Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World

by Ashley Herring Blake

  Ivy took the pencils and the notebook. The thick cover was smooth under her fingers. “Thank you. They’re perfect.”

  Ivy made her way back upstairs, hugging the notebook to her chest like it was full of precious jewels.

  Pretty soon, it would be.

  Ivy jolted awake to a rumbling sound. At first, she thought it was thunder. Quiet and far off, but still real thunder. Her heart jumped into her throat and choked off a whimper.

  Then Ivy realized it was her dad, talking really low. She was lying on the floral-printed sofa in the hotel room, where she had all but passed out as soon as she got back from Robin’s office, exhausted. Mom had been asleep on one of the beds, the twins tucked in on either side, and Layla had conked out on the other bed, her arms and legs stretched so wide, there was no room for Ivy.

  “… don’t want to be separated,” her dad was saying now. “I think it’s important.”

  Ivy cracked her eyes open just enough to see her parents sitting on the far bed. Mom was nursing Aaron, and Dad was holding Evan over his shoulder, patting his back. The room was early-evening dim, and Layla was still sprawled out on the other bed.

  “Normally, I’d agree, of course,” Mom whispered back. “But these aren’t normal circumstances. On the phone, Paige said they’d be glad to have her for as long as we need.”

  Ivy’s stomach flipped and flopped like a fish on the beach. Paige was Taryn’s mom.

  “She just seems so unhappy lately,” Mom said.

  “Of course she’s unhappy, Elise. She just survived a tornado and lost the only home she’s ever known.”

  Mom sighed and stroked Aaron’s head. “I mean before all this. You know it’s true, honey.”

  Dad scrubbed his face and shook his head.

  “Maybe she’d deal with all this better with her friend,” Mom added. “For now.”

  “But for how long?” Dad said. “We can’t afford to rent an apartment right now. The rebuild is going to cost a fortune, and insurance only covers so much.”

  “Exactly, Daniel. Can you imagine the six of us in this hotel room for that long? Layla and Ivy will kill each other.”

  Dad exhaled loudly and patted Evan’s back some more. “I don’t know what’s with the two of them lately.”

  “I think Ivy’s having a harder time adjusting to the boys than we thought.”

  “I can’t think about this right now. After seeing the house again, salvaging pretty much nothing… We don’t even know what we’re eating for dinner.”

  Mom reached out and squeezed his hand as they sat quietly. Eventually, Ivy thought they started talking again, but by then, the air conditioner had clicked on, and Ivy couldn’t make out their words. The sound of her heart trying to bust right out of her chest was all she could hear.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Biggest Secrets

  The next day, Ivy had never been so happy to go to school. As she stepped inside the two-story brick building, untouched by the storm, it was the most normal thing in the world. Everything was the same. Smelled the same. Sounded the same. All the same people clustering together and talking about the same things. Inside these walls, it was like the storm never happened.

  For about five minutes.

  “Ivy, wait up!”

  Ivy turned to see Drew Dunaway waving his good arm at her. His black curls flopped into his eyes, and his other arm sported a purple cast.

  She looked around for Taryn, but so far Ivy didn’t see her. Drew was nice, but he hardly ever talked to her without Taryn around.

  “Hey,” she said when he reached her.

  “Hey, what’s up?”

  She’d never understood this question. Clearly, school was up. Walking in the hallway was up. Same as Drew.

  But Ivy simply said, “Nothing.”

  “Sorry about your house,” Drew said as he fell into step next to her.

  “Yeah, you too.”

  “Oh, mine’s not as bad as yours. I mean, we can’t stay there right now. We’re living with my grandma, but we’ll be back in a couple weeks. Your house, though. Totally gone. Wow.” His eyes widened, and he shook his head.

  “Wow,” Ivy echoed, but she grimaced. Obviously, she knew that her own house was totally gone.

  “Hey, you should draw a picture of it,” Drew said.

  Ivy stopped walking and blinked at him. “I should what?”

  “A picture. Of the tornado or your house or something. You’re always drawing stuff in class and at lunch. Remember that Star Wars picture you drew on my lunch bag last month? That BB-8 was perfect!”

  “Oh… I…”

  “Could I see some stuff?”

  “Some stuff?”

  “Your drawings. You’re really good. If you do a drawing of the tornado, will you show me? I mean, the storm was freaky, but… I don’t know. Maybe you could make something cool out of it.”

  Ivy nodded, ready for him to leave now. She didn’t want to make something cool out of her destroyed house. She wanted to make her house whole again, and that was impossible.

  “Well, see you in homeroom,” Drew said.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  After he loped off down the hall, Ivy scrubbed both hands down her face. She felt like a volcano bubbling and stewing underneath the surface.

  Ivy popped open her locker, happy to focus on schoolwork and history lessons and protractors. She was reaching in to grab her math and social studies books when she saw it.

  A drawing.

  And not just any drawing.

  A drawing that made little lightning bolts flash in her belly.

  There was a pink-haired girl and a dark-haired girl holding hands, and they were inside a treehouse, this one in the middle of an apple orchard. Except these apples weren’t apples, they were glass orbs lit emerald and amethyst and sapphire from the fireflies that lived inside.

  Ivy would know.

  She drew it.

  It had been torn out of her notebook. Her lost notebook. Ivy blinked and blinked at the drawing. She pinched her arm, hoping she was dreaming. She pulled the ends of her hair until it hurt.

  Wake up, wake up, wake up.

  She didn’t. The drawing was still there, propped up against her neat stack of books, one corner drooping from the weight of a paper clip. Ivy pushed herself up against the locker so the metal door blocked her from the busy hallway as much as possible. Then she reached in and closed her fingers around the picture. Clipped to the top left corner was another piece of paper with some words in a typed font.

  Ivy ~

  This is a really great picture of you.

  Maybe you should talk to someone about it.

  Ivy ran her eyes over the typed page, but there was no name, no signature, no clue to who might have left this for her. They weren’t allowed to keep locks on their lockers, so anyone could’ve placed the drawing inside. Anyone could’ve taken one look at this picture—at all the pictures in her notebook—and known the pink-haired girl was Ivy.

  Anyone.

  Ivy’s lungs closed up at the thought of someone paging through her whole notebook, drawing after drawing, secret after secret. She had one picture back, a drawing she loved, but this wasn’t how she wanted to find it. No way. This was worse than losing the notebook. This was teasing. This was torture.

  “You okay?”

  Taryn’s voice startled Ivy so badly, she knocked her elbow against one side of the locker and yelped, the pain radiating up her arm. Somehow, she managed to hang on to the drawing and keep it in her locker.

  “Yeah, fine,” Ivy said, stuffing the drawing into her science folder. Her voice sounded clogged and watery. She cleared her throat before coming out from behind her locker door.

  “Oh, did your mom talk to you about living with me?” Taryn asked as she rummaged through her own locker.

  “Not yet.” It wasn’t a lie. Not exactly. Ivy’s mom hadn’t said one word to her about going to Taryn’s.

  Taryn emerged from her locker with a wrinkle
d red folder clutched in her hand. She stuffed it into her messenger bag. “Well, ask her about it, okay? Wouldn’t it be so fun?”

  Ivy nodded. It probably would. Taryn’s house was big and clean and quiet, and she always had the best snacks. Better yet, Taryn’s dad was an amazing cook. After eating nothing but sandwiches and granola bars for two days, Ivy’s mouth watered just thinking about Mr. Bishop’s spinach-and-cheese omelets and homemade chicken carbonara pasta. But if Ivy went to Taryn’s, it would feel like giving up, like admitting that her family didn’t need her right now. Maybe even that they didn’t want her. That was worse than peanut butter sandwiches for dinner and sharing a bed with her covers-stealing sister.

  In homeroom, Ivy’s face burned red the second she walked through the door. There were only four seventh-grade homerooms at Helenwood Middle. The person with her notebook was probably in seventh grade, since they knew where her locker was. Which meant the person might be in this room, right this very minute, watching Ivy and waiting. For what, Ivy didn’t really know. All she knew was that someone had all her secrets and was hoarding them like diamonds.

  She slunk down in her chair as Ms. Lafontaine called roll. All those names, all those faces—it could be anyone. There were a lot of kids at the gym yesterday, some who were displaced by the storm, like Ivy and Drew, and some who were there helping, like June.

  Ivy looked at June, who was a few rows up and over. She was hunched over a piece of paper, her head bent low to the desk, pencil moving. Ivy wondered if she was drawing.

  “Okay, everyone, a few announcements before we head to first period,” Ms. Lafontaine said while she wrote on the Smart Board. Then she tapped the word she’d written with the pen. “Resilient. Who can tell me what that means?”

  Nobody raised a hand.

  “Here’s a clue,” Ms. Lafontaine said, turning back to the board.

  The community was highly

  spirited and resilient,

  despite the storm damage.

  “Any takers now?” Ms. Lafontaine asked.

  June’s hand shot up.

  “Yes, June?”

  “I like this word,” June said, her hands fluttering around while she talked. “It means able to bounce back.”

  “Exactly,” Ms. Lafontaine said, pointing her pen at June. “Resilient means the ability to withstand or recover quickly from difficulties. It doesn’t mean things aren’t hard. It doesn’t mean we aren’t hurt. It just means we keep going. We keep living. We keep trying.”

  June nodded her head like she was at a concert of her favorite band. Everyone else just kind of sat there, bored, including Ivy. She felt anything but resilient these days.

  “Are you talking about the tornado?” Drew asked.

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Ms. Lafontaine said. “Our school, the elementary school, and the high school are coming together to put on a creative arts show. In one month, on May fifteenth, we’re going to display original student art that represents resiliency at the Kellerman Gallery here in town. It can be any kind of art you want, and it doesn’t have to be directly related to the storm. You can write, paint, draw, do a collage, submit photographs—as long as we can see it, it’s good to go.”

  The class started murmuring excitedly. June was wiggling so much, Ivy thought she was going to lift right off her chair.

  Ms. Lafontaine passed out an information sheet about the art show. Ivy took the green paper, which read, Resilient Helenwood: Claiming Our Future, Remembering Our Past, and stuffed it into her hand-me-down backpack. When she glanced up, June was twisted in her seat, eyes fixed on Ivy. She tapped the green sheet and smiled, tossing Ivy a thumbs-up.

  Ivy gave June a small smile back, but something nudged at her, like a finger poking her in the shoulder over and over again.

  She thought about how much fun she had with June the other night. Actual fun, when fun shouldn’t have been possible. Ivy didn’t know June very well, but what she did know, she liked. June was funny and kind and, yeah, a bit quirky, a bit weird, but that’s what made her interesting.

  And June knew what Ivy’s drawings looked like. Not the treehouse ones, but other stuff—mermaids and whales and girls’ faces. Ivy was sure that June would recognize her art. More important, June was in the gym that morning. She had been stacking pillows and blankets as they cleared the gym floor for the blood drive, right around the time Ivy had been looking for her notebook.

  Now Ivy wondered if June was the keeper of her biggest secret.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Perfect

  On the way home from school, Taryn wouldn’t stop talking.

  “… soccer game during PE today. That was the toughest goal I think I’ve ever made. Did you see? It was a thing of beauty. Even Drew looked impressed, and he’s the best player I know. Even with a broken arm…”

  Ivy uh-huh’d her way through the conversation, but barely heard a word. She was too busy thinking of the note she’d left in her own locker right before she left school:

  Talk about what? And please give me back my notebook.

  She’d scribbled it on a piece of paper during third period, then threw it away. Then she wrote it down again in fourth period, erased it during fifth, and finally perfected it in sixth. She half hoped it would remain in her locker, unseen, and whoever had her notebook would leave her alone.

  But she wanted an answer. And she wanted her notebook back.

  “Ivy, did you hear me?”

  Ivy blinked Taryn back into focus. “Sorry, what?”

  Taryn huffed through her nose, but smiled. “I said, did you notice Drew’s cast?”

  “As in… he has one?”

  “As in, it’s purple!”

  “Okay.”

  “Purple is my favorite color, Ivy. Don’t you think it’s a sign? Maybe I should do a reading for myself.”

  Normally, Ivy would’ve smiled and indulged Taryn’s gooey crush, but today it felt like sandpaper on a sunburn.

  “Purple is also one of our school colors,” Ivy said.

  “Yeah, but how often does a guy get a purple cast? I think it’s pretty cool.”

  “Yes, it’s cool.”

  Ivy knew her voice sounded uninterested, but she couldn’t help it. Her brain felt stuffed with cotton, no room for anything else. And the scene as they walked down Main Street didn’t help matters.

  Here and there, Ivy saw shingles ripped off roofs and windows busted right through. The curbs were loaded with tree limbs and trash and ruined things that people had swept from the streets. Ivy’s favorite pizza place, Vesuvio’s, was demolished, only one brick wall still standing at the corner of Second and Main Streets. Ivy’s mouth watered for the meatball pizza she’d never eat again. At least not for a long time.

  They slowed to a stop at the intersection of Main and Third, where Ivy needed to keep going straight and Taryn needed to turn left.

  “Well,” Taryn said, “I guess I’ll see you later.”

  “Yeah, all right.”

  “You okay?” Taryn asked.

  Ivy gritted her teeth. She was getting really sick of that question, and she couldn’t keep the crackle out of her voice. “I’m fine.”

  Taryn frowned but nodded as she turned and left. Ivy watched her walk away. She felt a pinch of guilt, but she didn’t know what to do about it. All she could think about was her notebook. And when she wasn’t thinking about her notebook, all she could think about was her destroyed home. The Calliope Inn that loomed up on her right like a haunted house, all eaves and gables, was very much not her home.

  Inside the inn, Ivy climbed the creaky steps to her family’s room, bracing herself for a flourish of activity and noise. But when she swung the door open, everything was quiet. Her mom sat on the floral sofa reading an old-looking, clothbound book that must have belonged to Robin. Ivy looked around for Layla, but didn’t see her. Then she remembered that her sister had lacrosse practice after school. This morning, Mom had insisted that Layla go, claimi
ng it was important to “keep living.” Then Mom and Layla had hugged, and Mom had wiped her eyes, all while Ivy watched from the doorway, half a granola bar stuffed in her mouth.

  Now Ivy was glad Layla was “living.” Ivy couldn’t remember the last time she got some alone time with her mother.

  “Hey,” Ivy said, dropping her backpack and plopping down on the couch next to Mom. “Where’s Dad?”

  Mom looked up from her book and smiled. Her hair was in a messy bun, and she was wearing borrowed sweatpants and a T-shirt.

  “Hi, sweetie,” Mom said. “He’s at work with Jasper, and then he has to go by the house later. The farm. The old place.”

  Mom scrunched up her brows and frowned, clearly clueless over what to call their ruined house.

  “Why?” Ivy asked.

  Mom waved a hand. “Boring grown-up stuff. Insurance and estimates.”

  Ivy nodded and looked around their little room. Aaron was in a bouncy seat they got from their church’s nursery, batting at the toys hanging from the bar. Evan was lying on a blanket next to his brother, gnawing on a rubber giraffe.

  Ivy’s head cleared a little. She tucked her legs underneath her and snuggled in next to her mother. She breathed in deep and, despite the unfamiliar clothes, could still smell her mother’s scent, shea butter lotion and a hint of pencil lead.

  “I lost my notebook at the gym,” Ivy said, playing with the hem of her mother’s T-shirt. “The purple one I’ve had for a while.”

  “You did?” Mom said. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry.”

  And someone found it. But I don’t know who. It was right there, edging toward the tip of Ivy’s tongue, but she couldn’t get it out. If she said it, she’d have to tell her mother about the note in her locker, and that would lead to all the pictures in her notebook, and that would lead to a lot of stuff Ivy wasn’t ready to trust anyone with.

  “Can you redraw the pictures you lost?” Mom asked.