“You okay?” he asked, as I concentrated on getting a grip on the wooden planks, nailed into the tree trunk, that served as the ladder.
“Fine,” I said, reaching up for the next rung. Henry was already in the treehouse, looking down at me—he’d climbed up with no problem whatsoever. It wasn’t the kind of treehouse that you sometimes saw in catalogs, the ones that came with a kit and instructions and were meant to look like log cabins, or pirate ships, all right angles and smooth wood. It had been built by Henry’s dad, without any fancy blueprints, just to fit in the space between three supporting trees, which made it triangle-shaped. There was a roof, two walls and a floor, but nothing so fancy as a door. Instead, the front was just open, slightly overhanging the trunk that served as the ladder. It seemed fitting that we were there now, as the only times I could really remember being in the treehouse was when it had been raining. I wasn’t sure I’d actually ever seen it from the inside when it was sunny out.
“Need a hand?” Henry asked, and I nodded. I extended one upward, and he grasped it—his hands cool against mine—and gave me a pull, allowing me to throw a leg over onto the wooden planks of the floor. I let go of Henry’s hand and pushed myself to my feet, starting to stand. “Careful,” he said. He pointed upward. “It’s a little low in here.”
I saw that I had been just about to whack my head on the roof. “Wow,” I murmured as I crouched down. When I’d been here last, I’d been able to stand up to my full height with no problem. The treehouse didn’t appear to have changed much. There was nothing inside it except a plastic pail in the corner that I saw was positioned under a leak; every few seconds there would be a muted ping sound as another drop fell in.
Henry was sitting at the front of the treehouse, his legs dangling in the air. He took off his baseball cap and ran his hands through his hair, brushing back that one lock that sometimes fell over his forehead. I crouch-walked over and sat down next to him, hugging my knees to my chest and rubbing my legs with my hands to try and warm them up a bit. If my sweatshirt had been bigger, I would have tucked them inside without a thought to how ridiculous I looked.
Now that we were under a little bit of shelter, I could see how gorgeous the woods were in the storm. Everything seemed greener than normal, and the sound of the rain was muted, making it seem much more peaceful than the deluge we’d been exposed to out on the road. It was still very windy, and I watched the trees around us as they bent and swayed in the wind. Mr. Crosby’s carpentry skills seemed to be holding up, though, and the treehouse wasn’t moving or even feeling unsteady.
“Better?” Henry asked.
“Much,” I said. I leaned forward and glanced at Maryanne’s house. I could see it through the trees—though it was still dark, it was worryingly close. “Won’t Maryanne mind?”
Henry shook her head. “Nah,” he said. “I come here sometimes to think, and she doesn’t mind it.”
“Got it,” I said. We sat there in silence for a moment. The only sound was the rain falling all around us and the wind whipping through the trees. I glanced behind me to the treehouse again, still marveling at the fact that it looked the same—just a little shrunken. “I can’t remember the last time I was up here,” I said. “But it hasn’t changed much.”
“It would have been that last summer, right?” Henry asked, turning to me. “When we were twelve.”
I nodded, looking straight ahead at the branches that were swaying and dipping. “Probably.” And maybe it was the disorienting effect of being caught in a rainstorm, or the conversation I’d just had with Lucy, but before I could consider what I was saying, I asked, “Do you ever think about that summer? I mean, when we were…” I paused, hesitating over the right word.
“When we were going out,” Henry finished for me. I looked at him and saw that he was still looking at me. “Of course.”
“Me too,” I said. I wasn’t quite brave enough to tell him what I’d realized at Gelsey’s slumber party—how much it had impacted me, our first attempt at something like love. It was the only time, I supposed, when you could go into something totally fresh, with no baggage, no idea of how you could get hurt and hurt others in return.
“I mean,” Henry said, “you were my first girlfriend, after all.”
I felt myself smiling at that. “And there have been lots of others, I take it, in the interim?”
“Scads,” Henry said, straight-faced, making me laugh. “Just dozens and dozens.”
“Same here,” I said, deadpan, hoping he knew that I was joking. Because other than my cheating ex, Evan, and two very short-lived relationships sophomore year, there was nobody of significance to tell him about.
“You know,” Henry added after a moment, “I really liked you back then.”