Chapter 17

Alder spent the whole weekend feeling like a jerk.

On Saturday he paced around his house mumbling “idiot, idiot, jerk” to himself. Fern sat on the pink velvet couch, watching him curiously. He only left the house once, to run errands with his mom. At least they stopped by the drugstore and picked up a DNA kit for the school project. Filling the little vial with spit (which was disgusting), Alder thought maybe this would help a little with Oak being mad at him.

Sunday, Alder lay flat on his back on his bedroom floor for a good part of the morning, staring up at a water stain on his ceiling.

“She should understand that it’s different for boys,” he told himself.

But the words, said out loud, felt not right.

He thought about Darla, and what Oak had said about her—“Darla sits at a table with her Dungeons and Dragons friends, and they’re all boys. Is that weird?”

His immediate response had been that no, of course that wasn’t weird. What he hadn’t said was what he felt inside. It was fine that Darla was like one of the guys. The fact that she was a girl who played Dungeons & Dragons after school every day, that she always wore a baseball cap, and that, for her last birthday, she had invited four of her best friends, all boys, to spend the afternoon at Comic Con, where they’d all had their picture taken together in front of an enormous poster of the new movie based on that game Starfield, all of that was perfectly fine.

But him, sitting at a table full of girls?

That made Alder feel . . . nervous.

And feeling nervous about the possibility of sitting at a table of all girls made Alder feel bad. About himself.

“Jerk, jerk, jerk,” he said, rolling over onto his stomach and banging his forehead against the floor.

But not sitting with Oak and her friends wasn’t only about the girl-boy thing. The truth was that each day at lunch, Alder hoped that Marcus would want to eat with him. That there would be an empty seat next to Marcus and, just like old times, he would wave Alder over as if it was no big deal at all, and they would sit together and joke about things. Nothing special, but still somehow completely special. There it was again—the way something could be two opposite things in the same moment.

Anyway, if Alder sat with Oak and her friends, that would be like giving up hope. It would be admitting that Marcus didn’t want to be his friend anymore.

Alder rolled the other way, onto his back, and stared up at the ceiling.

Fern hopped down from the bed to see what he was doing. She purred and pushed her head into his arm. Fern didn’t think he was a jerk, Alder comforted himself.

But, another voice said that was just because Fern didn’t know.

Alder stood. He picked up Fern and wandered to his window. He looked over at Oak’s house. The addition above the garage was coming along; it had walls now, though they weren’t yet covered in stucco. Today was a Sunday, so the construction workers weren’t there.

Then Alder’s gaze fell to the tree stump. He sighed. It had been a beautiful tree. But he realized that, though he was still sad about it, he wasn’t angry anymore. He wondered when, exactly, that had changed.

Fern perked up, as if she saw something interesting. She made a little sound like he’d heard her do when she saw a fly, a cross between a meow and a growl. A meowl. Alder took another step toward the window so his forehead pressed against the cold glass pane.

“What is it, girl?” he asked. He squinted and focused, trying to see what Fern saw.

Nothing.

He relaxed his gaze and gave up. And that was when he saw it—a glint, a glimmer, a shimmer.

Fern seemed to know when Alder saw it, for she meowled again, as if she were saying, “Finally! What took you so long?”

Alder tried to memorize what he was seeing—or what he thought he was seeing—but as soon as he focused in and looked directly at the spot, the shimmer disappeared. He softened his gaze again, letting the world slip out of focus . . . and there it was. The trick seemed to be not to look directly at it, whatever it was.

Doing his best to keep his eyes loose, Alder set Fern on his bed and left his room, heading for the front door. He heard Fern jump down from the bed, he heard her padding behind him. Not bothering to put on shoes, Alder cracked open the front door and slipped outside. Fern yowled crossly when he shut her in, but Alder ignored her. He wasn’t about to risk losing his kitten again.

Shoes would have been a good idea. Alder had regrets as he picked his way through the damp grass. The ground felt a little squishy too, in a way that made Alder think of worms. Alder was not a fan of worms or wormy things. Not even spaghetti. But he pressed on, in spite of the dampness, in spite of the squish, in spite of the images of worms in his head. As he did, he tried his best to keep his gaze soft and gently scanned the area around the tree stump, looking for the patch of shimmer.

When he couldn’t find it, Alder decided to walk in a circle all around the stump. Maybe he would see it from a different angle. Slowly, Alder circled the stump. Gently, Alder scanned the air. Gingerly, Alder stepped through the grass.

But nothing. Frustrated, Alder sighed. He felt his gaze harden back into normal.

There—just in his periphery—a flash! Could it be that the shimmer had moved over there? Alder turned his head to pinpoint what he’d seen out of the corner of his eye.

Oh. It wasn’t the shimmer. It was the front window of Oak’s house, and the movement he’d seen was Oak herself, peering out, watching him.

Alder lifted his hand in a wave. Oak stared at him, and though they were separated by the length of the yard and the pane of her window, Alder had no problem at all reading her expression.

Without a wave in return or an acknowledgment of any kind, Oak turned away.

Falteringly, Alder lowered his hand. His stomach felt sick again. “Idiot, idiot, jerk,” he berated himself, and he headed back inside.

“Alder,” his mom called from the kitchen, “you’ve been moping around all weekend! How about we start a new puzzle—does that sound like fun?”

Alder shook his head. He didn’t feel like doing anything.

“Well,” said his mom, “why don’t you look through that box of books and craft stuff I brought home from the donation fair? Maybe you’ll find something interesting.”

Alder didn’t feel like looking at books, either, but Mom said, “Either you find something to do or I will,” so he begrudgingly made his way to the box.

The next morning, Alder waited outside Oak’s house so he could apologize. He’d even brought her something from the book box, as a sort of peace offering. He waited for what felt like a long time, but when Oak still hadn’t emerged five minutes before the bus was due to arrive, Alder had no choice but to head for the corner.

“Just one tree kid today, huh?” said Faith.

“I guess so.” Alder began to head up the aisle.

“Did you kids ever find that house?” she asked.

Alder stopped dead in his tracks. “What did you say?”

“You know,” Faith said. “You’re in number Eleven. Tree girl lives in number Fifteen. But where’s the missing house? Where is number Thirteen? Did you find it yet?”

She was joking around. Alder could tell from her smile, the loose and happy tone in her voice.

“No,” he answered slowly. “Not yet.”

By the time Mr. Rivera called the class to order, Oak had not arrived. This was particularly inconvenient for Alder, as they jumped right into their interdisciplinary project and he was supposed to be paired with her today.

“It’s tough to go it alone without your family,” Mr. Rivera said, mustache twitching.

“Huh?” Alder said, confused.

Mr. Rivera tapped the open page in Alder’s notebook, which was headed with the word Family, followed by a hodgepodge of notes.

“Oh,” said Alder. “Right.”

Mr. Rivera wandered away, making encouraging jokes and checking on progress as he went up the aisle.

The least he could do, Alder thought, was make some progress in Oak’s absence. But before he even looked at his notes, he found himself immediately distracted by that phrase . . . the least he could do. It was a funny thing to aim for, wasn’t it? The least that someone could do? Why not aim for the most that someone could do? Or, maybe, the middle amount?

Alder had always liked language and words. Maybe it was something he’d gotten from his dad. Writing songs, after all, is about playing with words and the ways they fit together, with meaning and rhythm and rhyme.

Alder shook his head to clear it. Here he was, allowing himself to focus on the wrong thing. He was supposed to be focused on family, and yet he was thinking about . . . well, actually, he was thinking about family. His family. His dad.

He laughed a little. Wasn’t that funny? That he tried to think about one thing and then found himself thinking about another thing, but then it turned out that the other thing really was the first thing after all? He wished he had someone to share that with. Glumly, Alder looked around. He wished Oak were here.

It took Alder three attempts to approach Oak’s lunch table before he finally went through with it.

The first time Alder tried to approach their table, he couldn’t even bring himself to slow down as he passed it. He just kept walking, as if he suddenly saw someone on the far end of the cafeteria who was waiting for him.

On the second pass, Alder did manage to slow down. Oak wasn’t there, of course, but the others were—Cynthia and Miriam from his class, and the twins, who were in the other fifth grade class and whose names, he realized, he didn’t know. He even cast a friendly smile in the table’s general direction, but none of the girls seemed to notice. They were all leaning forward, looking at pictures on one of the twins’ phones. Alder didn’t mean to peek—he knew that was rude—but he couldn’t help but notice the picture that was up when he passed, of the twins and a third, younger kid and a couple of grown-ups, with a big basket of fruit, maybe apples, in the photo as well.

On the third pass, Alder forced himself to stop walking when he had reached the table. He counted down—three steps, two steps, one step—and then he brought his right foot up to meet his left, and he stopped, just behind the twin with bangs.

“Hello, Alder,” said Cynthia. “This is the second time you’ve passed our table. Do you need something?”

He felt an enormous wave of relief that Cynthia had only noticed him circle the table twice.

“Actually,” said Miriam, sipping orange juice, “it’s his third.”

Miriam.

Alder cleared his throat, though it didn’t need clearing. “Hey,” he said. “I was just . . . wondering . . . if maybe I could sit here? With you?”

He watched the four girls look at one another as if they were taking a silent vote. It couldn’t have taken more than a few seconds, but it felt like ages before Cynthia said, “Sure. Why not?”

It was, Alder knew, a rhetorical question, and he threaded his legs over the bench and sat down. “Thanks,” he said, and opened his lunch.

The girls returned to the photos on the phone.

“So how many different kinds of apples did you get?” Cynthia asked the twins.

“Just three,” said the twin holding the phone, the one with bangs. “There were five kinds in the orchard, but our baby brother got cranky before we made it to all of them. And Cameron says we picked more than we could ever eat anyway.”

Ah. The other twin was Cameron. One name down, one to go.

“I brought some to share,” said Cameron, unzipping her backpack. “And Carmen labeled them so we’d know which is which.”

Bingo, thought Alder, feeling rather pleased with himself. The twin with bangs was named Carmen.

Well. Cameron and Carmen. That was confusing. He almost made a smart comment, but then decided at the last moment not to. Maybe he’d just listen for a while.

Cameron pulled a half dozen apples out of a paper bag, two of each kind. A little piece of masking tape was stuck to each apple: Fuji; Honeycrisp; Opal.

“Does anyone have a knife?”

No one did. Here was something Alder could do. “I’ll go ask the cafeteria lady,” he offered, jumping up.

The best she could offer was a dully serrated plastic butter knife, but it was better than nothing.

“Thanks!” Cameron said when he returned, and she began slicing up the apples. When they had been cut into uneven wedges and sorted by type, everyone dug in.

“Let’s all try one kind at a time,” suggested Carmen, so they all reached for an Opal piece. Alder bit into the sweet, crisp fruit.

“It’s really good,” Miriam said, and everyone nodded, including Alder.

“Next, let’s try Honeycrisp,” said Cynthia.

It was at least as delicious as the Opal. But better even than the tasting, Alder felt, was the tasting together.

Finally, they all reached for a slice of Fuji. And then Alder heard from behind him, “What’s going on?”

He turned, with a cheekful of apple. There was Oak.