Out on a Limb Read Online Free PDF

after rule, as if they were getting paid for each one they could think up. No playing with matches. No playing with camping fuel. No playing with propane. No approaching raccoons. No feeding raccoons. No enabling raccoons to feed themselves. No leaving garbage where raccoons can get it. No leaving the treehouse with an open door, or with a window opened wider than a raccoon. No riding in the dumbwaiter. No horseplay on the ladder. And for Tilley, no climbing to or from the treehouse unless I was on the ladder below. (The idea, I guess, was that I could catch her as she hurtled toward me like a meteor.) On and on, the rules went.
    “Okay, got them,” I said.“ Got the rules. Okay, so Tilley and I will clean up. You guys go off to work.” I wanted them gone before they could think up any more rules, or, worse, change their minds about leaving us alone. I watched until Mom and Dad disappeared through the trap door in the porch, and then I just stood there awhile, experiencing the feel of myself alone in my new home. “I guess I better do the dishes,” I said, listening to the responsibility vibrate in my voice.
    I squeezed dish soap into the plastic washbasin and carried it to the pump on the porch. I pumped the handle until my arms ached, then Tilley pumped for a bit, then me again, then Tilley again, then me again. I was thinking that our plumbing system had failed when the water finally gushed out of the spout, all over my runners. After swishing the bowls and mugs through the suds I turned them upside down on the porch boards to dry. When I threw the dishwater over the porch banister, blue jays swooped from the oak branches and flew off with the soggy Cheerios. “Okay Tilley,” I said. “Let’s explore.”
    On that first day of freedom, we discovered about a gazillion cool things. We found a little island in the stream, with a snowball bush in blossom. The stream was full of little see-through fish, all darting around in one big school and failing to think for themselves. We ran back to the treehouse for a saucepan to fish with. They were innocent, unsuspicious fish, and easy to catch. In the meadow we found fluorescent green grasshoppers. The grasshoppers were smarter than the fish. We had to sneak up to catch those.
    Our grasshopper hunt brought us further and further across the meadow, all the way to the stable near the stone wall that separated the Grand Oak estate from Bellemonde Drive. It was a fancy stable, sort of a miniature Grand Oak Manor for horses. But there were no horses, we saw as we flattened our noses against the dusty window. There was only an old car with a running board and a winged hood ornament. “A Bentley,” I said, because I know my hood ornaments. From the stable, Tilley and I followed the little hedge that enclosed the Manor and its garden. The Manor garden was all formal and manicured, not at all like the tousled meadow on the other side. The hedge was so short that I could have jumped over without even taking a run at it, but one of Mom and Dad’s rules was that we couldn’t go inside the hedge without an actual invitation. I wasn’t about to violate any rules and find myself imprisoned in day camp, so Tilley and I just looked over the hedge at the paths that wound through the Manor garden. We saw birds splashing in a birdbath, and we saw the random flight patterns of yellow butterflies, but we saw no sign of human life. “Where do you think Great-great-aunt Lydia is all the time?” I asked.
    “Inside her mansion,” Tilley guessed. I thought so too.
    At lunchtime Tilley and I climbed back to the treehouse to get crackers and cheese. We were going to eat them in the cherry orchard in the meadow, along with cherries for a balanced diet. The crackers had not yet been unpacked, and Tilley drifted around the treehouse as I looked for them. “Hey,” Tilley said as I knelt rummaging in a box. “Look what I found.” She held out a paper. It was the exact same blue as the torn strip