Tree Dreams by Kristin Kaye

Author:Kristin Kaye
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SparkPress
Published: 2018-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Everyone’s been acting nice today and let me be. Justin must have told them that I got whacked back in Portland, and they’re giving me room, which is a very good thing. The deep tree quiet has stayed in my heart and in my bones throughout the day, settling my nerves, and all my worlds are nowhere except here, on this ground that I know so well.

Butt-crack blondie shows up with a cup of tea, which she didn’t have to do. A pack of blond dreads hangs down her back, her jeans are too big, and layers of shirts are bulky on her body. “I’m Woodruff,” she says and hands me the cup as she sits on the ground next to where I sit cross-legged outside our tent. “You doing okay?” Checking me out for herself. Big, blue eyes are bright in her freckly face. Queen of the Camp. Running the show. She’s funny because she talks sweet and laughs a little after she speaks, which makes you think she’s nervous, but then she tells you how things are and then you know that she’s in charge.

“I’ll be cool,” I tell her. The scent of chai wafts from my cup. “No worries.” For the first time in days I actually mean it.

“Cool,” she says, and she draws pictures with her finger in the dirt around her filthy bare feet. Quiet sits between us for a moment before she speaks. “I can hardly wait to go home.”

Home. She smells like she’s been here for a while, so I figure she has been. “Where are you from?”

She eyeballs me for a second. “We don’t really talk about things like that.”

These people, I swear. “Things like what?”

“Where we come from.” She looks at me hard and talks like I need to get the point.

I feel tired right away. Buzz kill. Take a shower. I could give a crap about what we do and do not talk about. “But you just said you can hardly wait to go home. I’m just wondering where that is, is all,” I tell her back. The cup of tea warms my hands. This scene makes no sense.

“Oh, sorry, man,” she laughs and backs off. “My bad. I was just talking about my tree.”

Her tree?

“The one in the village. I’ve lived there for almost a year.” A single dread falls forward over her shoulder, which she pulls back and ties around the rest of her rope-like hair. “I was just taking a break for a week and can’t wait to get back. It’s like home to me now.”

This gets me. “You’ve lived in a redwood tree for a year?”

“We call her Indigo,” she says. “Maybe you can visit if you decide to go to the tree sit.”

My body loses its mad at this news. She’s lived in it for a year. I’ve never thought of living in a tree. I just heart talk to them, share the same air somehow, but this girl knows redwoods in ways I have never even dreamed of.

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