Dear Teen Me from Author Zu Vincent (THE LUCKY PLACE)

Dear Teen Me,

Thank you for believing in your future writer self. For trusting that your dreams would come true. For being both the quiet observer and the spirited voice. Vagabond and homebody.  For recording the things you felt most deeply—marking down between the pages of your heart those moments that would later flow from your pen, whole cloth. Moments like the one below when, perched in your tree, you saw what you weren’t meant to see…

People called it the Delta breeze, the one that blew across the flatlands from the ocean. A muggy, cool breeze that prowled up Diamond Street, shaking the trees to life. It came just when you were about to suffocate, just when you thought you couldn’t stand the heat any longer, fitful with the hint of far off places.

But first, the dark hours before the breeze, when it was so hot and still, when nothing stirred or breathed, and you carried the whole world inside, wilted and waiting.

Diamond Street was changing. We moved there when I was three. Back then the houses were new and the trees just planted, the street felt wide as a river. By the time I was twelve the trees in front of the houses had all grown huge. Their limbs arched up and wove together over the street. The houses themselves had shrunk and needed paint, and extra cars parked along the clogged gutters, as if each address held more than one family at a time.

That summer, the Johnsons across the street left for a better neighborhood, and a woman named Rosa moved in with a batch of kids. Only the two girls belonged to Rosa. The boys were foster kids. Mom and our neighbor Janet Candy talked about this over beers. They speculated on Rosa’s welfare check and the men who came to see her. But those were happy times for me, when Mom was home and laughing over beers with Janet Candy.

I was changing too. Sometimes Diamond Street was a warm heart, beating. The shouts of kids playing in the street, doors slamming, radios turned up. That time of year the jays sat on the phone wires and watched for something bright to drop from someone’s pocket. Dogs chased them out of reach. Sometimes I rode my old bike uphill, to the top of the street, like I used to when I was little. I loved the sensation coming down, whizzing past the rows of houses until their lawns and flower beds blurred.

Other times I was tired of Diamond Street. I just wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere but here.

The tree in front of our house had a beautiful shape, with upward spreading branches and smooth bark. It forked three times and each fork was big enough for a person to rest in, cradled. The leaves high up shielded you from the street, and shook in the slightest breeze. They were early spring leaves, this tender kind of green.

I never used to climb this tree, for a while it was too small and then I thought I was too old. Now I liked being up here, especially after dark, hidden on the thinnest branches that would hold me. That night the houses on Diamond Street were blazing. It was warm so people left their front windows open. From one of them the theme song for “Friends” leaked out. Across the street Janet screamed and her back door banged. A dog barked. All up and down the street the square front lawns painted the same square black patches, except for the different shrubs people planted. And the Catholics, three doors down, who had a lit up plastic Jesus in their window, throwing light.

I thought about climbing down when the car pulled up. I held my breath because my brother and some other boys got out. I didn’t know what Jamie was doing with boys like these, regular seeming boys, not studio dancers. The only one I recognized was Gabriel. He was okay, we used to play with him when we were little, before his mom got a divorce and they moved away. But he was like the other boys now, he’d grown his hair long and was acting slouchy. They all plunked down cross-legged under the tree.

“You got it?” one of the boys said.

“Hang on,” another one answered.

“Let me.” My brother’s voice was low and drawly. Like someone who planned to be a dropout, not a dancing star. He struck a match and his face was full of long shadow. His eyebrows looked heavy, his cheekbones sharp. He drew in smoke from a short cigarette and I thought I knew what that cigarette was. Jamie made little sipping noises, then passed the cigarette. The others kept going around the circle like that.

“Wow,” one of them said. Another one laughed. His laugh made a dark spot against the lighter night. A breeze struck the tree and brought a funny smell. The branch under me swayed.

“You feel anything?” Jamie asked.

“Naw,” someone answered. Then they all laughed again, but low, as if they didn’t want anyone to hear.

“You’re supposed to get hungry.”

After a big pause they started to talk about girls. I wanted to jump down and surprise them, but then these boys would know I did silly things like climb trees. So I tipped my head back until there was nothing between me and the stars except a few scrawny leaves. The breeze shook the leaves until the stars ruffled, and a strange feeling hit me. As if my brother and I had just stepped into a current, where the water was too strong. He was holding my hand, but he had to let me go.

—zu vincent

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Zu Vincent writes for both children and adults.  A freelance writer and former editor, she wrote her novel THE LUCKY PLACE (Front Street Press) while earning her MFA from Vermont College, where she was awarded the Harcourt semester in 2006. Among her many published works are short stories, a play, essays for Harper’s, Yoga Journal and the ALAN Review, and the 2009 Scholastic biography CATHERINE THE GREAT: EMPRESS OF RUSSIA. THE LUCKY PLACE is an Honor Book for the Paterson Prize.

Tags: Franklin Watts, Front Street, Scholastic, Zu Vincent