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Seventh grade brought changes, all right, but the biggest one didn't happen at school — it happened at home.
Granddad Duncan came to live with us.
At first it was kind of weird because none of us really knew him. Except for Mom, of course. And even though she's spent the past year and a half trying to convince us he's a great guy, from what I can tell, the thing he likes to do best is stare out the front-room window. There's not much to see out there except the Bakers' front yard, but you can find him there day or night, sitting in the big easy chair they moved in with him, staring out the window.
Okay, so he also reads Tom Clancy novels and the newspapers and does crossword puzzles and tracks his stocks, but those things are all distractions. Given no one to justify it to, the man would stare out the window until he fell asleep. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It just seems so ... boring.
Mom says he stares like that because he misses Grandma, but that's not something Granddad had ever discussed with me. As a matter of fact, he never discussed much of anything with me until a few months ago when he read about Juli in the newspaper.
Now, Juli Baker did not wind up on the front page of the Mayfield Times for being an eighth-grade Einstein, like you might suspect. No, my friend, she got front-page coverage because she refused to climb out of a sycamore tree.
Not that I could tell a sycamore from a maple or a birch for that matter, but Juli, of course, knew what kind of tree it was and passed that knowledge along to every creature in her wake.
So this tree, this sycamore tree, was up the hill on a vacant lot on Collier Street, and it was massive. Massive and ugly. It was twisted and gnarled and bent, and I kept expecting the thing to blow over in the wind.
One day last year I'd finally had enough of her yakking about that stupid tree. I came right out and told her that it was not a magnificent sycamore, it was, in reality, the ugliest tree known to man. And you know what she said? She said I was visually challenged. Visually challenged! This from the girl who lives in a house that's the scourge of the neighborhood. They've got bushes growing over windows, weeds sticking out all over the place, and a barnyard's worth of animals running wild. I'm talking dogs, cats, chickens, even snakes. I swear to God, her brothers have a boa constrictor in their room. They dragged me in there when I was about ten and made me watch it eat a rat. A live, beady-eyed rat. They held that rodent up by its tail and gulp, the boa swallowed it whole. That snake gave me nightmares for a month.
Anyway, normally I wouldn't care about someone's yard, but the Bakers' mess bugged my dad big-time, and he channeled his frustration into our yard. He said it was our neighborly duty to show them what a yard's supposed to look like. So while Mike and Matt are busy plumping up their boa, I'm having to mow and edge our yard, then sweep the walkways and gutter, which is going a little overboard, if you ask me.
And you'd think Juli's dad — who's a big, strong, bricklaying dude — would fix the place up, but no. According to my mom, he spends all his free time painting. His landscapes don't seem like anything special to me, but judging by his price tags, he thinks quite a lot of them. We see them every year at the Mayfield County Fair, and my parents always say the same thing: "The world would have more beauty in it if he'd fix up the yard instead."
Mom and Juli's mom do talk some. I think my mom feels sorry for Mrs. Baker — she says she married a dreamer, and because of that, one of the two of them will always be unhappy.
Whatever. Maybe Juli's aesthetic sensibilities have been permanently screwed up by her father and none of this is her fault, but Juli has always thought that that sycamore tree was God's gift to our little corner of the universe.
Back in the third and fourth grades she used to clown around with her brothers in the branches or peel big chunks of bark off so they could slide down the crook in its trunk. It seemed like they were playing in it whenever my mom took us somewhere in the car. Juli'd be swinging from the branches, ready to fall and break every bone in her body, while we were waiting at the stoplight, and my mom would shake her head and say, "Don't you ever climb that tree like that, do you hear me, Bryce? I never want to see you doing that! You either, Lynetta. That is much too dangerous."
My sister would roll her eyes and say, "As if, "while I'd slump beneath the window and pray for the light to change before Juli squealed my name for the world to hear.
I did try to climb it once in the fifth grade. It was the day after Juli had rescued my kite from its mutant toyeating foliage. She climbed miles up to get my kite, and when she came down, she was actually very cool about it. She didn't hold my kite hostage and stick her lips out like I was afraid she might. She just handed it over and then backed away.
I was relieved, but I also felt like a weenie. When I'd seen where my kite was trapped, I was sure it was a goner. Not Juli. She scrambled up and got it down in no time. Man, it was embarrassing.
So I made a mental picture of how high she'd climbed, and the next day I set off to outdo her by at least two branches. I made it past the crook, up a few limbs, and then — just to see how I was doing — I looked down.
Mis-take! It felt like I was on top of the Empire State Building without a bungee. I tried looking up to where my kite had been, but it was hopeless. I was indeed a treeclimbing weenie.
Then junior high started and my dream of a Juli-free existence shattered. I had to take the bus, and you-know-who did, too. There were about eight kids altogether at our bus stop, which created a buffer zone, but it was no comfort zone. Juli always tried to stand beside me, or talk to me, or in some other way mortify me.
And then she started climbing. The girl is in the seventh grade, and she's climbing a tree — way, way up in a tree. And why does she do it? So she can yell down at us that the bus is five! four! three blocks away! Blow-by-blow traffic watch from a tree — what every kid in junior high feels like hearing first thing in the morning.
She tried to get me to come up there with her, too. "Bryce, come on! You won't believe the colors! It's absolutely magnificent! Bryce, you've got to come up here!"
Yeah, I could just hear it: "Bryce and Juli sitting in a tree..." Was I ever going to leave the second grade behind?
One morning I was specifically not looking up when out of nowhere she swings down from a branch and practically knocks me over. Heart a-ttack! I dropped my backpack and wrenched my neck, and that did it. I refused to wait under that tree with that maniac monkey on the loose any more. I started leaving the house at the very last minute. I made up my own waiting spot, and when I'd see the bus pull up, I'd truck up the hill and get on board.
No Juli, no problem.
And that, my friend, took care of the rest of seventh grade and almost all of eighth, too, until one day a few months ago. That's when I heard a commotion up the hill and could see some big trucks parked up on Collier Street where the bus pulls in. There were some men shouting stuff up at Juli, who was, of course, five stories up in the tree.
All the other kids started to gather under the tree, too, and I could hear them telling her she had to come down. She was fine — that was obvious to anyone with a pair of ears — but I couldn't figure out what they were all arguing about.
I trucked up the hill, and as I got closer and saw what the men were holding, I figured out in a hurry what was making Juli refuse to come out of the tree.
Chain saws.
Don't get me wrong here, okay? The tree was an ugly mutant tangle of gnarly branches. The girl arguing with those men was Juli — the world's peskiest, bossiest, most know-it-all female. But all of a sudden my stomach completely bailed on me. Juli loved that tree. Stupid as it was, she loved that tree, and cutting it down would be like cutting out her heart.
Everyone tried to talk her down. Even me. But she said she wasn't coming down, not ever, and then she tried to talk us up. "Bryce, please! Come up here with me. They won't cut it down if we're all up here!"
For a second I considered it. But then the bus arrived and I talked myself out of it. It wasn't my tree, and even though she acted like it was, it wasn't Juli's, either.
We boarded the bus and left her behind, but school was pretty much a waste. I couldn't seem to stop thinking about Juli. Was she still up in the tree? Were they going to arrest her?
When the bus dropped us off that afternoon, Juli was gone and so was half the tree. The top branches, the place my kite had been stuck, her favorite perch — they were all gone.
We watched them work for a little while, the chain saws gunning at full throttle, smoking as they chewed through wood. The tree looked lopsided and naked, and after a few minutes I had to get out of there. It was like watching someone dismember a body, and for the first time in ages, I felt like crying. Crying. Over a stupid tree that I hated.
I went home and tried to shake it off, but I kept wondering, Should I have gone up the tree with her? Would it have done any good?
I thought about calling Juli to tell her I was sorry they'd cut it down, but I didn't. It would've been too, I don't know, weird.
She didn't show at the bus stop the next morning and didn't ride the bus home that afternoon, either.
Then that night, right before dinner, my grandfather summoned me into the front room. He didn't call to me as I was walking by — that would have bordered on friendliness. What he did was talk to my mother, who talked to me. "I don't know what it's about, honey," she said. "Maybe he's just ready to get to know you a little better."
Great. The man's had a year and a half to get acquainted, and he chooses now to get to know me. But I couldn't exactly blow him off.
My grandfather's a big man with a meaty nose and greased-back salt-and-pepper hair. He lives in house slippers and a sports coat, and I've never seen a whisker on him. They grow, but he shaves them off like three times a day. It's a real recreational activity for him.
Besides his meaty nose, he's also got big meaty hands. I suppose you'd notice his hands regardless, but what makes you realize just how beefy they are is his wedding ring. That thing's never going to come off, and even though my mother says that's how it should be, I think he ought to get it cut off. Another few pounds and that ring's going to amputate his finger.
When I went in to see him, those big hands of his were woven together, resting on the newspaper in his lap. I said, "Granddad? You wanted to see me?"
"Have a seat, son."
Son? Half the time he didn't seem to know who I was, and now suddenly I was "son"? I sat in the chair opposite him and waited.
"Tell me about your friend Juli Baker."
"Juli? She's not exactly my friend ... !"
"Why is that?" he asked. Calmly. Like he had prior knowledge.
I started to justify it, then stopped myself and asked, "Why do you want to know?"
He opened the paper and pressed down the crease, and that's when I realized that Juli Baker had made the front page of the Mayfield Times. There was a huge picture of her in the tree, surrounded by a fire brigade and policemen, and then some smaller photos I couldn't make out very well. "Can I see that?"
He folded it up but didn't hand it over. "Why isn't she your friend, Bryce?"
"Because she's..." I shook my head and said, "You'd have to know Juli."
"I'd like to."
"What? Why?"
"Because the girl's got an iron backbone. Why don't you invite her over sometime?"
"An iron backbone? Granddad, you don't understand! That girl is a royal pain. She's a show-off, she's a know-it-all, and she is pushy beyond belief!"
"Is that so?"
"Yes! That's absolutely so! And she's been stalking me since the second grade!"
He frowned, then looked out the window and asked, "They've lived there that long?"
"I think they were all born there!"
He frowned some more before he looked back at me and said, "A girl like that doesn't live next door to everyone, you know."
"Lucky them!"
He studied me, long and hard. I said, "What?" but he didn't flinch. He just kept staring at me, and I couldn't take it — I had to look away.
Keep in mind that this was the first real conversation I'd had with my grandfather. This was the first time he'd made the effort to talk to me about something besides passing the salt. And does he want to get to know me? No! He wants to know about Juli!
I couldn't just stand up and leave, even though that's what I felt like doing. Somehow I knew if I left like that, he'd quit talking to me at all. Even about salt. So I sat there feeling sort of tortured. Was he mad at me? How could he be mad at me? I hadn't done anything wrong!
When I looked up, he was sitting there holding out the newspaper to me. "Read this," he said. "Without prejudice."
I took it, and when he went back to looking out the window, I knew — I'd been dismissed.
By the time I got down to my room, I was mad. I slammed my bedroom door and flopped down on the bed, and after fuming about my sorry excuse for a grandfather for a while, I shoved the newspaper in the bottom drawer of my desk. Like I needed to know any more about Juli Baker.
At dinner my mother asked me why I was so sulky, and she kept looking from me to my grandfather. Granddad didn't seem to need any salt, which was a good thing because I might have thrown the shaker at him.
My sister and dad were all business as usual, though. Lynetta ate about two raisins out of her carrot salad, then peeled the skin and meat off her chicken wing and nibbled gristle off the bone, while my father filled up airspace talking about office politics and the need for a shakedown in upper management.
No one was listening to him — no one ever does when he gets on one of his if-I-ran-the-circus jags — but for once Mom wasn't even pretending. And for once she wasn't trying to convince Lynetta that dinner was delicious either. She just kept eyeing me and Granddad, trying to pick up on why we were miffed at each other.
Not that he had anything to be miffed at me about. What had I done to him, anyway? Nothing. Nada. But he was, I could tell. And I completely avoided looking at him until about halfway through dinner, when I sneaked a peek.
He was studying me, all right. And even though it wasn't a mean stare, or a hard stare, it was, you know, firm. Steady. And it weirded me out. What was his deal?
I didn't look at him again. Or at my mother. I just went back to eating and pretended to listen to my dad. And the first chance I got, I excused myself and holed up in my room.
I was planning to call my friend Garrett like I usually do when I'm bent about something. I even punched in his number, but I don't know. I just hung up.
And later when my mom came in, I faked like I was sleeping. I haven't done that in years. The whole night was weird like that. I just wanted to be left alone.
Juli wasn't at the bus stop the next morning. Or Friday morning. She was at school, but you'd never know it if you didn't actually look. She didn't whip her hand through the air trying to get the teacher to call on her or charge through the halls getting to class. She didn't make unsolicited comments for the teacher's edification or challenge the kids who took cuts in the milk line. She just sat. Quiet.
I told myself I should be glad about it — it was like she wasn't even there, and isn't that what I'd always wanted? But still, I felt bad. About her tree, about how she hurried off to eat by herself in the library at lunch, about how her eyes were red around the edges. I wanted to tell her, Man, I'm sorry about your sycamore tree, but the words never seemed to come out.
By the middle of the next week, they'd finished taking down the tree. They cleared the lot and even tried to pull up the stump, but that sucker would not budge, so they wound up grinding it down into the dirt.
Juli still didn't show at the bus stop, and by the end of the week I learned from Garrett that she was riding a bike. He said he'd seen her on the side of the road twice that week, putting the chain back on the derailleur of a rusty old ten-speed.
I figured she'd be back. It was a long ride out to Mayfield Junior High, and once she got over the tree, she'd start riding the bus again. I even caught myself looking for her. Not on the lookout, just looking.
Then one day it rained and I thought for sure she'd be up at the bus stop, but no. Garrett said he saw her trucking along on her bike in a bright yellow poncho, and in math I noticed that her pants were still soaked from the knees down.
When math let out, I started to chase after her to tell her that she ought to try riding the bus again, but I stopped myself in the nick of time. What was I thinking? That Juli wouldn't take a little friendly concern and completely misinterpret it? Whoa now, buddy, beware! Better to just leave well enough alone.
After all, the last thing I needed was for Juli Baker to think I missed her.