Relativity (3 page)

I peeled the wrapping paper off and held the book in my hands, grinning. It was a collection of photos from the Hubble telescope. Amazing, full-color pictures of impossible things. Star clusters, the Crab Nebula, spiral galaxies. New stars emerging from molecular clouds. Storms on Jupiter.

I’d wanted to kiss George, but things weren’t like that. Couldn’t be like that. He and Jamie had just broken up, so he was still off-limits. She would’ve killed both of us in a jealous rage. Maybe after a few months, it would’ve been okay. After she’d moved on to the next boyfriend, and if I hadn’t moved three time zones east. Then George and I would’ve had a chance to become more than just flirty friends. Eventually, I’m pretty sure. Like a 90 percent shot. But now I’ll never know.

Because I’m going to die from corn asphyxiation. Honestly. If one more leaf smacks me across the neck or ends up in my mouth … gag.

Finally, the upper branches of the oak tree emerge, sending shadows over the tall cornstalks. Yes! All along I was perfectly on track. After another hundred feet or so the field ends abruptly, and I’m standing in an open patch of grass, shaking off corn silk and claustrophobia. I breathe. A very deep breath. So far, the only good thing about Ennis is the smell of fresh air.

And the tree!

It’s enormous, majestic. It casts its shade thick and wide, blocking the sun, and the cool air is a kiss of relief after sweating through the cornfield. I walk carefully, stepping over roots that erupt through the earth at intervals, like knuckles, fingers gripping the ground. To think this tree started as an acorn—a seed you could hold in the palm of your hand. How long ago? It shot roots into the soil, spread branches into the sky, feeding on carbon dioxide and rainwater. It thickened and stretched, cells multiplying, pulling itself up, straightening its spine like an evolving primate.

“You’re beautiful,” I whisper. It’s almost human in its presence. A breathing, living thing.

I hit the web browser on my phone and type in
how old are oak trees
in the search field. I scroll through the site listings and find an oak in England that’s a thousand years old, and one in California that’s two thousand. Most sites say they live closer to four hundred years. So this tree could predate the American Revolution, or even the Pilgrims.

I wish George could see this. I pull out my phone and try to frame the tree for a photo, but of course it doesn’t fit in the viewfinder. I step back, but it’s no use. There’s no way to capture its size and grandeur. If he were here, he’d pull out his sketchbook, and we’d sit quietly for hours while he worked his pencil magic.

I step closer to the trunk, reaching out to press my hands against the bark, layered and gray like stone. But I pull back, suddenly remembering Willow’s stories of electrocution, death by fire.

I put my hands on my hips. “You’re not going to fry me up for dinner, right?” I ask.

You’re an idiot, Ruby. It’s a tree. A bunch of xylem cells and phloem tissue. Plant matter. Not a serial killer.

It doesn’t answer my question. “Didn’t think so,” I say. At the base of the trunk there’s an even nook, almost like a small front porch. With some lingering apprehension, I sit cross-legged there, leaning lightly, hesitantly, against the trunk. Nothing bad happens. The methane in my intestines doesn’t erupt into flames. I don’t spontaneously combust.

In the distance, I hear the hum of a lawnmower. A soothing buzz. I close my eyes and relax, daydreaming. My mind skips through memories and settles on one of George singing happy birthday to me in the school parking lot, the way he jumped onto the hood of his car and ended with an operatic flourish: “And many more!” I feel happy in this moment, and sleepy. I’m just nodding off—destined for sweet dreams, for sure—when something hits the top of my head and bounces into my lap.

“Hey!” I say, startled and annoyed. It’s a piece of bark. I twist around to look up and behind me. Maybe a squirrel knocked it loose. I pick it up and chuck it toward the cornfield.

I lean against the tree again, trying to pick up where I left off. George singing happy birthday. I’m dozing off when another piece hits. This time I stand up and accuse the tree. “A break, please? That’s all I want!”

I shake my head. What am I doing here? Stranded in the middle of nowhere, at the bottom of Dad’s priorities. I’m not going to cry. But if I do, at least no one will see me here. I look up at the tree, its branches
outstretched like it would give me a reassuring pat on the back, if only it could. That’s when I notice, about ten feet up, a bare spot.

A lot of bark has fallen off, and now I see that the ground is littered with chunks. Odd. I wonder if a tree disease, a parasite, is at work. And then I hear the buzz again. The hum I thought was a distant lawnmower is neither: it’s not distant, not a lawnmower.

It’s the tree. Tentatively, I press my hands flat against the trunk. It’s vibrating. From within.

I pull away, my hands tingling slightly. Are the stories true? The only thing I can hear is my heart, and the voice in my head:
They’re just stories to scare kids
. There must be a reasonable explanation for the vibrating. Something’s going on here that makes sense.

Insects. Yes, that’s it. The entire oak is full of them, infested. See? It took a whopping thirty seconds to come up with a logical hypothesis. There’s no reason to panic. But then I think about how many insects there must be. Are they boring holes into the outer bark, and at any moment they’ll break through, and I’ll be surrounded by swarms, angry and with stingers?

Come on, Ruby. Don’t go jumping to conclusions.

I put both hands on the trunk again, then lean in and press my ear against the rough bark. It sounds like an engine.

I step back, stumbling away from the tree. I grab my empty soda can from the ground and hurry back into the cornfield. What was blue sky half an hour ago is now half-covered in inky clouds. And more are rolling in.

Trees don’t rumble. It’s thunder. It’s about to rain.

I attempt a nonchalant laugh at myself, but it comes out as a high-pitched giggle. I think of George and his iPhone thesaurus app. Bananas, loco, out to lunch, mad as a hatter.

As I jog into the cornfield, I take one last look over my shoulder at the tree. And that’s when—for a split second, I swear—it seems to be glowing.

The rotisserie chicken is greasy, the pepperoni pizza worse, making dinner delicious-disgusting. Dad also bought the token iceberg salad with approximately three carrot shavings. A glob of ranch dressing is its only hope. I’m seeing a pattern here. Last night was fried chicken with a side of mayo—I mean coleslaw. The night before was ribs from Pig-Out. Dad could cook if he tried, but he can’t pry himself away from work long enough to boil an egg. At least back in California, we had top-notch takeout. Burmese noodles, eggplant rollatini, burritos with fresh guacamole.

I sit at the kitchen table, armed with a stack of napkins, expecting someone to join me. But Willow and Dad flop down on the family room couch to watch the news, and Kandy takes her plate upstairs.

Fun times.

I send George my tenth text of the day (BORING! Tho there’s
mystery tree in backyard. Buzzes. Full of locusts) and immediately begin checking for his response.

Are there locusts in Ohio, or some kind of termite that eats a tree from the inside out? I don’t know. It’s more likely there’s something underground nearby, like a generator or transformer, and the vibrations are resonating enough to shake the tree. I think of the dozens of minor tremors I felt in California; there could be a seismic zone running through Ennis. I’m not sure about locusts, but I know there are fault lines all over the Midwest.

If it weren’t so late, I could have Dad drive me to the library. I could check to see if the electric company has an underground hub near the tree, or if any sinkholes have collapsed. Maybe there’s an underground river.

And if people really did die trying to cut the oak down, there must be something in the library archives about it. There would be newspaper articles and obituaries. Those clues would provide a way into the research. But I’ll have to wait until morning when the library opens, probably at nine.

Dad slides over toward Willow to make room for me on the couch, so I settle in to watch TV with them for a while. It’s annoying. They’re both channel surfers, stealing the remote from each other at every opportunity. My phone vibrates and I eagerly read George’s text: At movie. Trning phone off. Srry.

Bummer. He’s putting on 3-D glasses without me, at the movie we were supposed to see together. Which makes me wonder who he’s with. Maybe his brother, but what if it’s Jamie? What if they’re getting back together? I send Jamie a text that says Whatcha up 2 2nite?
then toss the phone onto the coffee table. She hasn’t been keeping in touch, so she might not even respond. So far the only contact she’s made was when she posted a message on my Facebook wall: How’s it going in Cowville?

Dad eats the last of his chicken, leans forward, and scribbles on a piece of paper. Copywriting inspiration has struck. Even when he’s not working, he’s thinking about it. It’s like constant background noise.

“Did you figure out the spinach-artichoke label?” I ask.

He nods, holds up a finger for me to give him a second. He scratches out what he just wrote, then writes something else. “I’m on to the gnocchi packaging now.”

“Squishy pasta-potato things, only good with buttery sauce.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” he says, smiling.

“It’s catchy,” Willow agrees. She pulls the cheese off her pizza and rolls it into a ball before popping it into her mouth.

“That’s kinda gross,” I say.

“Ruby,” Dad warns.

“She’s right.” Willow winks at me. She stacks her pepperoni slices, one on top of the other, and eats them all at once. “I’ve been eating pizza this way since I was a kid. Bad habit.”

“It’s cute,” Dad says, squeezing Willow’s knee. “Adorable.”

Ugh! I move away from them, pressing up against the armrest. There’s nothing worse than parental PDA.

“I walked out to the oak tree today,” I tell Willow, trying to ignore the dreamy look in Dad’s eye.

Willow raises an eyebrow. “That was brave of you. I see you survived.”

“Yeah. It’s weird, you know? There’s this sort of humming noise around it, or in it. Maybe it’s bugs, or maybe it was just thunder rumbling. I’m not sure. But I was wondering if there are any underground caves around here.”

She thinks for a moment. “There are some in Bellevue. They’re called the Seneca Caverns, or something like that. Why?”

I shrug. “I get the feeling there’s something underneath the tree.”

Willow frowns. “I’m not sure I like you going near that thing.”

“What tree?” Dad asks. He grabs the remote from Willow’s lap and changes the channel again.

“An oak off in the cornfields,” I say. “There must be an easy way to explain the noise it makes. I just need to collect some data, come up with a hypothesis.”

Dad taps his finger against his temple. “She’s got a science noggin,” he says to Willow. “Let her figure it out. It’ll give her something to do until school starts.”

“I thought you were going to the Natural History Museum tomorrow,” Willow says.

“Oh,” Dad says with a sigh and an apologetic cringe on his face. “About that.” Yep, here we go: the clearing of the throat, followed by the repentant tone of voice. “Even though I finished the sauce label, now I’m on deadline for this. They moved everything up on the production schedule.”

“It’s okay, Dad.” For once, I’m actually glad he’s ditching me. Because now I’ve got my own agenda for tomorrow. A trip to Cleveland would eat the entire day, and I wouldn’t have the chance to get back to the tree.

Willow pats me on the knee. “I’ll take you to that bookstore you wanted to go to.”

“Sure,” I say. “Thanks.” I can hit the library first thing, the tree next, then go with Willow after lunch. If the bookstore has a local history and geography section, I might find some useful info there too.

Willow snatches the remote, and just as we’re settling into a show about poisonous snakes in Africa, Dad steals it back. After two hours of watching sixty shows, two minutes each, I go upstairs and tiptoe past Kandy’s door. It’s open, but the room is quiet and dark, except for a dim light, like a night-light. I sigh, relieved. The dragon slumbers. At the hour of 8:30. Why not, I guess, when there’s nowhere to go, nothing to do. So far I haven’t met any of Kandy’s friends, and it occurs to me that she might not have any. Gee, shocker.

I unpack the last of my clothes, organize my bookshelf some more, and arrange a lamp, a wedge of amber with an insect inclusion, a meteorite chunk, and a few framed photos on my dresser.

First, George. He’s smiling, holding a bottle of water, wearing a backpack. The blue of the sky behind him matches the blue of his eyes. That was the day we hiked Mount Diablo. From the summit, we could see the Golden Gate Bridge.

Next to that, the photo of my old dogs, Isaac and Galileo. They’re outside our apartment in Walnut Creek, looking through the sliding-glass door. Their ears are straight up, mischief in their eyes. When the dogs both died of cancer within a year of each other, I kept that photo under my pillow. Dad bought a frame for it before it got completely wrinkled and ruined.

And finally, the faded, out-of-focus photo of Mom and me. My
only photo of her, after our roof leaked years ago and ruined a closet full of keepsakes. I’m about three years old, sitting on her lap, wearing a red-gingham blouse with denim overalls. Mom’s hair is long and black; the Cherokee in her blood also asserts itself in her cheekbones. She’s looking off to the side, like something has caught her attention. She seems not quite sad. Maybe wistful is the word. I know the feeling.

“’Night, Mom,” I say, settling into bed with the Hubble book from George. I flip through the thick, glossy pages, stopping at 30 Doradus #016, a heavyweight star in the Tarantula Nebula. It’s ninety times bigger than the sun, and it’s zooming across space so fast it could travel from the Earth to the moon in an hour.