A Taxonomy of Love Read online

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of Congress.

  ISBN 978-1-4197-2541-8

  eISBN 978-1-68335-164-1

  Text copyright © 2018 Rachael Allen

  Book design by Alyssa Nassner

  Published in 2018 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

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  To Susan, for believing, and to Zack, for everything

  Prologue

  Two important things happened the summer I turned thirteen.

  Hope moved in next door.

  Mrs. Laver assigned a summer project on taxonomy.

  The goal: Photograph twenty distinct kinds of insects and classify them by drawing their taxonomies.

  The best part was when I found this devil scorpion carrying fourteen milky-white baby scorpions on her back. They looked just like her, except light colored and in miniature: miniature pinchers, threadlike legs, bodies smaller than her stinger.

  Looking at the world that way really made sense to me. Because you have all the scorpions together on one branch, with their pinchers and their segmented tails with the stingers on the end. And if you go up a branch, you get the Arachnida class, which maybe surprises you at first because spiders and scorpions don’t seem that much alike, but then you realize they’re both invertebrates with eight segmented legs. And if you keep going up and up, you can see how every living organism is the same, but also how they’re different, and also how many degrees of different. You can see how everything fits together.

  After the project was over, I started doodling taxonomies here and there—usually funny, goofy stuff. But before I knew it, I was drawing them all the time. Some people don’t like labels and things, but I think they can help you understand yourself. Sometimes. Like if you’ve been acting really weird and you can’t help it and the doctor finally tells you that you have Tourette’s syndrome. It’s more than labels and words. It’s an aha moment and an explanation and a plan. Labels like that can lift the weight off your shoulders.

  I guess that’s why I’ve always liked classifying people and things, even if it’s just figuring out which creature on a Magic: The Gathering card is the most like my terrifying P.E. teacher. And these taxonomies, I mean, they could be even better than the Magic cards. Maybe I could finally figure out why I see things so differently from everybody else. Maybe I could use it to understand why girls always seem to like my big brother so much. Maybe I could use it to understand everything.

  Part One

  13 years old

  A TAXONOMY OF GIRLS WHO MAKE IT DIFFICULT TO CONCENTRATE ON MATH HOMEWORK

  My new next-door neighbor, Hope Birdsong, has magical powers, I’m, like, 80 percent sure of it.

  Fact: She makes bullies twice her size cower in fear (which suggests mind control, or at the very least, otherworldly bravery).

  Fact: Her hair smells like honeysuckles in spring, and she has the entire world tacked to the walls of her bedroom.

  Fact: Did you miss the part where her name is Hope Birdsong? Ordinary people don’t have names like that.

  Given all this information, I should have happiness shooting out of my pores. There’s just one problem.

  Fact: Hope Birdsong will never, ever, EVER love me back.

  I blame the cookies.

  At any given time, there’s a 35 percent chance my stepmom is baking cookies. Some days, the cookies feel like more than just baked goods—like they’re harbingers of awesomeness. Other days, they’re just really freaking delicious.

  Pam is working on another batch of Peanut Butter Blossoms when I hear a great big engine yawn to a stop next door. Before they can get their doors open, I’m peering through the blinds, fingers crossed by my side that there will be kids coming out of the moving van and that they won’t be a bunch of Neanderthals like my big brother, Dean, and all his friends. I wait and wish. The graphic of carnivorous plants splashed on the side of the truck seems like a very good sign.

  Let him be the kind of kid who likes Minecraft and spy gear more than punching people.

  Let him think camping is the best way to spend a Friday night.

  Let him—

  And I never get to finish that thought because the door opens, and out jumps her.

  “Spencer, what are you looking at?” asks Pam.

  Some things can stun you into absolute honesty. “The most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”

  “Oh, yeah? What does she look like?”

  You can hear the amusement in her voice, and it’s pretty cool of her not to make fun of me. In fact, Pam is mostly a pretty cool stepmom, except when she does weird stuff like freak out and buy an industrial amount of cleaning products just because I told her I pee in the shower. Like everyone else doesn’t.

  “She has white hair,” I finally manage to say.

  Pam looks up from where she’s rinsing a bowl. “You mean blonde?”

  “Uh-uh. White.” It’s practically glowing. It reminds me of fiber optics.

  I watch in wonder as she frolics around the yard with a German shepherd that is halfway between a dog and a puppy.

  “Hope!” yells a voice from the house, and she runs inside.

  Hope. Of course that’s her name.

  The oven beeps.

  “Do you think we should take some cookies to our new neighbors?” asks my stepmom.

  YES! Yes, that is the best idea in the history of good ideas! Yes, I should do it right now because Hope has been gone for six whole seconds and I’m already starting to go through withdrawal! My mouth is open, but nothing comes out. The one slippery, life-changing word I need hovers cruelly out of reach.

  And at exactly that moment, I hear my brother’s voice behind me. “Who’s that chick with the white hair?”

  Hope! I turn, and there she is in her yard again.

  “Boys. Welcome cookies?” Pam holds up the gleaming plate, and she is looking right at me, but my jaw has spontaneously wired itself shut. Not Dean’s. He swoops past and plucks the plate right out of the air, plucks the confidence right out of my chest. He had to have seen me trying to say yes. My feelings were so big, they were bubbling against the ceiling and leaking out the open window. He had to have noticed.

  I watch—seething—as that a-hole skips up the stairs of the Birdsongs’ front porch and into Hope’s heart.

  It should have been my hand clanking the anchor-shaped door-knocker the Rackhams left behind.

  It should have been my eyes eating up her smile and beaming it back.

  It should have been me.

  I’m still kind of moping about it the next day. Pam suggests I go over and introduce myself—no way—and then she says if I keep making that face, she’s going to take me over there herself and make me shake hands with everyone in their family, so I decide it�
��s time to get out of the house. ASAP.

  I escape to the mudroom and try to figure out what to do next. I guess I could see if Mimi–that’s my grandma–wants to go hiking. I glance out the window at the apartment over the garage where Mimi’s lived ever since Grandaddy died six years ago. The light is on, so she’s probably home. I can’t help glancing at Hope’s house, too, but I don’t see her, and anyway, I need to stop being pathetic.

  I shake my head and grab my hiking boots. I do not expect to find a caterpillar lurking behind them.

  “Well, hi there, little guy. How’d you get inside?”

  He’s brown with a bright sunny green patch that covers his entire back like a blanket, except for dead center, where there’s a small brown circle that looks like it’s meant for a miniature rider. I do not pick him up. A saddleback sting is worse than ten bees. Those little tufts that cover the horns on his head and tail and look like they’d be oh-so-fun to pet? They are poison-filled barbs.

  I can’t resist, though, so I touch my index finger to the soft skin of the caterpillar’s saddle. He rears back his head and tail, body curving into a U. The petting zoo is closed today, my friend. I jerk my hand away. I’m pretty sure he’s glaring at me.

  “Hey, Spencer. Whatcha doing?” My dad sweeps in and sits on the bench across from me.

  “Oh, well, I just found this caterpillar.”

  He squints at it. “Huh. Funny little guy. Listen, Dean and I are fixing to go to the cabins to make some repairs. You’d probably rather stay here and catch caterpillars, though. Right?”

  He doesn’t really look at me while he’s talking, busy pulling on his tennis shoes without bothering to untie and retie the laces.

  “Oh, um. Yeah.” The last time I tried to help out at the cabins, there was an unfortunate incident involving a staple gun.

  “Thought so.” He touches the top of my baseball cap. “See you, buddy.”

  (Everything you need to know about my dad: One time he sliced his leg with a chain saw while he was cutting down trees, and he took a shower AND made himself a BLT sandwich before driving himself to the hospital.)

  I go grab a piece of printer paper and gently prod the caterpillar onto it with the tip of a work glove. Dean rushes in and squeezes his feet into his already-laced-up shoes.

  “Crap, I forgot my hat.” He runs back downstairs to his bedroom.

  I look down at my unlaced boots. I wonder if everyone puts on their shoes the same way except me. Maybe my mom doesn’t. Maybe she drinks skim milk with her Chinese takeout, even though everyone else thinks it’s gross. But I don’t know. I haven’t actually seen her since I was five.

  I carry the saddleback outside on his paper stretcher. You can tell it’s summer just from the noises. Kids yelling and laughing, and the sound of a basketball echoing against the asphalt. For some reason, the raucous pick-up game across the street makes me feel more alone than ever.

  Then I realize I’m not. Alone, I mean.

  Hope is standing on her front porch, empty cookie plate clutched against her chest. And the expression on her face, well, I’m pretty sure it matches the one I was just wearing.

  Dean slams the door behind me. Hope turns toward the sound. Sees me. Waves. She’s walking down the stairs. This could be my shot. I have approximately twelve seconds to think of a stunning introduction. Something that will make me seem worldly. Cool. Mysterious.

  “This is my brother, Spencer. He’s playing with a caterpillar.”

  Not that.

  But she smiles. “Hi, I’m Hope.”

  “Hi,” I say. And then I tic. It’s just a shrug, probably my least embarrassing tic, but now all I can think about is whether I seem nonchalant or deranged. My tic-shrug isn’t the same as my real shrug. When I tic, it looks like my shoulders are connected to a piece of string, and someone decided it would be fun to give me a yank.

  Hope doesn’t seem to notice even when I tic-shrug a couple more times. I’m not ready to put her on the Kids Who Don’t Make Fun of Me list, but we’ll call her a solid maybe. “I, um, brought your plate back. The cookies were really good. Thanks.”

  I reach my hand out, but Dean snags the plate first (again). His hand brushes against Hope’s, and her cheeks turn pink. I hate my brother. I mean, I really hate him.

  “Dean!” my dad bellows from the truck. “Let’s go.”

  “See ya.” He cocks his head at Hope and shoves the plate against my chest like he’s doing a football handoff.

  I guess I expected Hope to leave after that, because it surprises me when she stays standing in front of me.

  “So, what grade are you gonna be in?” she asks.

  “Seventh.”

  “Me, too!”

  I am thinking this is possibly the best news I’ve received all summer, when a woman with the most toned arms I have ever seen emerges from Hope’s house.

  “You ready to go to the farmers’ market?”

  “Sure,” Hope calls over her shoulder. She smiles at me. “I’ll see you around, okay?”

  “Sure. Definitely.” I am proud of myself because I manage to say it as she walks away instead of after she’s already in her car.

  A couple of the basketball guys stare at her as she goes. I can already see it happening. They’ll assimilate her right into the fold, and that will be the end of it. I upgrade the chance she’ll be making fun of me by next week from maybe to probable.

  But then I notice her watching them as her mom drives away. She’s making that face again. The lost one.

  I downgrade from probable to maybe not at all.

  FYI, when someone says they’ll see you around and then doesn’t show their face for four whole days, you can bet they are calling you Caterpillar Boy to any and everyone.

  Dean just left for baseball camp, so I’m in the den playing whatever games I like for as long as I like because he isn’t there stealing the controller and giving me ultimate wedgies. It is a land of aliens and car thieves and zombies, and I am king, and I could play forever. Or just for the next ten minutes, because the king could really use a Mountain Dew break.

  I’m walking back from the kitchen, drink in hand, when there’s a knock at the door, and I happen to answer (read: am forced to by Pam).

  It’s her.

  I’m tempted to shut the door and open it again just to make sure, but I don’t want to seem weird, so instead I stare at her awkwardly and wonder if her hair is made of sunlight.

  “Hey, do you want to come outside?” she asks.

  Yes, I say. Except inside my head and not with my mouth.

  No, no, no, no, no. Not again. Is this what it’s going to be like every time I see her? My teeth sticking like someone superglued them together and my tongue falling down the back of my throat? I make a guttural, choking-type noise. Hope looks at me like she’s wondering if I have some kind of brain damage.

  “Do. You. Want. To. Come. Outside?” She flashes me a reassuring smile. The porch fans spin in lazy circles, also known as The Speed That Sends Hypnotizing Ripples Through Hair.

  “Sure,” I say, relieved that I no longer seem to have lockjaw. And then my shoulders twitch upward in a tic. Not a big one, but she must have seen it. Except she doesn’t react. Maybe she thought it was just the regular kind of shrug. Maybe my tic-shrug isn’t as different as I think it is.

  And then I’m thinking about my tics, and Hope noticing my tics, and the tan lines painted across her collarbones, and whether she noticed me noticing the tan lines, and holy balls, my nose itches . . . Do it. Just do it. You’ll feel so much better. There are freaking fire ants crawling around inside my nose and tickling me with their scritchy-scratchy feet, and all I have to do is sniff, and they’ll all go away.

  Hope is watching me.

  Don’t. Tic.

  I have to!

  Don’t.

  But the ants. I NEED TO TIC SO BAD, I—

  Sniiiiff.

  The relaxation is instant. I think this might be what my dad feels like when
he sneaks behind the woodpile with a cigar. Except I’m also flooded with this tremendous sense of accomplishment, like at the cellular level. Releasing a suppressed tic makes me feel like I have just climbed a mountain, and all is right with the world.

  I follow Hope down the stairs, hoping she doesn’t notice that sniff or the two that come after.

  I tic a lot (dozens of times a day? hundreds?), but it definitely happens more when I’m anxious. And maybe I notice it more when I’m anxious? Probably both.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “I was gonna go climb trees. You wanna come?”

  OMGPANCAKES, IS THIS REAL LIFE??? “Yes.”

  I trail behind her, feet shuffling, mind spinning. I do this thing—okay, it’s dorky, but I have this deck of Magic cards, and I tape people’s names onto the cards based on what they’re like (not the valuable ones, obviously). I don’t know, I feel like it helps me get a handle on people or something. It started this one time when I threw up when we were hunting. Dad and Dean were laughing, and I was like, Minotaurs, the both of you! And if I had to guess for Hope, I’d say she’s a Satyr Grovedancer or maybe some kind of dryad. I’ve been wrong in the past (when Dad first started dating Pam, I thought for sure she was a mountain troll). But there’s the hair, the name, and then the tree climbing. No human middle-school girl wants to spend her Saturdays climbing trees. They’ve all received the standard-fun lobotomy by now and started acting like Bella Fontaine across the street. Bella divides her time between obsessing over boys, making fun of people like me, and plotting middle school domination via text message, and she is most decidedly not a dryad, though I could be convinced she’s a harpy.

  “I found this grove of perfect climbing trees out past the cul-de-sac that way.” She points into the distance, her chin jutting out in a regal kind of way. It’s a strong chin for a girl, with just a hint of a cleft.

  “Yeah! I know that place. Those are pecan trees.”

  “They are? That’s so cool!”

  “I know! In the fall we pick them, and Pam makes pies.”