Where We Used to Roam Jenn Bishop (red white royal blue TXT) 📖

Becca said, as if it were a certified fact that the people who do art club are weirdos.

I got this strange feeling in my stomach then. Did my wanting to do it mean she felt that way about me, too? Just a little?

“But I don’t know who does art club,” I said. “Not for sure. I haven’t even gone yet.”

“You should’ve signed up for Battle of the Books back in September. But hey, you could still do Forensics with me! That doesn’t start for a few more weeks.”

I had been interested in Forensics. But that was before I realized it wasn’t like CSI at all. Once I learned it was about giving speeches, no thanks!

When we first visited the middle school as fifth graders back in the spring, I’d been so excited. There were tons more after-school activities than we had in elementary, and since the middle school was walking distance from my house, it didn’t matter anymore that no one was around to drive me. Becca and I, we could just walk home.

But here we were, more than a quarter into the school year, and I hadn’t signed up for anything. It was easier for Austin. When you do sports, it’s all figured out for you. Fall was for football, then he had basketball all winter, and track in the spring. I promised Mom I’d try spring track, but right now spring felt a long way away. And Becca did a million activities. I needed something.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“What about math club? You’re good at math.”

She wasn’t wrong. It was my best subject. Well, after art. I’d just never had a chance to do art for a grade. Still, I wasn’t nearly as good at math as Becca, who was taking it at the high school.

“Maybe,” I said as we waited at a crosswalk. But it was entirely different from the “maybe” I’d given Ms. Patel just fifteen minutes ago.

If I wanted to do something, why did it matter whether or not Becca was on board?

CHAPTER TWO

It was my brother who spotted the shadow boxes first. Just over two years ago, when the four of us went to Chicago when my mom ran the marathon. Dad was never good at standing around quietly and looking at stuff, so Austin was always the one who’d go with me to museums.

We’d taken selfies at the Bean and left Dad to explore Millennium Park while Austin and I checked out the Art Institute.

“You ever hear of this guy, Em? Joseph Cornell?” Austin had stopped in front of a box on the wall. It reminded me of the dioramas we made for school projects sometimes, except this one was different. For one, it wasn’t cardboard. It had a glass front and wooden sides, and in the back was a piece of wood with a hole cut out, the kind of thing you might peek through. Sitting on the bottom of the box was a small globe, a little blue cube, and a red bead. “Guess he was a collector, too.”

The Art Institute had dozens of these shadow boxes by Joseph Cornell. Some with layers of text, almost like decoupage. Several with birds and owls. One with a creepy naked doll. I was immediately obsessed with them. I couldn’t get over how the way he’d arranged these objects in a box seemed to tell a story. Or give you a feeling. It was so much more than just some random stuff in a box. And at the same time, it was exactly that.

Ever since I was little I’d held on to things. Mom wasn’t one of those minimalist moms, and she was never really strict about what Austin and I did with our bedrooms. Beneath my bed and in my closet were boxes of stuff I’d saved. When we got back home from Chicago, I made my first-ever shadow box with some of my treasures from when I was little. A lovey that had made a few too many trips through the washing machine and dryer. One of those trinkets I’d begged Dad for a quarter to buy at the grocery store—a miniature plastic person. And three shiny pennies. According to Dad, Grandpa Bill had let me go through his wallet when I was little and I had asked him, 100 percent serious, if when he was very, very old and about to die, I could have the three shiny pennies. They’d all had a good laugh and Grandpa Bill gave them to me that day.

I glued them to the back of the box, the way I’d noticed Joseph Cornell did in some of his boxes, and laid out the other items on the bottom.

Dad helped me hang the shadow box on the wall in my bedroom like it was in a museum. “My very own Joseph Cornell,” I’d said.

Dad corrected me. “Your very first Emma O’Malley. You never know, Em. This could be worth something one day.”

I laughed him off. Probably blushed, too. But ever since, when I think of that moment and how my dad took me seriously, I realize how lucky I am. There aren’t a whole lot of other kids in my school whose parents would be okay with them wanting to be an artist. At least, I don’t think. No, most people’s parents want them to be doctors or lawyers, or to work in tech. Even though Becca loves reading more than life itself, she already knows she wants to be a doctor when she grows up, like her parents.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, I was up late, working on my latest shadow box. A playlist was on softly in the background.

When she was doing the dishes after the big meal, Mom accidentally dropped one of her favorite plates, a delicate crystal one she’d inherited from her great-grandmother, and it shattered into dozens of pieces. She was about to throw it away when I asked if I could have it for one of