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Willow pressed her toes slowly, purposefully into the lush carpeting that covered each step. She crossed the kitchen, slipped out the back door and made her way to the far end of the backyard. This moment, standing on the edge of the manicured grass with nothing but towering trees in front of her, made Willow’s heart tremble. It was just Willow alone in the dark. Nothing but the syncopated buzz of cicadas and faint crackling of the woods. Nothing but the crisp acidity of October nighttime air filling her lungs.
Willow could feel the excitement pulsing through her nerves. She was on the edge of her father’s world and on the precipice of her mother’s. Here was the entryway to happiness.
Willow launched off the thick lawn into the depths of the trees. Only thirty-seven and a half steps, she told herself as she hurried over fallen leaves and flimsy sticks to the tree house. She and her mother had counted the number once. Rosie had even made sure to account for the length of Willow’s stride instead of her own.
And when Willow reached the base of the ladder that led up, she made the signal—three clicks of her flashlight. Then she waited, her eyes big and her heart rumbling. And without another moment of quiet, Rosie returned the signal and popped her head out the base of the tree house floor.
Willow always wanted to zip up that ladder so badly at the sight of her mother, but she knew her loose knees were no match for the rickety wooden rungs. She was barely able to keep herself upright on the smooth ground of the fifth-grade hallway, let alone an old ladder. So she took her time wrapping her fingers around each wooden rung and then gripping her tightest grip as she carefully let her feet climb up slowly, one step at a time.
And when Willow finally got to the top, her mother would lift her by her arms and kiss her so hard, so decidedly, on the cheek. And together Willow and her mother would sing and dance and talk and draw by flashlight. They would paint and have thumb wars and play Twister and spin quarters. They would take turns performing tongue twisters. They would love each other so much.
And when the tree house walls were coated with new drawings, and when their mouths were coated with Pixy Stix sugar crystals and their bellies were filled with cream soda, and when the tree house air was saturated with the sounds of Elton John through her mother’s tiny speakers, Willow would lay her small head in Rosie’s lap and exhale.
Willow’s soft and raspy voice moved through the stillness. “Mom, why did you and Dad get a divorce?”
“Well, do you like waking up to the sun or an alarm?” Rosie replied.
“The sun,” Willow answered. And she was quick to it.
“Me too, baby,” Rosie said calmly as she kissed Willow on the middle of her smooth forehead. And then Willow exhaled again in her mother’s lap.
When Rosie’s watch beeped at 1:00 a.m., Willow and Rosie packed up their wrappers and toys, clicked off the flashlight and shimmied back down the ladder. Rosie with ease and Willow with full concentration.
And when Willow got to the back door of her father’s house, she waited and watched as her mother walked down the driveway away from her. She watched Rosie’s hair bounce weightlessly as her thin arms scrambled to maintain the pile of soda and candy and colored pencils stacked precariously against her chest. Willow watched her mother in all of her coolness, all of her effervescence, until she was gradually absorbed by the darkness.
Inevitably, before she disappeared, Rosie would drop a pencil or crayon or marker from her grip and let it roll along the ground without the slightest motion to pick it up. Her mother didn’t even pause to make sense of the faint clicking sound of the thing as it slipped from her arms and hit the blacktop. Rosie just got into the front seat of the car, where the dim car lights revealed her silhouette once again. And then she rolled her windows down, pressed both hands into her lips and extended her arms out toward Willow. She was sending a kiss all the way through the velvet darkness into Willow’s soul.
Then her mother drove away.
Willow returned to the driveway with her flashlight on dim to retrieve the lost crayon and bring it upstairs with her. She rolled the dark pinkish waxy cylinder in her hands and scanned the crayon label—Jazzberry Jam—then tucked it into her pajama pocket.
On Wednesday nights, as Willow drifted into sleep for the second time, she would replay the image of her mother’s red lips turning into a smile and the feeling of her mother’s long manicured fingers playing with her curls. And just like that, she could fall asleep happy.
It never mattered how tired Willow’s time in the tree house made her feel for school on Thursdays. Wednesday nights with her mom were definitely Willow’s favorite night of all the nights of the week.
* * *
Willow woke up the next morning in her room at her father’s house to the sound of her alarm. She slowly opened her eyes to the blue walls and the white wicker dresser. To the lacy throw pillows on the floor. To the taste of quiet. And then back to the beeping alarm.
Rex had told Willow that the trick to not snoozing through your alarm was to place the clock across the room. “Then, the only way you can stop the buzzing is to get up!” he told Willow one morning when she overslept. He told her this as he moved her alarm clock from her bedside table to the edge of the dresser by the far wall.
Willow slapped down on the clock and started the tasks of the morning checklist her dad had made for her. She also made sure that her little brother was on top of his morning checklist too. But as usual, he wasn’t.
At six years old, Asher Thorpe was always forgetting things. Spilling things. Breaking things. Knocking into things. But he was almost always forgiven for all of it. Because of his full cheeks and round chin, his clear blue eyes and his silky blond bowl cut. And, most importantly, his missing front two teeth and his trouble with the letter R.
It surprised everyone that two brunettes like Rosie and Rex could produce a blond-haired, blue-eyed little boy. But it made sense to Rex, Rosie and even Willow that Asher would have the kindest, most gentle, most nonthreatening features. There was a lightness to Asher that none of the other Thorpes possessed. A lightness that Willow was reminded of every time she reached Asher’s room across the house and found him pleasantly asleep beneath a pile of stuffed animals. Every time she nudged her brother awake and he smiled at the sight of his big sister.
“Morning checklist, Ash,” Willow said, and kissed her brother on the forehead.
“Alwight, alwight!” Asher said through a sleepy smile and sloppy cheeks.
Willow left her brother’s room and completed her checklist.
Brush Teeth—30 seconds top, 30 seconds bottom
Wash Face—Face soap only
Make Bed
Brush Hair
Fold Pajamas
Get Dressed—Clean clothes!
Pack for School—Do you have all your homework with you?
Take Vitamins
Family Breakfast
Willow had her morning checklist memorized, but Dad insisted that it remained taped to her door next to her afternoon checklist, which was taped next to the nighttime checklist. And Willow was very diligent about completing all but two items on this list up to her father’s standards.
The first thing Willow had trouble with was “Brush hair.” Because Willow’s hair was too curly and wild, and brushing it only made it worse. Mom told Willow that this was the kind of thing that boys didn’t understand and to just ignore that item on the list. But Willow didn’t like disobeying so instead of skipping the step, she guided the smooth back of the brush over the top of her tight curls every morning.
And then there was “Get dressed.” And while Willow didn’t have a problem doing so, her father never liked the clothes she chose to get dressed in. And the things she got dressed in were the same every day—shiny purple leggings, a black T-shirt with a silver horseshoe on it and black high-top Converse sneakers. The same thing every day for the last five years. She had several pairs of purple leggings and several of the same T-shirt. And today, a few weeks into fifth grade, she was still wearing that same outfit.
Her father never said a word about the outfit to Willow. At least not with his mouth. But he didn’t have to because Willow could always tell how he hated seeing her in that outfit. Every morning when Willow said good-morning to her father, she could tell she had disappointed him all over again. He said it with his eyes and a subtle drop of his chin and a faint shake of his head. Maybe it was her outfit or maybe it was her collapsing knees. Maybe it was something else entirely. But no matter what, her father never looked at his daughter in the same way her mother did.
Rex was posed in the big wooden chair at the head of the breakfast table exactly as he always was. Right leg crossed over left. Reading glasses perched at the tip of his nose. A steaming cup of coffee in his right hand. A pile of furiously scribbled notes scattered across the table. Dressed in a suit that looked like it was brand-new.
Looking serious. Looking powerful. Looking the same way he always looked.
Rex Thorpe was tall and broad and his shoulders pressed forward. If you were up close enough, you could see that his black eyes were always tick, tick, ticking back and forth. He was always scanning the room and the people in it. And his lips were always pursed like he was ready to say something. But the way his eyebrows pressed in toward one another and the way he held his jaw tense, you knew you didn’t want to hear what he had to say. But whether he was talking or quiet, looking at you or ignoring you entirely, Rex Thorpe commanded your attention when you shared space with him.
Willow sat down at the table and poured a bowl of Lucky Charms cereal for her brother and then one for herself as Rex tilted his right arm up and down like a steel machine taking sporadic sips of coffee. Willow and Asher used their heavy silver spoons to scoop the nonmarshmallow bits into their mouths first. They liked seeing the color that the specific mix of horseshoe, pot-of-gold and heart-shaped marshmallows might tint the milk. It was a game they played at their mother’s house too. After the Lucky Charms milk settled into a certain color, they would each scramble through the box of crayons at the center of the table and search furiously for the one that best matched the color in their bowl. Whoever announced the closest color first earned a big red kiss from Rosie.
When they played this game at their father’s house, Willow and Asher just stirred and observed the milk quietly. But at least they were both having fun.
Asher broke the silence when he loudly asked, “Can we go bowling this weekend?”
“Maybe once all your chores are finished,” Rex said without lifting his eyes from the notepad next to the coaster he put his coffee on.
Willow already knew her dad would say something like this. Because the set of things that Dad said yes to was specific and almost always conditional. You could watch TV for fifteen minutes, if your laundry was already folded. You could have ice cream, two toppings maximum, if you finished every last pea on your plate. You could go outside, jackets zipped all the way up, only after you practiced piano for thirty minutes. You could open a new cereal box when the old one was finished, and then you could fold up the old box so it was efficiently flattened and put it in the recycling bin. It didn’t matter to her father if none of your favorite horseshoe-shaped marshmallows were left in the old box.
Asher returned to his cereal bowl with an “Oh, man!” and then dipped under the kitchen table to play with his action figures. Which meant that everything went back to quiet at the breakfast table. Back to a quiet that disappointed Willow. She liked noise and chatter and music and games.
She liked her mother’s house.
Willow looked up from her bowl and considered whether to ask her father what color he thought the milk looked like. But his temples flared with each chomp on the wad of pink Bubblicious gum in his mouth. He looked so serious sitting there like that. So intense. So engrossed in his notes.
So Willow took her creased word search book out of her backpack and scanned the page for the next word on the list—ZIPPER. Willow searched the grid for a letter Z. She tapped the Jazzberry Jam–colored crayon on the paper as she stared at the page. Willow smirked at her secret. The secret of how she came upon that crayon. And even though no one even noticed that Willow was smirking or holding a crayon, she was still proud of that dark pinkish cylinder of color in her hand. Proud that she had a mom who loved her so much she met her in the tree house in the middle of the night. Proud that she had a mom who played with her hair every Wednesday night. Proud that she had a mom who always let her win in thumb war.
Right before the “bus alert” that Rex had set up sounded, Willow found her word. There it was, lettered straight across the middle. Z-I-P-P-E-R. She circled all the letters, closed her word search book and tucked it into her backpack. She needed it to keep her company on the bus. And at her lunch table. And under the slide at recess. And in her mind’s eye.
Willow brought her and Asher’s empty bowls to the kitchen sink, zipped up her jacket, then her brother’s, then said, “Bye, Dad,” loudly enough for him to hear as they left for school.
“Bye, guys!” Rex shouted back from his seat at the kitchen table.
If Willow created a morning checklist for her father and taped it to his wall, it wouldn’t say check your notes or tighten your tie. It would only say one thing:
Kiss Willow and Asher goodbye.
3
Twelve Years Ago
When Rosie got to her favorite willow tree by the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir for the fourteenth time in fourteen days, she took off her helmet and leaned her bike against the rugged bark of the trunk. Then she started climbing. The fourth branch up on the left side was Rosie’s favorite to sit in. She could hear the ripples of the water and the murmurs of conversation below, but no one ever saw her up there. She sat up in the tree and made drawings, scribbled doodles and wrote notes to friends in faraway cities.
Two weeks ago, she walked out of Blooms Flower Shop after Rex came in yelling, and she decided she wasn’t going back. And if she had ever bothered to check her messages, she probably would have learned that she had been fired anyway.
Rosie pulled a few straggling Pixy Stix out of her tote bag and tore them open. She poured some of the sugar into her mouth and the remainder onto her notebook. The purple crystals scattered so beautifully on the page. She added some orange and then some red and swirled them around with her fingertips.
Art, she thought. Ha. She stuck her tongue in the pile for a taste, and then blew the rest of the sugar off the notebook. Rosie watched the colorful crystals scatter into the air and trickle down toward the ground.
“What the fuck?” boomed a familiar voice from below. She couldn’t forget that voice. The incisive way with which Rex Thorpe said “fuck.”
Normally, Rosie might have apologized, but there was no way she would say she was sorry to that handsome jerk of a man. Not after the way he treated her. Not after the way he treated love.
She shimmied down the tree prepared to walk away from him for the second time in two weeks. And as she did, her dress flipped up above her head revealing her polka-dot underwear. As soon as the paisley fabric fell back into position, Rosie and Rex locked eyes.
There was a pause.
“Hey, I know you. You work in the flower shop. You wrote that card to my girlfriend. The one with the crazy e. e. cummings love poem.”
Another pause.
“That was fucked-up.”
Rosie adjusted her dress, squinted her eyes and decided to do battle. But only for a second.
“Your note was fucked-up.”
“Yeah? What about it?” Rex came back quickly, ready to spar.
Rosie almost walked away with her grimace, but then something just slipped out.
“Even Maleficent had something original to say to Sleeping Beauty.”
Instead of firing back, Rex just stood there staring at her. And then he laughed. He found Rosie’s retort bizarre, immature and adorable.
Rosie tried to make her escape from Rex for the second time, tote bag in hand. Rosie’s body jerked just as awkwardly and charmingly as it had two weeks ago at Blooms Flower Shop. But this time there were strange comebacks and endearing polka-dot underwear.
Rex thought about Anabel. She never moved like this. Or dressed like this. Or talked like this. She always had a tall spine and a straight neck and a freshly dry-cleaned shirt.
Rex was surprised to find that everything about Rosie right here under this willow tree was warming his heart. Especially the awkward manner in which she tried to wiggle out of their encounter. Rosie marched determinedly in one direction. Then abruptly she turned around and marched equally determinedly in the opposite way.
But Rex had positioned his body right in front of Rosie’s and stared down at her.
And Rosie slowly lifted her head and stared right back into his eyes.
Rex saw right through her big brown eyes and into her soul. Her bones that had finally stilled. And into her heart. Her heart that was racing.
Rex felt his heart do the same, and right then and there started to believe in the nuanced, invisible, loving force of the world.
And it made Rex want Rosie. So wholly. So viscerally. And when Rex Thorpe wanted something, he made it happen.
So right there next to the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, Rex Thorpe pressed Rosie Collins up against the bark of a willow tree, and then pressed his lips against hers so gently.
It was the best kiss Rex ever had.
Even though there were Pixy Stix in her mouth and in his hair.
Rosie still had her eyes closed when she asked Rex slowly and calmly, “Think I’ll ever see you again?”
Then Rex stared into Rosie’s still-closed lids and said simply and honestly, “Sure do.”
Rex Thorpe went home, made a reservation at the most impressive restaurant he could think of and told Anabel simply and honestly that he was sorry, but he didn’t love her.
Because Rex Thorpe finally knew what love was. And she tasted like Pixy Stix and wore polka-dot underwear.
4
Willow dragged her feet getting onto Bus #50. How it was one of the most difficult parts about going to Robert Kansas Elementary School. Because #50 was cruel to a fifth grader with tightly coiled hair that sprung out in all directions. It was cruel to a fifth grader who preferred a CD player to hopscotch with friends. And to a fifth grader who sat in her seat engrossed in word searches. It was cruel to a fifth grader who wore the same outfit every day or had once, just once, even peed in her pants at recess in front of everyone.
Bus #50 was a nightmare for Willow Thorpe.
Willow couldn’t go back on that bus. Not one more time. So she told her father about Bus #50. She told her strong, sturdy father. About the hair-pulling while having the word boing yelled in her ear. About the pointing at her favorite black T-shirt with the horseshoe while everyone laughed and laughed and said “she’s wearing it again.” About the tearing of her word search pages right when she was going to circle S-L-I-T-H-E-R on a backward diagonal. Willow’s voice crept over the lump in her throat as she told him.
But Willow was devastated when her father’s only suggestion was to fix it herself.
“Stop sitting near those kids, Willow,” he said nonchalantly. “Sit in the seat right behind the bus driver. He can help.”
Willow did her best to clear the lump in her throat once more to protest, but as usual her father was insistent and unwavering. Rex walked Willow all the way up into the bus, pointed at that green vinyl seat with the duct tape covering up a hole in the back and said, “Sit here, Willow.”
He said it in front of everybody. He was already making things worse.
“Sit, Willow,” the fifth graders, and even some fourth graders, mocked as they patted on their legs like they were talking to a dog.
Willow might have been even more upset if she didn’t think those fifth, and even some fourth, graders had it right in some ways. Her father did talk to her like she was a dog. A dog being trained. And not just this one time on the bus. All the time.
“Eat your broccoli.”
“Take your plate to the sink.”
“Finish your homework.”
“Make your bed.”
“Tie your shoes.”
“Help your brother.”
Her father said those things without a smile or a please or a morsel of warmth. Her father was firm and direct, and Willow didn’t like it. Not now on Bus #50. And not any day at his house.
In an effort to avoid eye contact with everybody else on that whole entire school bus, Willow turned her attention to the duct tape on the seat. She wished Asher didn’t have to take the designated kindergarten bus. She wished he was sitting right next to her. And as she wished, Willow picked at the sticky edges compulsively until she revealed the entire hole in the back of the seat. But when she looked into the hole, she saw something unusual in there. Willow reached her hand into that hole to see what it was.
Tucked inside the hole she discovered two grape-flavored Pixy Stix with a string tied around them and a typed note that said, “For Willow.”
For the first time all year, Willow smiled on Bus #50. She smiled to herself and sneakily stuck her secret candies into her backpack.
But then she took one right back out, ripped it open and poured the sugar into her mouth. She couldn’t hold out for even a second. She loved Pixy Stix. She loved the loving force that put them there. And Willow thought she knew exactly what, who, that loving force was. There was only one person in this town, on this earth, in this universe who loved Willow enough to surprise her with her favorite flavor Pixy Stix.
* * *
As Willow walked down the hallway with her remaining Pixy Stix in her bag, she almost forgot that the kids at Robert Kansas Elementary School were going to be so mean. She almost forgot they might put diapers in her cubby. She had almost forgotten about the first time she saw diapers in her first-grade cubby after she peed in her pants a few days after her parents told her about the divorce. The day of that big thunderstorm. That big, booming, terrifying thunderstorm. She had almost forgotten that she would have no one to sit with at lunch, and that everyone would avoid being her partner in gym class. That her teachers wouldn’t call on her even though she knew all the answers. That at some point during the day, she was inevitably going to trip and fall in front of everyone.
Gravity worked differently on Willow than it did on everybody else. It yanked her down randomly. It pulled her toward the earth whenever it wanted to. It gave a quick but firm tug on her knee, her elbow, her hip—and her body would buckle, leaving Willow in a contorted pile of bent skinny limbs on the ground. And while this often caused minor scrapes or bruises, Willow actually didn’t mind falling down like this. She thought that it made her special. She thought it made her distinct. The very idea that somewhere, sometimes, the world around her had singled her out. It singled her out and pulled her close to itself. Willow liked the idea that gravity was thinking of her from time to time. And she liked the idea that it would always let her know, with a tug on the knee, exactly when that time was.
When the lunch bell rang, Willow took her time retrieving her bagged lunch from her cubby and then took her time walking down the hallway to the cafeteria. It helped minimize the time in which she was sitting alone at her lunch table in the back. She put one foot slowly in front of the other and traced her finger along the green elementary school walls.