The Last Tree Town

by Beth Turley

  Uncle Eric comes back. He looks much less cheerful this time. He walks over to the TV and shuts it off.

  “Are you happy with yourself?” he asks, staring pointedly at Jac.

  “Thrilled,” she answers.

  “Rude is not a good look on you. Neither is that hair. You told me the blue would be gone by now.” Uncle Eric points to his own head, which doesn’t make much sense because of the being-bald thing.

  Jac’s hair does look darker than it did at yoga, a blue like the sky just before the sun comes up.

  “I don’t know how dye works, Dad. I’m not a chemist.”

  “Well, become one. And fast. Or we’ll march straight down to Cost Cutters and ask them for a nice buzz cut.”

  Daniella should be sprawled out on the carpet with us. She’d run a hand down Jac’s spine and calm down the fight, press her forehead into Jac’s and whisper Don’t get so mad the way she used to.

  “You wouldn’t,” Jac says.

  “I would. I’m not doing this with you anymore.” Uncle Eric points back and forth between the two of them and then walks out of the room.

  We stare at the black screen in silence. Eventually Ben reaches down to the nacho plate and tosses a tomato chunk at Jac. She only half smiles, but it’s entirely genuine.

  “You’d look good with a buzz cut,” I say, because if I tried to put my forehead on Jac’s, she would probably head-butt me. I can’t replace Daniella.

  “If I go down, you’re going down with me.” She turns the documentary back on.

  10 North Sapling

  Mr. G has another lesson on the whiteboard. Lesson Two of Math Olympics: Identify useful patterns. They can show you what comes next. Those tricky future-tellers. I write the words in my notebook and then scribble until the class fills.

  “Cool drawings.” Aaron takes the seat in front of me. He dumps his backpack onto the ground.

  “They’re just doodles.” I cover up my paper with my arm.

  “Still. It’s interesting to see how your mind works.”

  I’m not sure how lightning bolts and curlicues show how my mind works. The best part of doodling is that I don’t have to think at all.

  Mr. G closes the door. His tie looks like a pencil. He circles the room with a stack of papers and places one on each of our desks.

  “We have to be ready for anything on the assessments. Complete this practice test, if you dare.” He laughs like the villain in a cartoon. I imagine him as a dark-cloaked vampire, teaching us to suck blood instead of simplify fractions.

  “Can we work with a partner?” Sage asks, already scooting her desk closer to Allie’s.

  “As long as you know that you’ll have to work on your own on the actual assessments.” He doesn’t sound cartoonish anymore. I identify the useful pattern of Mr. G. No villain voice = Being serious.

  Aaron keeps his head bowed over his paper, like he has no plans to tell me a tree town story, but that’s fine. I never said I wanted to hear them anyway. I focus on the first question.

  Find the total surface area of a rectangular prism with the measurements 5 ft x 3 ft x 2 ft.

  My eyes dart to the drawings in my notebook. I spot the rectangular prisms that I sketched and shaded in. If doodles reflect a mind the way Aaron says, then my mind works in math problems. I add mildly insightful to my set of Aaron Facts.

  “Did you get the right answer?” Aaron turns around in his chair.

  “It’s hard to know for sure,” I say.

  “There’s an answer key.” He shows me. The answers are printed small and upside down on the back of the practice assessment. I can make out #1: 62 square feet, which is what I wrote on my paper.

  “Some people call that cheating,” I say.

  Aaron draws thick, hard lines across the answers.

  “There. Can’t have anyone thinking I’m a cheater.” He blows off the graphite dust.

  I think about things that don’t have answer keys on the back. Diaries. Nightmares. Job applications like the one my Life Skills teacher, Mrs. Barnes, had us fill out for homework last year.

  The first part wasn’t so hard. I just had to put my name and address and previous employment. Mrs. Barnes said we could make jobs up for that part, so I wrote “Mathematician,” “Nacho Maker,” and “Owner of a Bird Sanctuary.”

  But the last section asked me to self-identify. Are you Hispanic or Latino—yes or no? I checked the box for yes, and then read on. If yes, do not continue.

  I continued anyway.

  The items in the next list confused me. Caucasian (Not Hispanic or Latino). Mom found me at the kitchen table, my pencil hovering over the paper. I asked her why the application said I couldn’t be both when I knew I was. She touched my hair.

  “These things are complicated, mi amor. But I want you to never forget two things. One, the privilege you have because of your dad, and two, the place your mom comes from,” she said.

  I told myself that I wouldn’t forget. I checked the Caucasian (Not Hispanic or Latino) box too. Two check marks to show both sides of me, even if it didn’t feel quite right. Mrs. Barnes took off five points and wrote “Please follow instructions” in the application’s margins.

  “Have you ever heard of North Sapling, New York?” Aaron asks.

  His voice interrupts my thinking about checkboxes telling me who I am.

  “No,” I answer.

  “They’re known for being environmentally conscious. The whole place gets together to plant a community garden. It was our first tree town, three years ago.”

  Curiosity creeps up on me. I look up from the practice assessment.

  “What did you plant?”

  “Myself.” Aaron grins.

  “What?” I imagine Aaron growing out of a rosebush, or sprouting from a root like a potato.

  “The problem was that we moved there in the winter. Plants can’t grow too well then.” He spins his pencil between his fingers.

  “But people can?”

  “People can grow at any time. I grew a foot in one summer.”

  His pencil keeps spinning. I count the different ways people can grow. Out of something. Up. Apart.

  “So your story is that you got taller,” I say.

  I think about those memes on the internet, the ones that compare what you think is going to happen to what actually happens. I apply the pattern to my deal with Aaron like I’m plugging x into an equation.

  Expectation: Stories like the ones Buelo told when he still lived in the condo on Smith Street, about beaches at night and fireflies in jars. His Eduardo Story.

  Reality: A story about growing a few inches.

  Aaron takes a breath like he’s not finished.

  “I decided to go to one of the gardens anyway. Frost covered the whole thing. I walked down the rows where the vegetables were supposed to grow, like I was planting my own footsteps. I thought someone should put one of those little paper labels next to them. You know, the ones that show you what’s going to grow? It would let people know that Aaron’s Boot Prints were there. Maybe there would even be a scientific name, like Bootus printus or something.”

  Aaron’s sentences build and build like cake layers.

  “Then what?” I ask, leaning closer, on the edge of my seat.

  “I ran back to—”

  “How’s it going over here?” Mr. G points his pencil tie to the practice assessment on my desk. I forgot it was there.

  “The first one is sixty-two square feet,” I answer.

  “And the second?”

  “To be determined,” Aaron says.

  “I love a good work in progress. But let’s keep it moving.” He waves the end of his pencil tie like he’s writing something in the air. We nod at him.

  Aaron pushes his desk back so it’s next to mine. I stare at the assessment. Half my mind is on the second problem, and the other half is on Aaron’s story.

  The problem asks me to find how much profit Janelle’s Cookie Barn made last year.

&nbs
p; Step one: Figure out how much Janelle’s Cookie Barn spent.

  What else happened in the garden?

  “I ran back to our rental house and took some things from my room. Like the shoe from my Monopoly game and a Superman comic book.” Aaron works on the problem while he talks. “My footsteps were still in the garden when I got back. I dug into each imprint and put my stuff in the holes, then covered it back up.”

  Step two: Find out how much Janelle’s Cookie Barn made.

  What would I plant myself with?

  “I like to think about someone finding it all when the weather got warm and they were ready to grow a new crop of plants. And then they’d know who I was back then.”

  Step three: Subtract the initial cost from the total sales.

  A calculator or my pebble CASSANDRA sign or a red chili from Pepper’s Pizza.

  “Who were you?” I ask.

  Aaron presses his pencil into the assessment a little too hard. Pieces of the tip crumble off.

  “I was nine. I’m not that into Superman anymore.”

  Aaron slides his paper toward me so we can compare, his face a little pink. We got the same result. I flip the assessment over to check the answer key.

  “We were right,” I say, and look at Aaron. He draws shapes that look like shields on his paper. He’s right. It is interesting to see the way his mind works. I add tells good stories to my set of Aaron Facts.

  Before I can think too hard about it, I stick my hand out toward him.

  “I accept your deal. One story from every tree town.”

  Aaron lifts his head, and his long hair flops to the side.

  “Excellent,” he says.

  His hand wraps around mine. We shake once, twice, three times. When I let go, it feels like something warm and permanent is left on my skin.

  We’re both smiling when we move on to the next problem.

  September 12

  High school smells like sweat covered in lavender perfume. Like a humid, smothering blanket so thick that I can’t breathe. But I don’t think it smells like that for everyone.

  To Jenna I think it might smell like McIntosh apples, new denim, and cracked-open books. I think Mason, who I technically dated for two months last year even though we barely talked, who is only a freshman and already a star on the football team, might smell fresh cut grass and chilly nights and that black goo the players smear on their faces.

  There was a pep rally today. I don’t have a drop of pep in me. The football team flexed their muscles and wore orange jerseys. The cheerleaders demanded we give them an M for “Mapleton.” I just couldn’t. Jenna nudged me and asked, “Are you okay?”

  But what if the answer is “Yes and no”? Or “I don’t think you’d understand if I told you, because I don’t really even understand”? Or “I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure this gym is going to devour me and spit my bones out later”?

  11 Tired

  Dad owns a sandwich shop with Uncle Eric called Holy Baloney. One Thursday a month he leaves before the dinner rush to visit Buelo with Daniella and me. He makes sure to walk through our front door at exactly four p.m. with three chicken salad sandwiches. We call it Dad-Visit Thursday.

  It’s 3:50 p.m. My heart pounds and my palms leave sweat marks on the parrot place mat. I haven’t been to Kindly Vines since Daniella said those things. I imagine walking to room 201, the walls whispering at me. It must be weird for you. You’re always like that. That, that, that.

  Daniella comes into the kitchen. Her hair is a dark, snarly mess. Mascara crumbles stick to her cheeks like black constellations.

  “Tell Dad I’m not going,” she says. She walks over to the refrigerator.

  “Why not?” I ask.

  Daniella stares into the white refrigerator light.

  “I’m tired.”

  I want her to sit at the kitchen table in front of the toucan place mat. I want to tell her about Aaron’s tree town story. I want Dad to walk through the door with our chicken salad sandwiches wrapped in parchment paper.

  “I could make you coffee. Buela showed me how.”

  Daniella shuts the refrigerator. The glass jars on the door rattle.

  “It’s not that hard,” she says, and walks out of the kitchen so fast that it’s like she was never here. I listen to her footsteps on the stairs, in the hallway between our bedrooms. I want to mute all the sounds so I won’t hear her door close.

  “Yes it is,” I whisper to the parrot.

  * * *

  Dad and I sit next to each other and eat our grinders without saying much. He put Daniella’s in the fridge for her to find later. I bet the bread is already soggy.

  “What did she say when you talked to her?” I ask. Dad balls a napkin up in his hand. He sits at the oriole place mat wearing his black polo with “Holy Baloney” stitched into the top right corner, the same as any other Dad-Visit Thursday. But Daniella isn’t here to split the bag of salt-and-vinegar chips with him.

  “She had a long day at school. A lot of quizzes. She just needs to rest.” He takes a handful of chips. Does he think about Daniella when he looks at the blue bag? Does he feel her absence like a bruise the way I do when I listen to our favorite songs alone?

  “I think she’d feel better if she just came downstairs and ate sandwiches with us,” I reply.

  “Maybe. But that’s not what she wants to do today. Starting high school is tough. Your sister is dealing with it in her own way,” he says.

  According to her diary, it’s not that simple. Clammy smells and carnivorous gyms are involved. But Daniella can’t find out that I’ve been sneaking into her room.

  “Middle school is tough too,” I mumble.

  Dad taps his knuckle against mine.

  “You’re right, Cassi. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  I tap Dad’s knuckle back. People always tell me I look like him. We both have the same square faces and round noses, eyes the color of clovers.

  “I’m just worried, that’s all,” I say.

  “She’ll be fine. It’s a matter of adjusting.” Dad crunches up our mayonnaise-stained parchment paper. “Let’s head out. Your mom should be there soon.”

  We always meet Mom at Kindly Vines on Dad-Visit Thursdays, after she’s finished running a crime-novel club at the library. I pick up the dirty utensils, the mayonnaise packets, the salt-and-vinegar chips. Some leftovers crunch inside the bag. I may look like Dad, but I don’t like salt-and-vinegar chips. He only shares that with Daniella.

  The phone rings. Dad answers before I can check the caller ID.

  “Everything okay?” he asks instead of saying hello.

  Dad listens. I can’t hear a thing. The oriole has a chunk of chicken salad on its feathers.

  “Are you sure you don’t want us to come?”

  I swipe the chicken salad off. It leaves a pale streak.

  “Okay. See you when you get home. Love you.” Dad hangs up.

  “We’re not going?” I ask. Dad stares at the phone like the buttons might answer my question.

  “Your Buelo is tired.” Dad’s voice stumbles over Spanish words the way mine does. He finally looks up. “We’ll go see him another time. Soon.”

  The look on Dad’s face + not being able to see Buelo = Another bad day, like the one that made Buelo go to Kindly Vines in the first place.

  “Fine. I’ll do my homework,” I say, and leave the kitchen.

  It’s silent behind Daniella’s door when I walk by. She’s tired, Buelo’s tired. Maybe everyone should get a good night’s sleep and everything will go back to normal.

  12 Electricity

  Daniella’s eighth-grade graduation was on the high school football field. Chairs for the graduates were set up in perfect rows, right on top of the Mustang mascot painted on the center of the field. It looked like it was running away.

  The day was warm, and the sun spilled all over the bleachers where we sat. I was between Mom and Buelo. Buelo’s cane was shiny and silver in the light, glaring a
t me. He had started using it a few months before, after he’d fallen down in the condo’s steep driveway on his way to get the mail.

  Buela was next to Mom, scrolling on her phone. Sometimes I thought Buela was better with phones than I was. She was always posting inspirational quotes and videos of yawning puppies. I did like the sleepy baby dogs.

  “I got an update from Celina today. The electricity at her house is still spotty.” She showed Mom the message on the screen. Titi Celina was my grandaunt, Buelo’s sister. She sent me a little figurine every year for my birthday.

  “It’s been months,” Mom said, shaking her head.

  When Titi Celina’s town was hit hard by a hurricane, it took weeks for us to hear that she was okay. Buela and Buelo didn’t do much during that time but pray and watch the news. Sometimes I’d watch with them and see the places we’d visited, destroyed by water and wind.

  Buela and Mom kept talking about the state of the island. I looked at Buelo. He was wearing his brown jacket and hat because he got cold even in June, plus he liked to look nice when he went out. His wrinkled hands were folded on top of his cane.

  “Are you feeling okay, Buelo?” I asked.

  He’d been quiet on the drive to the high school, and lately. Ever since his fall. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d told me a story.

  “Sí, corazón.”

  I winced. “Corazón” was what he called Mom. I was supposed to be his corazónita.

  The band started playing the graduation song, and the eighth-grade class walked out the doors of the gym in their royal-blue caps and gowns. I spotted Daniella near the front of the line with Jenna. They laughed and waved to the crowd like queens. Daniella had straightened her hair for the ceremony. Mom raised her camera and took pictures when she passed by.

  Everyone sat down, and I lost Daniella in the rows of graduation caps. The principal talked about moving on and facing the world and taking with you the lessons learned along the way. Panic swept over me. I couldn’t find Daniella. She’d be in high school next year. She was moving on.