What Happened to Ivy by Kathy Stinson

doing?”
    My bike crashes to the ground and I charge across the garden.
    “It’s not enough that you…you…” I shove Dad hard into the brick wall. “You drowned her, didn’t you!”
    Dad opens his mouth but I cut him off.
    “I might have been one lousy brother but I would never have done what you did!” And I smash my fist hard into his face. His nose flattens under my knuckles.
    I watch the blood gush. And then – for my sister, for Ivy – I smash him again.
    Just then Hannah rounds the corner of the house. She’s changed out of her running clothes but looking all grubby. Dad swipes an arm across his face, leaving a streak of blood. “She’s been helping stack the lumber. She—”
    “ Yoo-ou —!” I bellow at her. “ You traitor! ”
    “David,” Hannah says, moving over beside my dad. “It’s not like that. I just—”
    My feet pound the pavement hard. Down the sidewalk and past the end of our street. A sharp, angry smell rises off my body. How could she go help him, knowing what he did? How could she help him wreck the one thing left of Ivy’s?
    And my garden! How could she?

Chapter 26
    My chest feels like someone’s running a buzz saw through it. My shins are screaming. I can’t run any farther. I can hardly walk. I stumble through the streets not caring if I look like a madman.
    Even if I could run forever, I’ll never escape how it felt to see Hannah standing beside my dad. After telling me, not more than an hour before, that she knew I’d told her the truth about him. After letting me hold her.
    The only person who ever really cared about me is Ivy. And Will.
    I duck into a variety store and ask to use their phone.
    “I’d love to see you, David,” Will says. “One of the staff here is taking me to the botanical gardens this afternoon. How about I meet you there?”
    It feels so good just to hear his voice. I should have called him ages ago.
    At the entrance to the botanical gardens, I hand over some of my school-supply money.
    The perennial beds here look tired. Or maybe it’s just me that’s tired. I’ve got a lot of time to kill before meeting Will, so I take a deep breath and turn along a path I haven’t taken before. It’s lined with lilies. Butterflies flit from one to another. The lilies smell different outside than they did in the church at Ivy’s funeral.
    Will everything be defined now in terms of Ivy and how she died?
    Apples in the orchard are starting to turn red. I haven’t been here since the trees were blooming. When life was simple but I didn’t know it. Before Ivy died.Before I met Hannah.
    The path through the lily beds leads to a shady area where speckled lungwort carpets the ground under spruce trees. Lungwort’s Latin name, Pulmonaria , sounds much better. The bottom branches of the spruce trees have been removed so people can walk underneath them. This afternoon I’m the only one here.
    I should have brought Ivy here. She would have liked how the sunlight dances in patches where it’s filtered through the tall trees. She was always noticing stuff like that. And giggling. Like she did in the bath. Even if you didn’t know what she was giggling about, when Ivy giggled, it made you want to giggle, too.
    That was enough to make her life worthwhile, wasn’t it? Worthwhile for her?
    Or was Ivy’s life tougher than I ever let myself believe? How do you weigh crappy stuff like seizures and physio and people hardly ever understanding you, up against giggles and grins and just being happy with birds and pretty flowers and your sunhat and your turquoise bathing suit? How can anyone know whether someone else’s life is worth living or not, especially if that someone can’t tell you about it?
    The formal garden I’ve wandered into is mostly roses. The paths between the beds are straight lines. As soon as I see a way out, I take it, and wander instead into a wilder looking area of meadow grasses and ponds.
    Would dying seem like not such a bad thing if you