Where We Used to Roam

by Jenn Bishop

  I decoupaged the outside of the box with newspaper articles about the opioid epidemic. They weren’t hard to find. The Boston Globe had at least one in every issue. I cut them out every day for the rest of the summer, the little stack growing taller and taller each week.

  People were dying. Every day, somewhere, someone was dying.

  But every day, people were getting better too. They were resilient. Coming back strong, like the buffalo. Maybe even stronger than they knew.

  Like my brother.

  Since the morning he was discharged from the hospital, Austin went out for a run with Mom every day. They’d go for at least five miles, running on trails nearby or on the sidewalks through town. Sometimes if I was home, I’d tag along. Only for a mile or two though. And even then, I’d be all sweaty and out of breath by the end.

  Austin said it helped, and of course Mom loved it. Running, her and Austin. Most of all, we were just happy to see Austin be Austin again. Maybe not the same Austin from before. I knew he’d never be exactly that Austin again, and that was okay.

  The new Austin helped me with my homework and joined the cross-country team. He went to Narcotics Anonymous meetings and therapy and said he wasn’t going to have a girlfriend for a while. He said he had a lot to figure out about himself first.

  He hadn’t relapsed yet. Sixty days, abstinent. Every day was a new day. Every day. For all of us.

  I can’t tell you how many times I tried to sketch that baby buffalo. Each time it failed to match up to the image in my head. I could still see him so well in there. Tyler was the one who suggested going to my public library to use their 3D printer. Only then did he become real again, exactly how I saw him. The buffalo I saved. Or, well, tried to. He was probably strong enough to save himself.

  I glued him to the bottom of the box. Behind him I tacked several empty orange pill bottles, the same kind Mom found in Austin’s room back in June.

  * * *

  “Emma?”

  Her mouth full of cheese and crackers, Kennedy bounds over to me. Whoever set up this art show is taking us seriously with the snack spread. “Emma, it’s incredible.”

  This summer at RISD she’d taken her drawing to a whole other level. Learned how to animate, so she wasn’t only drawing manga now. She’d made a five-minute anime video for the contest.

  “It’s not as good as yours,” I say.

  “It’s deeper,” Lucy says. “No offense, Ken, but… you know what I mean.”

  Kennedy crunches on a cracker, examining my box from every angle. She flicks the white ribbon tacked up next to it. “Third place? Pssshh. The judges don’t know what they’re doing.”

  Her video had been awarded first place in its category, though to be fair, there weren’t as many entries in video art as there were in mixed media. Lucy’s gigantic self-portrait made out of plastic pushpins had won first place and best in show. I still can’t wrap my mind around how she even thought of that—so brilliant, so Lucy.

  We’d been back to school for two weeks now, though I’d opened the envelope the two of them mailed from RISD as soon as Delia sent it with all my stuff. Along with a bunch of drawings, Kennedy had written me a letter about how she felt so intimidated by Grace Collins and them that she just blurted it out. She wasn’t thinking and she never meant to make things so hard for Becca. She’d reached out to Becca on her own and apologized. I probably would’ve known that if I hadn’t waited so long to try to make things right myself.

  And Lucy—get this—she wrote me about her stepsister Erin and how she still sleeps with her baby blanket even though she’s married! And about this comedian guy, this tall, handsome grown-up, who talked about his baby blanket in his Netflix special.

  “Do you want to walk around, check out the other pieces?” Kennedy asks. “Or get some snacks?” She reveals her empty napkin and makes a melodramatic sad face.

  “Sure,” I say, and we go over to the snack table to grab some grapes and Brie, like dignified artists. Well, until Kennedy tries to snag a grape branch and a bunch of loose ones end up rolling all over the floor.

  As we’re walking to the front of the room where the crowd has finally thinned out, I catch Mom and Dad talking with some parents of Austin’s old friends from the football team. It’s not a secret anymore. Once Austin was home, Dad started going to those meetings on the North Shore with Mom. They were worried at first about what it would mean going public. Would it affect business at Mom’s store? Would people treat Dad differently at work?

  But what happened was the opposite of what they feared. When the station ran a special on the opioid epidemic in greater Boston for National Recovery Month, Dad recorded the intro. Channel 7 even came and filmed a segment with him, Mom, and Austin in our living room. The response from viewers was overwhelming. So many people wrote in about how much it helped for him to put his name and Austin’s story out there. Dad said if they could help just one person suffering in silence, as Austin had been, to get help, it was worth it.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I catch her by my shadow box. Her hair is back to its usual curliness, and she’s not wearing glasses. Her cable-knit sweater is tight, almost preppy-looking. I honestly wouldn’t be entirely sure it was Becca if not for what she’s holding in her right hand. Her security blanket. Well, the socially acceptable kind. A library book.

  I barely see her in school—she’s taking more classes at the high school this year.

  I tap Lucy on the shoulder. “Be right back.” And then I squeeze my way over, passing by Mom and Dad until I’m standing right beside her, staring at my shadow box.

  “It’s really good, Emma.”

  “Thanks,” I say quietly.

  “Don’t you think the buffalo kinda looks like her?” Austin steps in beside us.

  That quickly, Becca’s cheeks go pink. I knew it.

  “It does not look like me,” I say, swatting him.

  “What are you talking about? He’s got your hunched back, your furry legs—sorry, Em, but it’s probably time to shave those things.”

  “My back’s not hunched!” He’s probably right about my legs though. I think my blond hairs are starting to turn brown.

  Austin hulks over, doing his best impression of me as a buffalo, and I’m borderline choking on a cracker.

  Becca’s laughing so hard she’s crying, and people—perfect strangers in the gallery—are starting to stare at us.

  We’re all such a mess. Me. Austin. Even Becca.

  It’s funny how I ever thought I could contain a person in a box. Becca. Austin. Anyone. The thing about boxes: they have only so much space. A box can never fit everything about a person. Can never even come close.

  All my shadow boxes ever really capture is me—how I see things in one particular brief and fleeting moment. They’re like time capsules in a way. A gallery, really, of all my former selves. Because by the time I’m finished, I’m not that Emma anymore. I’m changing too.

  I look at my brother, his eyes squinting as he laughs. Becca’s crimson cheeks. The tiny buffalo behind them.

  I wonder what I’ll make next.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Some books take winding and circuitous paths or are born from fragments of abandoned projects. Where We Used to Roam is both of these things. It was partly inspired by a YA work-in-progress set aside after I wrote 14 Hollow Road. At points in the process of writing this book, it felt like everything that could change did. I am grateful for the many wise voices who chimed in along the way. First and foremost, I want to thank my agent, Katie Grimm, who read way more versions of this book than she ever should have had to, but who saw what it could be and helped me get it there, every step of the way. I am deeply appreciative of the guidance of my editors: Tricia Lin, for helping me fine-tune this story and keep the focus on Emma’s journey, and Kristin Gilson, for taking it over the finish line. So many others provided essential feedback and encouragement: Anne Bowen, Abby Cooper, Kelly Dyksterhouse, Stephanie Farrow, Robin Kirk, Autumn
Krause, Laurie Morrison, Aimee Payne, Jen Petro-Roy, Bonnie Pipkin, Ellen Reagan, C. M. Surrisi, Monique Vieu, and Matt Zakosek. Thanks also to Ambrose Cohen for his football acumen and the many doctors in my family who helped on the medical end: Kara Bischoff, Ben Hulley, and George Hulley. A huge thanks, as always, to my parents and my husband, for their unwavering support. And to my cat, Lilly, for being dangerously, distractingly cute.

  When I first began researching and writing about the effects of a loved one’s substance use disorder, the opioid epidemic was just starting to ravage northern New England. In the years since, it has only continued to rob so many of their lives, livelihoods, and loved ones across the country. Journalists at the Boston Globe and the Cincinnati Enquirer helped open not just my eyes, but the eyes of so many, and I’m ever grateful for the attention they continue to draw to this ongoing public health crisis. Other books that helped shape my understanding include Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy, Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones, Everything is Horrible and Wonderful: A Tragicomic Memoir of Genius, Heroin, Love, and Loss by Stephanie Wittels Wachs, and If You Love Me: A Mother’s Journey Through Her Daughter’s Opioid Addiction by Maureen Cavanagh.

  After my first year in college, I spent the summer in the northeastern corner of Wyoming with my best friend’s family. I didn’t save a buffalo like Emma—if only—but the landscape and people I met there have continued to shape my life. Thanks again to the Roosa family for all that you exposed this bison-crazed New Englander to and for your friendship over the years.

  More from the Author

  Things You Can't Say

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Author photograph by Kate L Photography

  JENN BISHOP is the author of the middle-grade novels Things You Can’t Say, 14 Hollow Road, and The Distance to Home. She grew up in Massachusetts and as a college student spent one incredible summer in Wyoming. She has been obsessed with bison ever since. After working as a children’s librarian, she received her MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Jenn currently calls Cincinnati, Ohio, home. Visit her online at jennbishop.com.

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  Also by Jenn Bishop

  The Distance to Home

  14 Hollow Road

  Things You Can’t Say

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  First Aladdin hardcover edition March 2021

  Text copyright © 2021 by Jennifer Barnes

  Jacket illustration copyright © 2021 by Ji-Hyuk Kim

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  Book designed by Tiara Iandiorio

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Bishop, Jenn, author.

  Title: Where we used to roam / by Jenn Bishop.

  Description: First Aladdin hardcover edition. | New York : Aladdin, 2021. | Audience: Ages 8 to 12. | Summary: Living near Boston, sixth-grader Emma tries to hide from family problems and changing friendships by spending the summer in Wyoming.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020051864 (print) | LCCN 2020051865 (eBook)

  ISBN 9781534457294 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781534457317 (eBook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Friendship—Fiction. | Family problems—Fiction.

  Brothers and sisters—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.B55 Wh 2021 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.B55 (eBook)

  DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020051864

  LC eBook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020051865