The Secret Tree

by Natalie Standiford

  “Everything changes in middle school,” Thea said. “Girls you thought were your friends suddenly turn mean on you —”

  “Feuds break out everywhere,” Melina said.

  “— and then you have to find new friends.”

  “What about you guys?” Paz said. “You’re still friends.”

  “We’re the exception,” Melina said. “Best friends forever.” She reached across Hugo to fist-bump Thea.

  “Get your fist out of my face,” Hugo grumbled.

  “Even if you keep your best friend,” Thea said, “everything else changes.”

  “Your world gets rocked like an earthquake,” Thea said.

  Mr. Gorelick started playing “Shake Your Booty” on his Mighty Wurlitzer organ. I grabbed Paz by the hand and led her onto the rink. “Come on, Pax A. Punch — they’re playing our song.”

  My next-door neighbor, Mr. Gorelick, was the house organist for the Oella Roller Rink. He played old disco tunes some afternoons and during the roller derby bouts. I grew up hearing all those old ’70s songs blasting out of his house while he practiced. (His other hobby was polishing his 1929 Model A Ford Roadster, which he called Old Donna.)

  “Hey there, girls!” Mr. Gorelick waved at us as we skated past the organ booth. “Keep those elbows sharp!”

  After a warm-up run around the rink, Paz and I practiced another trick we were planning for the Fourth of July Parade: the Tunnel. So far we’d only done it right once. Paz skated in front of me and reached back between her legs to grab my hands. I crouched down and she pulled me through her legs until I stood up in front of her. Then I reached back and pulled her through my legs.

  “Try not to polish the floor with your butt this time,” Paz instructed.

  “I’m not trying to polish the floor with my butt,” I said.

  She glided in front of me and reached between her legs for my hands. I grabbed them. I could always do that part. It was the next part that tripped me up.

  I plopped to the floor. It was now a little more polished than it had been one second earlier.

  “You guys are awesome,” Lennie sneered as she speed-skated past us. “Minty Fresh and Pax A. Punch, go go go!”

  “Get her,” Paz muttered. We chased after Lennie, the meanest skaters on our imaginary roller derby team. I raced ahead and tagged Lennie on the back.

  “Minty Fresh scores!” I raised my arms and turned around to get Paz’s approval. But she wasn’t there.

  She had drifted over to the sidelines to talk to three girls: Isabelle Barton, Katie Park, and Lydia Kendall. They were going into seventh grade. They all wore the same silver barrettes, three of them lined up on one side of their hair, one barrette for each girl. Three girls, three barrettes each. Like a code for a secret club.

  I rolled over to them. “Minty Fresh scored!”

  For one second, Paz didn’t look at me. She didn’t say anything. It was like a strange, slow-motion delay. One second.

  I shuddered.

  Something was different. I felt it.

  When the longest second in the history of time was finally over, Paz turned her head, blinked, and smiled at me. Same old Paz. Only not. Pax A. Punch was gone.

  “We only came because it’s raining, and there’s nothing else to do,” Isabelle was saying.

  “This place is so cheesy,” Lydia added. “I can’t believe that old guy is still playing that stupid organ. Can’t they get a DJ?”

  “It smells like dirty socks in here.” Katie sniffed.

  These girls were too cool for goldfish. They had probably gotten rid of them a long time ago.

  “Well, we’re here. We might as well skate.” Isabelle glided out onto the floor and demonstrated a beautiful figure-skating spin. It was not the kind of spin a roller derby girl would do. It was the kind of spin a roller derby girl would make fun of.

  “Ooh,” Katie and Lydia said.

  “Ah,” Paz sighed.

  I held my tongue.

  The Pax A. Punch I knew wouldn’t ooh and ah over a girly spiral spin.

  “It’s not hard,” Isabelle said. “I can show you.”

  Paz, Katie, and Lydia gathered around for a demonstration. I tried to squeeze in, but somehow there wasn’t enough room in the circle for me.

  “I’m getting a snowball,” I said, frustrated. “Want one, Paz?”

  Paz didn’t answer. Isabelle was helping her bend backward for a spiral.

  I skated over to the snack bar by myself and got a spearmint snowball. Spearmint is my favorite snowball flavor, not just because it matches my name. Then I sat in the bleachers to slurp it. Thea’s bag was open, so I reached down to zip it up.

  “Hey!” Thea dashed to the side of the rink. She’s very aware of where her stuff is and who’s touching it at all times. “Quit touching my stuff, Minty!”

  “I’m not touching it,” I said. “I was zipping it closed.”

  “Just don’t touch it.” She turned to Melina and said, “I hate when she does that. Does Paz have this obsession with touching your things?”

  Melina nodded and laughed as they skated away together, commiserating over how horrible it is to have little sisters. That was a big part of their friendship — complaining about me and Paz.

  Isabelle organized a game of Crack the Whip. She and her friends were tall girls, and Paz was almost as tall. I felt shrimpy next to them.

  I finished my snowball fast — too fast, because I got brain freeze — and hurried back to the rink. Mr. Gorelick was playing “Get Down Tonight,” and the disco ball was flashing colored lights.

  I raced to catch up with the whip and grabbed Paz at the very end. We snaked around the oval, led by Isabelle. Suddenly the whip cracked, and I went flying into the bumper. Polishing the floor with my butt as usual. Everybody laughed, including me. I got up, brushed myself off, and scrambled to catch up to the whip as it whirled past me again.

  David and Troy whizzed by, buzzing too close to Isabelle. “Hey!” Isabelle snapped. “You almost bumped me!”

  The Mean Boys laughed and made rude noises. They stuck out their butts and made fun of the way we skated.

  The whip waved across the rink, girls clinging to one another’s slippery hands. I skated fast, trying to catch the tail, but before I could reach it, the Mean Boys zoomed by. Troy ducked under Isabelle’s arm. She stumbled, wobbled, and let go of Lydia’s hand behind her. Lydia bumped into Katie, who crashed into Lennie, who fell on top of Paz. In a chain reaction, the whip collapsed to the floor.

  “Skate much?” David cackled.

  Isabelle rubbed her knee. “I hate those Mean Boys,” Paz muttered.

  “Life would be so much nicer without them,” Lennie added.

  “Don’t worry,” Isabelle said. “Sixth grade will eat them alive.”

  Melina waved to us from the bleachers. “Time to go home,” Lennie said.

  I helped Paz to her feet, and we all skated back to the bench. “Bye, Paz,” Isabelle said. “See you at the pool.”

  “Next sunny day,” Paz promised.

  We sat on the bench. Paz seemed to be avoiding my eyes. We sat quietly as we untied our skates.

  Paz pulled her sneakers out from under the bench and reached inside one of them, then the other. Then the first again. Then the second again.

  “Where’s my ID?” she asked. She felt around inside her shoes one more time. Then she crouched down and looked under the bench. I looked too. I found my own ID inside my right sneaker, just where I’d left it.

  “It’s gone,” Paz said. “Someone stole my ID!”

  “Who’d want to do that?” I asked.

  “Probably some maniac,” Lennie said. “Like the Man-Bat.”

  Paz scowled. “I’m sure that’s the most likely explanation.”

  “What’s the difference between the Man-Bat and Batman?” Hugo asked.

  “Who cares?” Paz said. “Help me find my ID!”

  “Batman is a superhero. He helps people,” Lennie said. “The Man-B
at is a monster. Like Bigfoot or Mothman or, I don’t know, the Witch Lady. He hurts people.”

  Paz looked all over the rink. She checked the lost and found. But she couldn’t find her ID. She reported it missing, and the manager gave her a temporary one.

  “So what? You lost your ID,” Lennie said as we walked home. “You’ll get another one.”

  “That’s not the point,” Paz said. “The point is somebody took it. And the question is: Why?”

  “You always make a big deal out of everything,” Lennie told her. “Stop being such a drama queen.”

  “If someone stole something from you, you’d be screaming bloody murder,” Paz pointed out.

  Paz and Lennie bickered the rest of the way home. I hung back, thinking about the missing ID and wondering if this was connected to the other strange events of the last few days.

  I didn’t know it then, but it was.

  The next day was muggy and hot. I kicked open the screen door and sat on the front steps. The cicadas whined, which made the hot day seem to boil. I sucked on an orange Popsicle, trying to finish it before it melted. It dripped onto the brick step. In seconds, a line of ants crawled out of a crack in the brick and circled the sticky, orange drop.

  It was already the end of June. When school let out, the whole summer had seemed to stretch out in front of me endlessly, and now the first month was practically gone.

  It’s funny how time goes so slowly at the beginning of summer. I noticed little summery things I’d forgotten about during the winter, like how the heat looks like oil rising off the black tar driveway, how mosquito bites itch the worst on your knuckles, and how ants march across the sidewalk in a straight line. How good orange Popsicles taste in the sun.

  Orange Popsicles. Orange goldfish.

  Funny how I could walk through the woods I’d known my whole life and suddenly find a tree I’d never noticed before — a tree with a strange note inside that made me start wondering about the people who lived around me, loved and unloved. I was jolted out of this thoughtful mood by a clank in the garage. I sat up, imagining robbers. Intruders. Man-Bats.

  The garage door was wide open. There was another clank. Someone was in there.

  “Thea?” I called. Maybe Thea was knocking around in the garage for some reason. It wasn’t like her, but stranger things had happened. “Mom?”

  No one answered. There were no more clanks. But I knew I’d heard something.

  I crept up to the garage. What if it was a thief? What if someone was trying to steal my bike?

  What if the Man-Bat was lying in wait?

  I tiptoed up to the garage, whispering, “There’s no such thing as a Man-Bat. There’s no such thing as a Man-Bat….” Curse that Lennie Calderon.

  I paused. There was a cardboardy, papery sound, like someone rummaging. I tilted forward and peered into the dark garage.

  A boy crouched on his knees on the floor, digging through a box of stuff Mom was going to throw out. He looked up at me with big raccoon eyes. His head was shaved nearly bald, and he wore green camouflage, like a soldier. A chunky, black plastic thing hung from a cord around his neck.

  “Who are you?” I asked. “What are you doing?”

  “Yah!” he shouted. He jumped up, did a quick karate kick in the air, and streaked out of the garage before I had time to react. He ran straight into the woods.

  “Stop! Stop!” I chased him. He was a very fast runner, and the camouflage made him blend into the trees. I thought I lost him for a second, but he reappeared in a patch of sunlight far ahead of me.

  I was sure I’d never seen him before.

  About three-quarters of the way into the woods, the boy stopped. He turned around, breathing hard. I ducked behind a tree to hide, hoping he’d think he wasn’t being followed anymore. I wanted to see where he would go.

  He caught his breath and looked around carefully. I didn’t move. At last he decided it was safe and walked the rest of the way through the woods. I crept after him, trying my best not to make any noise.

  He emerged from the trees into the bright, shadeless light of the other side. I stopped at the edge in shock.

  The other side of the woods had been transformed. The Witch House was still there. But everything around it had changed.

  The fields around the Witch House had been flattened and divided into plots, and on each plot stood a half-finished, brand-new house. The walls were wrapped in plastic covering printed with the word TYVEK, and the houses were missing roofs, doors, floors. The muddy yards were strewn with straw and a few shoots of young grass. One finished house sat at the entrance to the development with a sign that said MODEL HOME.

  A whole new neighborhood was being built across the woods from us. But why did it look so forlorn and abandoned? Where were the construction workers?

  I stayed hidden in the woods and watched the boy. He walked up to the Witch House and tried the front door. I wanted to shout, Don’t go in there! But the boy didn’t look scared. He rattled the doorknob again. It was locked. There was no sign of the Witch Lady.

  The boy sat down on the front porch and pulled something small and flat — a piece of paper? — out of his pocket. He looked at it for a while.

  Dong, dong, dong … The sound of the old ship’s bell reached me all the way through the woods. Mom was ringing for me. She’d kill me if I didn’t go home right away.

  Reluctantly I quit spying and headed home through the woods. About halfway through, I felt a low vibration and heard that murmuring sound. I stopped. There it was, the fat, old tree with the hole in it. Voices floated on the wind, whispering words I couldn’t catch.

  I reached into the hole and felt something. Another note! I unfolded the paper and read it.

  Im so stoopid. Im affraid something is rong with my brane. But I dont want anywon to find out or theyll kep me back.

  Mom’s bell kept ringing hurry home, hurry home. I tossed the note back into the tree — somehow it didn’t seem right to keep a second secret — and ran the rest of the way through the woods, thinking.

  A lot of kids I knew were bad spellers — including both of the Mean Boys. They were always doing dumb things. I wished they would be held back a grade, then I wouldn’t have to see them so much at school.

  Hugo Calderon wasn’t the greatest speller, but he wasn’t stupid. And he was only eight — learning to spell takes time. Once I heard Mom say Kip Murphy’s little sister, Casey, was dyslexic — that was a possibility. There was a kid named Mike on Bailey Street who’d already had to do first grade twice, and he was now in fourth.

  When I came out of the woods, Otis and Esmeralda were clopping down the street. “Straaaaaawwww … berriesforsale! Straaaaaaawwwww … berriesforsale!” Otis hollered. He sat on his cart, shaded by a beach umbrella he’d attached to the front, while his horse, Esmeralda, pulled the cart. Every few days, they trotted through the neighborhood, selling strawberries or corn or other fruits and vegetables. If Otis didn’t have anything to sell, he’d sharpen people’s knives. Mom and Dad said that he was out of another century, the last of his kind. He waved to me as I crossed the street.

  Wendy ran out of her house, trailed by her cat, Phoebe, calling, “Otis! Otis, stop!”

  “Whoa.” Otis tugged on the reins, and Esmeralda stopped in front of Wendy’s house.

  “You’re early,” Wendy said. It was true. Otis usually came around in the late afternoon or early evening, and it was only lunchtime.

  Mom stood on the front steps of our house and waved. “Hi, Wendy! Hi, Otis!” Then she put her hands on her hips and said in a less friendly tone, “Minty Mortimer, I don’t like you running around in the woods by yourself. All sorts of things could happen.”

  “But this boy —” I started, but then I stopped, remembering how Dad didn’t want me chasing strange boys into the woods. And I’d done it anyway. Twice.

  “What boy?”

  “Nothing. I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll be careful.”

  “Lunch is almost
ready. Run over and buy a quart of strawberries.” She gave me five dollars.

  “Okay.” I walked across the lawn to Wendy’s yard. She was heading back inside with a pint of strawberries in her hand.

  “Will I see you in the parade next week, Minty?” she asked. Phoebe purred and rubbed her white fur against my legs.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Paz and I are doing a roller derby routine.”

  “I was thinking of dyeing Phoebe’s hair red, white, and blue and pulling her along in a wagon.”

  Otis shook his head. “Don’t do that to her, Wendy. Cats are easily embarrassed.”

  Wendy reddened. She was easily embarrassed too. “You’re right, Otis. I should spare her the humiliation.”

  Phoebe ran back to the house as if she knew we were talking about her. Wendy waved good-bye and followed her.

  “Minty, your ankle’s all furry,” Otis said.

  I bent down to brush off the cat hair. It stuck to my fingers.

  “Give me a horse any day,” Otis said. “Wendy tried to talk me into putting a straw hat on Esmeralda, but I know exactly how Esmeralda would feel about that.” He patted his horse.

  “She’s got her bells.” I rattled one of the bells on Esmeralda’s harness. “That’s decoration enough, right? Quart of strawberries, please.”

  “Here you go.” He piled a few extra strawberries on top of a quart and gave it to me. I gave him the five dollars. “And thank you very much.”

  I paused to pet Esmeralda on the nose and feed her a strawberry. “Something’s different about you today, Minty,” Otis said. “Did anything happen?”

  “Happen?” I wasn’t sure what he meant. How did Otis know something was different about me?

  “Your aura changed color,” he said. “Used to be you had a yellow halo around you, but it’s greenish today. Heading toward blue.”

  “My aura?” I self-consciously felt the cushion of air around my skin. When he talked about the color of an aura that way, I could almost feel it emanating from me like an electric charge. “What does that mean?”