Up High in the Trees

Praise for
Up High in the Trees:

“Brinkman has chosen the perfect story for a debut. With a mother's patience, she brings Sebby step-by-step back into the world of the living.”

—Susan Salter Reynolds,
Los Angeles Times

“[A] luminous—and ultimately uplifting—debut novel.”

—Linda Fears,
Parents

“A very beautiful and deeply strange little book.”

—Suzanne Kleid, KQED
Arts & Literature

“This is an astonishing debut by a gifted young writer.
Up High in the Trees
captures, pitch-perfectly, the voice of one eight-year-old boy. That the story is also compelling, beautifully written, humorous, and heartbreaking makes it necessary reading. Sebby Lane is a Little Prince for our times.”

—Cristina Garcia, author of
Dreaming in Cuban

“[Brinkman has the] impressive ability to connect with and portray the myopic grief of a bereft child.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“
Up High in the Trees
is a beautiful—and fearless—book. In Sebby, Kiara Brink-man has created an indelible character whose voice is at once lyrical and absolutely real. A haunting, deeply moving work by a shockingly talented new writer.”

—Katharine Noel, author of
Halfway House

“A very moving and perfectly convincing evocation of the inner life of an unusual boy…. Brinkman's portrait of Sebby and his family is humane and uncompromising, never maudlin, and, in the end, we root for Sebby as if he were our own.”

—Dave Eggers, author of
What Is the What

“An achingly beautiful story … The surprise in this novel is the assured talent of such a young writer and the wisdom of such a little boy.”

—Mary Jo Anderson,
The Chronicle Herald
(Canada)

“[A] sincere, sober debut … told in brief, poetic vignettes, the novel moves quickly and episodically, like a series of snapshots from the camera of Sebby's unique mind.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“The real gem of this novel [is] Sebby's somewhat robotic, distant voice that lingers long after the book ends.”

—Rachel Aydt,
Quest

“
Up High in the Trees
is a hauntingly beautiful debut, a stunner. Kiara Brinkman has masterfully created an enchanting, poignant, and wholly original child narrator out of taut, spooky, electric sentences and elegant, musical concisions…. [A] riveting, often terrifying, depiction of the other-world that is childhood.”

—Maud Casey, author of
The Shape of Things to Come

“A quiet book, often poetic and moving … Touching.”

—Elizabeth Gold,
San Francisco Chronicle

“A visceral, heart-wrenching, gorgeous book. What moves me most about Brinkman's first novel is the voice: it's pitch- perfect and mesmerizing. With
Up High in the Trees
, Brinkman has created a fully realized, wholly original, and powerfully felt world.”

—Alison Smith, author of
Name All the Animals

UP HIGH IN THE TREES

A Novel

Kiara Brinkman

Copyright © 2007 by Kiara Brinkman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America

FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brinkman, Kiara.
Up high in the trees / Kiara Brinkman.

p. cm.

eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-5558-4612-1

1. Mothers and sons—Fiction. 2. Grief—Fiction.
3. Loss (Psychology)—Fiction. 4. Dreams—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3602.R53185U6 2007
813′.6—dc22   2006052161

Grove Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

Distributed by Publishers Group West
www.groveatlantic.com

for my family

Here it is in my head, right in the place where I keep feeling it and knowing it. Dad knocks on my head like my head is a door. He knocks softly because Dad has big, soft hands. He says my name, Sebby.

Sebby, he says, earth to Sebby.

I come back then, but the things I know stay stuck where they are and I keep knowing them. Dad picks me up and lifts me high so I can reach into the leaves of our tree. Dad tries to hold me up for a long time. His face turns red and a deep sound comes out of his throat, because I'm getting bigger and Dad isn't so strong. He puts me down.

What is it? Dad asks.

I shrug my shoulders to say, Dad, I don't know, so he'll think that it's all gone now. But it's here in my head, in the dark place where you hold things and carry them around.

One thing I know is that I'm going to live for a very, very long time.

Mother liked to run in the middle of the night.

She'd wake me up and ask if I wanted to go with her. I nodded, yes. My eyes were sticky. I had to blink a lot to make them stay open.

I held Mother's hand and we walked to the garage. She put me in my old blue stroller that smelled dirty and cold, like how the garage smelled. I was too big, but I could still fit.

Mother pushed me in fast circles around the block. The houses were dark and quiet. Nothing was moving except for us and we were going so fast.

It rained one time and we stopped under a tree.

The rain dripped off the leaves in big, slow drops.

Are you okay? Mother asked.

I nodded, yes. The rain made my stroller smell dirtier and older. Mother took off her T-shirt and her shorts. Mother was soft white like the glass on a frosty white lightbulb. The rain made her shine.

It feels nice, Mother said. She pushed my stroller and we went fast.

I liked how her feet sounded—tap, tap, tap—clean on the wet sidewalk.

I need to sleep, because my head hurts in the dark spots behind my eyes.

Sebastian, Teacher says.

I can hear Teacher's feet click-walking closer to me. Click, click, click, closer. She puts her hand on my arm.

Are you okay, Sebastian? Teacher asks.

Behind me, Ryan pinches my back.

Ouch, I say.

The kids are laughing. Katya looks at me. She is my friend.

You're okay, Teacher tells me.

I close my eyes and Teacher lets me sleep.

The bell's ringing wakes me up. It's the end of the day and everyone's lined up at the door. They push each other outside and run. I stand up to go.

Wait, Teacher says and makes her mouth smile.