“Which tree did she climb?” Quinn asked with urgency.
“The park at the end of our street has a grove of oaks on the far side of the play set, and one of them has a huge tree house where some of the teens stash stuff and hang out,” Kelly said. “She’s—”
Quinn was out the door.
She made it to the park before having to stop and bend over at the waist to gasp in air. She needed to get to a damn gym.
When she found the play set, she eyed the huge grove of oaks. Great. She moved in closer and stopped to listen.
Nothing but the buzz of what she sincerely hoped weren’t bees. “Hello?” she called.
There was a loaded silence and then . . . “Go away.”
Quinn took a deep breath and told herself that this was her sister. Her blood sister. She and Beth had been . . . well, everything to each other, everything, and Quinn missed her like she’d miss a limb. But after her death, Quinn had purposely backed away from any sort of emotional attachments because she couldn’t open up her heart like that again, she just couldn’t.
But Tilly hadn’t asked to lose her mom, to be left alone in the world. The ground had been ripped from beneath her feet, and much as Quinn wanted to run, she couldn’t. She located the tree with the tree house and moved beneath it. No ladder. Of course not, that would’ve made things easy and heaven forbid anything be easy. “I’m Quinn,” she said to the tree.
“I know who you are. Go away.”
She could. It would certainly be the easy thing to do. She could turn on her heel, walk away, return to L.A., and never look back. She would once again step onto the hamster wheel and run in place in her little rut, ordering the same coffee every day, getting in the same fight with Marcel every day, never looking up.
And she almost did just that.
But she’d already lost one sister to a tragedy. She didn’t want to lose another to cowardice. So she stopped herself and looked up, where she could see a red sneaker, laces hanging loose and untied. She followed the line of sight to a pair of jeans, a far-too-small tank top, and a face that looked startlingly like her own. Defiant and mad as hell at the world.
“Just go,” that face said. “You know you want to.”
Quinn certainly hadn’t known she had another sister, but Tilly was just as surprised.
And unhappy about it.
Added to that was the fact that the girl was grieving, something Quinn knew a little too much about. So she drew in a deep breath and said, “I’m not leaving. At least not yet.”
Chapter 6
I wouldn’t mind someone looking at me the way I look at pizza.
—from “The Mixed-Up Files of Tilly Adams’s Journal”
To say that Tilly had had a bad day, a bad week, a bad month was an understatement. But as she stared down from the tree house, looking into a face that so resembled her own, somehow, in spite of not being able to breathe, she managed to find her voice. “I don’t need you,” she said, hating that she sounded thin and quivery, like she’d been crying.
She had not been crying.
At least not that she would admit to.
She hadn’t been in the tree house in a while. Not since she’d gone through a rough patch at school when the girls had been bitches and the teachers jerks, and her mom had been on her about her grades, and all she’d wanted to do was make herself invisible. But no matter how much she’d wished for superpowers, including invisibility, they’d never come.
So she came here to vanish. The tree itself was tall and stable, and it always protected her. She’d named it Kevin.
Kevin had come through for her more than anyone else, with the exception of her mom.
The first time she’d sat up here, her mom had freaked out and called the cops to report her missing. When they’d found her, her mom had gotten a ladder and climbed up to the tree house, and with tears in her eyes she’d said, “Don’t fly away from me yet, darling, I’m not ready.”
After that, Tilly always had told her mom whenever she’d needed to be invisible and her mom had understood.
But now she was gone. There’d been no one left to give a shit if she disappeared or not. Especially not Quinn, a mysterious sister she hadn’t even known about. “I don’t need you,” she repeated.
“Well, that’s fair,” Quinn said. “I don’t like to need anyone either. You going to come down so we can talk?”
“No.”
“Is there a ladder?”
“It rotted.”
“Okay then.” And to Tilly’s shock, Quinn inhaled deeply and then began to climb the tree herself. “Yikes, they’re some seriously gigantor ants.”
“And killer squirrels,” Tilly said.
Maybe two whole feet off the ground, Quinn froze, looking terrified. “Killer squirrels?”
“They throw acorns with deadly accuracy,” Tilly said. “And the kamikaze blue jays are vicious, so watch out.”
Quinn searched the tree with concern, making Tilly laugh for the first time in a long time. “Are you afraid of squirrels and blue jays?”
“Of course not,” Quinn said. “I’m afraid of killer squirrels and kamikaze blue jays. In fact, there’s a squirrel staring at me right now with beady, shifty little eyes.”
“City girl.”
Something buzzed on Quinn’s phone. Tilly’s eyebrows went up when Quinn ignored it.
“It’s just a notification telling me that my friend Skye played her turn at Words With Friends,” Quinn said.
“Words With Friends?”
“It’s a game. A fun one. Maybe we could play sometime.”
“I thought only old people played Words With Friends.”
Quinn snorted. “I probably should’ve told you, insulting me only tends to make me try harder.” And with that, she began climbing the tree again, muttering something about ruts and routines, and how she’d totally gotten off the hamster wheel, thank you very much.
Tilly craned her neck to watch, fascinated in spite of herself.
“Oh shit,” Quinn said, first when she snagged her pants on a branch and ripped them, and again when she ran into a spiderweb with her face and tried to break-dance while hanging out of a tree.
Tilly heard herself laugh again.
Quinn blew out a breath and gave up about ten feet below Tilly—at a whopping five feet off the ground. But still, she supposed it was pretty good for an old chick.
Quinn looked up. “Listen, this isn’t exactly the ideal way to meet you, but it’s all we’ve got. So . . . hi.” She paused. “I take it you didn’t know about me either.”
Tilly couldn’t hold back her surprise. “Wait—you didn’t know about me?”
“I didn’t even know I was adopted until Cliff found me to tell me about your mom’s death.” Quinn paused, her eyes warm. “I’m really sorry about that, Tilly.”
Because it put a pit in her gut and blocked the air in her throat to think about it, Tilly could only shrug, like no big deal, when it was a huge big deal. The biggest deal ever.