Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World

by Ashley Herring Blake

  “I don’t know.” Ivy thought of the picture she’d gotten back today, hoping she’d feel something like excitement or relief, but the only thing she felt was a coil of nerves in her belly. Mom kissed the top of Ivy’s head and pulled her closer, running her fingers through Ivy’s hair. Ivy let herself imagine they were at home, sitting on the worn brown leather couch in their living room, and there was no such thing as tornados and lost notebooks.

  Next Ivy knew, she was curled up all by herself on the couch, blinking sleep from her eyes. The hotel room lamps were glowing warmly and the sky outside the window was starting to dim in the evening sun.

  “You were tired, sweetie,” Mom said from where she was nursing Aaron in the armchair. Evan was now in the bouncy seat, cooing happily.

  “Yeah,” Ivy said, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.

  “Hey, I found something that might make you feel better,” Mom said. She shifted and Aaron whined, but she managed to dig a folded piece of paper out of her pocket.

  “This drawing is yours, right?” she asked, handing Ivy the paper. “It’s so beautiful, sweetie. Maybe it’ll help you start a new notebook.”

  Ivy peered at the picture, and her mouth fell open. It was the drawing of her family that she’d ripped out of her notebook the night of the storm—the one that was most definitely missing Ivy.

  “How… where did you get this?” Ivy asked.

  Mom frowned and patted Aaron’s back. “Don’t be mad, honey. Robin offered to throw in a load of laundry while you were sleeping, and your pillowcase was filthy. This fell out when I took it off the pillow.”

  Ivy looked down, her throat too tight to talk. She knew it wasn’t a big deal. It was just a drawing, but it wasn’t something she was ready to show anyone, especially not her family. For the second time today, her innermost thoughts were exposed.

  “Ivy,” Mom said. “This is exquisite.”

  Ivy’s chest loosened a little. “It is?”

  “Of course it is. I didn’t realize how long it’s been since I’ve seen any of your drawings. Honey, you’ve improved so much! The lines and expressions on our faces. The unique use of color.” Mom nodded toward the picture. “That’s more than a drawing. That’s a story.”

  Everything in Ivy felt warm. Because yes, it was a story. Because yes, Mom finally saw it, saw Ivy, saw everything she couldn’t get out in words since the twins came.

  “It’s just perfect, Ivy,” Mom said.

  Everything in Ivy went cold. “It’s… it’s what?”

  “Can I put it up on the wall?” Mom asked, her blue eyes dancing. “Maybe over the sofa or between the beds where everyone can see it? We need a few things to make it feel more homey in here.”

  Perfect.

  It’s just perfect.

  Ivy looked at the paintings of flowers and mountain scenes already hanging on the walls. She imagined what Layla would say about her drawing. She’d probably love that Ivy colored the grass pink. Maybe Layla would say it was perfect too. What if Dad gushed over it just like Mom was doing?

  Ivy quietly folded the drawing.

  “Ivy, honey—”

  “I don’t want it up on the wall.”

  “Why not? It’s lovely.”

  Ivy stood up. “Can I go to Taryn’s? I told her I’d come over and study.”

  Mom’s eyebrows wrinkled together. “Of course, but I’d like to talk about—”

  Aaron’s cry cut her off. He bucked against Mom’s chest, and his face scrunched up like a raisin. Mom stood up and swayed, trying to quiet him.

  “Ivy—”

  But then, Layla flung the door open so hard that it banged against the wall. She had on navy blue lacrosse shorts, and she was mad, her hair flying behind her. She all but threw her hand-me-down messenger bag toward the desk, its contents spilling everywhere.

  “I hate Mackenzie Everett,” Layla spat. “I swear, she has it out for me as captain. She tripped me—actually tripped me—during warm-ups, trying to make me look bad in front of Coach Vaughn.”

  Layla barely took a breath before she launched into more reasons why Mackenzie was the “antichrist in eyeliner.” Layla wasn’t nearly this moody when she was friends with Gigi. Then again, maybe it was this room, their vanished house. Maybe it was a lot of things.

  Aaron wailed on, and pretty soon Evan joined him, and the whole room was nothing but noise and complaining, everyone trying to fit somewhere.

  No one noticed when Ivy slipped quietly out the door.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Suspect Number One

  Ivy didn’t go to Taryn’s house. Instead, she marched straight down Main Street toward Cherry, where a bunch of old, renovated bungalows stood in a happy little row across from the park. At the corner, she dug the yellow notebook Robin had given her out of her borrowed backpack. She found the nub of a pencil she’d gotten out of her locker and crouched down, balancing the notebook on her knees. On the first page, across the very top, she wrote a name.

  June Somerset, Suspect #1

  It was more than a name, Ivy thought as she underlined it twice. It was a mission.

  Ivy wanted to run down Cherry Street, but her ankle still smarted a little, so she slapped her notebook shut and forced herself to walk. Plus, she had to play it cool. Calm. Casual.

  She was halfway down the street when she realized she wasn’t sure which house was June’s, only that it was somewhere along this road. She slipped her notebook into the backpack and looked around.

  It was still light outside and muggy, like she was walking inside a giant’s mouth. Still, it was clear, and a white sliver of moon already hung in the sky. Ivy turned this way and that, hoping for some clue to where her suspect lived, but all the houses looked the same with their wide porches and stone steps, large front windows glowing warmly.

  Luckily, her suspect found her.

  “Ivy, hey!”

  A few houses away from where Ivy was standing, a girl ran down the porch steps and waved her hand.

  Ivy waved back and headed toward June. She was dressed in black yoga pants and a light pink T-shirt with her hair pulled back on one side, fastened with crisscrossing bobby pins. There was a tiny braid just over her ear. She beamed, and Ivy couldn’t help but smile back.

  “What’s up?” June asked. “Are you running away?”

  Ivy’s smile dipped. “What? No. Why would you ask me that?”

  June pointed to the backpack hanging off Ivy’s shoulders.

  “Oh,” Ivy said, tightening her grip on the straps. “No. I just…” But Ivy wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence. She didn’t want to tell June that yes, she was sort of running away, if only for an hour or two. And she certainly couldn’t tell June her true intentions: investigation.

  June tilted her head at Ivy but didn’t ask her to explain. “You want to do something?” she asked. “I’m so bored. My mom had to leave to deliver a baby at the hospital, and I’m not allowed to go anywhere, but maybe we can draw some more? I need to draw a person. Can you help me draw a person? Well, a girl, really. A glass girl, to be specific, and I don’t think I can—”

  “Breathe, June!”

  June took a deep breath, her eyes wide. It was actually really cute, and Ivy had to stifle a laugh.

  “Sorry,” June said.

  “It’s fine, I just didn’t want you to pass out.”

  June nodded, but looked down at her feet. Her cheeks darkened a little, and her teeth worried at her lower lip. Ivy used the few seconds to look for some obvious sign of betrayal, like it would show up as a red mark on June’s forehead or arm or something. The only really obvious sign was that June wanted to hang out with someone. Ivy could draw it, the loneliness, a wispy cloud the color of a clear sky just after sunset, all deep blues and purples.

  “We can do some drawing,” Ivy said.

  June’s head popped up, a grin pushing out the momentary sadness in her eyes. “Great! I’ve already been trying some things, but I’m awful. I’m so glad y
ou showed up. Not that I only like you because you can draw. I like you. I really do.”

  Ivy laughed and, weirdly, felt a warm blush spill into her cheeks. “Good to know.”

  She followed June to her front porch, where at least two dozen pieces of paper were scattered over the stone floor, along with about thirty different shades of colored pencils. There was a journal too, with one of those fancy ribbons attached to the spine to mark your place. It was open to the middle, and blue-inked handwriting covered the pages.

  “So… what are you trying to do?” Ivy asked, sitting down and pretzeling her legs. “Did you say you needed to draw a glass girl?”

  June nodded and sat across from Ivy. “And you’re the perfect person to help. You draw girls perfectly. I’m so jealous!”

  Ivy narrowed her eyes at June, but June just grinned back. “Um… thanks,” Ivy said, but she decided right then to keep her guard up. She was dealing with a suspect, after all, not a friend.

  June waved a hand over the drawings on the porch. “They’re terrible, right? And I don’t know how to make it look like glass. And I want strong glass. Not breakable glass. Or maybe glass that’s in the process of breaking, like the girl is getting out of a cage or something. I don’t know yet.”

  Ivy waited for more details, but June just rested her chin in her hands and sighed at her drawings. Ivy picked up a few papers, all of them with round faces and boxy bodies. In the middle of the mess, she saw the drawing of Greenleigh she’d made the other night. June seemed to be using it as an example. Ivy looked around for more of her own drawings, ones that June shouldn’t have.

  Finding none, she picked up a nearby sketchbook and laid it in her lap. “Okay, so, I think you should keep your girl simple.”

  June scooted over all the papers, plowing through them like a boat through ocean waves, until she was right next to Ivy.

  “You want to draw the bottom part of the face first and fill in the hair later.” Ivy showed June what she meant, and June nodded along. When Ivy was ready to add a body, she paused.

  “Sorry, I’m going to need a few more details about this glass girl thing,” she said.

  “Oh!” June laughed. “Yeah, I guess that does sound kind of weird.”

  “Just a little.”

  June grabbed her journal. Ivy heard her take a few deep breaths, her fingers drifting over the written words on the page.

  “So… you know that creative arts show Ms. Lafontaine told us about today?” June asked.

  “Resilient Helenwood?”

  June nodded. “Well, I want to do something for it.”

  Ivy’s mouth fell open. “You do?”

  “I know I’m not a great artist like you, but it won’t only be drawing. It’ll be poetry and maybe some photographs too. It’ll be a bunch of stuff. I’m not sure yet, but writing is what I like the best, so I want that to be the main part.”

  “That’s great,” Ivy said, and she meant it. Still, something that felt a little bit like jealousy pinched at her chest.

  “You should do it too, Ivy,” June said, as though reading her mind. “I bet you could come up with some amazing drawings.”

  Ivy smiled and nodded, that pinch twisting harder. Ivy had never put her drawings on display before, especially since all the things she’d wanted to draw for the past year weren’t things she could show anyone. They were lock-and-key diary entries. Putting them in a frame and hanging them on a wall felt like that dream where you walk into school without any clothes on.

  “Anyway,” June said, “I want to draw a glass girl because of this.” Then she slid her journal into Ivy’s lap and promptly buried her face in her hands. Ivy picked up the journal and read the neat scrawl:

  Glass feet,

  glass hands,

  glass bones under my skin.

  Glass heart,

  glass eyes,

  glass paper and glass pen.

  Glass girl in a glass room,

  glass wishes on a glass moon.

  Glass daughter, flesh and bone.

  Glass dreams in a glass tomb.

  Ivy read it again. And then again. And after she’d read it a third time, all she could get out was a profound “Wow.”

  “Is it awful?” June said from behind her hands.

  “What?” Ivy shook her head like she was coming out of a trance. “No way, it’s amazing. Beautiful. See, you’re good at something. Extremely good.”

  June’s brown eye appeared between two of her fingers. “Really?”

  “Really. What does it mean?”

  June took her journal back, shrugging as she dropped her gaze.

  “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Ivy said. “I know it can be hard… talking about stuff.”

  Ivy’s mind whirled like a top over hardwood as she thought of the notebook thief’s words. She watched June for signs of smugness or sneakiness or anything other than the doe-eyed look of wonder June wore right now, but she didn’t find them.

  “You feel like that too?” June asked.

  Ivy nodded.

  “I’ve never let anyone read my poems,” June said, hugging the journal to her chest. Then she exhaled so loud, Ivy startled. “That was scary. Ugh. But I did it!” June was back to smiling. “And you said it wasn’t awful!”

  June was so happy that Ivy laughed, her investigation forgotten again. She tapped her pencil against the sketchbook. “It’s the opposite of awful. As for drawing a glass girl, I think if we—”

  But her voice was cut off when June slipped her hand into Ivy’s and squeezed. A fluttery feeling swept over Ivy, the color a soft and whispery pink in her mind. She’d felt it before, after she and June had drawn all night in the school library.

  Happiness. She wished her mom could see her right now because unhappy was the last word Ivy would use to describe herself.

  But as June grinned at Ivy and pressed their palms together, Ivy’s stomach fluttered again. And again, pink upon pink, a little zing zigzagging up her arm. It felt different from happiness, but Ivy wasn’t quite sure why or how. Whatever it was, it didn’t stop when June released Ivy’s hand and looked down at the sketchbook in Ivy’s lap, ready to create her glass girl.

  Ivy gulped and then coughed, using the time to get her stomach to behave.

  Before they could do or say anything else, June’s mom’s truck bounced into the narrow driveway. June popped up to her knees and started grabbing at all the papers, collecting them in her arms in a haphazard bundle.

  “Help me, will you?” June asked, panic edging her voice.

  The whole thing reeked of secrets, a smell Ivy knew very well, so she didn’t bother asking why.

  “Put them in here,” Ivy said, holding open her backpack. Together, they stuffed all of June’s papers into the bag, as well as the art supplies and June’s journal.

  “Thanks,” June whispered just as Dr. Somerset, dressed in light blue scrubs, started up the porch steps.

  “Hi, girls,” she said.

  “Hey, Mom,” June said. “How’s the baby?”

  “Healthy and huge. Almost ten pounds.” She tilted her head at Ivy. “How’s your ankle, Ivy?”

  “Better,” Ivy said. “Thanks.”

  Dr. Somerset smiled and then turned her attention to her daughter. “Did you eat the dinner I left for you?”

  June nodded.

  “And you took your vitamins?”

  June huffed. “Yes.”

  “Just making sure, honey. And I remember asking you to stay inside tonight and work on homework.” She looked at her watch. “It’s almost seven thirty, which means you should be in your pj’s and reading by now.”

  June didn’t respond, but glared at the ground.

  “I’m so glad you came by, Ivy,” Dr. Somerset said, “but June needs to get some rest.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Ivy looked at June, who had shifted her glare to her mother. “I’ll just—”

  “No,” June snapped. Like a whip.

  Dr. S
omerset’s eyes widened. “Honey—”

  “No. It’s not even eight o’clock. I’m twelve, not two. I want Ivy to come inside, and I want to show her the backyard. I mean, if she wants to stay.”

  Ivy had no clue what to say. She did want to stay, but wasn’t sure what was going on here. Dr. Somerset looked just as flummoxed. She and June stared each other down.

  “All right,” Dr. Somerset said calmly. “Ivy can stay if she’s able.”

  June clapped and started jumping up and down.

  “Your parents know where you are, Ivy?” Dr. Somerset asked.

  Ivy nodded. She didn’t like lying, but it wasn’t as if her parents would go looking for her anyway. Plus, she’d asked her mom if she could go to Taryn’s. This was… close to Taryn’s. Sort of.

  “You have an hour,” Dr. Somerset said.

  “Great, thanks, Mom!” June grabbed the backpack and Ivy’s hand before pulling her through the front door. Ivy barely caught a glimpse of the house—all hardwood and cozy sofas and a big farmhouse table in the dining room—before June whisked her right out the back door and into the fenced-in backyard.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Hideaway

  If Taryn were here and she knew about Ivy’s stormy pictures, she would definitely call this a sign and whip out her tarot cards.

  Because there was a treehouse.

  In June’s backyard.

  Ivy stared up at the structure, nestled among the gnarly branches of a giant oak near the back fence. A rough wooden ladder led up to a square house. It had a little door and real glassed-in windows on the other three sides.

  “Isn’t it perfect?” June asked, pulling Ivy closer. The yard was neatly trimmed, but it didn’t have any flower beds or a little vegetable garden like Ivy’s house had. Well, like her house used to have.

  “Yeah,” Ivy said, but it came out as more of an exhalation. Because it was perfect. She could almost see herself inside, safe and happy and not lonely at all because she was with—

  A little lighting storm ignited in her belly.

  June marched right over to the ladder and planted a foot on the bottom rung. “Now, technically, I’m not allowed up here. My mom thinks it’s unsafe”—she hooked finger quotes around the word and rolled her eyes—“but she’ll never know.”