The Last Tree Town

by Beth Turley

  “To cheer you up. And the room,” she said.

  I wanted to pop every one of those balloons. When Buelo started to get mad later, Mom whisked me into the hall, sent me on a pointless errand to get her sudoku book out of the car.

  But they can’t take back what I saw.

  Sometimes I look in the mirror, and it’s Buelo staring back at me. We’ve always had things in common. A flair for the historical. A love for sugary cereal.

  And now, the forgetting. Him forgetting who he is and me forgetting how to stay happy.

  24 An Unexpected Snowstorm

  The first week of November brings an unexpected snowstorm, though “storm” might be an exaggeration. It’s more of a powdered-sugar-on-fried-dough dusting. The school declares an early dismissal anyway. I call Mom from the office to get permission to go to Jac’s. Aaron comes too.

  Jac and I pull on fleece leggings under sweatpants and wrap ourselves in scarves. Aaron puts on two pairs of Uncle Eric’s flannel pajama pants that Jac stole out of the dryer. Aaron’s tall enough to fit in them. Jac calls up the stairs to tell Uncle Eric that we’ll be sledding on the hill. All we hear back is heavy metal, the music he listens to while doing the Holy Baloney payroll. Ben is at the hill already when we get there, wearing a bright red snowsuit with straps that look like velvet. A saucer-shaped sled rests at his feet.

  “Don’t you dare,” he warns.

  “Don’t I dare what?” Jac asks, her voice all sweet and innocent.

  “You know what.”

  “Talk about your transformation into a marshmallow?”

  “I’ll be warmer than you.” He sticks out his hip, then presses a finger to his padded side and makes a sizzling sound.

  I laugh out loud. An icy breeze slips through my scarf, but I can feel the sun, too. I think about Aaron’s mountain story.

  “You were right,” I tell him.

  He looks at me. “Of course I was. About what?”

  The blend of cold and sunshine. I do feel like everything is going to be okay.

  I get choked up. Sometimes the words in my head feel too big to say out loud.

  “Never mind.” I hand him a sled. It’s round with one dip in the edge, like a doughnut with a bite taken out.

  A layer of snow glitters across the hill—ideal sledding conditions. The thin, wet stuff is the most slippery. We get settled onto our sleds. Jac takes the big square that looks like an oversize lunch tray, and I get the long, narrow one that two people can fit on.

  “Ready… set…” Jac takes off before saying “go,” but the rest of us are right behind her.

  The wind blows my scarf around. Jac is still ahead, and Ben and Aaron fall behind. I lean forward to gain speed, but the sled was made for two people. The empty back lifts up, and the front end grinds into the snow. It slows me down. Ben beats me to the bottom of the hill. Aaron and I slide through the finish line at the same time.

  “First place goes to the Dark Lord, second to Marshmallow Man, and last place to the Mathletes,” Jac announces.

  I don’t care that I lost the race. I’m thinking about when Daniella used to sit in the back of the sled.

  This sled – Daniella = A hunk of plastic that doesn’t function properly.

  We start to climb back to the starting point. Aaron dumps his bitten doughnut into the snow.

  “I’ll go down with you,” he says once we’re at the top, and sits in the two-person sled, filling up the empty space behind me.

  His knees brush up against my back. He grips the side of the sled with pale white hands.

  “Here we go.” I tip forward, and we take off, sliding faster and faster, with Jac and Ben behind us. I watch Aaron hold on tighter. We reach the bottom before I can think too hard about why his hands make my stomach flip over.

  Jac gets off her sled and stares up the hill. Her eyes are gray and stormy. Blue hair whips around her face, darker than ever. It must be the shadows from the trees; she promised me she would stop dying it.

  “Mind if we join?”

  Uncle Eric and Leslie are at the top of the hill. She wears a skirt with black stockings and Uncle Eric’s Patriots jacket, which doesn’t seem like a great choice for sledding.

  “Yes, we mind,” Jac calls to them. “Please return to your payroll.”

  The wind blows harder, like a natural disaster is on its way.

  “That’s not how this works, Jac,” Uncle Eric says.

  Leslie rubs her arms. Jac starts to walk. She retraces our footsteps all the way to her back door. Ben and Aaron and I follow.

  “Sorry, Uncle Eric,” I say when I pass. He touches my arm with his gloved hand.

  “She’ll come around.” I don’t know if he’s saying it to Leslie or to me.

  I leave the two-person sled by Jac’s back steps, and then go inside. The rush of warmth thaws my cheeks. Jac’s footsteps stomp around in her room upstairs.

  “Should we go after her?” I ask.

  “She’ll probably throw things,” Ben says.

  “Are we talking rocks or pillows?” Aaron asks. Ben and I look at him. He nods like he understands—it could be anything. We head up the stairs.

  I knock on Jac’s door.

  “Don’t come in here. Seriously,” Jac says. I twist the knob. It doesn’t budge.

  “Jac, unlock the door,” I say.

  “No. Go to Ben’s. I’ll meet you there.”

  I elbow Ben. “Get it.”

  Ben lifts the little gnome outside Uncle Eric’s office and grabs the bobby pin hidden underneath. He hands it to me. I straighten it out and then stick the wavy metal into the hole in the center of the doorknob. Aaron watches Operation Jac with wide eyes.

  “And don’t you use a…” We bust through Jac’s door. “Pin.”

  We stare each other down—the three of us at the door, Jac at her mirror. She stirs a giant bowl of blue Kool-Aid.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “I thought I’d found all your pins.” She drops the wooden spoon into the liquid.

  Ben steps closer to her setup. “Have you been dying your hair this whole time?” His voice is slow and cautious.

  Jac lifts her chin. “Yes.”

  I follow Ben. Ripped packets of Kool-Aid spill out on Jac’s dresser—two blue raspberries, a black cherry, and a grape.

  “You promised, Jac,” I snap. I don’t feel like being slow and cautious.

  “Promised what?” Ben asks.

  “That she’d stop. But I guess she likes making Uncle Eric mad too much to care about that.”

  Jac picks up a rubber glove and throws it at my head.

  “You don’t know anything about it!” she says.

  The blue liquid trembles in its bowl. Jac goes to sit on her bed. She wears an Eliza T. Dakota T-shirt from the school store. The shoulders are covered in blue spots. Ben and I sit on either side of her. Aaron stands near the dyeing site on her dresser like maybe he shouldn’t be here. But I can’t picture this moment without him in it. He’s now a factor in this equation.

  “Tell us, then,” Ben says.

  Jac stares at her camouflage comforter.

  “If Dad’s mad at me, he won’t pay attention to her,” she mumbles.

  Guilt creeps in because of the way I yelled. Lesson Nine of Math Olympics: Sometimes numbers can be irrational. But let’s not love them any less.

  “It doesn’t really seem to be… working, though,” I say gently.

  Her chin wobbles.

  “I’m aware, Cassi. He’s like a stupid lovesick teenager. I don’t want to fight with him about it anymore. But I can’t stop. As long as we’re fighting, it means he still knows I exist. I have power over that.”

  I wrap my arms around Jac, my head pressed against hers. Ben shakes his shoulders and leans into her side.

  “He’s never going to forget about you,” I say. “You’re his world.”

  “His whole, infuriating world,” Ben adds.

  Jac leans into me. She smells like the
artificial blue raspberries.

  “My mom loved birds,” Aaron says from the dresser.

  We all look up.

  “To quote Mrs. Quan’s comment on my last essay: ‘Please try to stay on topic,’ ” Jac says.

  “It reminded me of what you said about having power. I thought if I could build enough birdhouses, my mom would never leave. I made so many. She would smear the perches with peanut butter and seeds, and soon we had a whole neighborhood of singing things.” Aaron swirls his fingers in the bowl of Kool-Aid like he’s trying to make a wave pool. “But she still left.”

  I imagine the place mats on my kitchen table coming to life and living in Aaron’s birdhouse village.

  “Your mom left you?” I ask.

  Aaron nods. “I guess what she loved most about birds is that they could take off.”

  It’s quiet except for the Kool-Aid sloshing up against the sides of the bowl.

  Ben stands from the bed and walks over to Aaron. His snow pants make a swish sound. He reaches up to his head and lifts something invisible, and then puts it on Aaron.

  “You are officially the Monologue King.” Ben bows. “All hail.”

  “All hail,” Jac and I repeat. Aaron tries to look humble, but a smile splits his face. I add to my set of Aaron Facts. Has a mom who left. He tried to get her to stay. Monologue King.

  “Which tree town was that in?” I ask.

  “This was before the tree towns. It just…” He wipes the Kool-Aid from his fingers off on Uncle Eric’s flannel pants. “Seemed like something you would tell a friend to show them they’re not alone.” He glances at Jac.

  She smiles back. A lightbulb flickers in the ceiling fan.

  “We’re not friends,” Jac says. Aaron’s expression looks like he understands her dark humor already. I realize that he wasn’t just a factor here. In this moment, he was the solution.

  Jac bursts away. She reaches for the Kool-Aid packets and squeeze bottles and tosses them at all of us like she’s not going to need them anymore.

  25 Family Night

  Kindly Vines hosts a potluck dinner in the middle of November. They call it Family Night. We pick Buela up from the condo. It’s five o’clock but pitch-black outside. I think that’s the worst part of winter approaching. How there’s still plenty of day left but it feels like the middle of the night.

  Buela gets in on my side. We’re driving Dad’s car instead of the minivan, so I have to squeeze in between her and Daniella.

  “You want to hold this?” Buela puts an insulated food carrier in my lap before I answer; she knows I like to hold her trays. It warms me more than the heat blasting out of the car’s vents. I take a breath. She definitely made arroz con gandules.

  I lean the tray a little toward Daniella. She loves Buela’s rice and peas. I hope its powers might break whatever sad spell she’s under. She’s been especially silent tonight. Her head leans against the window. Orange streetlights streak across her face while Dad drives.

  “Keep it straight,” Buela says.

  I hold the tray flat again.

  The drive to Kindly Vines takes twenty minutes. We file out of the car when Dad parks in the lot. The walls at the reception area are painted a color between white and purple. Something about it makes me dizzy. We’re signing in when a nurse comes over.

  “You’re Mr. Francesca’s family, correct?” she asks.

  Her eyes are wide and frantic. A chill slips down my spine.

  “We are,” Mom says. She squeezes the sign-in pen. It’s attached to the clipboard by a white string. I think about the kite I saw at El Morro, stretched up into the sky.

  “Places like this are made for flying, sí?” Buelo asked when he caught me staring.

  Kindly Vines is not a place made for flying.

  “We’re having a bit of a rough time getting him to the potluck. Maybe you can come turn him around?”

  Mom nods. Dad holds her hand while we walk, quickly, to room 201. Buela holds on to my arm.

  I hear Buelo before I see him.

  “No, no, no. You cannot make me.” Bits of Spanish and swear words mix in. Buela lets go and jogs into Buelo’s room as fast as her short legs can take her. The tray of rice and peas shakes in my hands.

  “Wait outside,” Dad says to Daniella and me. My parents follow Buela. Daniella and I stop near the bathroom, just before Buelo’s room, where Daniella’s words are still shouting at me. I can hear them, as loud as the words coming from Buelo’s room.

  “Calmate, mi amor, calmate,” Buela urges.

  I try to calm down like Buela is asking Buelo to do.

  “Why am I here? Why am I here?” Buelo’s voice begins to strain. I could sink under the weight of these rice and peas. Daniella leans against the wall and covers her face with her hand.

  Down the hall, people stare. They hold their own trays of food for the potluck and push their own parents and grandparents in wheelchairs. I want to yell, Go away! Leave us alone! Why won’t all these bad things just leave us alone? like Buelo is yelling to the air.

  Daniella is so still that I would think she was sleeping, if her lips weren’t moving. I don’t know what she’s saying. But it looks like she’s mouthing, Why am I here?

  Buelo’s room goes quiet. I stand and wait, the tray still warm in my hands. A nurse leaves the room. Mom pops her head out.

  “Grab three chairs from the sitting room and come in,” she says.

  My heart beats fast and slow at the same time. I hold the tray in one hand and drag a chair with the other. Daniella’s eyes are watery when she takes the other two chairs. She rubs her face with her shoulder, and some mascara gets on her sweater. I wish she hadn’t hid the fact that she was crying. We could have stood next to each other out in the hall, instead of against two different walls.

  Buelo looks sleepy when we get into his room. His eyes are half-closed. We set up the chairs in a half circle around his bed.

  “We’re going to have our own Family Night,” Dad says. He leaves for a minute and comes back with plastic plates and utensils.

  Buela opens the insulated carrier, and a strong, peppery smell fills the room. It covers up any trace of soup or sanitizing spray or sadness.

  We serve ourselves big scoops of rice. Dad talks about funny customers at Holy Baloney, and Buela says the potluck would have been nothing but casseroles. I watch Daniella clear her plate and then fill it up for the second time. Her face is soft and calm now, like maybe she figured out why she’s here.

  Lesson Eleven of Math Olympics: You have multiple strategies in your mental toolbox. Use them.

  Buelo’s head bobs a little. He’s smiling in his sleep. I take that as his approval for the idea I’ve just come up with to help Daniella.

  26 Boiling Point

  “Are you sure about this?” Ben asks.

  I’m in my kitchen with Aaron, Jac, and Ben, along with oil, adobo, salt, and pepper.

  “Daniella loves this stuff. It’ll make her happy, I know it,” I say. The bag of yellow rice spills out like a trail of breadcrumbs leading to the empty pot heating up on the stove.

  Jac pulls on a red-checkered oven mitt and hands the matching one to Ben, even though the mitts aren’t really required for making Buela’s rice and peas.

  “Let’s do it,” she says.

  I stare at the rice pot and suddenly panic.

  Oil + Rice + Peas = ?

  Water + Adobo + Rice = ?

  The order of the ingredients mixes up, like variables I never learned how to solve for. I reach for the bottle of oil and dump it into the pot. It makes a hot, splashing sound when it touches the copper.

  “Have you done this before?” Aaron asks. He takes a step back from the sizzling oil.

  “I’ve seen my Buela do it a hundred times,” I answer. I try to ignore the strong smell of something burning. I add some adobo to the oil to cover up the smell.

  “Well, I don’t want to question your grandma, but I’m pretty sure you use water for rice,” he
says.

  “We should’ve stuck to nachos,” Ben sings into a wooden spoon. Jac takes a step forward and picks up the bag of rice.

  “No, I think Cassi’s right. Now we just add this.” She tips the bag, and yellow grains go everywhere. Some make it into the lava-hot oil, but most spill underneath the burner. Black smoke floats up around the pot.

  “Jac!” I shout.

  “Cassi!” she shouts back.

  “Aaron!” Ben joins in.

  Aaron laughs too hard to say a name back, but nothing is funny. The kitchen fills with thick clouds. Some oil leaks over the edge of the pot. I turn the burner off, and a flash of heat scalds the skin on my wrist.

  The smoke alarm starts wailing.

  “Help me open the windows,” I order. We spread out. Aaron opens the kitchen windows, and Jac sprints to open the front door. Ben waves a towel in front of the detector, moving his hips like the piercing beeping sound is a song instead of a disaster. The smoke bobs around in the air like it’s dancing with him.

  Daniella comes down the stairs and into the kitchen, and takes a quick look at the damage. She rushes over to the stove and moves the pot to another burner. She strips the towel out of Ben’s hands, then waves it hard until the smoke is pushed out the windows and the beeping stops.

  “What are you doing?” she asks. Her voice is breathless but still sharp.

  “Cooking,” I answer.

  Daniella’s eyes fall on the line of spices and oil, the half-empty bag of rice.

  “Cooking what?”

  Jac waves her hand at our setup.

  “It’s pretty obvious, don’t you think?” she says.

  “Hey, Jac, can you for once, like, not?” Daniella asks. “I’m sure it was your master plan to burn the house down, anyway.”

  Jac’s face crumples. She runs out the sliding door and slams it behind her. It’s too dark outside to see where she goes from there. Ben follows her into the night. Silence falls over the kitchen. The air is thick with the smell of disappointment.