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THE CREATION OF THE CHORE WHEEL , or Why You Should Always Travel with a Hammer

Ros’s bed was empty our first morning in the Lily Pad. They’d left it unmade, with the sheets kicked down to the bottom and most, if not all, of the contents of their suitcase strewn across their bedspread, like they’d burglarized their own belongings. I reached my hand across the gap and slid it between the sheets—still warm.

I was out of bed quickly. I’d taken the time to unpack and organize last night, so I was dressed in a matter of seconds, in my favorite pair of floral-print overalls, tying a bandanna around my thick, frizzy hair as I went to wake up Touchstone in his upstairs sleeping nook and find Ros, only a little concerned that maybe they’d wandered off into the river again like they had last night. Much to my relief, I found them in the kitchenette, already dressed, holding a mug of coffee.

“It’s weak and there’s no milk,” they said, grinning, “but I made it with extra love.”

They passed me a fresh mug, and I took a sip—it tasted like water with a vague coffee essence.

“It’s perfect,” I said.

“You’re such a liar,” said Ros.

“Don’t drink it all,” Touchstone called from upstairs, which was immediately followed by a thwack of his head on the eaves.

The three of us lugged the heavy couch to face the window so we could watch the mist rise off the river. According to my planner it was Monday, June 9, the start of our first full day in Lovesick, and I found myself already nostalgic for this first morning, the thin coffee, Ros’s legs stretched out over me and Touch, the goose egg slowly forming on his forehead. We’d left our dishes out last night, so as I finished my coffee I began to make us a chore wheel—an object of true beauty made with construction paper and markers that I’d brought from home. In addition to the construction paper, I’d traveled with all sorts of rainy-day activities: puzzles, beading kits, skeins of yarn, Magic Markers. “When will the rest of the Baby-Sitters Club be arriving?” Touch had asked last night as I unpacked. “I’m into beading,” Ros said, rushing to my defense. The joke was ultimately on Touchstone: I’d also brought my floral hammer, which had already come in handy when I banged down a spare nail that’d snagged his sock. I tap-tapped the nail down and felt proud, like, just as my mom had predicted, we’d leave the Lily Pad even better than we found it.

For now, I toiled away happily on my wheel, including such chores as water and dust plants and clean bathroom—or else , while Ros and Touch argued about the quality of the coffee, and my heart soared into my chest. This was everything I had wanted, and I had imagined it into existence: a place I could go with my friends and willingly waste time.

“ Dust plants ,” said Touch. “Where is that coming from?”

“My mom’s plants get super dusty at home,” I said.

“The plant-care dossier did say to clean their leaves,” said Ros.

“You’ve read it already?” I said, surprised.

“Henry wrote the whole thing for us. It deserved to be read. Plus, I was up early,” said Ros. “Needed something to look at.”

“Who takes care of all these plants when they’re not here?” I asked, looking around at all the greenery. I wished I could one day live in a house like this, that seemed to be two parts house and one part jungle.

“I think they pay someone to come take care of them,” Touchstone said. “He told me we were saving him a fortune by being here.”

“Gotcha,” I said. “Well, we can always call that person if we have a plant crisis.”

“We’re not going to have a plant crisis,” said Touch. “Hey, Ros. What’s your plan today?”

“I’m not sure,” Ros said. “I might go into town and see if any place has a help-wanted sign in the window.”

“You don’t have to rush,” I said. “It’s totally fine if you take a day to get acclimated.”

“Yeah, but I want to hold up my end of the contract,” Ros said.

“Baby steps,” I said. “Or maybe today could be a good day to write some poetry?” Before their dad left, Ros was always scribbling away, writing poems in a black notebook.

“Maybe,” they said. “It’s been so long since I’ve written anything, though. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Start with the Lily Pad,” I said. “Or start with the river. Or start with the fact that we’re in this place called Lovesick Falls, a name that’s practically poetry itself.…”

“Hey, Shakespeare,” Touchstone said. “We should really get going—”

I looked at my watch. “Oh my God, is that the time? We’ve gotta go! Bye, Ros—text me if you need anything—come on, let’s go, Touch—”

Ros called to us wishing us a good first day as we ran out to the car, and we were off.

On the drive to work I got my first glimpse of town, whose sleepy main street was growing slightly livelier as the mist burned off. It wouldn’t reach peak hum until the theater season started, which wasn’t for another two and a half weeks, with the opening of Into the Woods . For now, its sidewalks were thinly dotted with people: an older couple holding paper cups of coffee and greasy brown bags; some day hikers kitted out in boots and hiking poles; shop owners putting out their signs for the day. We followed a pickup truck with two shaggy dogs in its bed, who barked gleefully at everyone they passed.

“There’s a really nice beach down that way, where my brothers used to pretend to drown to scare me,” Touch said. Touchstone had two much older brothers, ten and eight years his senior, heavily involved in sports, who’d spent a lifetime tormenting their much younger sibling.

“Your brothers are awful,” I said.

“Don’t I know it. And that place makes incredible breakfast sandwiches—and, oh, Henry also mentioned this other place, the Dropped Acorn—it’s a little farther away, but it’s supposed to be incredible.…”

“Do we think they’ll be okay?” I asked Touchstone.

“Yeah, that’s the whole point. The food is supposed to be amazing.”

“No—do we think Ros will be okay today?”

“I think Ros would actually appreciate my fabulous tour guiding.”

“Seriously,” I said. “I worry about them all on their own.”

This was the flaw in my plan that I’d been fretting over: In spite of all my best efforts, I hadn’t come up with a way for us to be totally together. Touchstone had been a shoo-in as a member of the Young Company at Arden & Co., the theater festival. I’d had similar luck finding employment there: I’d managed to trick my way into an internship at the costume shop based on a few sketches I’d done, photographs of some old Halloween costumes I’d made, and an interview that I’d more or less blacked out during. Costumes weren’t necessarily my passion—I would’ve preferred making chore wheels or elaborate proposals—but since no such internships existed, costumes would do for the summer. But Ros hadn’t found work yet. They’d applied for a couple of jobs but gotten rejected from all of them—even from working concessions for the theater, which we could hardly believe. “I’m cursed,” said Ros. It did kind of seem that way, though putting stock in curses was more my mother’s bag than my own. Even though getting a job was in our Modest Proposal contract, the three of us decided that maybe Ros would have more luck on the ground. We decided that until they found something, they would be our Hestia, tending the hearth of the Lily Pad and keeping the metaphorical home fires burning. It was a big job, to take care of the house, especially for Ros, who didn’t share my obsession with cleanliness—but Ros assured me and Touch and our parents that they were up to the challenge. The arrangement wasn’t perfect, but it worked: Touch and I had jobs at the theater festival, and we’d have our stay-at-home friend until something changed.

“You worry too much,” Touchstone said.

“Obviously. But the question stands.”

Touchstone sighed. “You can’t babysit them forever.”

“I’m not babysitting . I’m looking out for them. After the year they’ve had, I think that’s the least we can do, don’t you?” He didn’t answer, so I just kept talking—trying to convince him, or me, or maybe both of us that all this worrying was in Ros’s best interest and not evidence of some other feelings that I had for them. “They’re my friend.”

“ I’m your friend,” said Touchstone. “You didn’t do my physics homework for the entire year.”

“It was a handful of times, thank you very much, just the refraction unit and then a few times on oscillations,” I said. “And your dad didn’t leave .”

“He’s been gone over a year at this point,” said Touchstone. “Ros is doing much better. They smile. They laugh. They made us bad coffee. They seem like a version of a person they used to be. And you seem…”

Obsessive. Fixated. Fanatical.

“It didn’t freak you out, watching them walk into the river last night?” I said.

“Not really. Ros is a good swimmer, and you walked in there, too.”

“It was probably stupid in retrospect,” I said. “We’re lucky we didn’t drown. What were they thinking? It could have ended so badly.”

“But it didn’t ,” Touchstone said. “Look at the facts in front of you, Celia. They seemed really good this morning. They were up. They read about the plants. Sure, they don’t have a job, but who cares? It’s summer. Maybe swimming in that river last night was a rebirth. Maybe they really did just need a change of scene, and you gave that to them. Maybe they’ve finally returned to their original form. Maybe you can stop worrying about them so much and start worrying about something—or someone—else.”

“Maybe,” I said.

I tried, for the rest of the drive, to turn off the worry as he suggested, just enjoy Touchstone’s tour guiding, admire the way the forest came right up to the road, and lose myself in the curve of the river below us. But Ros had been at the forefront of my brain for half a decade, and forgetting them just wasn’t that easy.

Ros was new in fourth grade, and we met because they were seated at my cluster of desks. They had furious, explosive hair, olive skin, and a scowl, and when I first saw them, they were scratching out the latter two-thirds of their name as it had been written on their name tent, pressing with so much force they’d torn a hole in the paper. I was worried that year about not being in a class with Touchstone—they’d split us up for the first time in our lives, into separate classrooms that didn’t even have recess together. My parents kept trying to recast this tragedy as an opportunity to make new friends and take risks , though I saw through all of that. I was alone, and to make matters worse I was quiet. Though I’d come a long way from the days when I used to clam up entirely, my teacher last year had written on my report card: Celia’s written work is excellent, and her reading level is very high, though I’d love to see her speak up more in class . My parents were obsessed with this comment and had urged me that very morning during drop-off to speak up more! But speaking, for whatever reason, was harder than reading and writing, even though I knew the words were the same. Touchstone got me, but other kids laughed, made fun of me for using the big words I liked.

So then I found my name tent next to Ros. I couldn’t tell if they were a boy or a girl. It didn’t matter to me. I was drawn to them at once.

“Hi,” I said. Risk number one.

They grunted.

My own name tent read Cece , which was how I’d been known for the first nine years of my life, a nickname that I wasn’t particularly fond of, but one that had just sort of stuck , like spilled pink lemonade, tacky and cloying, bound to attract bees. I watched this person, this Ros, blacken in the latter half of their name, and it occurred to me that I could do the same.

“Excuse me,” I said, “would it be possible, please, if it’s not too much trouble, if you might lend me your pencil?”

I had my own, but asking to borrow Ros’s was risk number two.

Ros considered me, then handed me their pencil. It was stubby and missing an eraser and covered in teeth marks. I carefully crossed out Cece and wrote Celia above it. There—much more dignified. I sat up straighter.

I handed their pencil back to them. They had dirt under their fingernails.

“Thank you so very much,” I said.

In response, they barked at me. Quite literally: a single, unmistakable woof that sent our teacher’s head a-spin and garnered some questioning looks from our desk mates. It was a little weird, I thought, to bark hello, but mostly they sounded like my dog Tabitha during a thunderstorm. She’s just scared , my mom would say, and rub her velvety ears. Buckets, unmoved by thunder, would pant solidly beside her, like a big blocky-headed port in the storm.

“Nice Ros,” I said. “Good Ros.”

They blinked at me, stunned. I pulled a clementine from my pocket and began to unpeel it, trying to keep the peel in one long strip.

“Want some?” I said, holding out a piece.

They took it from me and placed it into their mouth, though I couldn’t tell if they were chewing.

“How is it? My friend Touchstone gave it to me. Sometimes they’re too mealy or tough and I have to spit it out, but sometimes they’re juicy and perfect and I could eat like twelve of them. Once I did eat twelve of them, and then I threw up, and that was atrocious,” I said.

Ros chewed, swallowed.

“Good, then?” I said.

“It’s… orangely bright,” they said finally, and I laughed and they laughed.

“Just so you know,” they said, “I’m not a dog. I’m a wolf.”

“Okay,” I said. I didn’t care what they were. I just wanted them to be my friend. “I’m not really a student. I’m a princess in disguise.”

“Cool,” said Ros, and the rest was history.

At recess, Ros said, “Come on,” and we raced to the edge of the schoolyard. I wore saddle shoes that year, which I loved—black and white, old-fashioned—and that I’d begged my mother for until she’d caved, finally. Ros wore the shoes that all the boys had, and they ran fast, faster than Touchstone, faster than the fastest kid in the grade.

At the edge of the playground they paused. There was a hole in the fence, and they started to dip through it now.

“We’re not allowed,” I said.

“You don’t have to come,” Ros said. They looked almost sad, disappointed at the prospect of leaving me here, having come this far.

I had never broken a rule before. But this was a risk, wasn’t it? I followed them.

We were in the far corner of someone’s yard, where a weeping willow stood. Ros ducked beneath the branches of the tree and walked closer to the tree trunk, where they pulled a handful of pebbles from their sweatshirt pocket and began to sort through them. They squatted, placing certain pebbles amid the roots, and that was when I saw it: In the root system of the tree, right by Ros’s feet, stood the start of a tiny village. A few houses had been made with wood chips I recognized from the playground, with moss layered over their roofs. The pebbles Ros had placed formed a path between the houses. It was the beginnings of a fairy world, tiny and perfect and all built by Ros’s hand.

I wouldn’t have told you this if you’d asked me, but I hated recess. Playing felt like a chore, something we had to do in order to get back to the good stuff—worksheets, memorizing, spelling, learning. Make-believe with Touchstone was all right—we were always orphans, and I was usually the eldest—but we were a little old for it now. The girls were interested in monkey bars and acrobatics, jump rope. A few played sports with the boys, but they were always forced to be the goalie. Flipping upside down made me feel seasick, and though I loved to swim and play tennis, I didn’t want to join in the soccer game, which always seemed to end in a skinned knee. Touchstone and I played tetherball sometimes, but you had to race to get there first. We played cards for a while, but then some kid punched another over a specific Pokémon card, so all cards were banned. Sometimes we read books side by side, but I felt self-conscious, the words swimming in front of my eyes, while smiling, well-meaning teachers were always telling me to go play , like it was such an easy thing to learn how to do.

But I watched Ros get lost in this world at their feet.

I picked up a leaf that had fallen, ripped off a tiny piece, and placed it in front of one of the houses.

“What’s that?” Ros asked.

“A welcome mat,” I said.

A smile spread slowly across Ros’s face. “I think we’re going to need more sticks.”

It was, finally, a kind of play I understood.

From then on, we were Ros and Celia, and we were inseparable. We didn’t make a whole lot of sense when you looked at us—this feral zap of energy and this rule-loving bookworm—but beneath our outward appearance there was a connection between us that was hard to put into words. When I finally had both Ros and Touchstone over for a playdate, Touchstone accepted Ros as quickly as he adapted to Celia , my new name, which was to say, instantly (unlike my parents, who for years still introduced me to people as “their little baby Cece”). They seemed like brothers to me: They raced each other across the length of my backyard (Ros won) and crushed Otter Pops together and chugged the icy, sweet pulp so quickly their tongues turned blue. Between the three of us, we built another small city in my own backyard, and I felt a swelling in my chest watching us build it. I had hoped, in a vague sort of way, that I would make more friends, the kinds I read about in books. It seemed nice to have more than one friend. But I never in a million years had thought to hope for someone like Ros. Until I met them, I wouldn’t have known how.