With my heart thumping, I held my breath and placed my hand on the small branch jutting out and gripped it, pulling myself up as I stretched my leg to the branch at the side and used it to climb higher.
I looked up through the tree and saw Maddison looking back at me. He gave me the smile he only shared with me, and my heart skipped in my chest. As I reached up to climb even higher, a steady rumble cracked overhead and engulfed the air around me. It even made the tree vibrate through my fingertips. I crouched down, pulled my hand back and held on to the branch at my side.
“Grace?” Oliver called from his spot on the ground. “Are you okay?”
The excitement that had fired my courage had died with the noise still rumbling around us.
“No,” I called, the uncertainty colouring my voice.
“It’s all right, Grace. You’re fine,” Maddison chimed in.
The light shrunk away as if sucked from the sky, and the leaves and branches turned everything dark and gloomy. The tip-tap of droplets splashing on leaves sounded before I felt several drops hit my head and arms.
Maddison climbed down to me and perched on the branch to the side.
“Grace, you ready to go down?”
I nodded furiously at him, but my grip of the branch and my position backed up against the trunk didn’t change.
“It’s only a bit of thunder. Follow me back down, okay?”
I looked at him and nodded again, but I felt my grip tighten around the wood in my hand.
He slid his legs to the lower branch and dropped his body and then looked up. “See. Easy.”
My fingers relaxed their grip, and I inched my body along the branch to follow his lead. As I let go, the inside of the tree lit up with a flash, casting shadows around us, followed by a loud boom that shattered the sky above our heads.
“Arghh!” I squealed and pushed myself back against the trunk of the tree and gripped hold, securing myself in place.
“Grace, you’ve got to follow me down,” Maddison pleaded, but fear had tied me to this spot.
The rain fell harder, and a few drops now cut through the canopy above and started to cover me, seeping through my t-shirt and chilling my skin.
“Grace!” Oliver called again. “Mads, you’ve got to come down.”
“What about Grace?” he answered.
“Move, Maddison. I’ll talk to Grace.”
The rustle of the leaves told me that Maddison was finishing the last level before reaching the ground.
“Grace, you know what’s happening, right?” Oliver asked.
“Yeah,” I confirmed through chattering teeth. I was terrified that I was stuck in a tree in a lightning storm.
“Then you’ve got to come down. We need to get home.” His voice rang in my ears but didn’t make me shift from my spot.
“Grace?” he shouted again.
I peered down from my spot and saw him leaning up against the tree trunk, trying to get a clear line of sight to me. I wasn’t that high up, but the rain and the noise put a lot of distance between us.
“Grace, I won’t leave you, but you’ve got to help me.”
“Grace, come on!” Maddison added.
Another thunderous crack and the sky split with light. It sounded like the clouds were gathering like giant boulders, crashing into each other and fighting for position overhead.
Water dripped from my hair, now soaked through and plastered to my head, and the shiver that started now shook my whole body violently.
I’d always loved thunderstorms, watching the sky light up in a flash and listening for that roll of thunder after. But this took all the magic from those events. Being under those crashes and strikes made me feel tiny and insignificant and froze any courage I had from my earlier tree-climbing adventure.
“Oliver, what are you doing?”
“Get away. She needs to come down.”
The boys argued beneath me, and I squeezed my eyes shut, blocking everything out and imagined myself wrapped up in my covers with Bob.
“Grace, look at me.”
I squinted my eyes open, blinking back the rain now running over my face. Oliver’s popped up from the branch under the one I was glued too.
“Grace, we need you to come down. Just come to me and I’ll help you. It’s not safe in this tree,” he pleaded with me, and I knew he was right. But that didn’t mean my limbs would listen.
“Now, I’m going to put my hand out. Crawl forward and take it. Then you can climb onto the same branch as me, and we can go down together. Mads is at the bottom. You won’t fall. I promise.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know. But we’ve got to go. Or Mads will run back and get our mum.”
“No, no.” The thought of having Vivien, or worse, my mum having to pull me from the tree was the motivation I needed. I relaxed my hold and leaned forward until I could take Oliver’s hand.
I inched forward, shuffling along the bark until I was where he’d popped up. He let go of my hand so I could twist around and lower myself down to his position. My feet hit the branch, and I followed Oliver again until I put my feet in the knot and stumbled back towards the ground.
Maddison and Oliver grabbed hold of me, and we ran, them yanking my arms from their sockets, towards the gate. We scrambled over and raced off down the track, not worrying about running this time. My feet scuffed the mud and my hair whipped around my shoulders in long tendrils, heavy with water. We all arrived at my door, my lungs burning, and my throat tight from racing.
“Thank you,” I said. I paused, just for a moment to look at both of them. Rain dribbled over their faces from their flattened hair, both their t-shirts sticking to their skin like mine.
Maddison turned around and started running back home, but Oliver waited a second more. He nodded at me, urging me into the house, and I offered a weak smile. He wouldn’t move until I was safely inside. My gut trembled, and my lip quivered, wanting to burst into tears and hug him. He didn’t leave me.
A final nod and I did as he wanted. I closed the door behind me and raced upstairs to the bathroom before Mum could see me. Tears burned my icy skin as I stripped off and jumped in the shower. The heat scorched my hand as I tested the temperature, but I needed to thaw out.
“Grace?” Mum knocked on the bathroom door.
“In the shower. I got wet.” The door and the shower disguised the lump in my throat.
“Okay, then. Don’t leave your wet clothes on the floor.”
After the coast was clear, I pulled on a soft t-shirt and slipped under the fluffy covers of my bed, desperate to warm up. I twisted on my side and watched as the rain continued to lash the window. No more thunder. No more lightning.
I hid in my bedroom for the rest of the day. Embarrassment at what the boys must have thought prevented me from settling into a new book because I couldn’t concentrate. My mind replayed the noise of the first strike of lightning and roll of thunder, their faces, their voices.
The summer didn’t last forever, and we hadn’t had a chance to do any of the fun things we’d planned, and the one time we could have had a real adventure, I was trapped, scared stiff up a tree.
One day, I might be able to see the funny side, but right then, I still felt the shiver of cold rain droplets over my body.
Hours later, as I was finally drifting off to sleep, a tap sounded at my window, and then another. It came and went, not quite in a rhythm, but enough to annoy me into getting out of bed. I pulled back the curtain and stared out into the darkening night.