Alison McGhee

Ayla lives in a tree-filled street with her parents and grandpa. Her best friend Kiri's house is just down the block, but Kiri (they/them) has gone away, and Ayla hears her dog, Junie for Short, howling all the time. Then an old-fashioned telephone appears in Ayla's tree, and people begin to use it to call loved ones who have died - starting with five-year-old Gentleman, who calls his gecko, Sweetheart.

Ayla is counting down to Kiri's eleventh birthday, sure that Kiri will come back in time, because they have always celebrated their birthdays together, complete with trick candles and one to grow on. Readers will begin to pick up on clues about why Kiri hasn't come back, and where she is, and finally Ayla faces the truth she's been suppressing: Kiri isn't coming back, because Kiri is dead. There was a storm, and a loose dog, and a car driving the wrong way down their one-way street.

Ayla's family and neighbors give her the time she needs to come to terms with Kiri's death, and on Kiri's birthday, Ayla visits their mother and takes Junie for Short for a walk, trying out new nicknames for her and beginning to take steps into a world without her lifelong best friend.

Absolutely crushing.

See also: The Probability of Everything by Sarah Everett, The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin, Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson, Ferris by Kate DiCamillo

Inspired by the "phone of the wind" in Japan, established by Itaru Sasaki. NPR story: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/597/one-last-thing-before-i-go-2016/act-one

Quotes

My voice has that tone again, as if I'm someone else, maybe the mean version of me. (39)

It doesn't feel right to be sad and mad at the same time. (44)

When something huge happens inside our hearts and minds, humans sometimes turn still and silent...(77)

Trees talk to other trees, even ones far away, through their connecting root systems.
People talk to people who aren't right next to them through telephones. (108)

Mr. Nesbitt said positive space is the thing you're drawing, an negative space is everything around and between it.
Negative space is invisible, the things you don't see.
But invisible is what makes everything around it full of color and shape and life. (119)

But the nightmare isn't just when I'm asleep anymore. It's inside me when I'm awake too. It gathers itself inside me like lightning, like thunder and rain and wild wind about to explode me. (127)

But not thinking about it means that it's all I am thinking about.
Trying to push it away means I can't ever get away.
Not letting myself live through it means that I just keep living through it.
Is that why the nightmare keeps coming? Because I keep pushing it away? (138)

It happened so fast. It happened so fast. It happened so fast
so
so
fast
that my mind had to
catch up
to what was
happening
to what had
to what had
to what
had
already
happened (150-151)

That day will always be there
but there's more, Ayla
so much more (Kiri, 164)

Invisible, and everywhere.
They're a shimmer in the wind, or a laughing bird, or falling leaves brushing our arms. Snow melting on our cheeks. A blanket when we're cold.
Maybe, even, a tree. (196)… (more)

I feel like this book is just very disconnected and lacking in a lot of ways. The narrative format is interesting: 100 chapters made of 100 words each, but I don’t see how that helped the story along or added anything. The plot has quite a bit happening, as teenage Will deals with the aftermath of some terrible things that have happened to his family and best friend. But at the same time, I don’t think either issue was explored well, originally, or in a way that personally made me stop and think.
I feel sympathetic towards Will, and his friend Playa, but that’s about it. I just don’t feel moved by anything that happened, or affected by any of the vignettes of other characters. All in all, “What I Left Behind” felt very needlessly repetitive and cropped in a way that didn’t help the narrative.… (more)