Deadwood (16 page)

“Andy!” Hannah's mother said, slamming down the fork she was using to eat her taco salad. “Don't you think she's thinking about her own team instead?”

Hannah's father gave her a sheepish look as he spun the lazy Susan to grab the shredded cheese. “Sorry, Hannah Banana,” he said. “You do have a demanding schedule for a seventh grader.”

“None of you get it,” Hannah said, not caring if she sounded bratty. There was more to life than just sports, although if she really thought about it, she
was
worried about both games—probably Nick's more than hers. Her team was doing okay, but the Black Squirrel football team hadn't won yet.

“Something in school, then?” asked Hannah's mother, tilting her head.

“It's got to be that tree thing,” said A.J. “Jake told me he'd been out to look at it.”

“It's awful,” Hannah said, deciding to reconfigure her broken taco into a salad. She picked up her knife and smashed the corn shards into bits with the handle, pounding a little louder than she needed to. “Jake says the tree is too far gone to save. I don't believe him.”

“Well, like it or not, I have to trust him,” said Nick. “I'm not going to win a scholarship without him. Plus, you couldn't stand that Martin kid last week.”

“I didn't know him then,” Hannah said. “And he was right. You and your buddies carved up that tree up like it was Thanksgiving dinner, and now Jake's going to chop it down. He's going to kill it!”

Hannah's mother frowned. “Are you sure he can? It's on public land.”

“That's just it,” Hannah said, talking louder and faster with every word. “He already filed his bid with the Lower Brynwood Parks Department. Says he's going to have the application fast-tracked, or something. Martin and I only have a couple weeks left to save the tree, and we still have no idea what we're doing.”

Hannah's father smiled at his daughter, and she felt like screaming. Hadn't he heard her? Then he said, “Fast-tracked, huh? That application sounds like something that deserves the attention of the Lower Brynwood Assistant Budgetary Manager. Namely, your dear old dad.”

“You aren't actually going to help him?” Hannah nearly shouted, but her father waved his hand.

“Of course I'll help him,” he said, raising an eyebrow and smiling crookedly. “An application that important needs to be circulated for comment among every assistant manager in every department. Sequentially, of course. Got to check all his credentials and certifications with the state. I'll be sure to distribute it myself. I always like to put it in the in-box of someone who's out of the office for a few days—that way they review it with a nice, fresh attitude. Except when it gets buried under other paperwork. Anyway, if I give Jake's application my personal, fast-track attention, it should make its way toward approval in six to ten weeks. Unless, of course, you come up with a reason that we should deny it before then.”

“Dad! You're the best.” Hannah stood up and hugged him.

“I always say a bureaucrat can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Like a dad, I guess,” he said, hugging her back.

A.J. stared at them. “You all forget that Jake is my boss? He'll blow a gasket if he has to wait that long.” He leaned back and grinned. “Awesome.”

“Awesome for the rest of you. I'll suffer,” said Nick. “When he gets mad, he gives double drills.”

“That's not suffering, it's training,” said Hannah's father. “Tough drills make tough competitors.”

“Now you sound like Coach Laughlin too. All those stupid sayings.” Nick scowled.

Hannah wrinkled her brow. “What did you say?”

“Coach always spouts off this inspirational BS about how if you ask the universe for what you want, it answers back. The Answer, he called it.” Looking disgusted, Nick shut his notebook and pushed it away. “If the universe was my fairy godmother, a dozen recruiters would be beating down our door.”

A.J. nodded. “And I'd be writing my Heisman speech. Or at least I'd be in college.”

Their mother gave him a stern look. “It doesn't take a miracle for that, A.J. If you want to go back to community college, all you have to do is register.”

“Uh-uh,” A.J. said. “Little brother, it's your turn to ask the universe for what you want. I already got my answer: No. I tried to take classes—it didn't work with all the overtime Jake lays on me. I've been busting my hump hauling all the trees that have been keeling over lately. I'm beginning to understand why he hates them so much—I will, too, if I end up working for him much longer. The universe has been throwing a giant bowling ball all over town, and I'm right in its path.”

“There's always next semester,” Hannah's father said, but he looked puzzled. “Something weird
has
been going on in Lower Brynwood. All those fallen trees, snapped power wires—we had a water main break over on Brynwood-Newtown Pike and another on Route 74. One of the houses under construction in the new public housing development just plain collapsed overnight. Splat. The foreman showed up, and the jobsite looked like a pile of Lincoln Logs. Today we had a street-cleaning vehicle fall into a sinkhole. The ground opened up right underneath the driver. It nearly swallowed him up—he was lucky he wasn't hurt.”

Lucky?
Hannah thought. It was the opposite of luck—Lower Brynwood was literally crumbling in front of their eyes and under their feet, and the only ones who understood were her, Martin, the tree, and the rotten creep who had cursed the town in the first place. The bad one, whoever that was. Hannah didn't dare look up for fear that someone would notice the tears gathering in her eyes. She had refused to cry in front of her brothers since she was three years old.

She stared at Nick's playbook until she had reabsorbed her tears, and the shape of the leaf embossed on the cover came into focus. Hannah had seen it a thousand times, but this was the first time she recognized the shape.

“Why is that leaf on Nick's playbook?” she asked.

“Good question,” A.J. answered, pointing to the matching logo on his shirt. “It's the symbol of Laughlin Landscaping and Tree Care. Good old Jake must be using company property for the benefit of the Lo-B football team—probably took a tax write-off for the donation, too.”

Hannah stared at the logo. The leaf was from a beech—just like the Spirit Tree. Jake's logo was the Spirit Tree leaf? Why?

“A.J., Jake used to play football for Lower Brynwood, right?” she asked.

“Are you kidding? He never lets us forget it. He was captain of the team back during the last state championship—heck, during the last winning season we ever had.”

“When was that?”

“Ancient history. The golden era of Lower Brynwood sports, 1988 to ‘89. Four district championship teams in one year, and not one since.”

1989?
Forever young, 9/15/1989
. Of course. She should have known. Heck, she was pretty sure Jake's name was written right there on the bark. He must have cursed the tree to guarantee his precious winning season, and just forget everybody who followed him. He designed his whole business around it, and now he was conspiring to take the tree down, once and for all. She and Martin had a new number-one suspect.

All of a sudden Hannah felt famished. Taco Night ruled. She smiled to herself as she filled her fork with taco salad. Martin wouldn't be surprised to hear that the perpetrator—the witch, the bad one, the dark mage, curseworker, whatever—was someone like Jake. And she didn't even care that he was right, as long as they were one step closer to healing the tree. They'd have this mystery wrapped up by Columbus Day.

Slam
. A gust of wind banged the loose cellar door. A whirlwind of leaves swirled against the kitchen window, eerie in the purple glow of African-violet plant light.

But the plants under the purple grow lights were dead.

Chair legs screeched on linoleum as Hannah's mother leaped toward the plants. When she touched one dried leaf, it crumbled to dust. Her face crumpled, too, and Hannah thought she would cry.

“Your prize-winning African violets, Mom,” Hannah said. Her mom had won a blue ribbon in the garden show three years running.

“How is this possible? They were fine yesterday,” Hannah's mother said, her voice catching. Then she switched off the plant light and turned her back, shoulders rounded, walking to the sink to wash her hands. No one spoke.

She dried her hands and returned to the table, her face still and white as marble in the lower light. “Excuse me, kids, for jumping up from the table like that. I'm some example for table manners.” She sniffed and toyed with her paper napkin. “It doesn't take much to win a garden-club prize around here,” she said. “They were just plants, Hannah. Next time I'll stick to plastic. Nothing grows here—why would I think I'm so special?”

Later, as Hannah rinsed off the dishes, she noticed how dark the kitchen seemed without the plant light. Lifeless. The windowsill was empty except for the dark rings where the potted violets had sat. Hannah's mother had carried the plant corpses out to the composter with the kitchen scraps. She joked that plants might not grow well in Lower Brynwood, but they sure rotted fast. Everyone laughed, but Hannah couldn't have been the only one who didn't think it was funny. Lower Deadwood, just like Martin called it. Everything died here.

Hannah's mother walked back into the kitchen and wordlessly grabbed a towel to dry the pots dripping in the rack.

“You can let those air-dry overnight, Mom,” Hannah said. “I promise to put them away before school.”

“Why wait?” Hannah's mother stacked the dry pots and slammed them into the cabinet too hard, setting off a cascade of pot lids against the door as she kicked it shut. She hugged her arms to her chest and leaned against the counter.

“I'm sorry about your violets, Mom.”

“They're only plants.” Hannah's mom shook her head. “And the garden club eliminated the houseplant category this year, anyway. Michelle Medina said she thought it seemed unhealthy, all that dirt inside.” She sniffled. “Poor violets. No surprise they're dead. I can't keep my patients at the nursing home alive, either. Mr. Richardson passed today. I don't think Mrs. Quillen will last another week, either.” Her voice caught at the end.

“Maybe it was just their time,” Hannah said, knowing how weak it sounded. Something a funeral director would say. “They had good lives. They were really old.”

“Two weeks ago they didn't act like it. Mr. Richardson was such a kidder, always giving me a hard time, and Mrs. Quillen dressed like she expected the Queen of England for tea in the residents' lounge. But something changed. Like, overnight. Mr. Richardson didn't recognize me. And Mrs. Quillen came to breakfast one morning, her hair a rat's nest, but worse—her eyes were blank. Now she can't even sit up.”

Hannah felt cold in the drafty kitchen. She leaned against the counter next to her mother, resting her head against her mom's shoulder even though they were the same height.

“They're not the only ones,” her mom said, sliding an arm around Hannah. “Residents who used to be active just sit there in front of the TV. Catatonic. Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Wallace won't get out of bed. Sometimes they don't know me—it's like an Alzheimer epidemic.” Hannah's skin still prickled. “Like all the life that they had just faded away—like it was stolen overnight.”

Hannah tried not to think of the curse. Those people were old. Old people got sick. They forgot things. They died.

She looked at the empty shelf where the violets had stood, and at her mother's face, which was so close that she saw wrinkles she had never noticed before. Her mother looked worried and tired.
Old
. Hannah wanted this to be a coincidence—this couldn't be the curse. The curse meant bad luck, dead plants, torn ligaments—it didn't drain the life out of people. Did it?

Her phone blared suddenly. She leaped away from her mother. Thinking of the Spirit Tree, Hannah dug the phone out of her front pocket, afraid of the message it might have sent, relieved that at least the tree was alive to contact her.

The text was from Waverly. Hannah was puzzled. She didn't have any airtime left; at least, none that a human could access.

“That didn't take long,” said Hannah's mother, rearranging her worn features into a tiny smile. “Waverly must have some kind of tractor beam on your phone.”

“What?” Hannah asked.

“I asked your father to add minutes to your account early. He wasn't due to top up the airtime for two more weeks, but I thought you'd need the phone for your Spirit Tree project.”

Hannah gave her mother a quick squeeze, feeling almost normal again. “Thank you!”

“It's only twenty dollars worth—tell Waverly to take it easy or that won't last through the weekend.” The phone pinged again. “Waverly again?”

“Who else?” Hannah said. “I'd better reply or she'll send ten more.”

“Better yet, pick up the regular phone and save your minutes. I'll finish up here.”