by Lisa Graff
Logan didn’t talk much after that, the whole rest of the day. You could tell he was really worried about his brother. No one else really felt like talking either. It didn’t seem like a good time to play games or sing songs or tell stories. Mostly everyone stayed pretty quiet, pretty serious, even as the afternoon wore on and the crowd outside began chanting for them to come down. “For your own safety!” the grown-ups shouted. (Squizzy went around slamming all the windows and snapping shut the curtains, but the Treehouse Ten could still hear them.) And as hard as she tried, Winnie couldn’t focus on finishing her local history report, which she somehow needed to get to Mr. B by the next day to have any hope of passing the fifth grade.
Not long before the sun set that evening—minutes before the blazing yellow beam of the spotlight and the hideous music pierced the quiet—the mailbox light on the wall turned red. And when Lyle yanked up the mail platform, they discovered a single puffy white envelope. It was addressed to Logan, and inside was a note.
Logan—
I’m fine, just broke my dumb arm. Mom and Dad are so mad, they won’t let me watch ANY TV, even though what the heck else am I supposed to do now that my arm is broken???? I told them YOU won’t come down till they change their minds and let us watch anything we want (even Dragon Destroyers!!!!) You have to do whatever you can so the kids win.
TREEHOUSE TEN FOREVER!
From,
Brogan
P.S. This might make it easier for you all to stay up there—I found it in Kyle’s room, from his old phone. Keep it secret that you have it, though, OK? I know you can’t get online, but have Joey text Kyle if you need anything.
Underneath the note was a charger for Joey’s phone. (Joey cheered with joy when he saw it.)
“Brogan’s right, you know,” Squizzy said, reading the note over Logan’s shoulder. Her voice was shoutier than normal, because of how tired she was. “About doing whatever we can to win the war.”
“Sure,” Lyle grumbled. He was grumblier than normal, because of how tired he was. “But what are we supposed to do exactly, besides stay up here? We’re already doing everything we can.”
Squizzy folded her arms over her chest, thinking. “Maybe we should make a new list of demands,” she said. “A shorter one. With only one or two things on it, the things that are most important to everyone, like a total ban on grounding. The parents might actually agree to that, if we aren’t asking for so much dumb stuff. Then not only would we get to leave the treehouse, but we’d be proving we can make important decisions. Be independent.”
“That’s a pretty good idea,” Tabitha said, nodding slowly.
“Yeah,” Joey said. “Independent. I like it.”
“I like it, too,” Greta agreed.
Lyle, however, did not like it.
“The stuff we asked for wasn’t dumb!” he snapped. “We demanded things we want. Things we need! We can’t just ask for new stuff now. That’s what would make us look dumb. Everyone would think we were just a bunch of kids who couldn’t make up our minds. No one will ever take us seriously if we do that!”
“That’s a good point,” Aayush said, scratching his ear.
“We do have to look serious,” Logan agreed.
“Exactly,” Jolee added.
From her seat at the kitchen table, with her unfinished history report spread out before her, Winnie watched with an uncomfortable churning in her stomach, as each of her friends turned to look at her.
“Winnie?” Squizzy said, her arms still folded across her chest. “What do you think?”
“Yeah,” Lyle said, and he began to grind his teeth, ever so slightly. “Who do you agree with?”
Winnie glanced at Buttons, who was smartly staying out of things, curled up all alone on the loft steps. When she looked back at her friends, they were still staring at her, waiting for her answer.
So Winnie did the only thing she could think to do—she turned on her Artist Vision and observed each of her friends in the shifted light.
Squizzy’s fingers, twitching as she tapped her elbow.
Tabitha’s eyes, narrowed to slits.
Joey’s grumpy head nods.
Greta’s huffy breathing, in-and-out, in-and-out, waiting for Winnie’s response.
Lyle’s quiet teeth-grinding.
Aayush’s scratch-scratch-scratching of his ear.
The blotchy red spots on Logan’s cheeks.
Jolee’s slow, frustrated blinking.
Each of Winnie’s friends, she observed, was waiting for her to pick a side, whether Winnie wanted to pick one or not.
Winnie took a deep breath. “I think,” she said carefully, “that if I don’t finish my local history report before tomorrow, I’m going to fail fifth grade. So maybe we don’t have to argue about this right this second. Maybe we can figure things out in the morning.”
Winnie didn’t need to use her Artist Vision to observe that none of her friends liked that response at all.
Winnie didn’t need to use her Artist Vision to observe that none of her friends had even listened.
“You have to take a side!” Squizzy said, extra shouty.
“You’re the tiebreaker!” Lyle told her, extra grumbly. “Who do you agree with?”
Winnie did not want to take a side. She did not want to be a tiebreaker. Because the truth was, she thought that both of her friends were a little right.
Squizzy was right about fighting for independence. There was no point of any of them having gone up in the treehouse in the first place if they didn’t get something out of it.
And Lyle was right about needing to be taken seriously. None of the parents would agree to give them anything if they acted like little kids.
But Winnie thought both her friends were a little wrong, too. Ignoring the other person and acting like theirs was the only solution—that was no way to get any of them anywhere.
Watching Squizzy and Lyle glare at each other across the treehouse made Winnie’s stomach churn inside her like a washing machine that had gone off balance. And Winnie knew from too much experience that when she got that off-balance churning in her stomach, she couldn’t count on the two people who’d started it to make the churning stop.
She looked at Squizzy.
And she looked at Lyle.
And she looked down at her unfinished history report.
It was in that moment that the fiery yellow spotlight blazed through the treehouse window, and the insufferable grown-up music blasted all around them. And for the first time since the parents had begun their sleep deprivation tactics, Winnie was actually relieved. She couldn’t have told her friends what she thought if she’d wanted to—there was no way for them to hear her.
But the Treehouse Ten (well, Nine now, without Brogan) didn’t need to hear to fight. They divided themselves up without a single word—Squizzy, Tabitha, Greta, and Joey arranging their sleeping bags in the lounge area downstairs, and Lyle, Aayush, Logan, and Jolee crowded in the loft. As for Winnie, she joined Buttons on the stairs, right smack in the middle of all her friends, scrunched into an uncomfortable knot all night, with the yellow spotlight burning patches into her vision and the screeching music eating away at her brain.
Just past two in the morning, with no one even close to sleep, Squizzy tacked a sheet of paper to the trunk in the middle of the treehouse, where everyone would see it. As Winnie squinted to make out the words, the churning in her stomach grew worse than ever.
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The Great Escape
14 days after what happened happened
In her entire life, Winnie had never felt so rotten.
All night, Winnie sat crouched on the loft steps next to Buttons. Half of her friends glared angrily up at her from the first floor, and the other half glared angri
ly down at her from the second. The five pages of her not-quite-finished local history report, which Buttons had wedged himself on top of, seemed to be glaring at her, too. Winnie’s stomach churned and churned inside her, until she felt like it might just burst.
By the time the sun began to poke its way back into the sky Friday morning, Winnie knew she couldn’t sit there churning any longer. So, when the spotlights snapped off outside, and the blazing yellow glow inside the treehouse dimmed, Winnie pressed the balls of her feet gently against the loft steps, getting ready.
When the music stopped blasting, and the only sounds that worked their way through the windows were the birds’ chirpings, Winnie carefully shifted Buttons off her report.
When she heard the deep in-and-outs, in-and-outs of her friends drifting off groggily in their sleeping bags, Winnie slowly rose to her feet.
When the handful of night-patrolling grown-ups on the ground below headed to their cars to swap with the morning shift, Winnie tiptoed down to the art station, her not-quite-finished local history report wedged deep in her armpit. She opened a cubby door and removed a single item: her new zip-line helmet from Uncle Huck. Then, with her friends still snoozing and the adults on the ground focused elsewhere, Winnie quietly, quietly crept to the window. She quietly, quietly lifted the glass.
Winnie darted one last glance at Buttons, to make sure he was okay with her decision. And because he was the world’s greatest cat, he offered her the tiniest of nods.
Winnie took a deep breath and strapped her helmet to her head. She tucked the twelve carefully handwritten pages of her not-quite-finished local history report in the back band of her blue polka-dot pajamas. She climbed out onto the widest branch of the linden tree, grabbed the rope ladder attached to the side of the treehouse, and made her way to the roof. She plopped herself down in the zip-line seat, grabbing on tight to the handlebars with both hands. And she kicked off with both feet.
As Winnie zipped through the crisp April air—down through the branches, across her parents’ lawns, across the street, past the cars of the unsuspecting adults below—her stomach stopped its churning. It was all over, she told herself. She’d made the right decision in escaping. Everything would work out just fine. It would.
But just before she landed on the roof of Uncle Huck’s house, the twelve carefully handwritten pages of Winnie’s not-quite-finished local history report dislodged themselves from the back band of her blue polka-dot pajamas. And all Winnie could do was watch as her weeks of hard work scattered in the wind, rushing off in all directions.
Part III
How It All Ended
Advice and Toaster Waffles
14 days after what happened happened
Later, Uncle Huck would tell Winnie that he was pretty terrified to be jolted out of bed by his pajama-wearing niece stomping down on the skylight right above his bed. But as soon as she was safely inside the house, he seemed very happy to have her there.
Winnie, on the other hand, was not so happy. “My report!” she wailed, whipping her helmet off her head. “It’s due today! There’s no way I can redo everything now!”
“Winnie,” Uncle Huck said, taking hold of both her shoulders to try to calm her. “We’ll figure it out. I promise.”
“But I’m going to fail fifth grade!”
Winnie thought Uncle Huck would say some reassuring grown-up thing then, like, “Take a deep breath,” or “Count to ten, okay?” But what he said instead was, “Breakfast.”
“Breakfast?”
“That’s the only thing we need to worry about right this second, got it?”
Winnie wiped a sniffle from her nose and nodded. Breakfast was something she could worry about.
When they reached the kitchen, Uncle Huck got to work shifting messy stacks of papers to make room for Winnie to sit. Winnie was used to this when she visited. Maybe it was Uncle Huck’s “artistic mind,” or maybe her mom was right that he was just a slob. Whatever the reason, Winnie’s uncle was always leaving printouts and newspapers and drafting plans for new projects wherever they happened to land. And where they landed was everywhere.
“Sit, sit, sit,” Uncle Huck told Winnie, moving a heap of papers into the sink. “What’s going on? Are you okay? Tell me why you’re here.”
Winnie sat. And she tried to think of the best way to explain things. “My report,” she said. “I needed to finish it. I thought if I came here I could . . .” But then she trailed off, realizing that perhaps her local history report wasn’t the only reason she’d fled the treehouse.
“My friends are fighting,” she finished at last. She looked down at her hands. “I was in the middle. I didn’t like it.”
Uncle Huck opened a cupboard above the sink. It was completely empty. “So what are you going to do about it?” he asked, tugging open the dishwasher and pulling a glass from the top rack. After a quick swipe with a dishtowel, he set the glass in front of Winnie.
Winnie shrugged. “I tried to talk to them,” she said. “Just like I tried to talk to Mom and Dad. But it didn’t work. They didn’t listen. No one ever listens to me. I’m not very good at talking, I guess.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s true,” Uncle Huck replied, grabbing a carton of orange juice from the refrigerator. He opened it, sniffed it, and then set it beside the glass. “You talk to me just fine. You ask me, the problem’s on their end. All of them.”
Winnie slowly poured herself some juice. “It’s still a problem, though, isn’t it?” she said.
“I suppose so,” Uncle Huck admitted. He frowned and made his way to the freezer. “So maybe you can’t make your friends hear what you need them to,” he told Winnie. “Maybe no one can. Toaster waffle?”
“Sure.” Winnie eyed her juice. It was the kind with the pulp. Winnie hated pulp. She pushed the glass away. “So what am I supposed to do?” she asked, as Uncle Huck toasted their breakfast. “If I can’t make them hear?”
Uncle Huck was silent until two waffles popped from the toaster, crisp and golden. “Maybe you need to change your tactics,” he told Winnie, placing a waffle in front of her on a paper towel.
“I don’t have any tactics,” Winnie replied. She gave her waffle a nibble. When she noticed Uncle Huck raising his eyebrows at her, she told him, “I’m not good at anything.” He raised them higher. “Nothing useful, anyway. I’m good at art.” He nodded. “Doodling. Painting.” She thought a little more. “Artist Vision.”
“Aha!” Uncle Huck slapped his hand on the table so hard that Winnie’s glass jumped, sloshing pulpy orange juice onto an old newspaper. “And you said you had no useful skills.”
Winnie scooped up the newspaper to try to mop up some of the juice. “You think I can solve all my problems with Artist Vision?”
“Well, no,” Uncle Huck said. “Obviously not. Failing fifth grade, for example, that’s probably a whole different kettle of fish. As for your friends, though . . .” He took a swig of orange juice, straight from the container. “I wouldn’t be surprised if your Artist Vision helped you with that quite a bit.”
Winnie’s eye landed on a particularly curious advertisement for a museum exhibit about medical oddities in the juice-stained paper she was holding. “Maybe . . . ,” she said slowly, mulling things over.
“In any case,” Uncle Huck told her, “you should probably move quickly.” He scooped a different newspaper out of the teetering tower on the table, flipping through the articles about local artists and upcoming events, until he found the one he wanted. “Here.” He jabbed his finger at a headline.
Winnie drank in the words slowly. If she didn’t find a way to solve her problems before she was “retrieved” from her treehouse, everything would go back to the way it was before—or worse. And she definitely didn’t want that.
“You really think I can fix things?” she asked Uncle Huck.
“No doubt in my mind,”
he said. “Although you’re not solving anything here, eating waffles.”
At that, Winnie had to laugh. Uncle Huck was right, as always.
Winnie scarfed down the rest of her waffle in two bites. Then, with her worries about breakfast completely resolved, she returned her helmet to her head.
“I’m going back,” she told her uncle. “And I’m going to fix everything.”
Uncle Huck smiled. “Excellent,” he said. “Oh, and Winnie?”
She tightened the straps of her helmet. “Yeah?”
“Sometimes it helps to turn your Artist Vision on yourself, too, you know.”
But Winnie was hardly listening. She was already busy formulating a plan.
When Winnie kicked off in the zip line five minutes later, zooming her way back to the very spot she’d only just escaped from, she was gripping several pages of newspaper under her arm.
TRANSCRIPT
The following is what was said on the Channel 10 Action News special report that aired the morning of Friday, April 28th—the same day Winnie escaped from (and returned to) her treehouse.
Amanda Howard, Channel 10 Action News Correspondent: This is Amanda Howard, with absolutely nothing to report. I hope something happens soon, because Frankie and I have been here for two weeks now, and we’re getting a little sick of each other, ha-ha.
[The camera pans past Amanda’s shoulder and up into the tree cover, where Winnie can be seen, a blue blur zipping toward the treehouse roof.]
Amanda Howard: Frankie, what are you doing? I know you’re tired, but jeez. I’m over here.
Frank Quijata, Channel 10 Action News Cameraman: [voice heard off camera] Um, Amanda? Turn around, okay?