What Goes Up Read online

  Dedication

  For the person who carved that tiny

  “You can do this” in the study desk at

  the Vassar library. Thanks for getting me through.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  SOS

  Part One: Up

  8:17 a.m.

  Relaxation Techniques

  Unidentified Species

  8:19 a.m.

  Up/Down

  Correction

  Zombee

  I Promised

  Seventh-Grade Pact

  Textual Evidence

  Past Tense

  Ghosted

  In the Video

  Spoiler Alert

  Ian Is Apparently Short For

  Mycorrhizal

  It Doesn’t Seem So Mutual

  Still

  Last May

  Free BF to Good Home

  I Don’t Think I Meant to Hurt Him

  I’m a Fun-gi!

  When We Got to the Party

  After the Kahlúa Ran Out

  Random Flashback

  Random Flashback Redux

  Adaptation

  I Have Sloth Envy

  Unshedding

  Groveling in All Caps

  Her Response

  Kat in Shining Armor

  Junk Food

  Relationship Philosophy

  The Moment of Truth

  Not Sure

  8:44 a.m.

  At Least Now I Know One Thing About Last Night for Sure

  Part Two: Destroying Angel

  Invasive Species

  What They Have in Common

  Classroom Visit

  The Nerve

  What’s in a Name

  The Real Reason

  A.k.a.

  The Hiking Boots

  How to Forage for Morels

  Record Haul

  Sometimes I Wonder

  Signs of Toxicity

  Volunteering in the Discovery Den at the Museum

  Teacher’s Pet

  Tony’s Portrait

  When the Light Changed

  Common Sense

  The First Time

  Please Touch

  Eradication

  Trick or Treat

  Destroying Angel Poisoning

  Haunted

  And in the Morning

  Nature on Display

  What if Mom Went on Tinder

  They

  Pinched

  Suspicious

  Scientific Proof

  Part Three: Art History

  Clueless

  First Impression

  Forage Date

  The Female Responds

  First-Grade Science Fair

  On the Ride Home

  Showing Ian How It’s Done

  My First Spore Print

  Artist’s Statement

  Ian’s Slightly Different Explanation

  Spore Print Fail

  Artistic Evolution

  Amanita phalloides, by Chris Drury

  Tell Him

  Birth of the Spore Print Diaries

  First I Had to Teach Myself

  Pet Food

  Maybe Esther’s Right

  Channeling

  At the Gym

  Wayne Loved It

  Carbon Sink

  Backstory

  Wayne Liked This One, Too

  Part Four: No Matter What

  A.T.B.

  The Off-Season

  In Common

  Keep Trying, Bro

  Inspiration

  A Different Perspective

  BTW, I Never Saw Leo

  Without the Context

  With the Context

  Rage

  Elegant Stinkhorn (Mutinus elegans)

  Overcompensating

  Practice

  Laetiporus sulphureus

  The Night of the Art Show

  When We Turned onto My Street

  They Were So Mad . . .

  . . . About That?

  Excuses

  But Why Wait for the Copy

  The Next Morning Before School

  Regeneration

  Regeneration, Part Two

  The Solution

  Part Five: Down

  9:06 a.m.

  Sloth vs. Ladder

  So Long, Conor

  Field Instructions for Navigating a Post-Party Bathroom

  Bloody Mary

  Two Texts

  Three Responses

  As Much As It Literally Physically Pains Me

  They Mean Well

  King Bolete vs. Bitter Bolete

  Easy Answers

  Hard Question

  Gazelle Attack

  When I Finish the Story

  Breakfast Special

  The Mycophobe

  10:43 a.m.

  Mycorrhizal, Revised

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Christine Heppermann

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  SOS

  Either way,

  it didn’t seem like

  a momentous decision.

  I could go.

  I could not go.

  It was just a party,

  not the Titanic.

  If it sucked,

  it wouldn’t kill me.

  And, hey, who knows,

  it might even be fun.

  8:17 a.m.

  Aspen scaber stalk

  Blue milky cap

  Cloudy clitocybe

  Deadly galerina

  Notgoingtopukenotgoingtopukenotgoingtopuke

  Earthstar

  Justbreathejustbreathejustbreathe.

  Fairy ring

  Gem-studded puffball

  It’sokayit’sokayit’sokayit’sokayit’sokay.

  Hen of the woods

  Not going to puke.

  Just breathe.

  It’s okay.

  Relaxation Techniques

  Ian spins a Frisbee on his finger.

  Kat pictures herself by a river

  watching her negative thoughts

  float by like leaves.

  Esther mentally recaps baking shows—

  whose meringue flopped,

  whose custard froze.

  I list common names of

  mushrooms alphabetically.

  When I was little, other kids

  knew the difference between

  Ariel and Elsa,

  a backhoe and a bulldozer,

  a Diplodocus and a T. rex.

  But I could tell a tree ear

  from a ringed tubaria,

  a slippery jack

  from a slippery jill.

  My favorite bedtime story

  was the Audubon field guide.

  I’d hug Inky Cap, my blue

  hippo, while Dad turned the pages,

  pointed to photos, asked me to guess.

  (He never stumped me.)

  Dad made sure I knew the Latin names,

  too, but who wants to snuggle up with

  Coprinopsis atramentaria?

  Wish you were here, Inky.

  Wish I wasn’t.

  Unidentified Species

  His Name Is Cooper.

  Wait, Connor.

  No, Colin.

  Definitely Colin.

  Maybe Carter?

  Colton?

  8:19 a.m.

  Amber jelly roll

  Birch polypore

  Comb tooth

  Dunce cap . . .

  I’m all the way to

  Pinwheel Marasmius

  before it finally feels safe

  to sit up.

/>   Up/Down

  On the ceiling,

  a poster

  of Darth Vader

  recruiting for his army.

  Your Empire Needs You.

  (Sorry, Darth. Not much

  of a Star Wars fan.)

  On the floor,

  Cooper/Connor/Carter/Colin/Colton,

  rolled toward the wall,

  head poking out from the shell

  of a green sleeping bag.

  On this loft bed,

  trapped between them,

  me.

  Correction

  I’m not alone.

  Lying beside me

  against the rail is

  an R2-D2 trash can?

  On second thought,

  Darth, beam me up

  into your Infinity Falcon thingy.

  I’ll come over to the Dork Side.

  I swear.

  JUST

  GET

  ME

  OUT

  OF

  HERE.

  Zombee

  When your dad is the director of

  the Hudson Valley Nature Museum,

  you learn a lot of crazy shit.

  Like there’s this parasitic fly,

  Apocephalus borealis, that inserts

  its eggs into the abdomen of a bee,

  and then the bee starts slacking off,

  forgetting about nectar, crawling

  in woozy circles on the sidewalk.

  The introduction of a foreign substance

  somehow messes with its system, maybe

  the larvae eat its brain?

  So many things I can’t remember.

  I Promised

  What Esther wanted

  was to stay home,

  go to bed early,

  not look more hideous

  than necessary the next day

  in her peach bridesmaid’s dress

  at her cousin’s wedding.

  But she could tell I really wanted

  to go, that I really wanted

  her there. So she said,

  okay, she would drive us,

  if I promised we’d only stay

  at the party an hour,

  two at most.

  Seventh-Grade Pact

  We pulled it from the back

  of the cabinet, a dusty bottle

  Esther’s parents wouldn’t miss,

  supposedly a red, but to us

  it looked black—we were twelve,

  what did we know? We thought

  the date on the label meant

  expiration.

  I took the first sip.

  Definitely expired.

  Still, we passed it back and forth

  until the taste didn’t matter,

  until we couldn’t stop giggling.

  Outside on Esther’s trampoline,

  we launched ourselves at the moon.

  A midair collision forced us

  back down to earth. We hid

  the bottle in the neighbor’s trash,

  pressed ice to the lump

  on Esther’s forehead,

  and made each other promise

  never to drink again.

  Textual Evidence

  Beside a damp circle of drool,

  a miracle—my phone.

  Time to start swimming backward

  through my texts.

  From Esther: Hey where are you?

  From Kat: They’re playing Maroon fucking 5

  From Kat: My armpit smells like ham

  From Kat: Esther’s turning into a pumpkin

  From Esther: Jorie??????????

  From Esther: MEET AT CAR NOW

  From Me: I have a ride

  From Kat: Hahaha I bet

  From Kat: bye ho bye

  Past Tense

  At some point

  the “have”

  changed to

  “had,”

  and the “ride”

  changed to

  “did not

  go home,”

  and the “I”

  changed to . . .

  Do I really

  want to know?

  Ghosted

  From Me: Hey

  From Me: Room spinny

  From Me: Did you leave?

  From Me: Ian?

  From Me: Hello?????????????????

  In the Video

  Drunk Me

  teeters

  on the edge of the couch

  like a Jenga tower,

  bounces,

  totters,

  almost falls,

  spreads her arms,

  shouts,

  Kat! Hey, Kat!

  Are you ready

  to capture this moment

  of inspiration?

  Drunk Me

  L

  E

  A

  P

  S

  Spoiler Alert

  Gravity:

  It’s legit.

  Ian Is Apparently Short For

  Inertia,

  the property of matter

  by which it remains

  slumped in its chair,

  staring at its phone,

  while

  Cooper/Conor/Carter/Colton

  helps me up, and I limp

  out of the frame, laughing,

  and Kat says, Damn, girl,

  you’re indestructible!

  The video ends.

  I watch it again.

  Mycorrhizal

  What it means is,

  the tree and the mushroom

  have a mutually beneficial relationship,

  that they are separate yet

  connected, roots and hyphae

  intertwined to help each other

  thrive, though new research

  shows that when nitrogen is scarce

  the mushroom may hide this

  vital nutrition from its partner,

  while the tree, continuing to share

  carbohydrates, starts to shrivel.

  It Doesn’t Seem So Mutual

  for the mushroom to sit there,

  pouting, watching Drunk Tree

  stumble off with a stranger.

  At the bare minimum,

  the mushroom should probably

  get off its symbiotic ass and ask

  Drunk Tree if she’s okay.

  Isn’t that the literal definition

  of friends?

  Still

  I get why Ian’s mad.

  He was being nice, inviting his ex-girlfriend

  out so she can escape her ridiculous home life,

  and how does she repay him?

  By getting wasted and jumping around

  on the furniture like an out-of-control toddler

  who thinks she can fly.

  By hanging all over . . .

  Calvin?

  Christopher?

  Cormorant?

  Crustacean?

  Ugh.

  Last May

  Ian thought nothing had to change,

  even though he was moving on to college,

  and I was stuck for two more years

  in the stagnant swamp of THS.

  He’d still be in Poughkeepsie. We could

  see each other all the time. Jorie, it’s like

  the opposite of a long-distance relationship.

  But I said that all depends on

  whether you’re measuring in miles

  or in all the girls he would meet at Marist.

  According to my calculations,

  we’d be about as far apart as we could get.

  Free BF to Good Home

  You don’t have to worry,

  he told me. All men aren’t

  dogs, Jorie. I’m not

  your dad.

  It’s true, Ian’s more of a

  puppy. Gangly. Sweet. Never

  meaning to do anything

  wrong, and when he does,

  you can’t get mad becaus
e

  he’ll look at you with those big

  wounded eyes, and then

  you’re the monster.

  Sure, he can say he wouldn’t

  cheat, but how does he know?

  Besides, it’s not like I dumped him

  in a bag of rocks and tossed him

  off the Mid-Hudson Bridge.

  I said we could still be friends.

  I Don’t Think I Meant to Hurt Him

  A few years ago, Ian broke his thumb skiing.

  It healed a little crooked.

  If it’s cold out or if it rains,

  it aches. He wanted me to

  help him toughen up before

  Ultimate season, so he challenged

  me to thumb-wrestling matches.

  He told me not to go easy

  on him, and I didn’t, but he

  always won, except that one time

  I pinned him fast and hard

  and felt a small, mean glow

  when he winced.

  I’m a Fun-gi!

  That’s tacky, and it’s not even

  grammatical, Mom argued.

  It should say Fungus. Singular.

  But I had already decided

  that the smiling cartoon king bolete—

  Dad’s favorite species—was

  the best T-shirt ever.

  For years Mom buried it

  in the laundry hamper, but Dad

  dug it out and dug it out

  until it practically disintegrated,

  and then one day last year

  I was back at Crazy Dollar, shopping

  for Father’s Day gifts with Esther,

  not expecting to find anything

  that awesome again, but, hey,

  Shitake Happens.

  When We Got to the Party

  I didn’t want Ian to think I was

  clingy, so I dragged Kat and Esther

  into the kitchen, where we hung out

  in an awkward clump, and I was ready

  to admit I wanted to leave, when this girl

  Luna—like the moth, she said, and I instantly

  loved her—came in and started making

  these yummy brown drinks called White

  Russians, the name of which she said was

  racist bullshit, since the Kahlúa does all

  the work, so why should vodka and milk

  get all the credit? and I said we should

  rename it, and then Ian came in,

  and he was all, Cool, you met Luna

  and she’s like, You’re friends of Ian’s

  from high school? That’s awesome!