On Friday morning, seven o’clock plows into me even harder than usual. Brutal. It should be a sleep-in day. What else is a teacher workday good for? You can’t tell me teachers actually do anything on teacher workdays except stand around drinking bad decaf and complaining about the internet and Kids Today. It’s a day off for everyone except me. For me, it’s Don’t Get Caught Going To Your New Job day.

Even Ruby groans when my alarm goes off. Her tail is pretty much healed, but she’s too sleepy to wag it. I slump out of bed to take a shower; Ruby brings Artoo and falls back asleep on the bathmat.

I dress in multiple layers and stuff more warm clothes in my backpack.

On my way downstairs, I knock on Jeremy’s door. “Wake up,” I whisper. “You have to pick me up in half an hour.”

Muffled groan.

“If you’re late, the deal’s off,” I tell him.

In the kitchen, Mom sets my Zoloft next to my breakfast plate. “I still don’t know about this, Monkey.”

“Dad said it’s okay.” Ha! Take that, lady! Turned the tables and went to Dad first.

“Two whole days, though. It’s too much.” She hands me a bag lunch. “Can’t you just collect pledges and not do the entire Dance-A-Ma-Tron?”

“Salsa-Thon, Mom. You should be happy I’m being social. And philanthropic. It’s for a good cause.”

She makes a face. “This wasn’t exactly our agreement.”

“If you will recall, I got an A on my trig test this week. And all homework in on time, thank you very much.”

“And that’s the only reason I’m agreeing to this. If your grades slip at all after this…this Dancy-A-Jiggama, you are in back in the dog house.”

“Noted, Mom. Jeez. Most parents would be stoked their kid was going to get exercise and raise money for a good cause,” I take my Zoloft with orange juice and bite into whole wheat toast. “Plus, I made a new friend. Aren’t you proud? Dad is.”

“I’m going to ignore the manipulative attempt at triangulation of me and your father, and say that, yes, I am pleased you’ve reached out to someone.”

Rosemary did all the reaching, but let Mom think what she wants. A car horn beeps outside. “That’s her. I’ll be home around 4:30 or 5:00.”

“Love you, Monkey. I am pleased that you’re—”

“Bye.”

Ruby sits at the back door and wags her tail. She always wants to come with me, but this time it’s like she knows I’m going somewhere more exciting than usual. “Sorry, Rubes.” I nuzzle her. “No dogs allowed at dance-a-thons.” She looks at me with those big dark eyes. Ouch.

In the car, Rosemary’s mom is super chatty. Apparently the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. When she drops us off at the YMCA, site of the Salsa-Thon, she calls, “You girls have fun! I’ll pick you up at four.”

We walk slowly, Rosemary waving her mom off. When she finally pulls away, Rosemary giggles. “This is so excellent. Is your brother here yet?”

I scan the parking lot at the side of the building. “No. Wait, yes. Here he is.” I smile at Rosemary. “Thanks again for covering for me.”

“No problem whatsoever.” She gives me a huge, tight hug. Apparently she is pro-hug. At least she’s unambiguous about it: she spreads her arms so wide you can see from miles away that she’s coming in for a landing.

“Good luck,” she says. “Are you nervous? First day at a new job? Which you still haven’t told me about.”

“I will, I swear. I just want to get a few days under my belt.” And hell yes, I’m so nervous I could barf. “Yeah. Kind of nervous.”

She smiles, her eyes wide. “Text me, tell me how it’s going? And later we’ll go out to celebrate.”

“Sounds good. If I survive. And if my parents don’t find out and shoot me.” Oh man. Bad choice of words.

Jeremy is as thrilled as ever to be my chauffeur. I wonder what excuse he gave Mom and Dad about going out so early. Doesn’t matter; he has assumed the position of Jones Family Golden Child.

“Turn here!” He has the music so loud I have to scream directions. “Go up the hill!”

He shouts, “What? This is the way to the Pig Farm Party Shack!”

“I know! It’s on the same road!”

When we get to Mr. Showalter’s, the sun is just reaching the tops of the shorter pines. The place looks smaller in daylight. Jeremy swerves to a stop next to the beat-up truck, which is next to the white van.

Mr. Showalter materializes in the garage door, reaching overhead to pull it down behind him. The way he’s dressed, rugged and sturdy, he looks like a hunter hyphen construction worker. No possum.

When Jeremy sees Mr. Showalter, he frowns and turns down the music. “You sure about this?”

Wha? I gape at my brother. Was that actual concern in his voice? I guess dropping me off in the woods with a stranger is the hidden trigger to some latent sibling protection instinct.

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s fine.”

He shudders, shaking off his momentary lapse of hostility. “Whatever.”

“Pick me up at 3:30, okay? And remember, as far as Mom and Dad and everyone else is concerned, I’m at the Y doing a dance fundraiser.”

“I’ll remember. Just so long as you don’t renege on our deal.”

I grab my lunch and backpack and open the door. “Just pick me up on time today. And tomorrow. And—”

“Our deal. Unlimited use of the computer and any entertainment devices. And you’re doing my chores.”

Sigh. Goodbye, internet. Goodbye, movies. Hello, mowing the lawn and doing the dishes. “Yes. That’s the deal.”

“Then it’s all good. Go. Posthaste.”

And then he’s gone, and I’m alone with the mysterious Mr. Showalter.

It’s freezing. I open my backpack and start piling on the extra layers I packed.

Mr. Showalter smiles a friendly, wide smile. “Morning, Sarah. Right on time.” He sounds pleasantly surprised.

I poke my head through one of Stenn’s old hoodies, then put my coat back on over it. “Hi.” I pull on a hat and my red mittens—my Exhibit A, Telltale Heart mittens—which is some crappy planning, for sure.

Mr. Showalter says, “Ready.”

I nod. Ready as I’ll ever be.

“Let’s get to work.”

For the first hour, let’s get to work means following Mr. Showalter around, tying thin yellow plastic strips to the trees that will be getting the axe. The axe. Ha. Gradually, my nervousness wears off. It’s pretty easy. I just walk and tie while Mr. Showalter identifies different types of trees and how to tell if they’re ready for harvest. I try to pay attention, but it’s way early and way cold. My fingers are extra-freezing because I have to take my mittens off every time I tie a plastic thingy to a tree.

Around 9:30, Mr. Showalter stops, rubs his chin, and turns around slowly. He nods. “This’ll do, for starters.” He strides back to the homestead; I have to trot to keep up. At the garage, he opens the side door and holds it for me. “Come on, then.”

Oh. I hadn’t realized I’d stopped short. Am I a moron? (Scratch that question.) What I mean is, why had it not occurred to me that I’d have to go back into the garage? And why does it bother me so much? It’s not the gym, after all. But my forearm starts to throb as if Ruby had just sunk her teeth into it. Wonderful. Another place to be post-traumatic-stressed about.

All right, buck up, little camper.

I put my mittened palm on the doorframe and step in. The place is spotless. No bloodstains, no deer carcass. It’s just like the gym: unless you’d witnessed it, you would never know anything bad had happened here.

How many places in the world are like that? How many places are the sites of murders or deadly car crashes and you just don’t realize it?

Here in the garage, all that remains of the deer and that night is the deerskin, riddled with holes from the broken window, stretching on a rack on one of the workbenches. The antlers, cut from gray skull at the base of the horns, lie on the other workbench.

The swift animal was believed to speed the spirits of the dead on their way…

A frog-sized lump crawls into my throat.

“Sarah.” Mr. Showalter is standing next to me. “It bothers you,” he says.

I swallow hard. “Mr. Showalter…I’m sorry about what happened.”

All he says is, “Prefer you call me Roy.”

Allowing, wanting even, a lowly kid to use his first name? Not in this town.

He says, “Come along, Buddy.” An unfamiliar scritch scritch from the floor. Mr. Showalter’s—Roy’s—possum scampers across the floor and climbs his pant leg. Buddy the possum winds its tail around his belt and releases its claw-hold to hang upside down. Buddy’s pink snout glistens like he’s had a runny nose, or maybe a sloppy drink of water. Or maybe that’s normal for possums? It’s been a while since my last shift at the zoo’s rodent (marsupial?) house.

Roy—surely I will be labeled insubordinate for using his first name—walks over to the stretched deerskin, reaches around it, and returns with a pair of work gloves. “Here. Be big on you, but I don’t think you can cut trees in those.” Meaning my Telltale Heart mittens.

I take off my mittens and pull the work gloves on, shifting my gaze from the deerskin on the workbench to the wall behind it. There are random things pinned on a pegboard, some of them partially obscured by the deerskin: A bent plastic comb. A bubbling, faded Polaroid photo. A broken watch. A taped-together postcard. The glint of a thin gold chain. The top of a peacock feather. A leprechaun keychain. Clearly they aren’t tools or anything meant to be useful. And now, in daylight, I see that there’s a piece of gossamer thread around each thing, connecting one to another like a spiderweb.

“What do you make of it.” Roy’s voice startles me.

What do I make of it? There must be something important about this stuff, otherwise why would he ask? “Are they souvenirs? From trips?”

He looks at me like I’ve said something important. He nods once. “Something like that.”

I wait for him to say more, to clarify. But (surprise, surprise) he doesn’t. Instead of talking, he turns around, hefts a chainsaw down from a shelf, and hands it to me.

I repeat: the man hands me a chainsaw.

I must look completely shocked and bewildered, and also like I might tip over from the weight of the thing, because Roy laughs. “What, you thought the trees’d just fall down on their own?”

I blink at the chainsaw in my hands. There is a chainsaw in my hands.

Smiling, he shakes his head like I just told a good joke. “Would be easier if they did,” he says. He grabs two sets of safety glasses and earplugs, and leaves the garage. I lug the chainsaw and follow, watching Buddy bump against Roy’s leg as he walks.

Armed with the chainsaw, I follow Roy to the farthest tagged tree. He rips the yellow tag off the tree, then puts on his safety glasses and gloves. “Here. Set that down and I’ll show you how it works.”

Show me how it works? Show me how it works? I’m not just being a pack mule? I look around. Surely there are eighty workplace safety laws prohibiting minors from wielding chainsaws. The man is batshit crazy.

Well, hot diggity! This is the kind of crazy I can get behind. It’s not like using a chainsaw is number one on my List of Things to Do Before I Die, but now that the gauntlet has been thrown down, I’m determined. It’s time for something new.

Roy hands me the other pair of safety glasses, along with earplugs. After we put them in, he hollers instructions. Pointing to the scary end of the saw, he says, “The chain goes around and cuts according to how much throttle you give it.”

I nod. “Okay.”

He points to a small bar on top of the handle. “That’s the chain brake. Stops the chain if there’s kickback. Chain guard here. That’s the throttle safety latch, that’s the throttle interlock. If you let go of it, it kills the motor.” He looks at me. “Safety feature.”

“Throttle interlock. Got it.”

He steps on the handle. “To start it, you stand on it here, and here’s the choke, and then pull here.” He takes his foot off the chainsaw. “Before we do that, two things. First: this thing can kill you or take a leg off right quick, and it doesn’t care a lick about you.”

“What’s the second thing?”

“‘Timber.’ Always look where the tree’s going, and always yell ‘timber,’ even if you think no one’s around for miles. Aren’t big trees, but they don’t tickle.”

Dude. You had me at timber. “I think I got it,” I say, pointing to the parts. “Throttle, throttle lock thing that stops if you let go. Chain, motor, chain guard.”

He nods. “Always use two hands and never cut above shoulder height. Short blade, but it’s got some kick.” He rubs his chin. “Ready to try.”

“Can I watch you do one first?” See Sarah. See Sarah stall.

“Yep.” He steps back on the handle and pulls the start chain. It roars, evil loud. Roy motions with his elbow for me to step back. Hefting the saw, he squats at the base of the tree. When he puts the saw to the trunk, it gets louder, louder, louder. Eventually, the motor cuts out, and Roy yells, “Timber!” There’s a loud snap and the tree falls away from us, bouncing a little when it hits the ground.

He sets the chainsaw down. “Your turn.”

I take a deep breath to calm my nerves. “All right. I think I’m ready.” I step on the handle. “Here?”

He nods. “Give it a short, quick pull.”

I do. Exactly nothing happens.

“Try again.”

I pull harder and the thing kicks to life. I pick it up, holding the throttle lock like Roy said. It’s super heavy and it’s vibrating my arms into pudding. Carefully, trying not to behead or otherwise maim either of us, I crouch under the tree. When the blade touches the trunk, the whole chainsaw jumps hard. I guess that’s what kickback means. My stomach drops to my toes. This is so dangerous and scary. I try again, pressing the blade to the trunk. And the chain starts cutting wood. Ripping, more like.

Terror aside, it is frigging awesome.

By the third tree, it’s frigging hard.

An hour later, it’s by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done, ever. I manage to cut down eight trees in the time it probably would take Roy to do twenty. Or twenty-hundred, but who’s counting?

A while later, Roy suggests switching jobs. “I’ll cut. You move and net.”

Fine by me. Even after I put down the chainsaw, my arms are still shaking. My knees are jelly. But I still have two legs, two arms, and an attached head, so, victory!

Roy demonstrates my new task: dragging trees over near the garage, hoisting them onto sawhorses, then cutting off any straggly branches—done the old-fashioned way, with a big pair of loppers. After this manscaping, each tree has to be hauled over to a large metal ring with plastic netting scrunched around it. Roy shows me how to push a tree into the ring to catch the netting, then pull it from the other side, twisting as I go. And then you have it, the final product: a skinny cocoon tree. These get propped against the garage, their trunks parked in tubs of warm water.

Roy gives me a box cutter to cut the netting. Then he scratches his chin. “Do you need a break before we keep going,” he asks.

“No. I’m good.” Something about Roy is bringing out Scrapper Sarah. A person I’ve never really met before, but who I always hoped was in here. Somehow the work is transforming my snarkiness and sarcasm into stubborn pride. I will not complain. I will not wimp out. I will do what Roy throws at me, and then some. Maybe because

A) Roy seems so old-school and rugged.

B) Look at the hell he’s been through with his wife and son. Who am I to whine about some work?

C) He’s treating me like a capable human being instead of a broken teenager.

D) Most surprising: I seem to actually like this ass-busting work. Go figure.

After two hours of dragging, sawing, netting, and plunking tree after tree after into washtub after washtub, all my layers are off, down to my long-sleeve Salsa-Thon T-shirt (thanks, Rosemary) and yoga stretchy pants. My hair keeps sticking to my sweaty forehead. I twist it into a messy clump, secure it with the old elastic I keep twirled around the lip balm in my bag. I trek back into the rows to fetch another tree from Roy. Like me, he is shedding layers. He’s now in patched overalls and a thermal undershirt: Dukes of Hazzard Uncle Jesse Couture. I dig it. Buddy is snoozling on Roy’s coat. That possum has it good. Makes me miss Rubes.

Roy nods over at Buddy. “Looks like a good idea, doesn’t it. Taking a nap.”

“How do you know he isn’t just playing possum?”

Roy frowns. Then he smiles. “Well, goodness. She tells a joke.”

I drag another tree to the sawhorses for trimming. It’s the biggest so far, with long upper branches flying everywhere. The blasted thing will not behave. I try to shake it into submission, but only succeed in scraping up my arms, especially right near my bite. Awesome.

I’m still trying to prod it into the Net-o-nator when Roy comes over. “Lunchtime.”

“I’ll be right there.”

“Can I give you a hand with that,” Roy asks.

“No!” I say, a smidge forcefully. I’m making involuntary sounds, like pooping grunts, as I fight the tree. “I got this.”

Roy cocks his eyebrow like he isn’t so sure. “Come on in when you’re done. Kitchen’s to the right.”

“Okay.” I wait for Roy to leave and then I jog around to the other side of the metal ring. I grab the trunk and pull. The freaking thing will not budge. I set one foot on the Net-o-nator and yank. The tree moves a little. Yes! More leverage. I lift my other foot off the ground and brace it on the other side of the Net-o-nator. I lean way back, nearly horizontal, and pull like crazy. Yank. Eef. Pull. Arrh. Tug. Gah!

The tree swishes through.

I flop onto my back like a dead fish.

The tree falls on top of me, squashing my boobs and knocking the wind out of me.

When I manage to breathe oxygen back into my lungs, I push the tree off and jump to my feet. I kick it, spin around and kick it again. “Ha. Take that. That’s what you get for messing with me, tree.” Karate chop. Slow motion Kung Fu destroyer goddess moves like the wind, devastates like a tornado.

I look up in time to see Roy on his front steps, watching me

1. talking to myself

2. pretending to jujitsu

3. a tree.

Mother of God. The humiliation.