It wrecked me that I never came up with those definitions while Quentin was still here, that I never got a chance to show them to him. I stared at them in the composition book afterward, and I teared up. How could I have been distracted by all the fiffle when I could’ve been figuring out Quentin’s definitions?
Beverly and I walked home from school together this afternoon, and I told her about the words. She just listened and didn’t say much. Except then, as we turned the corner onto Thirty-Fourth Avenue, she came up with an idea … maybe the greatest idea I’d ever heard.
We arranged to meet up again after dinner, in front of the Hampshire House. That gave me enough time to copy Quentin’s words and their definitions onto my mom’s good stationery. I mean, you should’ve felt that paper. It was as thick as a bar mitzvah invitation, and it had classy ruffled edges.
I wrote out the words and definitions as neat as I could. Not in cursive. I printed the entire thing. It took a few tries. I did it twice before dinner, but the lines came out slightly crooked. I guess maybe I needed food, because after dinner, the third time I tried, my hand was steadier, and the lines came out almost perfect. They were as straight as I could get them.
Beverly was waiting for me at the Hampshire House. It was eight o’clock and real dark. No one was outside on the block except the two of us. The wind was blowing hard, and it was whipping her hair a thousand ways at once. I showed her the paper, and she nodded at it. That meant a lot, given how good she was at art.
Then we started to climb the tree.
Quentin’s sneakers were dangling by their shoelaces four stories up, right below his window on the fifth floor. Four stories might not sound like a lot, but it feels like a lot when the branches get thinner and thinner, and the wind is roaring in your ears, and you know there’s just sidewalk underneath you. The old oak at the Bowne House is a higher climb, but at least there you’re climbing over grass.
I started getting jittery about three stories up. Beverly was out in front of me by then. From where she was sitting, she could reach up and grab the branch the sneakers were hanging from. She glanced back at me, and I shook my head. I couldn’t go any higher. I pulled the folded paper from my pocket and held it out, and she shinnied down the branch, took it from me, and stuffed it into her pocket. Then she shinnied back and caught hold of the branch with the sneakers. She chinned herself up and shinnied out. It scared the daylights out of me, how thin that branch was, and how much it drooped. But I figured she’d gotten out that far before to hang the sneakers, so she could do it again. Sure enough, she got to the sneakers and took the folded-up paper from her pocket.
I felt my eyes welling up as she slid the paper into the right sneaker. But I fought it off. I didn’t bawl.
Neither did she.
“I hope Quentin’s got a good view of it,” Beverly whispered.
“I hope so too.”
After that, we started the long climb down.