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.
“Yeah. And shutters. And real glass windows. And a secret trapdoor with a rope ladder on the bottom,” Christopher said excitedly.
“But why would you need a secret door?” Matt asked.
“Because it’s cool. Duh,” Mike said.
“Let me see those,” Special Ed said, grabbing the papers out of Matt’s hands.
He studied them skeptically, like a surveyor, in between sips of Yoo-hoo. Christopher saw that Special Ed was getting bacon grease on the corners of the blueprints. It made him a little mad, but he didn’t say anything. He needed his friend’s help. After a moment, Special Ed slid the papers back to Christopher.
“Impossible. We could never build anything like that by ourselves,” he said.
“Yes, we could,” Matt said. “Our uncle George is a—”
“—handyman,” Mike said, stealing his little brother’s thunder. “We helped him last summer. We could figure it out.”
“But it’s already November. It’s cold as hell,” Special Ed cautioned.
“Are you a girl?” Mike asked.
“I don’t know. Are you?” Special Ed replied skillfully.
“Come on, Eddie. It’ll be our own private clubhouse,” Christopher said.
“What’s so fun about going out into your backyard and building some stupid tree house thirty feet from your warm living room with a real TV?”
“Because we’re not building it in my backyard,” Christopher whispered. “We’re building it in the Mission Street Woods.”
You could have heard a pin drop. Suddenly, the gravity of the plan was revealed. This was not some backyard excursion. This was high adventure. This was breaking rules. This was…
“Awesome,” Special Ed whispered.
“But that’s trespassing,” Matt said.
“No shit, Sherlock. That’s what’s so awesome,” Special Ed replied.
“I don’t know,” Mike said. “The Collins Construction Company has fences everywhere.”
“Are you a girl?” Special Ed asked. The “touché” was silent.
“Not everywhere,” Christopher said. “There is a path to the woods in my backyard. We don’t need to jump the fence there or anything. But we’ll need tools.”
“Easy,” Special Ed said, now the plan’s biggest champion. “My dad has a garage full. He never uses them.”
“What about wood?” Christopher asked, although he knew the answer.
“Collins Construction has scrap piles all over the place,” Mike said.
“And our uncle has plenty of loose nails,” Matt added, as if trying to matter.
The planning went on like that for the rest of lunch. The boys figured out that they could beg, borrow, or steal almost everything they needed except for shingles and a doorknob and windows. But Special Ed’s dad had a collection of old Playboy magazines and a color Xerox and a neighborhood full of older kids.
So, money could be raised.
Of course, the Collins Construction Company had a strict no-trespass policy. And Special Ed knew from his dad that Mr. Collins had been cutting down parts of the woods to build subdivisions. So, this was illegal. But somehow, that was part of the appeal.
“Breaking the law! Breaking the law!” Special Ed said, singing a line from one of his mother’s favorite songs from her college days.
“But what about our parents?” Matt asked.
Oh, right. Their parents. Hmmm.
They didn’t see how their parents would ever agree to let them run around in those woods alone. Especially after Christopher went missing. Maybe Special Ed’s father could be conned, but their mothers? Never.