— Chapter 13 —

The tree in Oscar’s backyard was enormous. He and Asha had never seen the top of it. Even from the second-floor windows in his house, they could only see the middle of the tree. In the summer, the branches got so thick with leaves that the trunk seemed to disappear halfway up.

They had long thought that it would be a perfect place for a tree house, but they couldn’t figure out how to get into the tree to build it. The lower part of its trunk was too smooth, with hardly any handholds or footholds to grab for climbing.

Oscar had longed to climb the tree ever since his fifth birthday party when he let go of a balloon and it had floated up away from him. One moment he’d been holding it, and a few moments later the wind had carried it up and around the tree. Oscar had run to the corner of the yard to see past the tree, expecting the balloon to appear again, higher in the sky. But it never did. It hadn’t occurred to him that something could just vanish into a tree.

There must be a secret space up there, Oscar had thought, a space where I could hide too.

But even if he could climb the tree, Oscar wasn’t allowed anywhere near it. Every time he asked his parents if he could nail some wooden pieces to its trunk so he could climb it, the answer was absolutely not.

“You’ll break your neck!” his mother and father always said.

Oscar didn’t understand what the big deal was. His neck was such a small part of his body. He’d broken half a dozen bones before. His neck wasn’t even a fun, useful part like a foot or an elbow.

Today, even though he knew he wasn’t supposed to, Oscar couldn’t resist climbing it.

The tree itself isn’t dangerous, he reasoned. Gravity is.

Standing at the base of the tree, Oscar was so excited that he forgot to be disappointed about not flying. He quickly sprayed himself all over with repellent and tossed the bottle to Asha as he floated up the tree’s trunk. He grabbed the first branch he could reach, wrapped his legs around it, and swung upside down.

“Woo-HOO!” he shouted.

“Shhhh!” Asha whispered loudly from the ground. “Keep it down! You want to advertise it to the whole neighborhood?”

Oscar clapped a hand over his mouth. It was hard to keep quiet when he was having so much fun.

Asha sprayed the repellent all over her body, then stuffed the bottle in a pocket of her shorts as she floated up the trunk and into the cover of the leafy branches. It was remarkably cool and dark in the space around the trunk, and it smelled fresh and green, like the shop where Oscar’s mother sometimes bought flowers.

They pulled themselves up through the branches, amazed at how easy it was without gravity pulling them down. Oscar had often watched squirrels race up the side of the tree and hop easily among the lower branches. Now he had the distinct sense of being a squirrel, so light that the branches hardly bent as he pulled on them.

Inside the leaf cover it looked like a different world — a place where all kinds of things happened that were invisible from the outside. They saw a small bird’s nest in a corner where one branch grew out of another. It appeared empty at first, but when they looked closer, they saw fluffy bits of feathers and pieces of light-blue eggshell. Higher up, they found a hollow filled with acorns and other bits of food.

“Hey, that’s the crust I dropped yesterday morning!” Asha exclaimed, pointing. She’d been running late to school and had left her house with a piece of peanut butter toast. She didn’t like crusts, so she had dropped it into a bush next to the sidewalk. Apparently the squirrel that lived in this hollow enjoyed crusts more than Asha did.

Oscar envied the squirrel and the birds — the tree seemed like a fantastic place to live. It was so quiet, and it felt safe and protected thanks to the leaf cover. He and Asha continued to pull themselves up through the branches until they found two spots where they could sit comfortably.

Oscar and Asha nestled into the chair-branches, hooking their feet under them so they wouldn’t float away. They looked at each other and giggled. The caboose was the coolest tree house ever, but this was a close second.

Just then, a breeze came through the branches and parted some of the leaves in front of them.

“WHOAAA!” they exclaimed at the same time. From where they sat, they could see over the tops of all the houses on their block. Now they knew how tall the tree really was.

“My Frisbee!” Oscar exclaimed, pointing at a red disc on the roof of Asha’s house. “We have to remember to get that down.”

“Look, someone lost his swim trunks,” Asha said when the breeze parted the leaves again. She pointed to a brightly colored pair of shorts on a roof across the street. “How did they get up there?”

The sun came out from behind one cloud and disappeared behind another. For a brief moment, the light sparkled off something behind Asha. Oscar peered at it. Hanging from a branch was a limp piece of red rubber tied with a silver ribbon. It was the balloon from his birthday party! He couldn’t believe it was still there.

“Asha, look!” Oscar said, pointing.

She turned around. “What is it?”

“The balloon I lost on my birthday when I was five!” he said. “Can you reach it?”

Asha looked at it, turned back to Oscar, and made a face. “Why do you want an old deflated balloon?”

“I just do,” Oscar said. “Can you try to grab it? Please?”

Asha shrugged and unhooked her legs from the tree trunk. Then she pulled herself along the branch until her feet stuck out from inside the leaf cover. She grabbed the balloon and began to unwind the silver ribbon from the branch.

Just then, the sun came out from behind the clouds altogether. Sunlight streamed through the leaves onto Asha, and she yelped as her legs began to float downward. She turned onto her stomach to grab on to the branch, which was bending slowly underneath her. “I’m drying off!” Asha cried, her eyes wide with panic. “Help!”

Oscar realized in horror that the bottle of gravity repellent was in the pocket of Asha’s shorts. There was no time to float down and get it out. She would get too heavy too quickly.

Oscar pulled himself down to where Asha hung and grabbed her arms. He wrapped his legs around the nearest branch and held on as she grew heavier and heavier. Oscar’s hands began to sweat, and he heard a branch snap as Asha slipped out of his grip.

“OSCAAAAR!”