Out on a Limb (16 page)

“Oh, but Tilley, it’s a
wonderful
thing, to have a good imagination,” Mrs. Smith said.

“Yeah, Tilley,” I said. “It’s good you’re so creative.” I glanced at Kendra. She still faced the TV, but she was examining me through the back of her head. That’s what it felt like anyway.

“I do NOT have a good imagination! I am NOT creative!” Tears of rage pooled in Tilley’s eyes.

“Oh, but of course you do, dear, of course you are,” Mrs. Smith soothed.

“Yeah, Tilley,” I said. “You do. You are.”

“The treehouse is real!” Tilley cried. Kendra turned to look.

“It’s real to
you
, Tilley,” I said. “Which is great. That’s how fantabulous your imagination is.”

Tilley stared at me. “Stop acting like the treehouse isn’t real!” she shouted.

I turned to Mrs. Smith. “Tilley is used to me participating in her fantasies,” I said. “We try to do that, as a family.” I patted Tilley’s head again, but she batted my hand away.

“That’s lovely,” Mrs. Smith said. “The world of make-believe is so important at this age.”

Eveline was looking from her mother, to Tilley, to me, trying to figure out what was going on.Tilley was quivering with fury. I had to get her out of there before she said another word. “Thank you for having her,” I said. I made a grab for Tilley. She tried to avoid me, but I chased her into a corner and clamped onto her wrist.

“Tilley, what do you say?” I said.

She bent over double, trying to squirm away. “Thank. You. For. Having me,” Tilley said, teeth clenched for her escape attempt.

“Nice having you, Tilley,” Mrs. Smith said, but she looked a bit concerned about the struggle in her family room. “See you soon.”

With Tilley more or less under arrest, I marched her out the front door and down Kendra’s walkway. When I let her go she whipped around to face me. “Why did you say that we don’t live in a treehouse when WE DOTOO!”

“I didn’t,” I said. “I never said we don’t live in a treehouse. All I said was that you have a great imagination.”

“LIAR!”

“It’s not a lie. You do have a great imagination. Everybody says so. You should be proud of it.”

Tilley squished her lips together. She opened her mouth a couple of times to speak, but didn’t. She could tell there was something wrong with what I was saying but she didn’t know exactly what. She thought hard, then punched me on the arm.

“Tilley!”

“You deserve it,” Tilley said.

No way would I admit this to her. “Violence is never justified,” I said, quoting Mom and Dad. Tilley went to punch me again, and when I grabbed her wrist she kicked my leg. “Tilley! You brat.”

“
You’re
the brat,” she said.

“
You
are,” I said.

“
You
are.”

“Yo
u
are.”

“
Yo
u are.”

“
You
are.”

“
You
are.”

I decided not to continue this conversation into infinity. I had just seen the slightest parting of the Smith’s living room curtains and I guessed that my fight with Tilley was being observed.

“Let’s
go
,” I said, and we stalked along the sidewalk. Tilley’s angry breath was like dragon smoke, pluming out of her nostrils into the cold evening air. I tried to be just as mad as she was, but somehow I couldn’t do it.

At the edge of the woods we silently fished our headlamps from our backpacks and strapped them on. The moment I unlocked her bike Tilley rode furiously away, her LED light bouncing ahead on the path. When we got near the treehouse she clattered her bike into our shed and stormed the ladder up the trunk.

“Careful! It’s slippery,” I called as I grasped the first icy rung. Tilley did not answer.

The treehouse door had been swollen since the fall rains and Tilley couldn’t open it herself. When I thumped it open she rushed into the dark treehouse and threw herself face down on her bunk. I stood there in the cold, watching her in the thin beam of my headlamp. “
Tilley
,” I said. I was about to tell her that what I’d said at the Smith’s wasn’t such a big deal, but then I realized something. The whole reason I had made
her
best friend think that Tilley had lied about where
she
lived was so that
my
best friend wouldn’t think I had lied about where I lived. So I couldn’t exactly say it wasn’t a big deal.

Face down on the mattress, Tilley shouted “I HATE YOU.”

I said nothing. There wasn’t much I could say.

NOTEBOOK: #21

NAME: Rosamund McGrady

SUBJECT: The Contract

Tilley lay in her bunk
, facing the wall. “Tilley,” I said softly into the dark, but Tilley didn’t answer. As I stood watching her from the bunk ladder, I began to freeze in the unheated treehouse.

“Cold, isn’t it,” I said to Tilley’s rigid back.

“How about I’ll make us a nice fire?” Tilley’s silence was cold as the air. I lit a kerosene lantern and got firewood from the porch. “Don’t worry, Tilley, I’ll get you all nice and warm,” I said, kneeling to arrange the kindling in the cast-iron stove. With mittens still on, I struck a match and held it inside. The flame kept stubbornly to itself before catching.

“Nice fire, huh, Tilley,” I said when flames finally leapt in the stove. She still didn’t answer. By then I was chilled right through. I climbed to my bunk and curled fully dressed under my quilt.

After a long silence I called out. “Hey Tilley, what do you feel like for dinner? Macaroni and cheese with bacon bits?” This was her favourite, so I thought she’d answer for sure. But I was wrong.

“Okay, mac and cheese with bacon bits coming up,” I said. I got out of bed to pump water, but found the pump handle frozen into place by a coating of ice. I got a hot poker from our cast-iron stove to melt it and then I pumped for what seemed like forever. The night air was so cold it prickled the inside of my nostrils.

Tilley was sitting up in bed when I banged open the door with my pot of water. She looked me in the eye and threw herself back down on the bunk. “Getting hungry, Tilley?” I asked, setting the pot down. Water sloshed on the cast-iron stove and sizzled into nothing. Otherwise, there was silence. I was surprised by how long Tilley was keeping up her protest. I thought she’d get bored. As I fried the bacon, she flung off her quilt and I hoped this meant she was returning to normal. It didn’t. The treehouse was just hot, was all, from the blaze in the cast-iron stove.

When my parents came home and we all sat down to dinner, Tilley still wouldn’t talk to me. At bedtime I left the sweltering heat of the treehouse to brush my teeth on the porch. I spat a glob of toothpaste over the banister, wondering if it would freeze solid before hitting the ground. When my parents sent Tilley out to brush her teeth I found myself alone with her. “Come on, Tilley,” I begged. “Please don’t be mad.” But when Tilley turned toward me, it was only to make a gargoyle face.

That night I lay awake in my bunk, feeling the heat of the dying fire seep away. I curled tighter and tighter to keep warm.By morning my porthole was coated inside with frost crystals. I moved a millimeter and was shocked by the cold of my sheets. As I lay there, hibernating against the terrible cold of the treehouse, I remembered how mad Tilley had been at bedtime. I hoped that maybe the night had erased her memory. But when Dad got the fire going and it was warm enough to venture from our bunks, Tilley was mad as ever.

“Do you want some hot chocolate, Tilley?” I offered.

“No,” she said.

“You mean no thank you,” Dad corrected.

“No
thank you
,” Tilley said, but in a very ungrateful voice.

“That’s not like you, Tilley,” Mom said. “It’ll warm you up.”

“Okay,” said Tilley to Mom. “If you make it for me.”

Mom went out to pump water, but came back into the treehouse empty handed. “David,” she said, “the pump won’t work. Our water pipe has frozen.”

“Frozen? Oh no.”

“It’s okay. We’ll fill a few pots from the stream, that’s all. The girls can do that and we’ll winch them up.”

Tilley and I bundled up and went out into the arctic cold. Down below we collected the pots from the dumbwaiter. I watched Tilley march toward the stream, empty pot bumping against her leg. I was worried. In the mood she was in, Tilley was dangerous. She could decide to prove to the Smithereens that she lived in a treehouse. She could get Mom and Dad to be her witnesses. She could bring the Smithereens to our home. She could show treehouse pictures from our photo CD. The evidence existed. I had to convince Tilley not to use it.

I came to an awful conclusion. There was only one way out of this situation. It was a drastic, desperate solution. I was going to have to apologize.

I caught up to Tilley when she paused to smash an ice puddle. “Tilley,” I said, but she marched onward. I caught up to her again at the stream. Ice was forming at the bank. I opened my mouth to deliver the apology, but nothing came out but a big winter cloud of breath. The apology was stuck in my throat, like a whole piece of popcorn. I tried again and managed to get it out. “Tilley. I’m sorry,” I said, sounding like I was reading from a card. “You were right that I was lying to Mrs. Smith. I did it because Bridget thinks we live in Grand Oak Manor and I didn’t want Kendra telling her that we just live in a treehouse. I’m sorry. I mean it. I am.”

The apology worked instantly. “Okay,” Tilley said. “How come Bridget thinks you live in Grand Oak Manor?”

“Accident. She thought it by mistake and I didn’t explain in time. I wish I had.”

“So, you’re gonna tell Bridget about the treehouse now?” Tilley asked.

“Well, no,” I said. “I’m not.”

“You just said you wished you’d told Bridget,” Tilley pointed out.

“I
do
wish I had,” I said. “But that’s not the same as wanting to tell her
now
.”

“It’s not?” asked Tilley.

“No.”

“I don’t get why not.”

“Well, it’s hard to explain.”

“So you’re just gonna tell Mrs. Smith and Eveline?” Tilley asked.

“No,” I said. “Then Bridget would find out.”

“You just said you were sorry you lied to Mrs. Smith.”

Tilley’s frown was coming back.

“I am.”

“Then how come you want to keep doing it?” Tilley asked.

“It’s not that I
want
to,” I said. “I
need
to. And I need you to help me.”

“Help you lie?”

“Well,” I said. “Yeah.”

“Uh uh,” Tilley shook her head like she was trying to get a bug out of her hair. “I only tell Eveline true stuff.”

I knelt with my pot, letting the stream water flow into it. I lugged it to the dumbwaiter, still thinking. As the dumbwaiter rose toward the treehouse, Tilley and her pot sloshed toward me. “Tilley,” I said. “Would Eveline keep a secret if you asked her?”

“Yuh!” said Tilley, putting her pot down. “’Cause she’s my best friend.”

“Then listen,” I said. “How about
I’ll
tell Eveline the treehouse is real if you and Eveline both promise that
you’ll
pretend to Mrs. Smith and Kendra and everybody else that the treehouse is just pretend?”

“Pretend it’s pretend?” Tilley asked.

“Yeah. And if you do it, I’ll be so, so, so nice to you,”

I promised. “Really, really nice.”

“How about Eveline?”

“I’ll be really nice to her too,” I said. “Really really. Any way she can think up.”

“Okay,” Tilley said. “Then I promise.”

I breathed a big wintry cloud of relief.

The dumbwaiter dropped. We put Tilley’s pot in, then climbed to the treehouse and got ready for school. It was too cold to ride our bikes. As Tilley and I walked down the path of frosted branches, I asked whether Mrs. Smith had ever talked about the treehouse with Mom and Dad when they’d picked her up. No, Tilley said. Maybe Mrs. Smith didn’t believe we lived in a treehouse, I thought, or maybe she thought living in a treehouse was a big embarrassment for grownups. Who knew? The important thing was that she’d never talked about the treehouse with Mom and Dad. This meant that the Smithereens and Kendra had never heard about the treehouse from anybody truly believable. It meant that none of them would know the treehouse was real if Eveline would co-operate.

When we got to the grounds of Sir Combover I was glad to see Eveline already there in her little pink jacket with the fuzzy bunny pockets. “Go talk to her,” I said. Tilley ran over to Eveline and they talked for ages as I stood with the cold of the asphalt seeping into my boots. Finally they came over. “Eveline agrees,” Tilley said. “But she wants a contract.”

“A contract?” I thought this was cute. “Saying what?” Tilley looked at Eveline. “About the being nice,” Eveline said.

“Okay,” I said, because I wanted Eveline to like the idea. I rummaged in my backpack for writing paper. I found a crumpled math test, blank on one side. To make up for the messy paper I used fancy language, which was easy for me because Miss Rankle had spent about seven hours on contracts in personal skills. I balanced my wobbling math textbook on my knee, and wrote in the best handwriting I could manage with mitts on. To embellish the contract, I added lots of curlicues. Then I read the whole thing out loud

.

In consideration for not revealing the existence

of the McGrady residential treehouse,

I, Rosamund McGrady, do hereby undertake

to be nice to Matilda McGrady and Eveline Smith

in such ways as they may specify.

I wrote the date and signed with a flourish. Tilley and Eveline signed too, in great big crooked block letters that took up the rest of the page. Each party to a contract is supposed to get a copy, but I’d be late for school if I wrote it out in triplicate. Eveline was really the only one who wanted it, so I just gave it to her. Of course she couldn’t read it, but she looked all happy before she folded it into her bunny pocket. She gave me a big gap-toothed Grade One smile, and I went off to Windward with the cozy feeling that my secret was safe.