My heart had already broken just watching my mom’s grin as she’d put down her sacred Saturday morning newspaper and mug of coffee, her short brown hair still in a tangled frizz of bedhead curls like a cloud above her head. She had jumped up and started whirling about, pulling out our old wicker picnic basket and packing cloth napkins and fruit and little plastic baggies of chips to go with the sandwiches and sodas we’d picked up in town on our way back. She’d danced around the kitchen as she’d grabbed at drawers and cupboards, wearing her grungy floral sleeping gown that no one outside of the family but Izzy and Hannah would ever be allowed to see.
“Such a wonderful day to be out in the woods,” she had said as she finally handed me the basket—so full that the folding wooden lid couldn’t close over the top—and the quintessential red-and-white-checked blanket that had been dragged along on all our adventures. I could still make out splotches of spilled grape juice and Popsicle drippings that had resisted years’ worth of bleaching and scrubbing. “My three girls . . . enjoy days like these while you can.”
I had bit my lip as I’d looked down at our old farmhouse brick floor, unable to meet her gaze without bursting out into tears and wrapping myself in her soft pillowy arms.
“It’s just so hard to believe that this time next summer, you girls will be getting ready to fly off on your own . . .” Her voice had cracked, and she’d waved us off toward the front door, clearly battling tears of her own. “The girls are off!” she’d called out to my dad, who had paused the baseball game he was replaying in the living room to come say good-bye. I was used to this kind of over-the-top attention and devotion, and generally it didn’t bother me—it was pretty nice, actually—but in that moment I’d needed to be away.
I’d glanced back at the house for just a second as we left, and had seen her and my dad at the window, his arm tight around her shoulders, her head leaning against his chest, both of them watching us with such an overwhelming mix of pride and longing and sadness that my whole being had ached with love for them. I’d wanted to rewind a decade or so, be their little girl again, even for a day.
“What’s the status of your bladder, Mina?” Izzy asked, her voice slicing through my thoughts.
“I . . . I don’t know, Iz. I don’t think I’m quite ready yet. Maybe another ten minutes or so?” I took a massive gulp from the soda bottle I was clasping in my clammy hands, and my stomach burned from the fizzle of carbonation. “I want to make sure that I have enough to cover all four test sticks.”
“You don’t have to be a perfectionist even about this, Mina,” Izzy said. “Not right now. You’re just putting it off.”
“Let her wait ten minutes, Isabelle,” Hannah said, shooting Izzy one of her most amazingly withering, momlike looks before turning to me with a sympathetic frown. “I can never make myself go when they need a sample at the doctor’s office. Remember, I had to sit in the waiting room for three hours at my physical last year? Three hours! Missed the whole afternoon of classes. Any other time, easy as can be, right? The mind is in total control over the body. Don’t worry about it, Meen. Let’s just think about something else for now.”
“Not quite so easy,” I said, forcing out a small laugh. “But thanks for the suggestion.”
Hannah tilted her head for a minute, looking thoughtful, and then she smiled and stood up. She held out both hands to me, waiting for me to latch on and get up with her. “Let’s climb up to the house, see how it’s weathered all these years without us. How long has it been, anyway? Four years? Five?”
“Mina’s thirteenth birthday,” Izzy answered without hesitating, sounding surprised, almost annoyed, that Hannah wouldn’t have remembered that obscure detail about our shared history. “We were sleeping out here like we did every year and decided halfway through the night that it was too cold outside and the floor was too hard, and then you said that no respectable teenager still slept in tree houses, anyway, so we packed up and that was that. Good-bye, lovely childhood.”
“Oh, right,” Hannah said, grinning as she kicked at Izzy’s leg to urge her up off the blanket. “That does ring a bell. About time we go back up then, isn’t it?”
Izzy sighed, but I could tell from the smirk on her lips that it was just for show. If Izzy had it her way, we’d all have stayed ragamuffin, hillbilly tomboys, digging in the creek and hanging around in the tree for the rest of our lives.
I thought back to the last time I had been in the tree house, and it wasn’t my birthday four years ago. More like four months. Nate and I had climbed up one time at the beginning of spring, the first real warm night of the season, long after Gracie and my parents had gone to bed, and long after Nate had called his parents to say he was staying over at his friend Peter’s house. I’m not sure why or how it happened, really, given that neither of us was particularly good at breaking rules, but I chalked it up to an overwhelming curiosity—what it would be like, what we would do if we were actually alone, no chance of my parents checking in to see if we wanted more soda or popcorn, no chance that they’d be able to overhear us through the gaps in the floors and the cracks in the walls of our early eighteenth-century farmhouse. Houses as old as mine typically felt like one big, open space—no walls, no closed doors. No matter what room I was in, I knew where everyone else was, what they were doing, what they were saying. Any sort of private life was impossible.
Anyway, nothing really happened that night, much to Nate’s disappointment, probably, though he was too much of a gentleman to have ever said so. But it didn’t seem like the right time to tell Izzy and Hannah any of that. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t told them to begin with, actually—embarrassed by my own prudishness, maybe, or wanting some kind of secret that belonged just to me and Nate for once. Either way, I wasn’t telling them today. It seemed too suspicious now.
Izzy was the first to start up the rickety old ladder, masterfully avoiding the rungs that had rotted and splintered over the years of neglect. “Let me test it out first, make sure it’s all sturdy,” she said, looking back over her shoulder at us as her arms and legs continued to climb, pushing and pulling, the familiar movements so etched into her memory. “I’ll tell you when it’s safe to come up.” She pushed back the limp strings of colored beads still hanging in the doorway, the wooden strands bouncing against one another and tinkling like rain, and disappeared into the house. Hannah and I kept looking up, hands shielding our eyes from the sun peeking through the leaves, waiting for the all clear.
After a few long seconds, the house’s faded blue shudders burst open in a flurry of paint flakes and leaf bits, and Izzy’s grinning face popped out over the edge of the window. “Just like I remembered it, ladies, almost as if the last few years didn’t happen.” She sighed, her eyes glazed with contentment. “Anyway,” she said, yanking her head back as she vanished into the house, “I think it’s safe. The floors still seem solid enough.”
Hannah motioned for me to go first, and we both started the climb up, more slowly and hesitantly than Izzy. I crawled inside and made room for Hannah to come in next to me, pausing then to soak in the makeshift all-in-one living room, kitchen, and bedroom that had been our home away from home for such a massive piece of our lives.
There wasn’t much in the way of furniture, given the complexity of transporting it up twenty feet off the ground, and what we did have was a raggedy collection of well-worn, well-loved hand-me-downs that had been discovered stashed away in our parents’ basements and attics. We had three assorted wooden chairs that my dad had somehow managed to carry up all by himself without toppling backward off the ladder—I can still remember that day, watching from the ground with my mom, petrified, hiding my face in her skirt while she assured me that he’d be okay. There was a “table” made out of planks of wood and balanced on two bright green plastic buckets, a few shelves that displayed the treasures we’d dug up along the creek, and a barrel of old cups and dishes that were probably still caked with strawberry Pop-Tart crumbs and hardened scraps of pizza bagels.