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one.”
    John’s face went hard, like onyx. “Good for you.”
    The tension in the air suddenly grew so thick we didn’t need tree limbs to sit on anymore, we could have sat on one of those words that just crawled out and got huge.
    I shifted uncomfortably. It’s not like I meant to make him mad or anything. I wanted to say something like, Sorry for upsetting you , like they do on TV shows, but I wasn’t sure if people actually said things like that. Those words certainly aren’t said in my family. They’re just smothered by silence.
    â€œWant to keep climbing?” I asked, scootching over to the trunk of the tree and standing up. “I can show you this squirrel’s nest.”
    He looked at me, and his face shifted. Softened, no longer stone.
    We climbed for hours that summer afternoon, sometimes talking, sometimes silent, sometimes sweating too hard to talk. Getting to know a tree is hard work. You have to know how its leaves smell in the heavy heat of summer, how its branches clatter against one another in the autumn winds, and how the rain pours in rivulets down its trunk and drips off its branches in the storms. It takes time, pure and simple. The same thing is true with getting to know the earth or a river or a person. By the time the shadows were long, we were both pretty tired and hungry. John headed back through the cornfields and I walked my slow way home, wondering about Grandpa and John and how so many things could happen in one day.
    But something wasn’t sitting right, and it chewed at the edges of my thoughts. As I turned up our mile-long driveway, it hit me: John hadn’t come from the direction of Mr. McLaren’s house, where he said he’d seen me. And when he left, he certainly wasn’t headed back there.

CHAPTER FOUR

    â€œ YOU were at the cliff?” Mom asked. It wasn’t really a question. It didn’t have to be, since I told Mr. Williamson, and he told my parents and probably the rest of the town.
    My feet fidgeted under the kitchen table. I couldn’t look at her, or Dad, either. It didn’t help that they had been waiting for me to get home for two whole hours—and that was after being delayed at the hospital. I had left a note, but I guess I forgot to tell them when I was going to come back. The only time they seem to remember me is when I’m in trouble. Which isn’t that often, but still.
    Mom glared at Dad. “You see what happens when she listens to your talk?” Her voice was low.
    â€œJust this morning,” I said. “Not this afternoon.”
    Dad shook his head, avoiding Mom’s eyes. He stood in the doorway, away from both of us.
    â€œYou see what happens?” Mom said again. She punched the buttons on the microwave to reheat the rice and peas, plantains, and chicken that Dad made a couple days ago. She punched the buttons a lot harder than she needed to.
    â€œMr. Williamson said I found Grandpa just in time,” I said, tucking my hands under my thighs.
    â€œIt wouldn’t have been ‘just in time’ if you had been home,” Mom said.
    My stomach tightened. All the other kids would have been sleeping that early in the morning and all their grandpas would have died, I thought. I’d known that Grandpa wouldn’t thank me, but I didn’t expect this. Did no one notice that I’d saved his life this morning? Why was that difficult to see?
    The microwave churned and hummed, warming our dinner. Dad finally moved from his doorway post and set the table, avoiding Mom as much as he could; when the microwave buzzer beeped, it cut through the heavy air, and we ate dinner with a cold clattering of metal on plates.
    This is what I mean about silence. My parents didn’t ask me why I went to the cliff, how often I go, or if they can go with me. They didn’t ask how I feel when I go, or if I wonder about Bird, or if I wish I could fly after him. They didn’t