The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z. (12 page)

I round a bend in the trail, and the trees thin out until there are just low bushes on each side. Blueberry bushes, I think, but it’s too late in the season for berries. I watch for sweet spots of dark blue anyway, walking with my head down until I trip and go sprawling into damp leaves and bang my elbow on a root so hard I have to catch my breath.

I hold on to my box of leaves though. For once.

And then I look up and have to catch my breath all over again because the killer root belongs to the most incredibly fantastic climbing tree in the entire universe.

I know climbing trees. Zig and I have climbed every tree in our neighborhood that’s even the tiniest bit climbable. Even Mr. Webster’s crab apple, and that one’s really hard because he doesn’t cut it back enough, so there are skinny branches sticking out all over the place.

But this one. This is the great-grandmother of all climbing trees.

Robert Frost must have been a climber. I bet he grew this tree special for climbing and had somebody cut it back every year so it would have perfect branches for footholds. They’re perfectly spaced. They’re the perfect thickness. Just far enough apart but not too far. Perfect.

And the best part is that the branches go all the way to the top without turning into the skinny ones that might snap under your feet. They stay thick and sturdy.

This is no climb-halfway-up-and-run-out-of-good-branches tree. It’s an all-the-way-to-the-top tree.

I balance my leaf box on the root that tripped me. For a second, I think about stopping to identify this tree, but it’s way more fun to climb it.

So I climb instead.

Without having to stop or find a new route even once, I’m within a Gianna-length of the very top—probably forty feet off the ground, at least.

And my perfect tree has a perfect view. The shoe box on the root looks tiny from up here. But the mountains, all hazy purple in the distance, still look big and old. And the trees are amazing. My eyes skim the tops of fluffy red and yellow trees still holding on to September, then swoop down into the dark spaces where the leaves have already fallen, where black branches scratch the edges of the hills.

Mom and Nonna wind their way toward the clearing until they’re almost right underneath me, but they don’t spot the shoe box, tucked just off the trail, and I don’t make a sound.

Their voices drift up into my branches.

“They’ll be getting hungry. I’ll call and have him preheat the oven.”

“Or I can do it when we get back. Relax, Angela. Enjoy the sunshine.”

The path through the forest was already darkening with tree shadows, but here in the clearing, the last rays of late afternoon sun make it feel a lot warmer.

“It is a pretty nice day.” Mom tips her head up to the sky. I duck behind a branch so she doesn’t see me. “Fall still makes me think of Dad,” she says.

“It was his favorite.” Nonna’s voice is quiet as they take the turn in the trail that heads back to the parking lot, and I strain to listen. I’ve never heard much about Mom’s father because he died right before I was born. “Remember how he’d take you out picking apples in the orchard and hold you way, way up to get the ones on the highest branches?”

“I always thought they looked sweeter,” Mom says.

She laughs, and as I watch her reach out to help Nonna step over a tree that’s fallen across the trail, it’s a little easier to imagine a Mom other than the list-making, tofu-eating, three-ring-binder-organizing Mom of right now.

I climb down, jump the last five feet to the ground, pick up my shoe box, and run to catch up with them.

“Well, there she is,” Nonna says. “Our leaf catcher. We thought you’d gone up ahead.”

“I did, but then I found a great climbing tree,” I say. “It had perfect branches. They were just the right—”

Mom frowns at me, licks her finger, and smudges it against my cheek. “You have pine sap on your face.”

But Nonna reaches for Mom’s hand and pulls her back. “Let her be, Angela. The tops of trees are always sweeter. You know that.”

Mom looks over at me. “Sappy girl,” she says, but she smiles a little and lets my face stay dirty all the way to the car.

CHAPTER 14

P
lease stand for the Pledge to the Flag.”

I stand, but I pull my backpack up onto my desk so I can look for my English papers while I’m pledging allegiance. I never got to do my homework last night because we got back so late and then dinner was late and then Ian tried starting the dishwasher with laundry soap inside and the kitchen got all wet and bubbly. After we cleaned it up, I had to go to bed.

I pull my crumpled poetry response sheet from my backpack. For some reason, it smells like applesauce. I reach in my bag for a pencil and feel something mushy. It’s the apple I brought for a snack after cross-country. Bruised, juicy, and mushy. I toss it into the garbage near my desk and read the journal question:

What might Robert Frost mean when he writes, “One
could do worse than be a swinger of birches”? Write
your personal response in a paragraph.

This is the very worst kind of assignment. When teachers ask for a personal response, they never mean it. They want a school-acceptable personal response, which kids make up based on what we’re pretty sure they want us to think. It’s not what we really think, though. I toy with the idea of writing the real deal this time:

I think Robert Frost is saying that a little daydreaming
and playing isn’t such a bad thing at all and that
teachers ought to lay off when a kid gets caught looking
out the window. We’re not plotting to make bombs or
something; we’re just taking a little time out from a boring
lecture to think about important stuff like the school
dance or what’s for lunch. I really hope it’s pizza. Robert
Frost probably would have failed English at this school
because he’d be looking out the window instead of writing
these responses all the time.

And if he had written the responses, he would have
failed science, too, because he would have written
poems about birches instead of collecting their stupid
leaves and pasting them into an overpriced binder with
index-card labels. And then someone like Bianca probably
would have made fun of his poems when he was
done.

I am done writing now and will be looking out the
window for the remainder of the period.

What I really write is this:

I believe that Robert Frost writes, “One could do
worse than be a swinger of birches” to show readers the
value of imagination. I’m an artist, so I know that painting
can take you away from earth a while, just like his
trees took him into the clouds. But Frost also says in the
poem that we need to come back to earth and get things
done. He probably had to go milk cows or something,
and we all have to pay attention and do our work.

Gianna Z.

When I turn in the response in English, I double-check to make sure it’s the second one—not the real deal—that I hand to Mrs. Clancy.

All day long, I double-check my backpack to make sure my leaves are there for science, and for once, I don’t lose a single one.

On my way to science, I check one more time. I have the four from my run this weekend, plus eighteen more from my hike, and most of those are already labeled in their bags, so all I have to do is make up the index cards. I can get three more by tomorrow, easy.

Mrs. Loring has the field guides and identification keys laid out on our lab tables, so I know it’s going to be a workday. Perfect. I pull up a chair next to Zig and Ruby, who are table partners. I’m surprised she’s back in school already. She looks tired and sad, like part of her is still there at the funeral home with her grandmother. But she has a pile of leaves in front of her that she somehow managed to collect in the middle of it all. A few more are sticking out of her marble notebook like bookmarks.

Zig has his leaves pressed inside a giant phone book that definitely came from a city bigger than ours. Our town’s phone book is about as thick as my pinkie finger. I look at the cover.

“Rochester, New York?”

“My dad left it that time he visited four years ago. He spent our whole camping weekend on his cell phone, making business calls.” Zig runs his hand over the phone book cover and looks a little sad. I hate that, so I blurt out something stupid.

“What kind of tree is your dad?”

He looks at me for a second, then looks down at the phone book.

“The kind that doesn’t grow around here.”

Ruby reaches for the phone book, flips it open to the restaurant section of the yellow pages and pulls out a perfectly flattened leaf the size of my face.

“What’s that one?” she asks.

“American chestnut. I couldn’t believe I found it.” He holds it up and smiles at it the way parents smile at a newborn. “They’re really rare now, you know?” I didn’t know. But I’m not surprised that Zig found it. He must have at least forty leaves, almost all of them numbered and linked to corresponding note cards with facts already.

“Gianna?” Mrs. Loring has appeared behind me in one of those stealthy moves only moms and teachers are capable of. I hate that. Teachers should have to wear cowbells. She raises her eyebrows at my backpack. “Do you have your leaves? Let’s make good use of this work session.”

“Yes, Mrs. Loring.” I open my folder to show her, but my colored-pencil leaf drawings are on top. I move them so she can see I have real ones, too.

“Nice job. It looks like you’re all caught up.” She hands me a field guide, and by the time the bell rings, I’ve identified all but a few of my leaves.

“I’ll see you after practice?” Zig waves, and I nod. “Bring your stuff. We can work on the project at my house.”

I grab my books from my locker and open the door to a perfect running day.

Coach jogs over with her clipboard and falls in step with me during our warm-up lap.

“Science project coming along, Gianna?” She has an asterisk next to my name on her roster.

“It’s coming along great,” I say, and I feel Bianca’s eyes burning into the side of my face. She’d been running with Mary Beth on the inside of the track, but as soon as Coach started talking to me, she weaseled her way over and edged into the lane next to ours, tipping her head over to listen.

That’s just fine. I’ll give her something to listen to.

“My project is just about done,” I say loudly, and for once, it’s the truth. “I just need three more leaves.”

“Good, good . . . glad to hear it. I’m counting on you, you know. Sectionals are a week from Saturday.”

“I’ll be there.”

Coach jogs away, and I can’t help smiling over at Bianca, who looks even nastier than her usual poison sumac self.

Today’s workout is a trail run on the winding path through the woods behind school, so I warm up with a lap on the track. Then I take off into the trees at full speed, breathing in big gulps of autumn. Fallen leaves have their own unique smell, an awesome earthy smell you don’t get when you’re running on pavement. Your feet have to be crunching the leaves into the dirt, over the rocks, and then you can smell it all around you.

I’m not even a little bit tired when I come out the trail on the other side of the woods, sprint down the street, and take the last turn around the block to head back to school. My four miles go by too fast today, so I take a few extra laps on the track. I meant to pick up my last three leaves along the way, but I always zone out when I run. I’ll get them on the way home.

With my extra laps, I’m the last one out. I could run forever today, but it’s getting late, so I take a long drink of water and head inside to get my stuff.

The locker room is quiet, but what I see when I come around the divider hits me like an explosion.

Papers cover the floor. Papers with English poetry responses. Papers with fractions converted to decimals. Papers with my name on top.

My stomach clenches, and I feel like I’m going to throw up the water I just drank.

What happened?

I pull open the locker where I put my stuff before practice. Nobody ever locks their lockers. You’re not supposed to have to lock anything in Vermont, not even your front door. But the hook where I hung my jacket and the shelf where I tossed my backpack an hour ago are empty.

My leaf project was in that backpack.

I slam the locker shut and start opening the other ones, up and down the row of benches.

Nothing.

I drop to my knees and start rifling through the papers on the floor. The leaves have to be here somewhere. They have to be.

The little floor tiles dig into my knees. I shuffle every last paper into a pile and don’t find a single leaf.

Through wet eyes, I see a blur of red over at the sinks. My jacket’s balled up in one of the basins, soaking wet. Who would do this? As soon as the question forms in my head, I know.

Under a bench, I find my science binder, empty. She ripped the papers right off the rings, so I can’t even clip them back in. I fling the binder against the row of lockers, and the clang echoes off the yellow tile walls of the shower room.