Jake
The place I’m renting for the summer is an artist’s studio in the middle of the woods. It’s small—just a living area, kitchenette, and bathroom. There’s a ladder leading up to a tiny loft under the roof where a double bed is squeezed in beneath a skylight. A wood-burning stove, grill, and two wooden chairs sit on a deck that overlooks the forest. That’s my favorite thing about living here.
I slump down into one of the chairs and put my feet up on the railing, drawing in deep lungfuls of air. The familiar dank smell of moss and fern and mulchy wet soil makes me smile, bringing all kinds of memories flooding to the surface.
It’s approaching dusk and there’s a damp chill in the air that makes me shiver. The forest of Bainbridge is a couple hundred years old, all towering pines, cedars, and thick-trunked firs. In places the underbrush is so dense you’d need a machete to cut a path through it. We’re close to the Olympic Peninsula, which is one of the wettest places in all of North America, so even in summer the island has a fall feel to it.
I don’t know if it’s the high of seeing Em again or the forest calling me, but within minutes I’ve changed into my running gear. I start jogging through the trees, letting my feet choose the direction. I know where they’re taking me, and for a few seconds I consider stopping and turning around, but I can’t stop myself. I keep running, sweat trickling down my back and adrenaline pumping fiercely through my body.
About a quarter mile into the woods, the track peters out and I stop, unsure of where I am. It’s been years since I’ve run in these woods, and the old landmarks that used to mark the route are gone. There was once a moss-covered tree stump in the middle of the path. I turn around, frowning, wondering if I ran by it already, but then I spot it almost entirely hidden by undergrowth. A sapling has sprouted from the center and is valiantly pushing its way toward the sky. Oriented, I fight my way through waist-height ferns, until I finally make it into the clearing.
For a minute I stare up in wonder. I can’t believe it’s still in one piece. The roof has collapsed in places, the wood looks rotten around the ledge, but the tree house is still standing.
I step closer and run my fingers over the slats of wood we nailed into the tree trunk to make a ladder. They feel solid enough, but from the derelict feel and the moss carpeting the wood, it seems as if no one’s been here in a while.
I climb up, testing each rung before I put my full weight on it. An injury would be just what I need. I can hear my coach yelling at me for taking such a dumb risk, but whatever . . . I want to see inside. I need to see inside.
Once I reach the ledge, I step even more carefully. The wood is so rotten in places it’s the consistency of papier-mâché. One wrong step and it’s a six-meter drop to the ground. For a moment I stand there, dealing with a wave of vertigo that comes out of nowhere. I remember sitting here in the dark. Waiting. Hoping . . . I’d rather forget about that, though.
Ducking low, I walk inside. Instantly, I’m struck by how tiny the place is. In my memory it was huge. In reality it’s about the size of my college dorm room—that is, about as wide across as a double bed. We all used to be able to stand up in here. Now I have to stoop to avoid smacking my head.
Em and I built this place, along with our teammate Denton and Em’s other best friend, Shay. It took us a whole summer, ransacking yards and the forest for discarded bits of wood and tarp, stealing hammers and nails and even a power saw from Em’s dad’s shed.
The place was finally finished and we were all ready to start enjoying it when the Walsh brothers found out about it. They followed Em one day when she was dragging some old sun-lounger cushions through the woods for us to use as a sofa.
“Jake and Emerson sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” Reid started singing from below.
Em reached straightaway for the hammer. I had to stop her from chucking it at their heads. Knowing her, she would have managed to hit both of them with just one throw. Thinking back on it, maybe I should have let her.
After that, every time we tried to use the tree house, we’d find Reid or Rob and their crew of friends already occupying it, piles of cigarette butts and smashed beer bottles littering the forest floor below. One time we found a porn magazine stuffed beneath the sun-lounger cushions, the pages stuck together with what Em loudly hoped was glue. Another time we caught Rob making out with some tenth-grade girl.
Em was so mad she wanted to tear the tree house down, preferably while they were both still in it. She even stole an axe from her dad’s workshop and marched off down the road swinging it. I had to chase after her on my bike and wrestle it from her hands. That was Em. She’d chop off her nose to spite her face before ever admitting defeat.
But then Rob started taking football more seriously and Reid began hanging out with a guy whose parents owned a boathouse. And just like that, the tree house was ours again.
We hosed it down with Lysol before we moved back in and burned the porn magazine in a victory campfire.
I smile as I stare around at the place, my eyes catching on the markings etched into the wall. There’s Denton’s name, and Shay’s—both scratched into the wood with a blunt penknife. I cross to the other side of the tree house. Dusk is falling and I can barely see, but mine and Em’s initials should be here too somewhere.
I take out my phone and shine the light on the wall, running my other hand along it. There they are. Or rather, there they were. Someone’s scratched through our initials, hashed them out, scoring deep rents in the wood. It looks like whoever it was used a carving knife . . . or possibly an axe.
I exhale loudly. No mystery as to whom.