Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World: Chapters 16–22

“Now, technically, I’m not allowed up here. My mom thinks it’s unsafe”—she hooked finger quotes around the word and rolled her eyes—“but she’ll never know.”

Ivy sat in the corner with all the books and blankets. It was a perfect reading nook.

She reached over the edge of the chair and pawed at a stack of books, grabbing a thin, tattered paperback. Ivy recognized it immediately.

June opened Harriet Honeywell and the Mermaids of Hurricane Cove one-handed and pointed to the dedication: To my brilliant girls, without whom Harriet would never have been born.

One poem in particular, written before the storm, intrigued Ivy so much that she read it twice.

It didn’t rhyme, but Ivy knew not all poems did. Free verse is what her language arts teacher called it.

June’s eyes flitted over the words, her frown growing deeper and heavier.

She balanced the yellow notebook Robin had given her on her lap, pencil poised.

It had rained during the night, a gentle and safe sprinkle that Ivy let lull her to sleep after she’d stayed awake for hours drawing, and now the pavement shined like polished silver.

This morning, June’s house looked a little different. For one thing, it was sage green with a raspberry-red trim.

Ivy made a beeline out the door and sat in her first-period class by herself while everyone else chattered in the hallway for five minutes.

Seething, Ivy put the drawing back in her locker before she ripped out a piece of paper from her science folder.

Ivy yanked her attention back to Taryn, who apparently had been talking this entire time. “Sorry, what?”

She skulked around bushes and hid behind the skinny trunk of a birch tree, which wouldn’t have actually disguised anything if Drew happened to turn around as he crossed the street.

She was reveling in the brilliance of this plan when Drew stopped walking.

The front door was open, so the voices floated out the screen door like water through a sieve.

Her stomach pinched as she peered around the side of the house. There, huddled under a window brimming with bright red geraniums, was Drew.

Inside, the yelling crescendoed again. “You really think this is the time to separate?” the man boomed.

What did June see when she looked at the picture, all the lines and colors Ivy meticulously chose?

A couple of years ago, Taryn started calling those times when they’d be hanging out and then got really quiet “pondering mysteries.”

Riddle!
Conundrum!
Mystery primo!

Ivy pushed the covers back and swung her feet to the floor. Her toes sank into Taryn’s plush carpet.

But if it was really okay, Ivy thought she should also feel okay, and she didn’t. She felt like a pumpkin whose innards have been scooped out for Halloween.

Before Ivy could offer to come along, Taryn was out the door, leaving Ivy alone with Taryn’s bewildered parents and the giant pile of eggs and cinnamon raisin toast they had made for both girls.

When Ivy got to school, June was standing by Ivy’s locker. Ivy blinked a few times to make sure she wasn’t dreaming, but it really was June, wearing a dark purple sundress and grass-green leggings.
And she was trying to slip a piece of paper through the slats in Ivy’s locker.

Ivy unfolded the paper. On it was a drawing of a little whale. A blue whale. June had colored it an azure blue, and there was a red heart in its middle, taking up half of the whale’s body.

Ivy’s heart leaped into her throat. She felt sick and glittery, droopy and elated. She had no clue which emotion to trust.

During math, Mr. Santorini almost caught her while he was passing out graph paper, asking what Ivy could possibly find more intriguing than linear functions, but she slipped the drawing into her desk right before he got to her row.

Still, anyone could make those kind of letters. She spent hours poring over them in her little corner of her family’s room, wondering who could’ve made those pencil strokes.

If she was the one who found the notebook, Taryn would’ve pestered Ivy for every thought in her head that very first day.

Dr. Somerset usually worked until dinner, sometimes later, and the two girls would gather up all their art supplies and a few illicit snacks that Ivy sneaked from the inn, and they’d close themselves in June’s treehouse.

She brought an ancient Polaroid camera up to her face, snapping a picture of a pair of grubby ice skates that she had found in her attic and that were at least three sizes too small.

She was splayed on her stomach near the lantern, idly sketching her own face into the yellow notebook Robin had given her.

She was splayed on her stomach near the lantern, idly sketching her own face into the yellow notebook Robin had given her.

She looked tired, as usual, clad in a pair of olive-green scrubs.