Second Chance Summer

“Last month’s storm,” Henry said, already starting to walk around it. “There was a treehouse up there, it came down when the trees fell.”

So that explained the lumber, and the occasional nail I could see jutting up through the beams. I started to follow him when a memory came back to me, hitting me with such force that I stopped walking. “Do you still have yours?” I asked. The second after I said it, I remembered he no longer lived in his old house. “I mean, is it still there? The treehouse?” Henry and his dad had built it together, and we had declared a younger sibling–free zone, and spent hours up there, especially whenever the weather was bad, and spending all day by the lake wasn’t an option.

“It’s still there,” he said. “As far as I know. You can still kind of see it if you look down the driveway.”

“I’m glad,” I said, not even realizing that this was what I felt until I said it.

“Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”

I stared at the fallen trees as I walked around them, still a little shocked to see them on the ground, the opposite of where they should be. It seemed crazy that something so big, so seemingly permanent, could be knocked down by a little wind and rain.

Henry was already starting to stride ahead, and so, hurrying to catch up with him, I started to clamber over the downed trees. By then, I’d made it to the top of the tree, where the trunk had narrowed, and it seemed like it would be simple enough. “Ow,” I muttered under my breath as yet another twig scraped my leg.

Henry turned back and squinted. “What are you doing?” he called, starting to walk toward me.

“Nothing,” I said, hearing the annoyance in my voice, which I knew wasn’t exactly fair, since he was helping me get out of the woods, but all I was doing at that moment was trying to keep him from having to wait on me.

“Don’t,” he said, and I could hear that he sounded equally annoyed. “That wood’s rotten, it’s likely to—”

With a snap, the trunk I’d been standing on collapsed, and I was pitching forward, bracing for the inevitable fall, when just like that, in an instant, Henry was there, catching me.

“Sorry,” I gasped, feeling how hard my heart was pounding, the adrenaline pumping through my body.

“Careful,” he said, as I started to step out of the trunk. “Davy twisted his ankle doing that last month.”

“Thanks.” I leaned on him a little bit for support as I lifted my foot out, trying very hard not to think about what kind of creepy-crawlies were probably living in a rotted-out tree trunk. It wasn’t until I had both feet back on the forest floor that I realized his arms were still around me. I could feel the heat from his hands on my back through my thin T-shirt. I looked up at him—it was still so strange to have to look up at Henry—and saw how close we were, our faces just inches apart. He must have become aware of this at the same time, because he dropped his arms immediately, and took a few steps away.

“You okay?” he asked, the brusque, businesslike tone back in his voice.

“Fine,” I said. I brushed off some of the wet leaves that had stuck to my ankles, mostly so he wouldn’t see how flustered I was.

“Good,” he said. He started walking again, and I followed behind, careful to put my feet where I saw him place his, not wanting another mishap. In what seemed like only a few more seconds, I was following Henry out of the woods, blinking in the brighter sunlight, and realizing I was just two streets away from my house. “You know your way from here?” he asked.

“Of course I do,” I said, slightly insulted.

Henry just shook his head and smiled, the first real smile I’d seen since meeting him again. “It’s not like you have the greatest sense of direction,” he said. I opened my mouth to protest this, and he went on, “I just had to help you find your way out of the woods.” He looked at me evenly for a moment, then added, “And it wasn’t even the first time.” Then he turned and walked away, leaving me to try and figure out what he meant.

A moment later, when he’d passed out of sight, it hit me. The first time we’d met had been in these very same woods. As I walked home, shielding my eyes against the sun, so bright after the darkness of the woods. I realized that I’d been so caught up in thinking about how things with him had ended, I’d almost forgotten how they had begun.

“Taylor, where have you been?” my mother asked when I returned, her eyes widening as she took in the scratches on my legs. I’d been trying to sneak back to my room quietly, hoping that everyone would still be asleep, but no such luck. My mom was unpacking what looked like practically a kitchenful of paper bags from the PocoMart, the closest thing to a grocery store in Lake Phoenix. There were bigger supermarkets, but they were a good half hour drive away.

“Just walking,” I said vaguely as I glanced around the kitchen, not meeting her eye. I saw that the coffeemaker was still empty—my mother was a tea drinker—which meant that, two hours after I’d left, my father was still asleep.

“I ran into Paul Crosby at the market,” she said, referring to Henry’s dad. I felt my face start to get hot, and was just grateful that she’d run into him before his sons had a chance to report back about my getting lost in the woods. “In the dairy aisle. He said they’re living next door to us now.”

“Oh,” I said. “How about that.” I could feel my cheeks getting hotter, and I opened the fridge and stuck my head in, trying to pretend I was looking for something essential.

“You’ll have to go say hi to Henry,” my mother continued, as I concentrated on making sure the expiration dates on the containers of milk were all facing out.

There is only so long you can stand with your head in a refrigerator, and I had just reached that point. Plus, my ears were staring to get cold. “Mmm,” I said, closing the door and leaning my back against it.

“And I suppose I should go and say hello to Ellen,” my mother continued. She sounded distinctly less excited about this thought, and I didn’t blame her. Henry’s mother had never seemed to like kids very much unless we were quiet and out of the way. While we had always dashed full-out into my house, sometimes mid-watergun fight, when we reached Henry’s door, we immediately settled down and got quiet, without even talking about it. Theirs was not a house you ever made blanket forts in. And without my mother saying anything outright, I had always gotten the sense she really hadn’t liked Mrs. Crosby very much.