Alice in Wonderland High (12 page)

I pulled the strings of my hoodie tight, trying to disappear.

“Why didn't you put it with the plywood in the back of the truck?” Whitney asked.

Kingston held up his hands. “Hey, don't go blaming me. This wouldn't have been a problem if it had stayed where it was.”

“I guess we could call it a night,” Whitney said. “Save some supplies.”

No one made a move for the truck.

I'd carried out every task they'd given me tonight, but I'd still managed to be more of a burden than a benefactor. I wilted against a large oak tree perched in front of the house, its branches covering most of the windows.

“No way. What we did isn't
big
enough. Let's burn the place down.” Kingston pulled a lighter out of his pocket and whipped it in the air.

“Hey, let's not get crazy.” Whitney held up a five-finger stop sign.

“Too late for that, Whit. We have to do something!” Kingston bent down and picked up a rock off the ground, clutching it in his fist. He wound his arm and launched the rock at the house. His home-run aim smashed a window on contact, right through the construction sticker.

“Stop!” The panic in Whitney's voice set me on high alert. I straightened, bumping my head on one of the lower branches.

Kingston searched the area for another rock. I peered up at the branch above me.

“Wait!” I lifted my leg onto the lowest branch. I reached for the one above me and pulled myself up, leaves rustling. My muscles strained until my feet found purchase on the next branch up.

Kingston paused, arm frozen in mid-throw.

“What are you doing?” Chess rushed over and grabbed my leg.

I kicked his hand free. “If I climb this, I can get into a higher position. Go up to the roof and put plants up there.” I climbed onto another branch. “No need to smash windows.”

“No.” His fingers encircled my leg again, and his warm hands burned through my pants. “I'm not letting you do that. It's not safe.”

“It could be kind of cool.” Whitney approached us. “We've never done that before. And it would be a bitch for them to take down. Or . . . ” She smiled wickedly. “They could leave them up and our statement stays like a warning beacon.” She hopped up and down at this idea.

Kingston dropped the rock and clapped his hands once. “I'm all for watching the monkey climb.”

“This is a really bad idea,” Chess said.

“Please,” I whispered so only he could hear. “Let me show them I can be useful.”

Chess's jaw shifted. “Fine. Get me some rope. Alice, don't climb yet.”

While Whitney dashed off to get the rope, Kingston crawled onto the hood of the trunk and leaned back, his arms crossed behind his head, watching my show.

Chess climbed to my spot on the second branch, the tree shaking in protest. “I know most of what we did today is kind of insane, but you don't need to win the competition.”

I pressed my lips together. He was snarking up the wrong tree.

He wrapped his arm around my waist. I loathed the extra fabric the hoodie concealed me in. “Now if you fall, I can catch you.”

“You'll fall, too,” I pointed out, even though I folded into his touch.

He brought his lips close to my ear. “Alice, you don't have to do this. You're in, okay?” His warm breath sent chills down my spine and tingled in my ear. I closed my eyes and savored the sensation.

“I want to.” Gripping the branch above for support, I twisted around to meet his eyes. “I'm tired of holding everyone back. Holding myself back.”

“Does that mean you're going to try still? With the farmers' market?” His chest stilled as he waited for my answer.

I bit my lip. I didn't want to lie to him. He seemed to be the only person I didn't have to pretend with. “I get why you guys don't want me to do that yet. So I'll postpone it.” Until I could figure out a way to do it publicly, without drawing attention to them if they wouldn't help. “I understand how it would mess up what you're trying to do. But this isn't just about the farmers' market. You know that.”

“Right, you're sticking around because of Kingston.” He raised his eyebrows a few times.

“He and I have
so
much in common, it's like we were separated at birth.” I chuckled. “But no, the other reason I'm sticking around is . . . ” I took a deep breath. “In this tree.” I couldn't believe I had said that! My cheeks burned. Whitney grunted as she rummaged through the car. Kingston hopped off the trunk to help her. “I'm really attracted to the plants.”

He laughed. “Yeah, that's what I'm attracted to, too.” He pulled on the zipper of his hoodie.

A door slammed. Whitney headed our way, rope swinging in her hand. Chess spoke in a rushed whisper. “Alice . . . you should know. We didn't tell you everything tonight. Our goal, our purpose or whatever. You only got half the story. The other half?” He sighed and looked away. “It would probably scare you off.”

My skin prickled. I didn't want to ask this yet, not until they trusted me. But this was the perfect opening. “I saw something in Whitney's room. About trying to cut the school's power supply?”

“It's not what you think.”

“I don't even know
what
to think.”

Whitney hopped below us. “The rope you ordered.”

Chess and I both pulled away, but I stole one last glance at him. I didn't know what to think about the power-supply stuff I'd found, but I knew what I wanted to believe. That I had been right all along; this group
was
doing good things, just in a roundabout way.

Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to justify my involvement.

“We tying up Alice?” Kingston shouted from the car. “Using her for ransom?”

Whitney clucked her tongue. “Don't worry. I plan on having a little chat with him tonight. Right now, I'm more worried about
him
giving us away than you.”

The corners of my lips twitched until they formed a smile. She finally believed I was trustworthy! They couldn't be bad guys.

Right?

Chess twirled the rope around his hand like a lasso and looped it around a thick branch toward the top. He then tied both ends around my waist with sailor knots. There,” he said. “Now you won't splatter to the ground if you fall.”

“It would make for a killer art installation.” I lifted myself onto a higher level and then another one.

Panting, I paused, my arm muscles working overtime. I had some tree-climbing experience, but it was the ten-foot one in my garden, not this fifty-foot monstrosity. This was climb and punishment.

“I'm starting to get wrinkles,” Kingston hissed from below.

I ignored him and pressed on anyway. From the way Chess cheered me on below—“Steady now, you're doing great”—I expected him to be fully decked out in a miniskirt and pompoms.

When I reached the top, another rope came flying up at me and I managed to catch it without falling out of the tree. Miracles do happen.

“Hold on,” Chess yelled, “we're tying a pot to the other end.”

The rope tightened until it was ruler-straight from the weight of the plant. Trusting Chess's harness would hold me, I pulled the rope until the pot made its way through the branches.

With the pot in hand, I swiveled to focus on the roof. Two feet of empty space separated the shingles from the branch I balanced on. In order to get across, I would have to stretch my body like a bridge. It had looked much closer to the house from below. Cause of death: depth perception.

Suddenly, something soft hit my back. I wobbled for a moment but managed to regain my balance as another soft thing hit my arm. It was sticky and left a streak of . . . frosting? “Stop throwing things at me!” I yelled. “Are you trying to make me fall?”

“What? That's crazy! I thought you needed a push forward,” Kingston said from below. “You froze. And it's not like I'm throwing rocks.” He jiggled the petit-four box in his hands. Clearly, he didn't know how stale they were.

“Hey.” Chess snatched the box out of Kingston's hands. “She brought those for me.”

Kingston laughed. “She must not like you then because I tried one and—” He stuck his finger down his throat and made loud simulated-barfing noises.

I bit my lip. “I don't know what he's talking about.”

“No one ever does,” Kingston said.

I turned back to the roof, trying to find my resolve again.

“If you're scared, I can get some more rocks,” Kingston so kindly offered.

That fueled me forward. I took several calming breaths, then tightrope-walked toward the edge of the branch. I tossed the plant onto the roof. It landed sideways and rolled down the shingles. My teeth ground together. But the pot snagged on the gutter and rested there.

I blew my hair out of my face.

I surfer-balanced on the wooden arm and lowered myself inch by inch onto the teetering branch. By the time I lay on my stomach, I wasn't sure which was shakier, my limbs or the tree's.

I made the mistake of looking down. Adrenaline surged in my body, pumping hot blood into my ears. My pulse raced, my muscles strained . . . and I loved it. I'd never been this high before, never seen the tops of my friends' heads. I was tall up here.

Smiling, I glanced up at the tip of the branch only to spot a lizard crawling along the storm drain. Heights I could handle. Reptiles, not so much. I didn't dare breathe, just tried to aim telepathic commands toward it. When it crawled closer anyway, I opted for actual words. “Shoo! Go away!”

“You okay up there?”

I forced the word “Yeah” out of my mouth instead of what I wanted to say: a rant about the lizard defending the house from alien invaders like me.

I hugged the tree limb, finally earning myself the nickname most go-green-haters liked to shout: tree-hugger. The lizard paused in front of my fingers before deciding my arms were a bridge. It crawled onto my forearms, its tiny feet tickling me.
Ignore the sensation. There is no lizard. Lizards are imaginary creatures, like unicorns.
It continued down the rest of my body. A ticklish sensation radiated over my legs. My nose twitched. When the lizard reached my ankles, it danced back and forth. I lost it. My mouth opened up in a fit of giggles.

The branch sagged from my spastic movements, bending closer to the roof. I curled my fingers as tightly as I could around the limb and shook my leg to try to get the lizard off me, not realizing the motion would throw me off balance. My weight shifted and my torso mimicked a headfirst bungee jumper.

My scream was worthy of a horror movie.

The lizard fell off my leg and tumbled to the ground below. But I couldn't think about that.

“You murdered Bill!” Kingston yelled. “Poor guy.”

“Bill?” Whitney said.

“You don't like the name Bill?” He pressed a finger to his lip. “What about Artie? Nah.” Kingston's voice turned thoughtful. “He seemed like he'd have a one-syllable name.”

I clenched my teeth and tried my best to stay . . . alive. Gripping my ankles around the branch, I swung my arm above me, searching. My fingers clasped something cold and smooth. The rain gutter. With one final trapeze move that would surely have won me maximum points in the Presidential Fitness pull-up test, I tugged my entire upper body onto the safety of the roof, then swung my lower half up to match.

Pausing there, I resisted the urge to kiss the solid surface.

“Wow, good job,” Whitney called, already picking up a plant and tying a rope around it. All the fear of my near-death experience evaporated.

“You mean, God job,” Kingston said. “Since she seems to be playing God. Murdering innocent animals.”

Chess placed his hand on Kingston's shoulder. “Hey, lay off. It was self-defense.”

“Karma's not that forgiving. I should know.”

“Oh, but karma's totally on your side about throwing cakes at me?” I yelled while Whitney used a makeshift rope-over-branch pulley system to send plants up to me.

“I said I should know.” For once, Kingston made sense.

While I placed plants on the roof based on Whitney's directions, Chess climbed up to the top of the tree with a scrap piece of plank wood. He fastened it across several branches using ropes and nails. I preferred my descent method to my grand ascent.

“What did I tell you?” He took my hand and helped me onto the same branch he stood on. “Oh, right, that it was a terrible idea to go climbing this tree.”

“Should I remind you that I succeeded?” I couldn't keep the proud smile off my face.

“Should I remind you that you almost didn't?”

I had a lot of almosts in my life. Things I wanted to do but didn't. There was an
almost
standing with me on this branch.

I leaned forward, invading his personal space until my lips rested against his. Turned out a near-death experience made you aggressive.

His lips moved against mine, fierce and hungry. My arms wrapped around him, a makeshift harness. My mind was full of exclamation points.

I broke away from the kiss. “That shut you up.”

He grinned with a smile I wanted to devour. “Wait, I'm still talking. I don't think it worked yet. You should try to shut me up again.”

I accepted that RSVPlea and kissed him again. Every atom in my body danced with excitement.

“Great,” Kingston said, and Chess and I broke apart. “We're coupling off now. Whitney?”

She gave him a dirty look. Chess and I climbed down the rest of the tree, and every time he placed his hand on my waist to steady me, my skin tingled. We reached the others at the bottom where they had finished loading the car.

Even though I stood on solid ground, I felt like I was floating.

“I hope you didn't find that climb
too
difficult.” Whitney grabbed the rope from my hands. “Because the missions only get more dangerous from here. Can you handle that?”