A murmur goes around the group. I don’t know what a sit is, but Sage jumps in before I can ask. “It’s too early,” she says, shaking her head. “We aren’t ready yet. We don’t have ground support in town, nobody here’s got climbing experience—”
“Yeah, but they’re coming back, soon; we need to put it in motion.”
Sage’s voice gets hard. “Nobody here has training; we can’t just blow that off. There are all kinds of risks. We’re talking about putting someone in a three-hundred-foot tree.”
Oh. A tree sit. They want to put someone in Legacy so they can’t cut her down, so that if anybody tried to, they’d be cutting down a person. I heard about tree sits once on Independent World News, parked outside the school with Jeff in Grandpa. I think we were maybe making out. That seems so far off, like a million years ago.
“Seriously,” Sage says. She looks across the fire at the kids from the buses. “Any of you guys ever been up in a tree?”
“We occupied an oak at U of O campus once,” Goat says. “It was like forty feet, maybe?”
“Bullshit.” Stone laughs, giving Goat a friendly punch on the shoulder. “You made some flyers, dude.”
“Or, I mean, some people I know occupied it,” Goat says, then punches Stone back. “I dropped out, so.” The guys laugh. Sage just looks at the rest of us like, See what I mean?
“Okay, fine, but you got another idea?” Aaron asks her. “’Cause, I mean, they just broke Nutmeg’s rib. They’re coming in, and they’re coming in to cut. I don’t think we can rely on the dragons, and the ditches aren’t done.” He shoots Jeff an accusatory look. Aaron’s eyes glint green in the fire. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him anything but calm.
“No, I don’t,” Sage bristles. “But that doesn’t mean we should just blow off the risk. You and I are organizers, we’ve never been up. Exile and Nutmeg know about barricades and road stuff. Until we can get some people here who’ve set up a sit before, who have actually been up, I don’t think it’s safe, and I don’t think we’re ready, and I think we should be coming up with something else.”
Everybody squirms; no one wants Sage and Aaron to be fighting. They’re the closest thing to someone who’s in charge. “I’ve been around a lot of sits.” Nutmeg tries to break the tension. “I can rig on the ground; I could probably figure out how to apply that up high.”
“Yeah, but they probably broke your rib,” Sage tells Nutmeg. “We can’t send you up.”
“Fine,” Aaron says. “I’ll do it.” Sage looks at Aaron like, What the hell are you talking about? We didn’t talk about that.
“Look.” He turns to her. “I think it’s necessary. I know knots, I’ve got endurance, Nutmeg can figure out how to rig pretty much anything, you and Exile are good for strategy. Other folks can do ground support, whatever. It’ll work.”
“I’m not cool with that,” Sage says. “I’m sorry, I’m just not.”
“They’re coming in three days,” he says.
She just looks at him.
“Okay,” Aaron says, “let’s take it off of you and me. Let’s take a vote.” He turns to the group. “Who all thinks I should go up?”
Nutmeg and Exile raise their hands. So do all the school-bus kids. Jeff looks at me; I’m sitting on my hands. He raises his.
Sage eyes me. I can tell she really doesn’t want Aaron to go up. I look back and forth between the two of them, Aaron with his hand in the air, and even though everyone else already voted, I feel this pressure, like it’s somehow up to me.
“It’s the best thing for Legacy, Al,” Aaron says, and finally I put my hand up too.
I feel sort of sick to my stomach. But it’s not like me saying something would change anything.
“Fine,” Sage says. “I just want to say I think we’re not prepared, and I don’t think it’s safe. But I’m not going to stand in the way of the group.” I watch her, sussing out whether she really means it. Her eyes are clear, honest. I think she does. I relax a little. I didn’t fuck it up by raising my hand. I’m pretty sure it’s okay.
“Okay.” Aaron takes a breath. “Everybody better go to bed. There’s gonna be a lot to do starting at sunrise.”
Exile goes to get ashes to put out the campfire; people start to disperse. I brush myself off and look across the fire, waiting for Jeff to walk back to our tent. He’s got his back to me; Goat and Dirtrat busted out a bowl. I stare at his back, his thermal shirt tracing the V from his shoulders to his waist. I can’t look at him without knowing how it feels to touch him. It’s not right that he’s ignoring me.
“Jeff,” I finally say. “Hey.”
He turns, orange flickering on his cheeks, his lip ring glinting in the light. “I’m gonna hang out for a while,” he says. “Don’t stress if I crash in the bus,” and he turns back around.
“Oh,” I say, half to myself. Crash: that’s overnight. “Okay.” And I walk back to our tent alone.
* * *
• • •
The next morning there’s a ton of stuff to get, and we have to get it fast. Milk crates, carabiners, metal clamps. Tarps and plastic, water bottles, plywood, yards of rope. We’ve got hammers and batteries and nails, but that’s about it. Someone has to go to town.
Jeff didn’t come back to our tent last night. I don’t know what that means, or how to talk about it; every time it elbows into my mind, my pulse races and I feel queasy. Is he trying to tell me something? Was he with Cyn?
I don’t know the rules: I never had a boyfriend before Jeff. The closest thing was Andy’s friends, and they weren’t close at all. Jeff and I have never been “official”—we both just always only had each other. If he’d ever asked me to “be his girlfriend,” it would’ve been bizarre, because I already was. Ever since we’ve been around other people, though, I’ve been confused. He got mad that I didn’t tell him I was going to town with Aaron, but he doesn’t tell me everything he’s doing, and now he’s hardly even talking to me. Last night he slept somewhere else. With a girl who hasn’t talked to me, not once. I’m pissed at him—but underneath the mad is a raw layer of hurt, and underneath that an empty hole of fear: without him, I’m cut loose. When I think about it, it feels bottomless.
I try to just keep working. Aaron and Exile are headed into town, and I ask if I can go. I’m not telling Jeff.
This time that’s on purpose.
As we’re loading into the car, Sage comes up to Aaron. He looks at her, and I can tell he’s not sure what she’ll say to him. But nobody’s yelling, nobody’s hiding; it’s more like they both know there’s a problem, and they’re both there to figure it out. I’ve never seen that before. Like: things can be hard with someone, and you can work them out. I never saw anybody do that. My mom never worked anything out. My dad just left.
Sage hands Aaron a mobile phone, big and blocky. “Here,” she says. “See if you can get a signal in town, make some calls to people who will get the word out. If we’re going up, I at least want to build some ground support.”
Aaron nods. “Makes sense.” He looks at her a minute, his face softening. She looks back at him. It’s like she’s giving him permission. I see it pass between them. “Thank you,” he says. She holds on to his hand. It’s nice. I think, That’s how it’s supposed to be.
* * *
• • •
Aaron drives as the sun finishes coming up; I sit in the backseat of Exile’s car, picking at the peeling upholstery, listening to the guys talk.
“I don’t know how many dumpsters we’re gonna find; this town is pretty small,” Aaron tells Exile. “I think we’re gonna have to hit a store. But we don’t want to draw attention.”
“Do we want to send Alison in?”
“I think a girl buying plywood here will draw more attention than either of us,” Aaron says. “They’d probably just assume we’re carpenters, but she’d set alarm
bells off.” It’s weird to think about that: at the Free State I’ve been doing all that kind of stuff. Building, digging, whatever. But this is the real world, I guess, and a small town, and plywood and carpentry aren’t normal for girls. It almost makes me mad: I shouldn’t have to be a “girl,” I should be allowed to just be a person.
Aaron pulls into an alley near a big green dumpster and we get out of the car. He leaves the engine idling, doors unlocked. They lift the plastic lid off and clamber up, both of them old hands at this. I stand on the damp pavement, unsure what I’m supposed to do, till Exile says, “C’mon,” and reaches out his hand. I grab it, lift myself clumsily up into the dumpster, and then we’re sitting in a pile of trash. I look at us and see street urchins, orphans from some eighth-grade book for English class—rags, patches, garbage—and I wonder what the hell anyone who knew me before would say. My mom, Andy, anyone from school. Would they even recognize me? I’m grubby and unwashed, hiding from store owners, going through somebody’s trash. So we can find stuff to build an illegal platform a hundred feet in the sky. That somebody is going to live on.
I hold my breath against the smell and dig in. Once you get past the layer of gross, it’s amazing how much good stuff people throw away. Sure enough, we find broken two-by-fours; sheets of plastic, empty jugs. Down the alley two plastic milk crates sit at a convenience store’s back door. As we’re picking them up, we hear footsteps from inside; we look at each other and run, laughing, back to the car. We tumble in before they can see us, and for a second I feel wild, free, the thrill of getting away with it. Together. Wood scraps press into my lap, hard edges and sharp angles, but I don’t care.
Aaron smooths his hair into a neater ponytail before he walks into the hardware store. Exile and I stay in the car.
“So—do you know how to do this?” I ask him. “Build it, I mean.”
“Not really,” he says. “I mean, I know the basic idea. But I’ve never done it myself.”
“Is Sage right—do you think it’s dangerous?”
“Well, I mean, dangerous compared to what? Compared to sitting at home watching TV, sure. Compared to being outside in a hurricane? Maybe not.” It’s not particularly comforting that the only thing he can think of that’s worse is being in a hurricane. “Way I see it is, you spend too much time being scared, it’ll slow you down and they win.” He looks at me. “’Cause they’re not scared.”
“But they’ve got everything. I mean, cops, money—we don’t have any of that.”
“Yeah, but there are a lot of people out there who’d support us.”
I think of Tacoma, kids at school, the people at my mom’s job. I’m not so sure that’s true. “You think?” I ask.
“I do.”
That thought has never occurred to me: that anyone out there could support me, that I might not be as alone as I thought. Well, it did once. Looking at that Antioch catalog, getting that acceptance letter, I thought, Maybe that’s a place full of weirdos like me, people who were alone where they came from and now they can be together. But that’s just an idea. I’ve never trusted it could actually be true.
* * *
• • •
We drive back to the Free State, sheets of plywood hanging out the trunk, straining against the rope. For a second I let myself believe what Exile said about the world: that there are other people out there. And even though the car is weighted down, for a minute I feel light. For a minute, I feel like the world could be bigger than I thought it was. And that makes me think maybe I don’t need Jeff as much as I thought I did.
When we get back, I don’t look for him. I push him out of my head, unpack the gear, load it onto my shoulders. I’m panting and it’s heavy, but I like the work. I fold up tarps and dropcloths, finish fast, and holler off, “What’s next?”
“Maybe fill some more food buckets up?” Aaron says. “Or blankets, I’ll need blankets. There are extras over by the tents.” Everybody’s working, even Goat and Stone and Bender, even Dirtrat. They’re probably high, and working slow, but they’re still doing stuff. There’s that much to do.
The sun sinks past the tree line by the time we have everything organized; then we have to hike it to Legacy. We load up like pack mules, plastic bags and milk crates and backpacks, cords of wood lashed together with bungee cords. Jeff stays away from me, hiking with the school-bus kids and Cyn. They lag behind us. I keep turning around to see if he’ll try to catch up with me, but he doesn’t.
By the time we’re done, the sun is setting. We have to get back to camp: you can’t cook in the dark, and everybody’s starving.
“Are we just leaving all this stuff here?” Sage asks. “I don’t think that’s smart.”
“She’s right,” Aaron says. “They might be watching,” and I think really? “We went to town twice; people saw us. And I put the word out for support. If they’re gearing up, they probably have an eye on us. We leave supplies out overnight, they might get swiped.”
“You’re right,” Nutmeg says.
“Someone’s gotta sleep out here,” Sage says. “I’d volunteer, but—” She looks to Aaron. I can tell she wants to stay with him. He’s going up tomorrow. For a second I feel jealous, a sharp twinge in my chest. I’m sure I’ll be alone again in the tent tonight, staring at the stars through the mesh, waiting to see if Jeff will come back from the bus, waking up in the morning to find that he hasn’t.
“I’ll do it,” I jump in, not even looking at Jeff.
It’s like the first night we were out here, when I volunteered to lock down—but instead of doing it to make him feel better, this time I’m doing it to say, Fuck you. I can be alone, and you can’t hurt me.
Jeff looks at me, quick, a flicker of hurt. My heart flutters—is he going to stop me? Do I want him to? And then Cyn catches his eye and he catches hers, and he leans back on his heels, adjusts his stocking cap, and whatever was open between us for a second gets locked up again.
Fine.
CHAPTER 16
I wake up before sunrise the next morning, black sky turning blue above me. Rain falls soft from the sky, patters on the forest floor, most of it caught by the trees. It’s quiet. Really quiet: no one else is awake yet back at camp.
And I realize: I’m okay.
I hardly slept last night, blinking in the dark, ears attuned to every sound. But finally I must’ve fallen asleep. And here I am, and here are the supplies, still safe. I feel kind of hard, and kind of hollow, but also kind of proud.
I rub my eyes and sit up. Today’s the day. I look up the huge trunk, darkened by the rain. It’s like climbing a skyscraper. It’s hard to imagine Aaron up there. I know there’s a way to get up, but I can’t picture it. I wonder if he feels like I did last night: scared but pushing past it, shaking inside but forcing yourself to do it anyway. I wonder if Sage is holding his hand, helping him feel better. I feel that twinge again, a vacuum inside me that keeps trying to suck me in. I have to get up and get to work.
* * *
• • •
By daybreak everyone is down at Legacy, caffeinated, ready to start. Nutmeg cuts a huge length of rope, attaching a heavy beanbag to one end. He steps back, looking up her trunk to find a good branch. “We’re gonna throw this over,” he tells us, “and tie the climbing rope to it.” He spots the lowest strong branch; it’s probably forty feet up. “My rib is still fucked, though. Who’s got a good arm?”
All the guys here are pretty skinny. Stone is so loud on the bus, the boss of everyone; here he just kicks at the ground, trying to look cool, hanging back, blending in. But Jeff pipes up: “I can throw.” Then he shoots me a look like, See? I can do something too. He hasn’t volunteered for anything since we’ve been here. He’s competing with me. I roll my eyes and look away.
Nutmeg hands the beanbag rope to Jeff. “You probably want to back way up. It’s high.”
Jeff nods like, Don’t te
ll me, dude, I know. He backs up, winds up, and pitches. It doesn’t even get close.
“Shit,” he says, and I catch him glance at me, checking to see if I saw him miss. I look down instinctually. It’s a habit, making sure he’s not embarrassed. Like that’s my job.
He tries again. Closer this time, but not by much. “Goddamn it,” he mutters, looking around, ears turning red under the raindrops. Everybody’s watching. On the fourth try he finally gets it. It sails over the branch and swings down with a thunk. Stone goes, “Fuck yeah,” and Jeff looks at him, puffs up a little, proud.
Nutmeg ties the throw line to the climbing rope, pulls it over and down, and then Aaron steps into a harness and ties a complicated knot, the kind of knot that someone has to teach you. He wiggles the knot up and down the main rope, making sure it moves, then clips his harness on. Exile hands him work gloves: “Wear these or it’ll rip your hands up when you climb.”
“Thanks,” Aaron says, a little breathless, and puts them on. He looks up at the rope, hanging down from the branch, and I follow his gaze. Stretching up toward the sky, the rope looks unbelievably thin. I can’t imagine how it could hold a person.
He looks at all of us. “Here goes.” Sage steps forward to hug him, her fingers digging into his shoulders. I look down, cheeks flushed, feeling Jeff behind me. Aaron buries his face in her neck, unembarrassed, in front of all of us, and I wonder what it would feel like to have someone so unafraid to be with me.
And then Aaron lets go and hooks in, slips his boot into the foot loop and moves the knot up, and starts climbing.
We all watch. Five minutes and he’s halfway to the branch, swaying back and forth like a monkey. The bus guys hoot and holler as he gets higher, cheering him on, like they had anything to do with it.
Ten minutes and he reaches the first branch. Forty feet up. He heaves himself onto it, hooks his harness to the tree trunk, lifts up the rope he just climbed up on, and stands to pitch it over another branch, thirty feet above his head. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s crazy.
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