by Gail Banning
NOTEBOOK: #14
NAME: Rosamund McGrady
SUBJECT: The Lie
Of course I could go to Bridget’s after school, Mom said when I called her at the linguistics lab. She sounded thrilled that I had made a friend. I was thrilled too. Only one thing worried me as I sat in communication skills, waiting for the 3:20 bell. If Bridget and I were going to be friends, I was going to have to tell her that I lived in a treehouse. I didn’t have a problem telling Bridget, but I did not want Kendra to find out. Or Devo. Or Sienna. Or Twyla or Nova. Or Matt or Heath or Zach. Not yet, anyway. When I was more established at Windward Middle School I would come out about living in a treehouse. So when I told Bridget about the treehouse after school that day, I would ask her to keep it a secret. I trusted her to keep a secret.
Bridget’s Mom, Paige, picked us up after school. She put my bike in the back of her minivan and drove us to Bridget’s house. Windward is totally surrounded by fancy houses, so I shouldn’t have been so freaked that one of them was Bridget’s. I’d just never been inside a house like that before, and I wasn’t ready for how big it was up close.
“Here we are,” Paige said, idling the minivan while the automatic garage door rolled away. The garage was three times the size of the entire treehouse. From the garage we entered a room that was more treehouse sized. It was “the mud room,” which was basically a giant closet for boots and umbrellas and stuff. Beyond that was the family room. It was huge. There was so much space that you could hardly stub a toe if you were trying. Our little treehouse suddenly seemed a bit pathetic.
“Snack, girls?” Paige asked, putting down a plate of homemade chocolate-chip cookies. These cookies were heaven. They were a million times better than packaged, and several zillion times better than Mom’s campfire cookies. Even the Hanrahan milk was better than ours, because a propane fridge is never cold enough. I drained my glass in four glugs. Paige refilled it, then sat at the table and started asking questions. I didn’t mind to begin with. Her first questions could all be answered with a simple yes. Yes, I was new to Windward. Yes, I had gone to Queen’s Heights before. Yes, I liked Windward. But yes, I did miss my old friends.
Then Paige asked me a harder question. “Whereabouts do you live?” I was already losing my nerve about explaining the treehouse to Bridget. Even less did I want to explain it to Paige, who probably had no interest in rope swings or dumbwaiters. Her own house must be what she liked, I reasoned: therefore the treehouse would sound cramped and inconvenient to her. And how could I swear Paige to secrecy, an adult I’d just met? But if she wasn’t sworn, she’d tell other mothers, and pretty soon Devo and Kendra would know everything. When I told Bridget about the treehouse, we had to be alone.
“Where do I live? Um. Out that way,” I answered, waving my hand around.
“On the University Endowment Lands?” Paige asked. “Yes,” I said truthfully.
“Oh, lovely. That’s such a nice area. Beautiful woods. Which street do you live on?”
The conversation was not going well. I didn’t live on a street at all. The treehouse was nowhere near one. And yet Paige’s very question showed that people were fully expected to live on streets. The question showed that to not live on a street was positively weird.
“Bellemonde Drive,” I said. It was the closest I could get to the truth without giving a full explanation.
“Bellemonde Drive!” Paige gasped, and I suddenly realized my mistake. She thought I lived in one of the mansions on Bellemonde. Of course she’d think that. There were nothing but mansions on Bellemonde Drive. What had I done?
“So, you must live in one of those big Edwardian places,” Paige said.
“I don’t know about Edwardian,” I said. “And it’s not really very big. At all.”
“I adore all those places on Bellemonde,” Paige said. “Mom’s degree is in architecture,” Bridget said. “She goes mental over old mansions.”
“A bit mental,” Paige admitted. “Especially Edwardian. Even before architecture school I was in love with houses like yours.”
The phone rang and Paige got up to answer it. Bridget reached for another cookie. I’d lost my appetite. I had lied! I had made Bridget and her mom think I lived in a mansion! I hadn’t meant to lie. Or had I? Maybe not wanting to say the truth was the same thing as wanting to lie? I had to say something right away, I thought, as Paige hung up the phone. But when she returned to the table Paige reported that the soccer coach had just called about practice on Friday, and Bridget told Paige that she needed new cleats, and Paige told Bridget she couldn’t possibly need new ones yet, and Bridget told Paige that her feet were two inches longer than they’d been four months ago, and Paige went to the mud room to inspect Bridget’s cleats, and I had not said a thing. Bridget and I went up to her room.
“What do you feel like doing?” she asked, flopping on her enormous bed. She sounded exactly normal. She had no idea I’d lied. It seemed like my guilt would send out some kind of aura or vibration or something. I guess that’s why I was so surprised that Bridget couldn’t tell. I shouldn’t have been though. After all, the whole point of dishonesty is that people not find out.
“I don’t know,” I said, wondering how to bring up the truth. “Do you want to try decoding that letter?” she asked. “I’ve still got the pictures on my phone, if you don’t have them with you.”
“Actually, I wrote the whole letter out again. I’ve got it here,” I said, sitting down beside her.
“You don’t mind me helping?”
“Mind? Why would I mind?”
“In case it was secret, or something.”
“No, I don’t mind at all,” I said. Whatever Great-great-aunt Lydia’s coded letter might turn out to say, I had no intention of keeping secrets from Bridget. I was going to tell her about my treehouse, in only a moment.
“What have you tried so far?” Bridget asked, and I explained all of the code alphabets I had tried. Tell her now, I told myself.
“You know,” Bridget said, taking the replica coded letter from me, “I’m starting to think that this letter isn’t written in a coded alphabet at all.”
“Really?”
“Yeah look,” Bridget said. “All the words have vowels, like normal words. That wouldn’t happen randomly, if your aunt whatzername had just replaced the real letters with ones from a code alphabet. Would it? Maybe it’s all anagrams. You know, where the letters in every word stay the same but are rearranged? You don’t mind if I write out my own copy, do you?”
“Of course not.” Now, I told myself as Bridget hunched on the bed copying the letter. Tell her about the treehouse now. Right now. Okay, go. I swear that I actually opened my mouth to start, but just then Paige walked in with Bridget’s clean laundry and I closed my mouth again. Bridget and I worked on anagrams, but soon realized they were not the answer. Great-great-aunt Lydia’s coded letter was full of two-letter words like‘ID’ and‘TE’ and‘LE’ and ‘PE’ that couldn’t be rearranged into real words, and the ‘X’ at the end couldn’t be rearranged at all. Somehow the right moment to tell Bridget that I lived in a treehouse did not come along. Late in the afternoon Paige reminded Bridget of her piano lesson. I recognized this as my cue to leave, and I collected my backpack and fleece jacket. “We’ll go out by the garage door, Rosie,” Paige said. “I’ll give you a ride home.”“
No!” I said. “No, that’s okay.” I could just picture Great-great-aunt Lydia swatting me away from her front gate on Bellemonde Drive while Bridget and her mom watched from the minivan. It would be horrible if they found out the truth that way. There was a puzzled silence, and I felt like I should fill it up. “Car trips of three miles or less cause half of all exhaust emissions,” I said. “So I’d rather ride my bike. To reduce global warming.”
“Oh.” Paige smiled. “But I hate to send you riding off all by yourself when it will be getting dark soon.”
“I’ll be home way before dark,” I said. “And I like riding all by myself. I l
ike the quiet. It’s when I meditate.”
After a few more ride offers Paige let me get my bike out of the minivan. It had gotten cold, and my knuckles turned white on my handlebars. To turn what I’d just said into the truth, I tried to meditate. But my meditations never rose above one pestering thought. All my meditations were on how totally hard it was getting to tell Bridget about the treehouse.
NOTEBOOK: #15
NAME: Rosamund McGrady
SUBJECT: Fever
When it rained again three days later, I couldn’t stand to return to school in my weird rain gear. I wore it out of the treehouse to avoid arguing with Mom, but when Tilley and I were getting our bikes from the shed, I stuffed my cape and gaiters in my backpack.
“You’re gonna get soaked,” came the voice from inside Tilley’s orange plastic hood.
“Lesser of two evils,” I said, and we set off on our bikes. The rain fell down from the sky and the mud sprayed up from my tires. I was oozing by the time we reached Sir Combover Elementary. When I watched Tilley scamper across the school grounds all dry and comfortable in her cape and gaiters, I almost wished I’d worn my rain gear too. But when the orange of her retreating outfit burned an afterimage onto my retina, I knew I’d made the right decision.
I got to Windward and headed for my classroom as the warning bell rang. Devo, Matt, Heath and Zach were funneling in the doorway. Like me, they were wearing fleece jackets, but theirs were dry. They had gotten rides to school. “Hey, look what crawled out of the sewer,” Devo said, and they all did their laugh track. I sneered in self-defence. A rivulet of dirty rainwater rounded the corner of my lip, and dribbled into my mouth. Miss Rankle opened up the classroom door. I went into the cloakroom and hung up my fleece jacket. A pool was forming beneath it when Kendra, Twyla and Sienna came in.
“Oh, you poor thing,” Kendra said, looking me up and down. “You must feel so totally disgusting.”
“Yeah,” said Sienna. “You must feel so gross.”
“Yeah,” said Twyla. “Revolting. Is that how you feel?”
“Where’s your special orange outfit today?” Kendra asked.
“Oh that,” I said. “I just had that for the day. It’s a costume.”
“For what,” Twyla asked. “A play,” I said.
“What’s your part,” asked Sienna.
“My part? Um. Radioactive waste.”
“Weird play,” said Twyla.
“Good casting though,” said Kendra.
“Hey Matt,” Devo said, lifting my jacket from its hook with the tip of somebody’s furled umbrella. “Flush this back down the toilet, will ya?”
“Yo.” Matt charged dutifully off, with my jacket speared on the umbrella. Oncoming hallway traffic scattered. Before I caught up he flung my jacket into the boys’ washroom. I heard it splatter on the tiled floor.
I turned to Devo. “Get it back,” I demanded. “Right now.”
“Sure,” Devo said. “All you’ve gotta do is get down on one knee and say ‘I worship Devo, my Supreme Master.’”
“As if,” I said.
“Okay then.” Devo shrugged and walked away.
I considered running into the washroom, but fear of urinals stopped me. I went to the classroom to find Bridget, but she wasn’t there. Several kids weren’t there. “It seems we’re decimated by flu,” Miss Rankle said during attendance.
I couldn’t wait for the day to end. Unlocking my bike after school, I was shot by rain. Coatless, I rode through a wind that could cut skin. Where the sidewalk met the path I stopped, and there I pulled my hideous cape out of my backpack. I was completely soaked, but the cape would help protect me from wind as I rode unseen through the woods. Just as I was putting it on a monstrous SUV drove by. From the passenger window Kendra looked down at me with comfortable curiosity. Cape snapping in the wind, I set off on the path through the woods. The plywood ramp over the stone wall was slippery-when-wet and I thought I’d never get over it. By the time I got to our meadow every muscle ached and I could barely climb the ladder to the treehouse.
Mom was home early that day. “Oh Rosie, look at you,” she said. “How did you get so wet under your cape? Where’s your jacket? Take off your things! Get into bed!”
I left my clothes in a puddle on the treehouse floor and climbed the wooden ladder. I tugged my quilt over me and flopped on my pillows, passionately in love with my bunk. Mom did not cross-examine me. She heated chicken broth on the cast-iron stove and climbed up to deliver it. The mug was nice and warm, but it seemed like way too much trouble to lift it to my mouth.
Pretty soon Dad brought Tilley home from Eveline’s. Tilley was still sensibly dressed in her hideous rain gear. Dad bent at the cast-iron stove and stoked the fire. It looked not quite real, and full of strange personality. It crouched and hid, and then leapt out in surprise flames of green and neon blue. I stared until it all fell to embers. When Dad went out to chop more wood my ears vibrated with the far-away whack of the axe. I didn’t climb down to the table for dinner.
The night turned to storm. On our roof, the rain burst like loud applause. The wind flung itself at the treehouse and shrieked down our chimney. Branches thrashed outside, and shadows lurched across our walls. As the treehouse rocked like a ship, I fell into a delirious sleep.
My delirium lasted three days, I was later told. I was told that my fever reached 104 degrees. A temperature of 104 degrees is enough to cause hallucinations, and supposedly I had some. Supposedly I screamed that there were pigs on my bunk, which freaked Tilley right out, even though she could plainly see that my bunk was pig-free. A temperature of 104 can cause not only hallucinations, but also permanent brain damage. It is therefore high enough to scare parents out of their wits, even casual parents like my mother. Mom and Dad were especially scared because there was no quick way of getting me to the hospital. How would they get me to the ground, they had wondered when my temperature reached its peak. In the dumbwaiter? Was that safe? And then what? Would the bike trailer take my weight? And how long would it take to haul me all the way down the path through the woods? Maybe it was better to break down Great-great-aunt Lydia’s so-called electric fence so that Dad could carry me through the curly iron gate to a taxi on Bellemonde Drive? Fortunately, my fever had dropped without emergency measures.
To me the really scary part was this: when I started getting better, I heard Mom and Dad murmuring in their bunk about whether we should keep on living in the treehouse. Dad wondered whether it was responsible. I decided to recover fast, to make my parents forget all their health-and-safety concerns. I declared myself well enough to go back to school, but my parents disagreed. “No, Rosie, we’d rather err on the side of caution,” Mom said, which didn’t sound like her at all.
“Mom, please, please, please don’t go all cautious on me,” I said, rearing up from my bunk. “Don’t make us move out of the treehouse. Promise me we won’t.”
“Did I say anything about moving out of the treehouse? We just want you to stay home from school until you’ve made a full recovery.”
Mom and Dad went back to university, leaving me to get better on my own. I was comfortably sick. Now that I was no longer friendless, I didn’t mind being alone. I nestled under my quilt, getting up only to throw another log into the cast-iron stove, or to heat myself a bowl of chicken noodle soup. I was still too weak to try decoding Great-great-aunt Lydia’s letter. A lot of the time I’d just stare out my porthole, watching the oak leaves twist free and fly off in the wind.A lot of the time I thought how pleasant it was to be away from Devo and Matt and Heath and Zach and Twyla and Nova and Sienna and Kendra.
For six entire days I did not leave the treehouse, not even to go to the bathroom. As an emergency alternative to the outhouse, the treehouse porch had what medieval castle-dwellers called a garderobe. “Garderobe” is just a fancy name for what is basically a hole in the porch. The fancy name does not help. A garderobe feels as primitive as it is. On day six I felt well enough to go back to using th
e outhouse. Over my pyjamas I put on the fleece jacket that Mom had retrieved from the Windward lost and found. I climbed down the ladder and crossed the meadow for the first time in a week. It was only when I was coming back from the outhouse that I saw something weird on the trunk of the oak tree. It was a bunch of dead plants, tied with a blue satin ribbon. The ribbon was skewered to the trunk with a small pocket knife. I stared, wondering when the bunch had been put there. Recently, I concluded. Very recently, or my family would have seen it while they were coming or going. I turned and looked around the meadow, but there was no sign of life. I pulled the knife from the bark and took the dead plants. There was more than one kind, but I didn’t recognize any of them. I sniffed at them cautiously. They smelled better than they looked. There was a whiff of something familiar. I stood straining to place it, the way you strain for a name that’s on the tip of your tongue. But I couldn’t get it.
I folded the knife into my jacket pocket, and stuck the dead plants there too. I climbed to the treehouse and got back in my bunk. If Great-great-aunt Lydia wanted nothing to do with me or my family, I wondered, why had she brought us dead plants? It was a very weird thing to do.
I got both of Great-great-aunt Lydia’s letters from my wallet. I read the letter Great-great-aunt Lydia had written in code, and I wondered about the word ‘CHHARM’. I read the letter Great-great-aunt Lydia had torn up and thrown in the stream. For the first time, I felt a twinge of the creepiness that Tilley felt about Great-great-aunt Lydia. For the first time, I wondered if my description of her as some kind of witch was entirely my own invention. Reading the torn blue strip, I wondered if it was about an incantation, someday soon.
NOTEBOOK: #16
NAME: Rosamund McGrady
SUBJECT: The Fight