We pressed on, cutting across the clearing that was Mudders Meadow and onward, deeper into the trees. Overhead, owls screeched.
Finally there was a glimpse of light. Ahead, the trees started to thin out, and I thought I could see something white on the ground. Leigh pushed me to the right and we bumped into a knobby old oak tree.
“Up,” she said.
“Up?” I echoed, but then I looked up and understood. A giant four-walled tree house loomed large over us. Not the rinky-dink kind that had been in the arboretum. This was more like one of the Fort Farm forts mounted in a tree, with two-by-fours holding it steady to the trunk.
“Will we both fit in it?” I asked.
“Sure,” Leigh said. “I don’t take up much room. Give me a second. I’ll throw down the ladder.”
And just like the afternoon of the climbing event, she hopped up the trunk and landed inside of the house. A metal ladder descended, the kind people use to escape the second story of a burning house. My parents had one in their closet.
I climbed awkwardly and landed on the wooden floor. Light erupted, and I threw an arm up against the glare. When my eyesight adjusted, I saw a camping lantern illuminating the inside of what Beth would call a “cozy studio” tree house. My hair brushed the ceiling, but otherwise the tree house was much roomier than it looked from below.
“I know,” Leigh said airily. “It’s bigger on the inside.”
There was a single storage container on Leigh’s side of the room, which she opened, leaving the lantern between us. She retrieved a single bottle with a pirate on the label and two plastic cups and set them next to the lantern. And then she pulled out a plain red leather wallet, which she handed to me.
I opened the wallet’s flap and saw a small photo of Leigh. Her hair was black, not yellow, and was stick straight, so long that it disappeared out of frame. She also wore thick black glasses, the kind that people sometimes wore even without a prescription.
It took me a second to realize what I was looking at. On the top, in bold font, it read “Rayevich College: Class of 2019.”
I looked up. Leigh twisted the top off of the pirate bottle and a strong alcoholic breeze filled the tree house. She poured some of the dark brown liquor into each of the cups and handed one to me.
“Surprise?” she said.
I took a long drink from the cup she’d handed me. It tasted like syrup that was also on fire. I couldn’t tell if I hated it. I drank it again and my entire throat felt like it was pulsing red hot.
Leigh took her sips more carefully, watching me with nervous eyes.
“I shaved my head to get off the creamy-crack wagon,” she said. “You know. The big chop?”
I couldn’t tell if she really believed that her using relaxer was the biggest shock here.
“You go here?” I asked. The alcohol made my voice feel far away, so I said it again. “You. Go. Here. How?”
“I’m seventeen, just like you,” she said, bouncing her head from side to side. “But I’m also about to go into my junior year. Of college. Here. The camp bylaws don’t expressly say that preexisting students can’t win the scholarship. There’s no precedent for it, but it’s not against the rules…”
“How?” I repeated, louder this time.
“Not all geniuses go to the Messina.” Her forehead scrunched in distaste. “It’s a very expensive holding pattern. I don’t know who would blow all that money on not going to college.”
“And the tree house?” I asked, very close to shouting now. “How how how?”
“That’s what they’re for,” she said, giving a little snort into her cup. “Have you seen the prices for on-campus housing? It’s ridiculous. There’s a reason people fight for placement at this camp. That full ride is buku bucks. Anyway, if you want to live off campus, you have to have a car, because the buses don’t run all the way out here all day. It’s a nightmare. And I didn’t have my driver’s license when I started here because I was fifteen—”
I spluttered. “You’re like a real genius.”
“It’s not like there’s a difference between me being a genius and you being a genius.”
“Except you go to college,” I stressed. “And you live in a tree. A tree.”
A handbag! shouted Oscar Wilde. Oh, God. Alcohol made the quoting louder. Or maybe it was the beginning of my real, live nervous breakdown.
“Most of the time, yeah.” She shrugged. “When the weather is really bad, I can usually crash with friends in the residence hall. My parents only qualified for so much financial aid, so…” She stopped. “Are you like really freaked out right now or is the rum making your face do that?”
I touched my face. It did feel freaked out. My eyes were bugging and my mouth wouldn’t close. My head was starting to spin. I set my cup down. “Did you take the binders?”
Her eyes went saucer round. “What? No. Of course not.”
“There is no ‘of course’ when you tell me that you started college at fifteen and live in a tree.”
“You lied about your name and having a twin and I didn’t accuse you of stealing the binders. Plus, the binders getting taken was a blow to my summer, too, you know. I don’t know shit about classical music. Who has a classical music section but no math? What kind of shit is that?” She scooted back until her back pressed against one of the tree house walls. “Fine. Yes, I took most of the water bottles from the dining hall, but that is it. I did not break into anyone’s rooms. That’s such an invasion of privacy.”
“Sorry,” I said. I rubbed my eyes until pinpricks of light floated behind my lids. “Why haven’t any of the counselors recognized you? It’s a small school, right?”
“Who said they haven’t?” she asked. “I’m here under my real name. Simone from Team Five and I took medieval art history together last year. Not that we’re super best friends or anything. It’s hard to make friends when you’re the baby everywhere you go. Camp has been really cool for having other smart kids around. I’ll miss that when the semester starts back up.” Her eyes stared past me. “Oh! Maybe that’s why people go to the Messina. I never factor in the social component. Still. It seems like an expensive way to keep friends.” My face must have still been rum-frozen, because Leigh reached over to pat my knee. “I’m really sorry about all of this. I don’t have a way to keep your parents from stealing you back to California. I’ll miss you when you go. I really liked having a bestie for a couple of weeks.”
“I really liked being your bestie for a couple of weeks.” My voice—too far away from my ears—was as tight as a hug good-bye. Without warning, my eyes burned with an entire ocean of tears. “I really don’t want to go home. I’m not ready to be at the end.”
“It’s okay,” she said softly. “You aren’t.”
I curled up on the floor, taking up almost all of it, like in Alice in Wonderland, when she became a giant and wore that cottage like a romper. Leigh petted my hair while I cried.