“Your project is so cool!” Derek shouts as if I’m not sitting right next to him, and I don’t try to shut him up or anything even though other kids are starting to look over.
I shrug my shoulders like it’s no big deal, but I’m kind of happy he’s looking at it so close.
“You put me on there?” he says as soon as he sees his name dangling from one of the maple branches. Then he full-on hugs me even though he knows I don’t do hugs or anything like that. I don’t hug him back, but I don’t shove him off either.
He’s touching the bark of the sugar maple and running his fingers in the grooves of the Vermont license plate. “It’s perfect,” he says.
Then he slides his project over to me. His board game idea came out cool too, with a stack of cards in the middle just like a real board game. “Pick the top card,” he tells me.
I turn over the top card and there’s a picture of him and me holding a big jug of syrup from boiling last year. He’s lifting up the jug to his mouth, pretending to chug it, and I’m rolling my eyes. Under the picture it says Robinson Hart. Best friend I’ll ever have.
I nudge his shoe with my shoe under the table and say thanks. “That reminds me,” I tell him. “We’re going to try boiling again this weekend. Tell your mom.”
“Maple Day! Wouldn’t miss it.” He nudges my shoe back with his.
Ms. Meg is telling everyone to take out their projects. She says we’re going to spend the next couple of periods practicing presenting before our families come this afternoon for the open house. I’m thinking that I don’t need to practice because Grandpa will be working at the garage. And I already know he likes my project. And I don’t really care what any other parents think.
Candace sits down at the table with us. “Let me see!” She slides my project over to her. And before I know it Alex is huddling around and Oscar is too.
“It looks so cool!” Oscar says. He touches all the names that dangle down from twine off the twigs.
Oscar’s is really good too. The sketch of himself between the two trees looks just like him. One tree is for his mom’s side of the family and the other is for his dad’s. I remember everything he was saying in Group Guidance and I know why he made his project like that. He feels like he’s in the middle of his parents splitting up.
Candace finished hers too. I tell her I like how all the happy pictures of Tessa and her are right in the middle of her tree.
Oscar says, “I bet you’ll have lots more happy pictures with her too. It’ll all work out.”
Candace nods and smiles and says she knows.
I turn to Alex. “We had a pact,” I remind him.
He unzips his book bag and pulls out a piece of folded white notebook paper. It’s small and sketched in black ink. “It’s not that good, but I don’t care,” he says. “At least it’s done.”
It’s a simple drawing of a tree, but you can see the roots digging down below the ground. That’s where he labeled his dad.
“It’s really good,” I tell him and I reach out like Harold does to me sometimes and give him a fist bump.
“I made my Grandpa the trunk of my tree,” I say. “But he’s kind of like my roots too, I guess.”
And it feels pretty OK having everyone look at my family tree project because it’s not so bad.
Even Ms. Gloria and Mr. Danny come to the classroom to see our projects and Ms. Gloria puts her arm around my shoulders when she looks at the names dangling from the sugar maple twigs and sees hers. Her windshield-washer-blue eyes get all teary and she says she’s really proud of me.
I tell her something that Grandpa told me last night, which is how I figured out how to finish my project. He said that you should hold close the people who push you to be the best version of yourself. “That’s what family does,” Grandpa said. “They push you to be your best and love you no matter what.”
That sounds like Ms. Gloria to me, and everyone else I put on there, except maybe May because she’s just a baby. But I guess it’s my job to help her be her best version and love her no matter what. And that makes her family too.
Before I know it Ms. Meg and Ms. Gloria are handing out after-school snacks and lining us all up to use the bathroom because parents are starting to come.
Our job is to say “Welcome to our classroom” to all the parents who show up, but I just look down at my Nike Air Griffeys and let Candace talk to the adults.
All the parents are sitting down at our tables and it looks funny to see them in our classroom. Then Candace pokes me and points. “My sister came!” she whispers. “I put the invitation on her bed last night, but I didn’t think she’d actually be here.” Her sister is sitting in the front row with a purple streak dyed through her hair, and she smiles big when Candace spots her. Then I see her mouth, Good luck.
I give Candace a secret thumbs-up.
Ms. Meg is in the front of the room welcoming the parents and telling them how hard we worked on these projects.
“Now it’s time to hear a short explanation from the students about the choices they made on their family trees,” Ms. Meg announces.
Brittany is the first to go. Then Chelsea. They pretty much have the same papier-mâché tree project, and they talk about how fun it was to paint it once it hardened. Then Ronald goes. He talks about how his brother is really important to him, so he put him at the top of his project. Then Derek presents his board game and his mom cheers from the front row. Alex shares next, and he’s looking right at me the whole time he’s talking about his tree drawing. He points to the roots that dig deep below the soil. His mom and brothers aren’t here, and I don’t want to think of what they’re doing, so I just look right back at him because I think it’s making us both feel OK.
“Robinson?” Ms. Meg says. “Your turn.”
My stomach feels like two outs bottom of the ninth, but I stand up and walk to the front of my room and all of a sudden I’m thinking that maybe my license plate tree is stupid and I don’t have anything to say about it.
“This is mine,” I say and hold it up. I catch Ms. Gloria’s eye, which is enough to remind me to turn my hat around backward.
Then before I know it the classroom door is creaking open and my grandpa pokes his head in. “Found it,” he says and Ms. Gloria waves him in and helps him to a seat. Behind him are Harold and Paul, and May is wrapped up and sleeping in Harold’s arms. Katie, Grandpa’s nurse, is here even though it’s way earlier than five thirty, and that’s when she’s supposed to start helping us. I’ve only known her one day, but she doesn’t seem half-bad because she doesn’t have to be here and she is and she didn’t make my grandpa feel stupid when she was helping him last night, even with the simple things, and she let me squeeze the cheese into the mac. She smiles big and pats my grandpa’s arm. Harold gives me an air fist bump over sleeping May.
I point to the trunk of my tree and say, “My Grandpa is my trunk. He’s the one who takes care of me.” Then I point to Eddie’s branch. “My mom was just like me. A fighter with a boy name.” Then I point to the other branches. “These people aren’t actually related to me, but they’re still family. Ms. Gloria. Derek. Harold and Paul and May.” I don’t really have anything else to say, but it feels like everyone else talked way longer about their projects. Everyone’s watching me, expecting more, and it makes me feel weird. I’m looking at Grandpa’s nurse Katie and thinking that maybe I should have put her on the tree because she isn’t so bad and she’s going to be around for a while and she came all the way to school to see my project.
Then I decide I could always add people as I go.
I look at Harold again and I remember how I want to represent my family well, so I try to think about something else I can say.
“I guess family is something you get like I got my Grandpa, but it’s also something you make.” And I’m looking at Derek, who’s nodding his head and giving me a thumbs-up, and then at Grandpa, whose eyes are all misty and proud. Then Grandpa stands up and claps and everyone else claps too and it feels just like sliding into home.