had to comfort her. Mom didn’t even notice. She didn’t notice a lot lately.

  It could be because Ivy’s ankle hurt, but her chest felt tight, just like it did when she first found out that Mom was pregnant with the twins. She’d been excited at first. Twins! Brothers! Or another sister, maybe two! But then Dad got right down to business, talking about how they all had to play their part and pitch in. Mom was forty-one years old, so the pregnancy was what they called “high risk.” Stress was dangerous. So was exhaustion and heavy lifting. Mom had to stay in bed for the last two months of the pregnancy.

  Ivy was happy to help, but it was hard
. She was worried about Mom a lot, and the twins ended up coming early anyway. Since then, she felt like she’d barely seen her mother. It was all twins all the time with Ivy’s family.

  When she looked up from her ankle, she saw June jogging back across the gym, bringing Taryn, Ivy’s best friend, with her.

  “Ivy!” Taryn yelled from ten feet away. She ran over and collapsed next to Ivy. Ivy got a whiff of her peony body lotion, and it smelled so familiar and nice after the smell of dirt and sweat stuck up her nose for the last few hours.

  “Is your house really gone?” Taryn asked.

  There was that word again—gone. Ivy had no clue what she was supposed to say.

  Yep! Sure is! Totally vanished!

  Any response felt weird and didn’t match up with what was actually happening, so Ivy nodded.

  “Wow,” Taryn said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  June frowned at Ivy and handed her a plastic bag full of ice. Ivy took it and pressed it to her ankle, avoiding June’s eyes.

  “Annie Demetrios’s house flooded, but it’s still in one piece,” Taryn said, craning her neck to look around the gym. Taryn waved at Annie a few families down. She waved back, but didn’t smile as she sipped from a foam cup.

  “Drew is here too,” Taryn went on. “His house wasn’t wiped out, but they can’t stay in it right now. The roof is messed up. And they think he broke his arm.”

  “Oh no, really? Is he okay?” Ivy asked. Drew played soccer for their seventh-grade team. It was a fall sport, so they were done, but Ivy was pretty sure he played with a local league in the spring.

  Taryn shrugged and knotted her fingers together. She’d had a crush on Drew Dunaway ever since Ivy and Taryn figured out what crushes were. They sat with him and his friends at lunch sometimes. All he and Taryn ever talked about was soccer and superhero movies. There was nothing wrong with soccer and superhero movies, but Ivy didn’t have much to say about them, which left her chewing her turkey sandwiches or doodling on everyone’s napkins in silence whenever they sat with him.