Tree House

The day before Ryan died, I felt it in my subconscious, like how you can feel when a polished musician strums the perfect sequence of guitar notes. It’s strange the way the heart speaks volumes about tragedy, yet simultaneously shrouds its origins in mystery. The night before, I’d been listening to the same sad songs over and over and crying my eyes out, and I had no idea why. It wasn’t until the next day, when Ms. Deaver called to inform me that my childhood best friend had passed, that I could begin to decode the cipher my heart had been weaving for me.

Ryan, I believe, was trying to tell me something—and it was something about which only the heart can speak.

In the coming days, I remembered my promise to Ryan from years past that, should anything happen to him (he’d always insisted it would not be a matter of if he died before me, but when), I would come back to the house on Garrity Drive. He’d always said he wanted his best friend to see him off into the afterlife. Mainly, I think he was afraid of being alone, and wanted to know I would be there for him.

I don’t remember walking to Garrity Drive, but somehow my black sneakers had carried me forward, crushing patches of dead autumn leaves to smithereens with every step, until I arrived in front of the house he and his mother had left behind years ago. The house looked the same as it had when Ryan and I were kids—plain white, with a pitched brown roof and lines of withering shrubs that guided you up a walkway to a modest front porch. A sign on the overgrown lawn read “Bowler Realty” and the name Wanda Bowler, the realtor in charge of selling the estate. A set of wicker chairs—the ones Ms. Deaver used to sit on in the mornings for coffee and in the evenings for whiskey—were still perched on either side of the front door, appearing brand new and untouched since the house had been put on the market.

Between the chairs was a round metal table, and an ashtray rested on its glass surface, half-filled with discarded cigarette filters. Some of the cigarette butts appeared to have just been put out, and the smell of burnt tobacco was thick about the ashtray, so I assumed someone was home. But when I knocked, no one answered. I wandered across the porch, peering in through the windows. The curtains were drawn.

The porch wrapped all the way around the house and led to the backyard. I followed it to a side gate, pushed it open.

The old tree house was still there, to my surprise, tucked away at the back corner of the property. Ryan and I had fashioned the monstrous thing years ago (Ryan was twelve and I was thirteen) out of discarded metal sheeting and two-by-fours eaten to shreds by termites. It wasn’t very durable back in the day, yet, seven years later, the decrepit thing was still standing and looking just as it had when we’d constructed it.

I approached the tree house, which sat lopsided between a set of thick mulberry branches. About ten paces from the rickety wooden ladder, I heard laughter—a child’s squeaky shrieks of joy, barely audible above the autumn wind. I looked around, saw no one. Maybe it was the neighbors.

I hoisted myself up the ladder, the rope frayed but still durable enough to hold my weight. I made it to the landing. At twenty years old, I barely fit in the small compartment where Ryan and I had passed enough hours to span weeks, maybe months.

Nailed to the wall were magazine cutouts of ’60’s Ford trucks and cars with women posing in short shorts and tank tops, as well as posters we’d stolen from the movie theater in town. A handful of books and magazines were stacked in the far corner. I spotted a Carl Sagan book, one of Ryan’s favorites (I’d had a lot of friends as a kid, but he was always my “space geek” friend). When we were bored during the summer, Ryan would read a chapter and, in a fit of inspiration, pretend to be a space explorer. He would salute me while wearing his favorite Star Trek shirt (the one with Picard on the front) and saying things like, “It’s the Borg, Captain! Great Scott, we must attack!” If he couldn’t make me laugh, I gave him a wet willy—but he almost always made me laugh.

I picked up the book and set it in my lap, staring at it. The book had been here for a long time, yet, somehow, it was free of dust or mold or sun damage. It dawned on me that everything—the yard, the house, and even the tree house—appeared intact, unfazed by the heat and wind. I frowned, feeling like something about all of this was out of place (nothing in Arizona withstands the weather, especially if it’s subject to open windows), when I heard a voice behind me.

“Bradley Turner,” it said.

I startled, my bones jarring against my flesh. I turned around to face the unexpected visitor, jerking my neck painfully.

Sitting before me was a young boy, his hair ashy blonde. He wore a striped Freddy Krueger sweatshirt and a faded pair of green jeans. He stared at me with bright, auburn eyes, and a slight smirk rested on his lips.

“You came back,” the boy said. “You promised you would.”

“Who are you? Where’d you come from?” I asked, thinking he was the laughing neighbor kid I’d heard minutes ago.

“You know who I am,” said the boy.

I frowned. “No, I don’t,” I replied.

The boy looked about the tree house. “You helped me build this, remember?”

I shook my head. “Listen, kid, I don’t know who you think I am, but I don’t know you.”

“Moe’s Lumber,” said the boy.

“What?” I asked, confused.

“That’s where you and I got the wood for the clubhouse that summer,” he said. “Moe’s Lumber, at the corner of Lafayette and Prince. We climbed the fence after they closed and dragged scrap wood all the way back here by hand. We started building it while my mom was at work the next day. She was so mad when she found out. She wouldn’t let you come over for a month, and she had to pay Moe a bunch of money for the inconvenience. After that, she took the belt to my hide. I had bruises for weeks.” The boy looked at me quizzically. “How could you forget?”

This had to be a dream. I scrunched my eyes shut, patted my fists against the sides of my head, trying to clear the mirage from my mind.

When I opened my eyes again, the boy was still there, but a foot taller, older—thirteen, maybe—and his hair longer and shaggier. He still wore the striped shirt and green pants. “Recognize me now, Captain?” he inquired, his voice deeper now.

Familiarity took over. The young boy before me, nearly my height now, carried the same smirk as…

“Come on,” he said, interrupting my thoughts. “Let me show you something.” Then he disappeared through the doorway of the tree house and shimmied down the ladder. I followed, keeping the Carl Sagan book tucked under my arm.

The boy stood on the weed-infested ground, waiting for me to join him. Beside him were two bikes that hadn’t been there before, both of them too small for either of us to fit on. “What’s this?” I asked.

“You still don’t remember?” the boy asked patiently, the smirk still plastered on his acne-ridden face. “Marchbrook High, the day of the assembly. This is the bike that Gavin Shiner and Preston Evingston stole from me. Gavin was riding it around outside the assembly, showing off his new leather jacket like a dirtbag, and Preston had me pinned to the ground behind the gym.”

I blinked. I looked down at the bike, its turquoise frame suddenly standing out in my mind. The boy must have seen it in my expression, because he continued.

“You heard Preston laughing behind the gym,” he said, “so you went to have a look. You found him pressing my face into a mud puddle. I couldn’t breathe. I was sure he was going to kill me. He’d always said he was going to kill me one day, and I thought the day had come.”

I kicked him, I thought, remembering now. I stormed over and kicked Preston in the gut and knocked him sideways. Then I helped Ryan up, his face covered in mud. The poor kid was crying. Preston tried to get up but I kicked him again, and he called me a four-eyed freak and ran away. Then I went to get the bike from Gavin, had to shove him off of it. I got detention because Mrs. Anders saw me do it.

The boy nodded, as if he’d read my thoughts. “That’s the day we became best friends,” he said.

I shook my head in disbelief. “Ryan?” I couldn’t think of what else to say.

He smiled. Then he ran off across the yard at a full sprint, disappearing behind a shed at the back. I followed, once again.

When I caught up to him, he was sitting on top of the shed, his legs dangling over the battered roof’s edge. And now he was taller again, and older, the acne on his face absent and his ashy blonde hair reaching down to his shoulders. The striped shirt he’d worn before was replaced by a Star Trek shirt with the face of Picard on the front. He still wore the same faded green jeans, which crinkled as he kicked his legs to and fro.

I pulled myself up onto the shed with some effort and sat beside him. I hadn’t seen Ryan in a couple of years, not since he and his mom moved away to another state. “Is this really you?” I asked. “How can it be you?”

“What was the last thing you said to me? Do you remember?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No.”

He said, “We were sitting here, in this spot, looking up at the stars. I asked you to name the biggest star you could think of. You said Sirius, and I laughed. Then you said, ‘But that’s probably tiny compared to others out there.’ Like you understood there are things grander to be found, things beyond our comprehension. And you know what? You were right. There’s a lot more to the universe than we can ever know here on Earth. I haven’t been gone a full day and I know so much more than I ever thought possible.” He looked down at his hands. “But anyway, the last thing you said to me? You said, ‘I hope you find the biggest star someday, and when you do, you can show it to me.’ I remember it well. Even if I wasn’t dead, I would remember it.”

I thought I might cry. “How did you die?” I asked.

He pursed his lips. “It doesn’t really matter now.”

“It does to me.”

He nodded solemnly. “Overdose.”

Now, I did cry. “Did it hurt?” I asked through my tears.

“The only thing that hurt was knowing I’d made a mistake I couldn’t take back. I didn’t think the afterlife would hurt this badly, but it does.”

He didn’t cry, but he sat by and let me do it for him. “I’m sorry,” I said finally. “For not being there when you needed someone.”

A sad look came over him. “You can’t blame yourself for that which is beyond your control. Life is an ever-unraveling conundrum. You can’t be everywhere all of the time—not even for the people you love the most.”

“I wish I could have been there for you,” I said.

He looked at me. “You are now.”

A storm cloud blew in rapidly, concealing the sun above us. I looked up, watching it for a minute.

Beside me, I heard Ryan say, “It’s almost time to leave.”

I glanced at him. His pale skin appeared fractured, his hands resembling the texture of long-dried spots of earth. When his gaze met mine, he was smiling. “Thank you,” he said. “For being here when I needed someone.”

We both stood up on top of the shed. I looked around the yard, which had grown gray beneath the overcast sky. Everything looked different than it had minutes ago. The weeds were now tall and yellowed, the house boarded up and the paint peeling. The tree house roof had caved in, and a few two-by-fours had fallen. Our “clubhouse” was crumbling, barely hanging on by a thread. In my hands, the Carl Sagan book was frayed, the pages damaged from being rained on over the years.

I turned my attention back to Ryan. He said, “This is how it looks in your world. But I wanted to show you how it looks in mine: bright, sunny, and untouched by nature’s hand. Flawless.”

“Thank you, Ryan,” I said.

His skin was peeling now, the flakes falling like snow onto the shed’s roof. He was fading. It felt like he was dying all over again. I reached out to touch him, but my hand floated through his like thin air.

“Before you go,” I said, “I have one last question. Have you found the biggest star yet?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. But I’ll keep looking.”

“When you do,” I said, “you’d better show me. I’ll be here waiting.”

Ryan smirked. “So long, Bradley Turner,” he said, bringing his hand to his forehead in a salute. “Until next time.”

I turned around, unable to watch any longer. I began to sob. When I looked back, Ryan was gone.

I stood there for a long time, waiting as the afternoon faded into twilight. The clouds departed, the sun went down, and I saw the stars begin to emerge from their hiding places. Part of me hoped I would catch a glimpse of the biggest star in the universe from down here.

There was a twinkle above me, bright like a supernova. I liked to think Ryan had already found his star, and he was showing off.

I smiled and said, “So long, Ryan Deaver. Until next time.”