The forest is darker than normal, a hundred thousand layered shadows sliding over and under and into one another, and as Dee follows Sibby into the woods, she feels like they’ve lost hours and hours just by stepping through the tree line.
The fort is pretty deep into the woods. Burke’s uncle Terry started building it for them a couple of months ago, when he moved into the basement in Burke’s house. All the kids in the neighborhood helped out, on and off, but mostly it was Terry and Burke and Delia and Sibby, with some visits from Terry’s girlfriend, Sandy. Dee’s dad even came out to help and brought lumber that he had left over from the deck he’d been building, but he was pretty busy with work, so it was just a couple of times.
Since then, all the kids from the street play there every afternoon: Dee and Sibby and Greta, Dee’s little brothers—although they’ve been at hockey practice a lot lately—Burke, and even his sisters, every once in a while.
“It’s about time we had the fort to ourselves,” says Sibby. “There’s never enough room when everybody shows up.”
As always, Dee is happy to hang out with Sibby one-on-one, but she’s not sure she agrees about the fort being better when it’s just the two of them.
But most of all, the woods are scary without a big gang.
Ahead of them, the treehouse comes into view, a ghostly structure of weathered wood, just barely visible through the trees, suspended in the air.
“Last one there is a rotten egg!” yells Sibby gleefully, and without waiting for Dee to catch on, she begins to run.
Dee stands where she is, frozen in place. She doesn’t want to hurry to the treehouse. In fact, she wants to turn and run back the way they came, out into the clear air, the houses of their neighborhood in full view, and eyeballs looking through a dozen windows, watching them.
But as Sibby crashes away from her through the underbrush, branches snapping and dead leaves crunching underfoot, Dee realizes that she’s going to be left behind, all alone, if she doesn’t follow in Sibby’s wake.
Her boots, when she does start to run, are solid and thick. They aren’t the best for a footrace, but they’ll keep her feet warm. They’ll keep her tightly gripped to the ground.