afraid, but he wasn’t. He took in a breath, feeling relieved. Because he knew something was in there. Watching him.
“Thank you for getting my mother a house,” Christopher whispered.
There was silence. But it wasn’t silence. It was listening to him. Christopher thought that maybe it was right behind him. The tickle on the back of his neck.
“Are you trying to talk to me?” Christopher asked.
The breeze wrestled with the leaves. Christopher felt a voice on the wind. It didn’t speak. But he still felt words on his neck. As if the wind pushed through the trees just barely enough to understand.
Christopher entered the woods.
The rain hit the tops of the leaves and ran down the trunks in small rivers. Christopher didn’t know where he was going, but somehow, his feet did. It felt like riding a bike. His brain might have forgotten, but his body never would.
His feet were taking him to the voice.
Christopher’s heart skipped a beat. He couldn’t see anyone, but he could feel something. Like static that goes crack when hands finally touch. He followed it through the woods, and the light on the trail became brighter. A smell came to him. A delicious autumn smell. Like bobbing for apples. He saw names carved into the trees. Initials of teenage lovers from a hundred years ago. People who were old now.
Or people who were dead.
Christopher reached the clearing. He stood silent, staring at the giant tree shaped like an arthritic hand. He saw a plastic bag on the ground, covered in dirt. He picked it up and lovingly washed it in the rain, fresh and cold. He rubbed it with his red hoodie until the dirt gave way to white. Then, he walked over to the tree and put the white plastic bag on a low-hanging branch. Christopher stared at it, dancing like a kite on a string. He couldn’t remember, but there was something about it. Something safe and comforting. Like an old friend.
“Hi,” Christopher said to the white plastic bag.
you can hear me?
The white plastic bag sounded so relieved.
“Yes, I can hear you,” Christopher said.
i can’t believe it. finally someone can hear me.
Christopher’s face went flush. He took a long, hard swallow.
“Are you really real?” Christopher asked the white plastic bag.
yes.
“You’re not a fig newton of my imagination?”
no.
“So, I’m not crazy?” Christopher asked.
no. i’ve been trying to talk to everyone. but you’re the only one who listened.
Christopher was so relieved.
“Why can I hear you now?”
because we’re alone in the woods. that’s why i got you that house. do you like it?
“It’s the greatest house I’ve ever seen.”
i’m so glad.
“When can I see you?”
soon. but first, i need you to do something for me. okay?
“Okay,” Christopher said.
Then, the little boy knelt down at the foot of the tree and stared at the white plastic bag, dancing like hair in the breeze. Christopher sat there for hours. Oblivious to the cold. Talking about everything. With his new best friend.
The nice man.
Part III
Best Friends Forever
Chapter 20
“Do you guys want to build a tree house?”
“A tree house?” Special Ed said, washing down his bacon with a chocolate Yoo-hoo. “My dad made me one from a kit once. He got really drunk, and it broke.”
They were in the cafeteria. Salisbury steak day. Christopher didn’t know what Salisbury meant exactly, but his mom had given him lunch money to buy a real hot lunch instead of his usual brown-bag peanut butter and celery. Especially because it was getting a little colder in November. The Halloween decorations had been taken down and Thanksgiving decorations had been put up.
“Not that kind of tree house, Ed,” Christopher explained.
Christopher opened his notebook and carefully slid the plans over to his friends. The M&M’s looked at the blueprints, all perfectly drawn on graph paper in painstaking detail. The roof. The black shingles. The hinges. Red door. And the little 2x4s snaking up the tree like a ladder of baby teeth.
“Wow. That’s like a real house,” Matt exclaimed behind his eye patch.
“You drew all this?” Mike asked, impressed.
Christopher nodded. He woke up with the plans on Sunday morning. An image in his brain he could almost scratch. He spent the whole day drawing them with colored pencils and graph paper the way he used to plan his mother’s dream house. But this time, there were no video games or candy room or petting zoo off the kitchen.
This time, it was real.
“You would have a front door that locks and everything?” Mike asked.