But Danny was happy to help with repairs and building projects. Bob had never gotten around to completing the deer fence he and Julian had begun in June. With the three of them working, it was done in two days. As Danny put the finishing touches on the gate latch, he actually began to whistle. It was almost like he was putting on a show.
The children had almost given up hope of ever returning to the tree house when Nancy announced after lunch on Tuesday, “I’m taking Molly and Jo–Jo into town to buy new shoes and pick up some groceries. If you all would just clear up the dishes, you can have the rest of the afternoon off. We’ve been working you pretty hard.”
The Operatives exchanged quick glances and sprang into action. Robin jumped up and offered to braid Molly’s hair. Danny cleared the table, and Julian found Jo–Jo’s striped shirt on the bathroom floor and coaxed him into it.
Nancy watched her daughters affectionately. “You see, Molly, it’s not true that Robin is always mean to you.”
Molly, who was studying her hair in the mirror, said nothing.
“She only notices when I’m mean,” Robin complained. “The ninety–nine percent of the time I’m nice, she’s oblivious.”
“See, even you admit you’re mean,” Molly said.
“One percent of the time! Tops!” Robin twisted the last hair tie around Molly’s braid. “You look gorgeous. Note: a compliment.”
When the truck reached the end of the long driveway and pulled out of sight, Robin led the operatives to the shed. Five minutes later, loaded down with supplies, the four operatives were on their way to Big Tree Grove.
The tree house looked a lot higher than Julian had remembered.
“You’re going to get all the way up by yourself?” Danny asked dubiously.
“Well, the only really tricky part is getting the rope up over that beam, the one sticking out.” Robin grabbed a length of thin, black cord out of their equipment bag and tied it to a stick. She threw the stick high into the air, where it made a graceful arc, then banged into the trunk several feet below the beam.
“Let me try,” Danny said.
“No, give me another chance.” Robin picked the stick off the ground and untangled the cord. “My brothers did it easy.” But this time, the stick was even farther off the mark. Julian tried, and Danny tried twice, coming within a few feet of the beam on the second try. Ariel’s attempt went several feet wide of the tree.
Robin threw the stick up two more times, and then they all sat down, discouraged. “Anyone got any other ideas?” she asked.
“Let’s just kidnap Preston instead and hold him for ransom. ‘You leave these trees alone,’” Danny said in his Mafia voice, “‘or your boy’s wearing concrete shoes.’”
Julian glared at him and Robin scowled. “We can’t throw away the whole plan because of one little obstacle. We almost got it.”
“Well,” said Danny, “there are other ways to get a rope over a tree.”
“Like what?” Robin asked.
“Slingshot. Bow and arrow.” Danny was enjoying displaying the fruits of his tree–climbing obsession. “Crossbow—now, that would be the ultimate. Or a throw weight.”
“What’s a throw weight?” Robin asked.
“It’s like a beanbag,” Julian said.
“I’ve got a plain old beanbag. Only it’s back at the house.”
Danny tried the stick again, and again it fell several feet below the beam. “Well, it looks like we’re never going to get the rope up this way. Maybe somebody should go get the beanbag.”
Robin pointed her chin at Ariel. “She’s the fastest.”
Danny almost choked. “You’ve got to be kidding me! There’s no way Ariel’s faster than me. Or Julian.”
Robin shrugged. “How much do you want to bet?”
“A candy bar to the winner!” Danny said jubilantly.
Ariel leaned against the tree to stretch her legs. “Where is the beanbag exactly?”
“It’s in the dresser in my bedroom. Inside the top right–hand drawer.”
“All right. Let’s go,” said Ariel and she sprang away from the tree and up the slope, with Danny close behind. Julian watched in astonishment. Danny loped along with his usual athletic grace, but Ariel looked like she was running in fast forward. They disappeared over the top of the ridge, and he could hear Danny calling out, “I’m going to get you! There’s no way you’re getting my Snickers!”
Robin sat with her back against the tree. “She’s going to win. She’s the fastest girl on earth.”
Julian laughed. “It’ll be good for Danny. Keep him humble.” He paused. Here, in the warm afternoon light, the forest was so silent—silent a thousand years ago, silent a hundred years ago, silent a month ago when he was sitting alone in his uncle’s house.
“Can you believe we’re all here?” Robin said at last. “I thought it would never happen.”
“How’d you get your parents to let us come? You know, when I saw the sheriff car, I thought it was all over. I thought your dad would never want to see me again. Ever.”
“Yeah, me too. I don’t really know what changed his mind. Maybe it was your aunt! She didn’t win any popularity contests here! I think my dad felt sorry for you. It’s not your fault Sibley Carter’s your uncle.”
“So you told your dad you sent him that e–mail?”
“I had to. I mean, once they knew you were Sibley Carter’s nephew. I had to explain that!”
“And you told them I was in his office? And how I opened Sibley’s e–mail?”
“I just told him you found the e–mail by accident. Dad didn’t really ask for details.”
Julian felt himself breathe a little easier. At least Bob wouldn’t think he was some kind of sneak.
“You must’ve been glad to see your grandmother,” Robin said. “When’s your mom coming home, anyway?”
The sound of a woodpecker rang out like a distant jackhammer. “Later this month,” Julian said. “I’m not sure exactly when. I haven’t really talked to her.”
“What do you mean? You haven’t talked to her since you were here in June?”
Julian looked up, surprised at the outrage in her voice.
“There aren’t any telephones in China?” she asked.
“Well, she sent me some postcards. She and my grandmother have talked a few times.”
Robin just stared at him in bewilderment.
“She’s busy,” Julian said.
It was true, he couldn’t imagine Nancy heading off to China for the summer and not calling home once. Or Danny’s mom. But they were in a whole different category of mothers: normal mothers who gave you chores and made you do your schoolwork and sit down to dinner.
His mother was not like them. She was young and beautiful. A free spirit. In fact, she was always joking to her friends about how he was more responsible than she was.
“She’ll be back soon,” he said. “That’s just the way she is.”
Robin’s dubious expression made Julian uncomfortable, and he decided to close the curtains on this conversation. There was something else he’d been waiting to tell Robin. “You know the article about the IPX hackers?”
“Yeah. What a weird story.”
“Well, you know who the hackers were?”
Robin shook her head.
“It was us. Me and Danny.”
“You’re lying!” Robin said. “You and Danny couldn’t do that!”
“No, we did. We waited until everybody was gone and Danny spoke Spanish to the cleaning crew so they wouldn’t suspect anything and we wrote the fake press release and everything. It was the perfect plan. Too bad it didn’t actually work.”
The look he’d been waiting to see on her face finally appeared: awe. She was impressed. “I can’t believe you guys did that!” she said. “I didn’t think you had the guts.”
“We have more guts than you think.” Not exactly the best retort, Julian realized, after the words came out. “But don’t tell Danny I told you. Bec
ause he really wants to keep it a secret. He’s worried about his parents finding out.”
He felt a thud on the side of his head and looked down to see a beanbag about as big as his fist, made out of a blue bandana. Danny and Ariel were laughing.
“You guys need to be on your guard,” Danny yelled. “An entire army could sneak up on you and you wouldn’t notice.”
“Who gets the candy?” Robin said.
Danny kowtowed before Ariel. “What can I say? She’s amazing. If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it. She’s like the Road Runner.” He grabbed the beanbag and quickly tied it to the thin rope. “OK, eef I make eet dees time,” he said in a Spanish accent, “I weel be a man again.” He did an exaggerated windup. The beanbag sailed up and soared over the beam and down the other side. “Oh, yeah!” Danny cried, doing a touchdown dance.
Robin waited for Danny to regain his composure before handing out directions. They tied the black cord to the thick, white climbing rope and pulled until the rope was over the beam and its two ends were dangling in front of them. Robin pulled the harness up to her waist and stepped forward with a shorter piece of blue cord in her hand.
“First, you need to tie the climbing rope to the harness with a Blake’s hitch. Like this, see? Then you tie a foot loop.”
She labored at the knots. Julian and Danny tried to follow the movement of the ropes but she was too fast.
“John and Dave made me practice these two knots all week.” She checked all the knots again. “OK, now you put one foot in the lower knot and that kind of scoots you up.” As she said this, she rose about a foot into the air. “Now you pull up here,” she said grabbing the higher knot, “and you just keep going.”
She looked like a caterpillar, bending in the middle and then stretching out again. With each stretch she went higher and higher until her bare feet were dangling above their heads.
“We’ve got to learn how to do that,” Danny said to Julian. “We could climb the TransAmerica Building.”
“How’s the weather up there?” Ariel shouted.
“It’s nice. Nice and breezy!” Robin kept inching her way up while the others made encouraging comments. Finally, she was level with the platform. She stepped into the tree house and threw her arms in the air. “Ta–da!”
They gave Robin a round of applause and watched as she unhooked her halter from the rope and walked to the opposite end of the platform. In the distance, they heard the dull gong of the dinner bell.
“I’m not going to be able to set this up today,” Robin called down. “But it’s all ready to go.”
“Are you serious?” Danny said. “We don’t get to see the tree house?”
“Well, at least we got Robin up,” Ariel said.
“Yeah! Good job, Robin! See ya later!” Danny turned and walked away jauntily.
“Don’t worry! I can get down no problem. That’s the fun part.” Robin clipped herself back to the rope and placed her foot inside the loop again. Then, stepping off the platform, she pulled against the upper knot and whizzed down in little fits and starts. Julian watched her graceful legs and bare feet stretched out below her cutoffs, and for a fleeting moment he had the same sensation he’d had the first night at Huckleberry Ranch. Life was full of surprises. This girl, this tree–climbing, knot–tying girl, had been here all the time. He’d discovered her out of six billion people, and now they were friends.
he next morning, Bob put the boys to work extending an old trail going along the creek—clearing underbrush and building steps from old railroad ties. By the second day, they could anticipate some of Bob’s orders, and they fell into an easy rhythm. When the lunch bell rang, Julian was surprised it was already noon. They walked back to the house, chatting amiably about Bob’s next big project: converting his equipment from gasoline to biodiesel. Julian listened with half an ear, but Danny asked question after question until Bob, in exasperation, sent Julian to the loft to find an article explaining the process in detail.
Several stacks of neat papers were piled on top of the computer desk. Julian hesitated, then began leafing methodically through the papers. He finished one stack—bills, invoices, articles clipped from magazines and newspapers—and was halfway through the next when he saw a flash of familiar writing. At first, Julian thought he’d found one of the exchange–student forms they’d faked, but he’d seen all the forms and there’d been nothing like this: a long letter, in Danny’s best handwriting, addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. Elder.”
Julian pulled the paper from the stack and stood, skimming the unfamiliar words.
When he got to the end of the letter, Julian felt a little dizzy. Everything that had happened in the past few weeks he now saw in a new light—Robin’s excited e–mail, Bob’s friendly greeting, Danny’s cheerful demeanor. And somehow, knowing that Bob and Nancy—and maybe even Robin—had read Danny’s letter made him feel exposed, like he’d been walking around in his underwear.
Julian heard Danny bellowing his name from the deck. The last thing he wanted was to be caught snooping. Julian carefully stacked the papers back on top of Danny’s letter and found the biodiesel article in the last pile on the desk.
He started down the spiral stairs, then stopped midway. What would he have done if he were in Danny’s shoes? Probably nothing. But Danny had written the letter in his best handwriting and found the Elders’ address and sent it off. And the letter had worked—it had changed Bob’s mind. He was back at Huckleberry Ranch and he was Julian again, not that boy, and he owed it all to Danny. With a flush of shame, Julian remembered that day at Quantum, when he’d wanted to keep Huckleberry Ranch all to himself.
He stood on the step, his mind turning. He didn’t know what to do with this new information he’d stumbled across. He certainly didn’t want to discuss it with the Elders and he didn’t know what to say to Danny, so Julian simply filed it away in his mind, like a rock in his rock collection that nobody would ever look at but him.
On Friday afternoon, the operatives were finally able to return to Big Tree Grove. Within a few minutes, Robin was up in the tree house. She hung the pulley seat from a metal hook screwed into a thick beam and lowered it jerkily to the forest floor. It was made of weather–beaten green canvas and attached to a complicated system of ropes and pulleys. When it bounded to a stop, Danny made a little bow and swept his hand toward Julian. “After you?”
Julian took a step toward the chair, then stopped himself. “No, you go ahead,” he said. He’d been doing Danny little favors all day—giving him the extra cookie, carrying the heavier tools from the trail. But he still couldn’t shake the feeling that he was somehow in his debt.
Danny gave him a perplexed smile, then climbed into the chair. Julian watched impatiently as he pulled himself up hand over hand. After Ariel had made it to the top and sent the chair back down, Julian finally took his turn. The canvas was rough and smelled faintly of mildew.
Julian reached for a rope.
“No, pull the other one,” Robin shouted down.
Julian pulled with two hands until his feet were dangling in the air.
“That’s it!” Robin said.
Julian rose and rose until he hung slightly above the floor of the tree house. Robin smiled happily. “Do you like it? Isn’t it great?”
Julian grabbed her outstretched hand and climbed onto the deck. Robin wrapped the pulley–seat rope around a metal cleat to secure it while Julian looked about curiously. The front side of the tree house was a deck, about six feet square. Along the side of the deck were long benches with hinged tops that doubled as storage bins. Everything was dusty and covered with leaves and redwood needles and little redwood cones. In the middle of the tree house, the floor narrowed where it was cut around the two giant redwood trunks that jutted up from below. Then the back of the tree house widened out again, like an hourglass, and there was a little cabin with a pointed roof.
Ariel and Danny were walking around the deck, peering in all the storage bins.
<
br /> “They’re all empty,” Ariel said. “We can put our food and stuff in there.”
“And if it rains, we can go in the cabin,” Julian said.
“You see,” said Robin. “We’re totally safe up here. Nobody can get us.”
“Look here!” Ariel ran her finger along the wooden railing.
“Look at all these initials. A.G. T.C.G. R.W.G. F.C.G.”
Robin studied the letters. “Those must be from the Greeleys. One of the boys was named Tom, I think. Maybe that’s him—T.C.G.”
Julian traced his fingers over the smooth letters. “Here’s more. J.R.E. D.A.E.”
“That’s my brothers!” Robin said. “John Robert Elder. David Armi Elder.”
Danny was looking down at them from the roof. “This is so cool. We can carve our initials too.”
With a pang, Julian remembered his ivory pocketknife. He hadn’t realized it was missing until he began packing for Huckleberry Ranch, and then he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen it.
“Let’s try to get back tomorrow night. For a test run,” Robin said.
“There’s plenty of room for all of us to sleep here.” Danny hopped down off the roof. “Too bad there’s not a little fireplace. A fireplace and a little DVD player. Then this place would be perfect.”
It’s already perfect, Julian thought to himself. And at the same moment, Ariel said, “It’s already perfect.”
“There actually is an old fire ring down on the ground,” Robin said. “But I don’t think we can arrange the DVD.” She suddenly turned businesslike and clapped her hands together. “OK, everyone! Here’s the plan. We’ll ask my parents if we can all camp out tomorrow night. We’ll bring our sleeping bags and supplies and as much extra as we can. It’ll be a trial run for Operation Redwood.”
Operation Redwood Page 16
