Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World

by Ashley Herring Blake

  “I was sick,” June finally said.

  Ivy wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but it wasn’t that. Surprise mingled with something else, something darker—worry.

  “Are you… are you okay?” Ivy asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine now. But my mom worries. A lot. It’s like all she does. I think she’d be happy if I never set foot outside ever again. She’d homeschool me if she didn’t have to work so much.”

  June started coloring in a few more glass shards, but then she stopped, staring at the glass girl again. Ivy didn’t think June was talking about a cold or strep throat.

  “I haven’t told anyone this,” June said. “I mean, not like I have anyone to tell, really, but I didn’t want to be that kid, you know? The cancer kid.”

  Ivy’s stomach sprinted to her feet. “Cancer?”

  “I had leukemia. I was diagnosed when I was eight.”

  “Oh. Oh, wow.”

  “Yeah. It sucked pretty much all the time for three years. I lost my hair and threw up a lot when I was doing the chemo. I’ve only been in remission for a year, and my mom is still stressed all the time about it. And she’s a doctor, which makes it worse. My body temperature goes up to ninety-nine and she drags me to the hospital.”

  “Really?”

  “And stuffs me with vegetables and organic this and that. I’d kill for a slice of pizza or some chocolate chip cookies. Those granola bars in the treehouse are all I can sneak past her. And now she took all that too.”

  Well, that explained June’s weird lunches.

  “I just want to do stuff, you know?” June said, her voice small and sad. “That’s why I’m going to do the art show. I’m not a great artist, but it’s something. I can learn to draw. I can do photography. I can write poems and make a collage. I could’ve died, but instead I get to have friends and do the things I like.”

  She waved her hand at Ivy and smiled. Ivy smiled back, but she couldn’t get that word—leukemia—out of her head. Suddenly, everything about June made sense.

  “Is that what that poem was about? The one I read?” Ivy said.

  June’s face burned bright red and she pressed her hands to her cheeks. “That… that was—”

  “You don’t have to explain it. Sorry, I shouldn’t have even read it.”

  June nodded. “Thanks. But I want to explain it. That’s what friends do, right? They tell each other stuff?”

  Ivy’s stomach flipped and flopped, a familiar feeling by now, and her mind flashed to her notes with Keeper. “Yeah,” she whispered.

  “Well, that poem… it was… it was about you and Taryn.”

  Ivy blinked, trying to remember the exact words of the poem. They don’t know I watch them…. They laugh and I want to know the joke…. But they’re too far away, happy without me.

  “Really?” Ivy asked.

  June nodded. “I just… I know I’m a weirdo. I just wanted to know you. You seemed so interesting and fun.”

  Ivy’s heart soared and hurt at the same time. Before she could second-guess it, Ivy threw her arms around June’s neck. Right away, June’s arms came around Ivy’s back, and they sat there together, a little tangle of friendship.

  Ivy pulled back first, but kept hold of one of June’s hands. “I want to tell you something too.” She said it without thinking, not even sure what the something was. There were a lot of somethings in Ivy’s heart and mind right now, but she wanted June to have something of hers too. Something real, something that wasn’t just stuck in a drawing.

  “Okay,” June said, beaming and clearly relieved. She kept hold of Ivy’s hand, and Ivy squeezed so tightly, she worried she might be crushing June’s fingers.

  But before Ivy could say anything else, a key rattled in the door, and her dad walked in. He looked awful. His hair was a mess, and his eyes were red and droopy looking.

  “Dad!” Ivy pulled her hand from June’s.

  “Hey, sweetie, you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. How’s Aaron?”

  Dad sighed and dragged his hand through his hair. Robin stood up, and Ivy slid off the bed, June right by her side.

  “He’s okay for now,” Dad said. “He’s got an upper respiratory infection, which usually means a bad cold, but the doctor thinks it’s bacterial, so Aaron has to go on antibiotics. And because he’s so young and they’re on the lookout for pneumonia, they’re going to keep him in the hospital for now.”

  “Oh,” Ivy whispered. Those words—bacterial and pneumonia—were never good words. Their neighbor, Ms. Clement, had pneumonia once. She was in the hospital for a week. Next to Ivy, June shifted, and Ivy wondered if she was thinking that her mom would probably freak out about the whole bacteria thing.

  “But he’ll be okay, won’t he?” Ivy asked.

  “He’ll be fine, sweetie,” Dad said. “He’s in good hands. It’ll just take some time.” He looked at Robin and smiled wearily. “Thank you so much for staying with Ivy and Evan.”

  “No trouble at all,” Robin said. “I had fun. Ivy’s a special girl.”

  “That she is.” Then Dad glanced at June. “Hi, June, how are you?”

  “I’m okay, Mr. Aberdeen, thanks.”

  Dad nodded, but he just kept standing there, running one finger over his eyebrow again and again.

  “Well,” Robin said, “I’ll just go and let you—”

  “Actually, Robin,” Dad said, “you’ve done so much already, but I have a favor to ask.”

  “Of course. Anything I can do to help.”

  “Thank you. Could you give me one moment with my daughter first?”

  “Sure,” Robin said. “June, come tell me about yourself, sweetie.”

  June’s eyes met Ivy’s, and Ivy swallowed the knot in her throat. All her senses were on alert. June and Robin settled on the sofa as Dad led Ivy over to the beds. He checked on Evan, squeezing Ivy’s baby brother’s tiny hand, before sitting down on the edge of his bed.

  “Honey, I need you to do something for me,” he said.

  Ivy sank onto the other bed, facing her dad, her heart a bass drum in her chest. “Okay.”

  Dad looked at his lap and kept touching his eyebrow, a sure sign that he was nervous.

  “Dad, you’re scaring me.”

  His head snapped up, and he reached out to take Ivy’s hands. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. It’s nothing to be scared of. In fact, you might like it.”

  “What is it?”

  “I know we’ve been through so much lately. I never expected all this and never, ever wanted you to go through losing your own home. I still haven’t really processed it all, and I wanted to keep us together as a family, to figure this out together. But with Aaron being sick and all of us crammed into one room like this… well… your mom and I think it’s best if you stay with Taryn for right now.”

  Ivy slipped her hands out of her father’s and balled them in her lap. “Oh.”

  “Just for a while, honey, until things settle down.”

  “Are you sending Layla away too?”

  “Ivy, we aren’t sending you away.”

  “Is Layla going too?” Ivy’s tone sharpened, but if Dad noticed, he didn’t say anything about it.

  “I have to work, Ivy. We need all the money we can get, and if I don’t complete projects, I don’t get paid. Layla helps Mom with the boys in the afternoons.”

  “So, no. You’re only sending me away. I can help too, you know.”

  “We’re not sending you away,” he said again, but quietly. “I need you to be strong, Ivy. This is a hard time for all of us, and we all have to do our part.”

  And Ivy’s part was to get out of the way. To get smaller and smaller. She didn’t say any of this, but they both knew it was true. It had been true ever since Mom told them she was pregnant with twins.

  At the thought, guilt snapped at Ivy because she really did love Aaron and Evan, but she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t stop the feeling that she was disappearing from her own family. Mom couldn’t eve
n come to tell her good-bye.

  “Get some things together to take with you, okay?” Dad said. “I’m going to ask Robin to drive you over to Taryn’s. We’ve already spoken to her mom.”

  Ivy nodded and got up, drifting through the room to collect her secondhand clothes and her toothbrush. She didn’t even have a suitcase to put them in, so she stuffed everything into her backpack. Dad talked with Robin quietly while June hovered nearby, worry all over her face. But Ivy couldn’t look at her. Ivy’s face flamed up as she finished packing, as June watched her get shipped off.

  “Here,” June said, handing Ivy the notebook that Ivy had left on the bed. Ivy dropped it into her backpack. Then they just stood there, Ivy staring at the floor. She didn’t want June to say anything.

  When Dad and Robin finished talking, he pulled Ivy into a hug while Robin and June waited in the hall. He pressed something into Ivy’s hand. It was a cell phone.

  “I already programmed all our numbers in,” he said. “We’ll talk every day, okay? And we’ll see you before you know it. For your birthday next week, we’ll go out to eat anywhere you want, all right?”

  Ivy’s birthday. With everything going on, she’d barely thought about it, but April 29 was next week.

  She’d be thirteen. A teenager. Practically a woman.

  “I know it’s a special one, and your mom always wanted to do a big party, but…” Dad sighed. “Well, we’ll just have to see what we can do. And, hey, you’ll already be with your best friend. How cool is that?”

  Ivy blinked at him and nodded. Words formed and died on her tongue. Just as well. None of them were very nice.

  “We love you so much,” Dad said, pulling Ivy into one last hug. “Don’t forget that.”

  Ivy didn’t say anything back. Instead, she drifted out the door, barely feeling her feet underneath her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Something Huge

  Ivy hadn’t heard from Keeper in three days. The morning after she was sent to Taryn’s, she opened up her locker fully expecting another one of her treehouse pictures and a new note, but there was nothing. She was so mad that she’d slammed her locker door and stomped her way to homeroom without another word to Taryn, who had been chattering away about the Spring Dance coming up that weekend while she rifled through her own locker.

  The next day, nothing.

  The next, nothing still.

  Ivy didn’t understand it. She needed to tell Keeper about her family, about being banished, about her talk with Robin, and how with every day that passed Ivy was more and more sure that she liked June. In fact, she was certain. There was too much evidence, too many fluttery feelings and daydreams in math class, and sweaty palms whenever she caught a glimpse of short dark hair in the school hallway.

  And she missed June. She missed June so much, she felt the ache in her bones. Ivy hadn’t seen her outside of school since that night in the hotel room. Apparently, June hadn’t actually gotten permission to come over, and now she was grounded for at least a month for sneaking out.

  It was awful. It was agony.

  And she knew why.

  She, Ivy Aberdeen, liked June Somerset.

  Now she just had to figure out what to do about it, and talking to Keeper was step number one. But as she lay in the middle of the giant trampoline in Taryn’s backyard after three days of facing her empty locker, Ivy felt more abandoned than ever.

  Everyone was disappearing.

  “Okay, are you ready for this?” Taryn said as she started jumping.

  “Ready for what?” Ivy asked.

  “This!” Taryn jumped harder and higher, somersaulting and flipping, sending Ivy’s body bouncing around the trampoline like a rubber ball. Ivy had to stick out her hands to keep from smashing her face into the trampoline. Laughter burst out of Ivy, and Taryn cartwheeled over her, grinning from ear to ear.

  Finally, Taryn collapsed at Ivy’s side, looping her arm through Ivy’s. The movement rolled Ivy into her and their butts collided. They both laughed, but soon they got quiet and stared up at the trees swaying back and forth against the blue sky. Ivy loved laughing, but she loved this too—the easy silence, her best friend so close, she could hear her breathing.

  Ivy had been at Taryn’s for three days. They’d had fun, watching movies and eating Mr. Bishop’s amazing food and doing their homework together. The one thing they didn’t do was play soccer in Taryn’s backyard like they used to. Ivy kind of wanted to play, but since she told Taryn that she didn’t care about the soccer camp, Ivy didn’t want to bring it up. Still, being at Taryn’s was fine. It was mostly fun. But it wasn’t home. Unfortunately, nothing really was.

  Aaron came home from the hospital yesterday, but Ivy’s parents didn’t say anything about coming home. They sounded stressed every time they talked on the phone, which was every day. She even talked to Layla once, and her sister told her that a guy named Jared had asked her out. Ivy tried to act excited about it, but all she could think about was how easy it was for Layla to tell her that. How easy it was for her to tell Mom and Dad that she had a date or whatever.

  Ivy wished her feelings about June were easy.

  Mom had been really quiet. She asked Ivy about school and everything, but she always sounded so tired, and one time she had to hand the phone off to Dad because Aaron started crying. Ivy guessed he was still on some medicine and was doing okay, but Dad said Mom was still worried. He didn’t really say much about anything else, but he sounded pretty worried too.

  Last night, Ivy went downstairs to the Bishops’ kitchen for a drink of water and overheard Taryn’s parents in the living room talking about the Aberdeens’ house.

  Or their lack of house.

  Ivy didn’t get how a lot of the words worked together, things like insurance claims and rebuilding and months and years. But one word they kept saying over and over again was crystal clear—stress.

  Taryn elbowed Ivy. “Pondering mysteries?”

  Ivy smiled and nodded, but she didn’t continue their game. She didn’t know what to say. Her thoughts were nothing but scribble-scrabble on a page and didn’t make any sense at all.

  Taryn’s face fell, and she turned away to gaze back at the clouds. She sighed loudly, and Ivy could tell she’d done something wrong, but she didn’t know how to make it better.

  “What do you want to do for your birthday on Saturday?” Taryn asked quietly.

  “Oh. Um… I don’t know.”

  “My dad will cook you a huge breakfast, obviously,” Taryn went on. “You can have your favorite maple-and-brown-sugar pancakes. Then what?”

  “I don’t know. A movie, maybe?”

  “Wrong answer. Nope, try again.”

  “What’s wrong with a movie?”

  “You’re turning the big one-three! Teen is going to be in your age now. It’s huge. A movie is one giant yawn.”

  “Well, maybe I like yawning.”

  Taryn laughed, and Ivy laughed with her, but she was only half kidding. She was having a hard time getting excited about her birthday.

  “The Spring Dance is that night,” Taryn said.

  Of course it was. “Oh. Well, that’s fine. You’re going with Drew, aren’t you?” Taryn had finally grown tired of waiting around and asked Drew to the dance herself.

  “Yeah, but I don’t have to go. I can stay with you.”

  “No way, you’ve been so excited,” Ivy said. “Plus, my parents said they’d take me out to dinner.”

  Taryn nodded, propping herself up on her elbow. “I wish you’d come to the dance. It’d be more fun with you there.”

  That made Ivy laugh. “I doubt that.”

  “Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Like, put yourself down. You’re my best friend, you know.”

  Ivy wrinkled her brows. “I didn’t mean to put myself down, I just…” But she didn’t know how to finish that sentence. She always felt a little dull next to Taryn, who was all bright colors and bold lines.<
br />
  “You should come to the dance,” Taryn said again. “What if you went with June?”

  Ivy snapped her head toward her best friend. “What?”

  Taryn cleared her throat. “I mean, it would probably be fun to go with friends, right?”

  Ivy stared at Taryn, her thoughts whirling and blinking like fireflies. Because as soon as Taryn said it, Ivy knew exactly what she wanted to do. She was turning thirteen, after all. Thirteen. Just the sound of the word in her head made her feel a little more grown up.

  A little braver.

  A little bolder.

  A little more… Ivy.

  And she might not be with her family right now, but Taryn was right. She needed something huge, something she’d never done before, something wild and scary. Something she wanted.

  Ivy knew exactly what to do about her crush on June. She was going to ask June Somerset to the Spring Dance.

  By the time Ivy got to June’s, she was soaked with sweat. For one, it was unseasonably hot for April, and the afternoon sun blazed over Ivy’s back as she jogged down Cherry Street. On the other hand, Ivy was positive she’d be pouring sweat even if it were snowing.

  As soon as she decided to ask June to the dance, Ivy knew she had to do it right away. She tried to act casual as she told Taryn she thought it was a good idea, but inside she was ablaze with nerves. If Ivy thought her stomach was fluttering at the idea of crushing on June, that was nothing compared to the reality of actually asking June to a dance. She felt like a whole colony of bats had taken flight in her belly. Thick wings and fuzzy and fanged.

  She gulped huge breaths as she rang June’s doorbell. She put her hands in her front pockets, then her back pockets. Then she took them out and laced them together in front of her, then behind her. She had just let out a frustrated groan when the door swung open.

  “Hi, Ivy,” Dr. Somerset said, smiling tightly.

  “Hi, Dr. Somerset.”

  “June can’t come out today, but I’ll tell her you stopped by.”

  Ivy gulped again. She knew she should nod and say thanks and go back to Taryn’s. After all, Dr. Somerset was a grown-up. But Ivy needed to do this, and she needed to do this now.