Greggy Schuler removed his mask and bowed to his phantom partner. He moved from the door. “Proceed.”
As Mr. and Mrs. Dallas stepped past the boy, he grabbed their arms. His eyes pooled with tears, and he whispered to them.
“Do you think I can go home now? Do you think my mom will be mad?”
“Furious,” Mr. Dallas said. “It’s a damn school night, Greg.”
Snot dripped from the boy’s nose, now. “School,” he said moving towards the descending stairs. “I remember it.” His voice faded. “Jamie and Scotty are not the children you built this treehouse for, Mr. Dallas. None of us are.”
The air changed from there. How long had it been since they lost Jamie to his treehouse? Mr. Dallas said it had only been a few hours since dinner, but Mrs. Dallas felt the seconds linger as they moved beyond the reasonable floors. They met more of Jamie’s friends. At the very least, they could see he was popular at school and in the neighborhood. The two of them worried about that.
5. Password? Fraggles
6. Password? The New Deal
7. Password? 1906
29. Password? Ecclesiastes
46. Password.
47. Password.
48. Password.
On the 49th floor, Mr. and Mrs. Dallas expressed some regret to each other about resorting to shoving as many children out of the way as they did on their journey here. But the passwords grew more complex with the rising floors, and the two of them only grew even more tired. So, they shoved. Knocked these kids down and left some of them there crying into the seams of the treehouse’s bones.
Dana Transue—eating peanut butter, despite her fatal allergy—greeted them on the 49th floor. She wore a ‘cool’ anime t-shirt over a long crimson ball gown. She knew what Mr. and Mrs. Dallas wanted to say to her, so she interrupted them with a biting tone. “Don’t be so dumb,” she said. “We are above allergies in this tree. Beyond their reach. Beyond yours.”
Even so, she had a fresh epi pen just an arm’s length away from her on the table.
Mr. and Mrs. Dallas stood ankle deep in peanut shells, having to wade through them to get to Dana.
“Password?” Dana asked, opening a box of crispety, crunchety, peanut buttery Reese’s Puffs. Family size. “Jamie and I are going out, you know.”
“Oh, we’re thrilled,” Mrs. Dallas said, smiling. “You’ll have to come over for dinner.”
“We’ll see,” Dana shook her head. “Jamie, Scotty and I are thinking of moving up here for good. Just get away from it all, you know?”
“Sure,” Mr. Dallas said.
Mrs. Dallas grabbed the epi pen and pressed it to Dana’s thigh. “Go home,” she said. “Come for dinner tomorrow.”
Dana laughed and threw Reese’s Puffs at the Dallases until they left. Mr. Dallas caught one in his mouth, and it was better than the egg whites he had for breakfast this morning despite how much he knew he needed the egg whites to survive his impending heart attack.
[]
Jamie Dallas ladled water from a shallow bowl over the back of his neck. He sat hunched over in the middle of the floor and breathed out when he sensed his parents in the doorway.
A dense heat washed over Mr. and Mrs. Dallas. The moon shone bright through cracks in the treehouse’s roof.
“We’re close to the moon,” Jamie wheezed, “but the sun isn’t far either.”
Scotty Agnew—Jamie’s best friend since tee-ball—lay in the corner of this darkened wood room. Violence lived here until recently. The boy breathed despite bruised ribs. He chewed on the strings of his hoodie to calm himself. His brother recently broke into a neighbor’s home, so Mr. Dallas forbade Jamie from seeing Scotty again. Just like that. Ripping the potential bad seed from the heart of his healthy son.
“I’ll admit I’m scared,” Mr. Dallas said to Mrs. Dallas after they conferred about the Scotty situation in bed yesterday morning. “About how much damage I’m about to do.”
Jamie ran from them when they told him. Scotty was—as ever—waiting outside by the Dallas’s basketball net. Jamie grabbed his hand and pulled him towards their tree house in the deeper grove of trees. They climbed it. They climbed beyond it and shouted to the neighborhood as they did.
“We can revisit the Scotty situation,” Mrs. Dallas said to her son. “We reacted too quickly.”
“We’ve moved past it,” Scotty said, a gleam of nasty in his moonlit eyes. “I told him, I said, I told him you were right about the deviant in me.”
Mr. Dallas knew it. He put his hands on the hips over his khaki legs. This damn kid.
Jamie ladled another scoop of water over his head. He ran his hands over his skull, next. Drops streamed softly from his fingers to the bowl.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’re thinking of the next password.”
A door in the shadows beside Scotty only then became apparent to Mr. and Mrs. Dallas.
“This used to be the top,” Scotty said, humming to himself. “We could go farther.”
Mr. and Mrs. Dallas went to the window together and looked out over their neighborhood. The houses stood dark, underneath the shadow of the tree. Clouds seeped in through the window and the cracks in the treehouse’s wood.
“We can go farther,” Mrs. Dallas said. She moved away from the view, towards her son.
Mr. Dallas sat against the wall under the window. A splinter had found its way into his thumb; he plucked it, and oozed one drop of red from his finger.
He had work in a few hours. All of them moved together beyond the morning.
• • •
