The Secret Tree

by Natalie Standiford

  I dashed over to the model home and tried the door. It was locked. So I knocked. I rang the doorbell. “I know you’re in there!” I called. “You have to come out sometime! I’m going to sit right here and wait until you do.”

  I couldn’t wait forever. If Mom rang the bell, I’d have to go home. But the boy didn’t know that.

  The ground around the unfinished houses was just mud and straw. The Witch House was gray and peeling and cobwebby, with an overturned couch on the front porch and trash in the yard. A curtain moved in the window. Was someone watching? Or was it just the wind?

  The Model Home was the most inviting place in the development, new and clean and surrounded by a carpet of green sod.

  I heard a noise from inside the house. I knocked again. “I swear I won’t hurt you! I just want to talk to you.”

  The door swung open, and there he stood. The boy in the camouflage.

  He was short, shorter than me, and his hair was yellow fluff like a baby duck’s, shorn close to his head. Around his neck hung the chunky, black plastic thing I’d seen on him before.

  “Is that a camera?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you take my picture with it?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Did you steal one of my school pictures out of my garage?”

  “No.”

  He was lying. “I know you did,” I said. “You can tell me the truth. I won’t say anything.”

  The boy said nothing.

  “I know you took something,” I said. “I saw you.”

  “I’ll give it back,” he said.

  Aha!

  “That’s okay,” I told him. “My mom was going to throw it out anyway. But you still shouldn’t have taken it without asking.”

  I thought he was going to say he was sorry, but he didn’t.

  “Is this your house?” I asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Can I come in?”

  “Okay.” He stepped aside to let me in. A painting of a farmhouse hung on the wall of the entryway, with a bowl of plastic flowers on a table below it.

  “I’m Minty Mortimer,” I said.

  The boy shook my hand. “Raymond Delmore Junior.” He leaned forward and sniffed me. “You don’t smell very minty. You smell kind of sweaty. And grassy.”

  “Yeah, well, they didn’t name me for my smell. They named me after my grandmother Araminta.”

  “My grandmother’s name is Kelly,” Raymond said. “That rhymes with smelly.”

  “Yes, it does.” Kelly rhymed with smelly — that was undeniably true. But it had nothing to do with anything that I could see. “I know a dog named Kelly.”

  Speaking of smells, this house had a strange one. Most houses smell like the people who live in them. I’m used to my own house’s smell, so I don’t notice it, but Paz says it smells like lemons, pizza, and rubbing alcohol. Mom does disinfect things a lot. The Calderons’ house smells like onions and wood polish and Play-Doh. The Gorelicks’ house is air freshener, menthol, and pot roast. Everybody’s house has a different people smell.

  This model home smelled like vinyl, paint, and new carpeting. It had no “people” smell.

  Raymond led me into the living room. There was a black leather couch, some stiff-looking chairs, and a Barcalounger with the footrest out. The glass coffee table was littered with comic books, a harmonica, an open can of grape soda, a notebook, glue, tape, scissors, and a pencil.

  “So this is really your place?” I asked.

  “Sure is.”

  “Where are your parents?”

  “They have their own houses. This house is just for me.”

  “Wow. How’d you get your own house?”

  “The construction workers left it for me,” Raymond said. “They left a few weeks ago and they haven’t come back. I think they ran out of money.” He paused. “So it’s my house now.”

  He plopped down on the Barcalounger, king of the castle. I stayed on my feet. I had something to confront him with and wanted the advantage of height.

  I pulled the latest secret out of my pocket — the one about the curse — and waved it in Raymond’s face. “What do you know about this?”

  His eyes lit up. “Another one!” He grabbed the paper and read it, moving his lips slightly.

  “Are you putting a curse on my friend?” I demanded.

  Instead of answering, Raymond reread the secret.

  “Why do you keep taking pictures of us? Are you a spy? Or are you using the pictures to cast a voodoo spell?”

  Raymond opened the notebook on the coffee table and held the slip of paper over it.

  “Can I have this?” he asked.

  This was not the reaction I was expecting. This boy wasn’t easily intimidated. “I don’t know,” I said. “What are you going to do with it? Use it in one of your curses?”

  “I’m not cursing anyone,” Raymond said.

  “How do I know you’re not lying?” I asked. “You lied before, about my school picture. For all I know you’ve got voodoo dolls for everyone in Catonsville.”

  “I need this.” He clutched the scrap of paper. “Please let me keep it.”

  “What do you need it for?”

  He paged through the notebook. There were pictures of people from the neighborhood: Lennie playing kickball, Hugo and Robbie wrestling on the grass, Casey Murphy riding her bike in the driveway, Melina playing her guitar. Raymond added two more pictures to the book: Troy and David on their bikes. The photos he’d just taken.

  “You took these pictures?” I asked.

  “With this.” Raymond touched the blocky camera around his neck. It said POLAROID in small silver letters on one side. “See, you take a picture, and a second later it comes out of this slot.” He showed me where the pictures came out. “You don’t need a computer or anything. You just wait a few minutes for it to develop itself.”

  “So why did you steal my school picture?” I asked. “Why not just take one of me with your camera?”

  “This camera’s old,” he explained. “I’m on my last roll of film.”

  “So? Buy more.”

  “I don’t have any money. Besides, this film is hard to find.”

  Raymond turned another page. There I was, smiling dorkily in last year’s school picture.

  “Hey! You did steal it.”

  “I needed it.” He closed the book and hugged it to his chest. “For the book.”

  “What is this book?” I sat down on the couch. “Let me see it.”

  He clutched the book tighter.

  “I promise I won’t take it away. I just want to see it.”

  He hesitated.

  “You have to show it to me,” I said. “Because my picture’s in there.”

  Raymond set the book on the table. On the cover, in crayon, was written, My Book of Frends.

  “You spelled friends wrong,” I pointed out. He picked up a crayon and added an i.

  I opened the book. Taped to the first page was Paz’s missing photo ID.

  “You stole this too!” I peeled Paz’s photo ID off the page. “From the roller rink! I didn’t see you there.”

  “Nobody saw me,” Raymond said. “When I wear my camouflage, I’m practically invisible.”

  “I can see you just fine.”

  “That’s because I let you see me.”

  “Okay …” I turned another page in the book. A few scraps of paper were slipped between the pages. They were just like the notes I’d found in that murmuring tree. Secrets.

  I’m in love with Kip Murphy.

  I just want people to like me.

  I wish I had the guts to run away.

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

  “I found this one before.” I pointed to the badly spelled note. The others I hadn’t seen. “Where did you get them?”

  “From the Secret Tree.”

  So I wasn’t the only one.
To be sure, I said, “You mean … that tree in the woods? With the big hole in it?”

  Raymond nodded. “A ghost lives in that tree. He eats secrets.”

  “A ghost.” I blinked. That would have sounded crazier to me than Lennie’s stories of the Man-Bat, except … I’d felt something. The humming. The murmur.

  “People tell secrets to the spirit in the tree, and the spirit makes the secrets go away,” Raymond said. “He swallows them and whispers them out on the wind.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Otis,” Raymond said. “He drives down our road once in a while. He gives me some strawberries or a watermelon, if he has extra. He says if I don’t take them, he has to throw them away.”

  “Does he ever talk about your aura?” I asked.

  “No,” Raymond said. “But he told me about ghosts and spirits, and how they can live in the trees.”

  “That’s just a story,” I said. “Like the Man-Bat.”

  “It’s true. One day the construction workers were digging up the dirt under that house there —” Raymond pointed out the window at the unfinished house closest to the woods. “And they found a skeleton. They dug up a grave by accident.”

  “A grave!” I thought of Crazy Ike, buried long ago on the Witch Lady’s farm.

  Raymond nodded. “They took the skeleton away and kept on building the house. I told Otis about it, and he said it must have been the bones of Crazy Ike.”

  “The boy who died from a bat bite!” I knew it.

  “Otis said when you disturb a spirit’s grave, the ghost floats out of the ground and goes to live in a tree. Especially a tree with a hole in it. And it eats secrets. So if you find a tree with a hole in it, you can put your secret in there, and the spirit makes it go away.”

  “So Crazy Ike’s ghost lives in that tree? I thought Crazy Ike turned into the Man-Bat.”

  “You believe in the Man-Bat?” Raymond scoffed. “He’s not real.”

  “And Crazy Ike’s ghost is?”

  “Yes.” Raymond said. “I saw him. I saw his spirit float out of the ground and fly into the woods. He lives in that tree. Didn’t you feel it humming? That’s his spirit. He’s calling out, ‘Bring me your secrets….’”

  “I did feel it humming,” I said. “It sounded like voices murmuring.”

  “Those are the secrets blowing on the wind,” Raymond said.

  “Oh.” This story was crazy, far-fetched … but I believed it.

  “After they dug up those bones, the construction guys started having problems. One of their trucks broke, some pipes wouldn’t work, and the wood they used had termites. They stopped coming to work. Otis said Crazy Ike cursed them.”

  “Because he was mad that they dug up his grave?”

  “Yes. But I think Crazy Ike made sure they left this model house for me to live in. Because Crazy Ike looks out for me.”

  “How does Otis know so much about spirits?” I asked.

  “He’s from Louisiana,” Raymond told me. “He knows voodoo.”

  Voodoo! That could not be a coincidence.

  “Do you think Otis put a curse on my friend Paz?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so.” Raymond reached for the can of grape soda and tilted it toward his mouth. It was empty. “Why would he?”

  “He probably wouldn’t.” But the Witch Lady would.

  I looked at the notebook again. “What about all these secrets? Why didn’t the tree eat them?”

  “Maybe it was full.”

  “Raymond —”

  “Or maybe I took them out of the hole before the tree had a chance to swallow them.”

  “But that means those secrets won’t go away.”

  “These are my friends’ secrets,” Raymond said. “I’m just trying to help them. That’s why I made this notebook. I put in pictures of all my friends and try to match the secret to the person. When I’ve matched them all, I’ll put the secrets back in the tree.”

  “I think you should put them back now,” I said. “And stop taking pictures of everybody.”

  “But don’t you want to know who put a curse on your friend?” Raymond asked.

  He was right. Paz had already suffered a stomachache and a rash. Something worse — much worse — could be next.

  “We’ll make a list of suspects,” Raymond said. “Then spy on them to find out if they’re doing curses.”

  I knew it wasn’t right to spy. But this was a matter of life and death. Possibly. Anyway, it was extremely important.

  “Where should we start?” I wanted to start with the Witch Lady, but I was afraid to say so. I hadn’t quite figured out what Raymond’s relationship with her was, if any. After all, he had his own house. Maybe he had nothing to do with her.

  Or maybe he was related to her. And maybe he got touchy when people called her a witch.

  “How about those Mean Boys?” Raymond suggested.

  “Good idea. They’re mean to everybody. But they could have a special grudge against Paz.” I suspected Troy of having a crush on Paz. That would be a weird reason to curse someone, but Troy had a twisted mind.

  “If they do, we’ll find out. And I’ll take pictures so we’ll have proof.”

  “Then we can call the police on them and get them arrested,” I said.

  Raymond paled. “Not the police. We can handle this without them.”

  “We’ll tell my parents, then. And Paz’s parents.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ll start tonight,” I said. “Meet me at the edge of the woods across from my house, just after dark. And bring your camera.”

  “I will.”

  I picked up Paz’s ID. “I’m taking this back to Paz.”

  “No! She’ll think you stole it.”

  “I’ll tell her you stole it,” I said. “That happens to be the truth.”

  “No. You can’t tell her about me.”

  “Why not?”

  “You can’t tell anyone about me. And you especially can’t tell anyone about my secret house.”

  “But why?”

  “Because we’re spies now,” Raymond said.

  “But —”

  “Promise you won’t tell.”

  “But —”

  “Promise. Or I won’t help you find out who put a curse on your friend.”

  I wanted his help. And nothing was more important than saving Paz from the curse.

  “Okay,” I agreed. “But once the mystery is solved, can I tell?”

  “No,” Raymond said. “Never.”

  After dark I climbed down the big tree outside my window and dashed across the front yard, darting behind bushes and cars until I reached the safety of the woods. No one saw me. I waited among the trees, watching the lightning bugs twinkle.

  While I waited, my head was full of other people’s secrets, especially the new ones.

  I’m in love with Kip Murphy.

  I just want people to like me.

  I wish I had the guts to run away.

  Did everyone around me have secrets? These were serious, the last one most of all. In order to want to run away, you’d have to be pretty sad. And it made me sad to think that someone around me was that sad. Like the person who felt like only a goldfish loved him or her. Sadness seemed to be spreading everywhere.

  “Minty Mortimer …” someone whispered.

  “Who’s there?” I whirled around. I knew I was meeting Raymond, but he’d startled me.

  He stepped out of the shadows in his camouflage outfit and a black ski mask, his boxy camera hanging from his neck. I wore a black T-shirt and jeans to blend into the night.

  “Where do we start?” Raymond asked.

  “Troy’s house.” My reason: Thea had said that love hurt like a stomachache. So if Troy had a crush on Paz, his stomach probably hurt. Maybe he thought that a stomachache would make Paz like him back. It was twisted, but that’s the Mean Boy Way.

  Or maybe Troy just felt like doing something mean to Paz. That was always a possib
ility.

  We crossed through the shadowy gulf between the Murphys’ house and Wendy’s and into Troy Rogers’s backyard. Raymond hesitated at the border.

  “They don’t have a dog, do they?” he whispered.

  I shook my head. “Cat. Named Slayer. He might scratch.”

  Raymond nodded, and we continued into the yard. A light glowed from the kitchen window at the side of the house. We crept up to it and peeked inside.

  Mr. Rogers was washing the dishes and singing along with the radio. He was a chubby man, big like Troy. Slayer, an orange tomcat, ate from his dish by the sink. He was big and fat too.

  “I want to know what love iiiiis!” Mr. Rogers wailed to the music as he slotted the dishes into the dishwasher. Slayer ignored him. I wondered where Troy was. Up to no good, surely.

  Mr. Rogers gave me a ride to school every once in a while. The previous fall, for three whole months, his eyes had been red every morning. I didn’t think much of it. Maybe he had allergies. Then I realized I hadn’t seen Mrs. Rogers around in a long time. Eventually, Mom told me Mrs. Rogers had left them.

  “I don’t blame her,” I’d said at the time. “I wouldn’t want to live in the same house with Troy either.”

  “Araminta Mortimer, that’s a heartless thing to say,” Mom had told me. “Someday you’ll understand.”

  It turned out that Mr. Rogers had been crying all night long, every night, for three months. But he looked okay now.

  Mr. Rogers poured soap into the dishwasher and clicked it shut. Slayer finished eating and licked one of his legs. Mr. Rogers squatted down to pet Slayer, who hissed at him. Mr. Rogers pulled his hand away. Slayer went back to licking his leg.

  “Sorry, buddy. I know you’re touchy these days….”

  Raymond nudged me. “I’m bored,” he whispered.

  I understood. I waved at him to follow me around to the back of the house.

  We crawled along the brick wall until we found another light, coming from the basement. Perfect. Very easy to peek into.

  Troy sat on the rec room floor with the TV on, a jar of lightning bugs at his side. A fishbowl sat on top of the TV. Troy’s birthday goldfish from Mr. Jack swam a restless figure eight.