AND THERE NEVER WERE.
In the 1880s, a bunch of Europeans settled here by mistake. They were trying to reach the Pacific Ocean, and believed the existence of palm trees meant they were close to the water. What they were really seeing were Joshua trees, named by the Mormons for the way the branches seem to be reaching up toward God in prayer.
I think the trees are begging God for rain, and He's saying no.
You'd think that once people recognized the error they'd stop coming to Palm Valley, but a hundred and thirty years later, here we all are, putting up golf courses and water parks in the desert and pretending it's normal.
Palm Valley's a charter city, which means we've gone rogue. We have our own constitution, and citizens vote directly on all local decisions, so when Palm Valley High was labeled a failing school in 2007, the city council hired a private corporation called Fresh Start to fix everything.
My mom's the regional director of Fresh Start, which is why we moved here from New Mexico when I was in sixth grade.
The first thing Mom did was fire all the teachers, even those on the tenure track, and make them reapply for their jobs. Half didn't make the cut, so they were swiftly replaced by recent grads who were okay with signing yearly contracts that could be revoked at any time. Good-bye, union. Good-bye, benefits.
Everyone in Palm Valley got whiplash, like, "Huh? When we voted for this proposition, we didn't think it would, like, change anything. Betrayal!"
You know how in movies from the '60s people always get bricks thrown in their windows by a hostile, dangerously ignorant populace? That happened to us a few times. We were prank-called constantly and had to get an unlisted number. I used to worry about my mom whenever she left for work; protestors and former teachers screamed and spat at her every morning for the entire summer.
It wasn't just her they went after. While my dad was at work, his car got egged and vandalized, mainly because of where it was parked: the Lambert College faculty lot. His very existence was a traitorous insult to the school system; how could he put up with my mother's hard-line stance when he, too, was a teacher? Nay, a professor.
After my parents got a death threat in the mail, we were assigned our own protection, Deputy Sheriff Thompson. Mom and Dad always had a hot thermos of coffee and a plate of dinner waiting for Thompson when his shift started, but he rarely accepted. His wife and brother used to teach at Palm Valley High. That was the thing-everyone knew someone who'd been affected by the layoffs.
As for me, the brakes on my bicycle got cut when I left it outside Rosati's pizza. I ate gravel on the ride home, had to fling myself sideways to the curb when I realized there was no way to stop. If I'd been on a steeper hill, I might've broken my neck.
While sitting on the curb, recovering from my fall, I watched my bike get run over by a semi. I never asked my parents to replace it.
By the time I was in eighth grade, my mom's decisions had been vindicated: Test scores and graduation rates were way up, and she was suddenly embraced as a positive force in the community.
Part of me couldn't accept that the harassment was over. When you spend a couple years looking over your shoulder and worrying about whether your mom will come home at night, the fear doesn't go away so easily. I guess I kept waiting for the other Converse to drop; for someone who'd been lurking on the sidelines to strike at me. And now, it seemed, someone had.