Underneath the Sycamore Tree(91)

Two Years Later





There’s a knock at my apartment door that peels my eyes off the football game on the screen. Setting my beer down, I smack a half-drunken Murphy and shuffle over to see if our other friend Spencer decided to show up.

I don’t expect to see a tiny little redhead on the other side of the door.

“You’re not Spencer.”

Her eyes widen. It’s dark, but the porch light makes the color staring up at me an eerie tone of crystal blue.

“Uh…no. I’m Piper.” She shifts something in her hands to jab behind her. “I live next door with my friend. Anyway, this was delivered to our place. It has your address on it.”

Shoving the box toward me, my face scrunches when I see my name on the flap. Mom must have sent another care package and wanted to surprise me.

“Thanks,” I murmur, putting it under my arm and grabbing the door to close it. “Well…”

Nodding, she steps back and tugs on the oversized UM sweatshirt she’s wearing. It’s the same one Emery wore when she…

I clear my throat. “Bye.”

Her lips part when I close the door, not thinking about much except what’s inside the parcel. Setting it on the coffee table and taking another swig of my beer, I rip off the tape and open the flaps.

Murphy mumbles before passing back out, half draped on the couch and half hanging off. Rolling my eyes, I pick up a glass jar full of…paper?

“What the…?”

At closer glance, I recognize some of the colorful post-its inside. When I unscrew the top and pull one out, my jaw grinds.

They’re the post-its I left for Em.

Stupid pictures of cartoon objects and animals with sayings only she’d get. Insults. Taunts. Nicknames.

She saved them all?

Pulling a few more out, I notice some that aren’t mine. The drawings aren’t very good, and half of them are smudged like she kept running her hand across the ink.

I can still tell what they are.

A lacrosse stick.

The UM emblem.

Sunshine.

One of them has words.

If you don’t go to UM, I’ll haunt you.

A choked laugh escapes me and Murphy jerks up, falling off the couch. He lands with a loud thud on the floor before groaning. I snort and nudge his leg with my foot.

“You good down there?”

He mumbles something unintelligent.

I nod, going back to the post-its.

The very first mouse I drew for her is resting in front of me. Brushing my fingers against the aged paper, I manage to smile before clearing my throat and putting all of them back into the jar.

There’s a note from Mom.

Henry found these in Emery’s room. He said you’d want them.

Palming my face, I take the jar to my room and place it on my dresser. The Valentine’s card I got for her is resting there too, something I grabbed before I moved.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, I stare at the new addition to my space before grabbing my phone and typing out a text to Mom. She responds almost instantaneously.

Mom:

Love you too, baby boy. And your little sister says hi.



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Author’s Note





I know what you must be thinking. Screw you, Barbara. Am I right?

First off, I’m sorry for the emotions you’re probably feeling right now. For the record, I loved Emery too. In fact, I am Emery. That’s why I needed to write this book in all it’s raw, real glory. I knew how it’d end. It’s a fear of mine that I’ve battled since I realized something was wrong with me.

When you have a chronic condition, you spend a lot of your life being doubted by others. Not all diseases can be seen. In fact, a lot of them aren’t. That’s why invisible diseases can be so deadly, because nobody knows they’re there until it’s too late.

Not only do you have to suffer silently from pain and other symptoms, but you have to watch what your misery does to everyone around you. Loved ones. Friends. You name it.

Underneath the Sycamore Tree started as a short story called Mama’s Eyes that I wrote for my Creative Writing class in undergrad. It was a story I wrote from the heart about how the relationship between a mother and daughter changes when the daughter becomes chronically ill. It’s a story I reflected on for many weeks before submitting it, and maybe years before choosing to take everyone’s advice and expanding it into a full-length novel.

This book was both one of the easiest and hardest ones to write. Odd, right? I wrote this faster than I wrote any book before. When a story comes from the heart, it’s going to gut you and cleanse you all at once. It’s therapeutic but also painful in ways that is hard to explain. You’re reliving moments you wish to forget.

Like the first chunk of hair found on a pillow, the first of many prescriptions, missed classes, seeing your family look at you like you’re slipping away, and the fear—the fear of not knowing what’s going to happen because doctors don’t seem to believe you even though you struggle getting out of bed, and you’re skin and bones, and your hair is falling out. After a while, you begin believing them when they say you’re crazy.

This book is the representation of something very rarely found in literature. Often, we’re scared of reading stories that remind us of real life. I get it. We all want to escape reality, right? Reality always finds us though when we finish the last page.