Gilla crossed her arms. Then she checked out the mirror and saw how that looked, how it made her br**sts puff out. She remembered Roger in the schoolyard, pointing at her the first day back at school in September and bellowing, “Boobies!” She put her arms on the rests of the chair instead. She sucked her stomach in and took a quick glance in the mirror to see if that made her look slimmer. Fat chance. Really fat. It did make her br**sts jut again, though; oh, goody. She couldn’t win. She sighed once more and slumped a little in the chair, smushing both bust and belly into a lumpy mass.
“And straighten up, okay?” Kashy said. “I can’t reach the front of your head with you sitting hunched over like that.” Kashy’s hands were busy, sectioning Gilla’s thick black hair into four and twisting each section into plaits.
“That tree,” Gilla replied. “The one in the front yard.”
Kashy just rolled her perfectly made-up eyes. “Okay, so tell me again about that wormy old cherry tree.”
“I don’t like it. I’m trying to sleep at night, and all I can hear is it creaking and groaning and…talking to itself all night!”
“Talking!” Kashy giggled. “So now it’s talking to you?”
“Yes. Swaying. Its branches rubbing against each other. Muttering and whispering at me, night after night. I hate that tree. I’ve always hated it. I wish Mum or Dad would cut it down.” Gilla sighed. Since she’d started ninth grade two years ago, Gilla sighed a lot. That’s when her body, already sprouting with puberty, had laid down fat pads on her chest, belly and thighs. When her high, round butt had gotten rounder. When her budding br**sts had swelled even bigger than her mother’s. And when she’d started hearing the tree at night.
“What’s it say?” Kashy asked. Her angular brown face stared curiously at Gilla in the mirror.
Gilla looked at Kashy, how she had every hair in place, how her shoulders were slim and how the contours of the tight sweater showed off her friend’s tiny, pointy br**sts. Gilla and Kashy used to be able to wear each other’s clothes, until two years ago.
“Don’t make fun of me, Kashy.”
“I’m not.” Kashy’s voice was serious; the look on her face, too. “I know it’s been bothering you. What do you hear the tree saying?”
“It…it talks about the itchy places it can’t reach, where its bark has gone knotty. It talks about the taste of soil, all gritty and brown. It says it likes the feeling of worms sliding in and amongst its roots in the wet, dark earth.”
“Gah! You’re making this up, Gilla!”
“I’m not!” Gilla stormed out of her chair, pulling her hair out of Kashy’s hands. “If you’re not going to believe me, then don’t ask, okay?”
“Okay, okay, I believe you!” Kashy shrugged her shoulders, threw her palms skyward in a gesture of defeat. “Slimy old worms feel good, just”—she reached out and slid her hands briskly up and down Gilla’s bare arms—“rubbing up against you!” And she laughed, that perfect Kashy laugh, like tiny, friendly bells.
Gilla found herself laughing too. “Well, that’s what it says!”
“All right, girl. What else does it say?”
At first Gilla didn’t answer. She was too busy shaking her hair free of the plaits, puffing it up with her hands into a kinky black cloud. “I’m just going to wear it like this to the party, okay? I’ll tie it back with my bandanna and let it poof out behind me. That’s the easiest thing.” I’m never going to look like you, Kashy. Not anymore. In the upper grades at school, everybody who hung out together looked alike. The skinny glam girls hung with the skinny glam girls. The goth guys and girls hung out in back of the school and shared clove cigarettes and black lipstick. The fat girls clumped together. How long would Kashy stay tight with her? Turning so she couldn’t see her own plump, gravid body in the mirror, she dared to look at her friend. Kashy was biting her bottom lip, looking contrite.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have laughed at you.”
“It’s okay.” Gilla took a cotton ball from off the dresser, doused it in cold cream, started scraping the makeup off her face. She figured she’d keep the eyeliner on. At least she had pretty eyes, big and brown and sparkly. She muttered at Kashy, “It says it likes stretching and growing, reaching for the light.”
Who went for a ride…
“Bye, Mum!” Gilla and Kashy surged out the front door. Gilla closed it behind her, then, standing on her doorstep with her friend, took a deep breath and turned to face the cherry tree. Half its branches were dead. The remaining twisted ones made a mockery of the tree’s spring finery of new green leaves. It crouched on the front lawn, gnarling at them. It stood between them and the curb, and the walkway was super long. They’d have to walk under the tree’s grasping branches the whole way.
The sun was slowly diving down the sky, casting a soft orange light on everything. Daylean, Dad called it; that time between the two worlds of day and night when anything could happen. Usually Gilla liked this time of day best. Today she scowled at the cherry tree and told Kashy, “Mum says women used to live in the trees.”
“What, like, in tree houses? Your mum says the weirdest things, Gilla.”
“No. They used to be the spirits of the trees. When the trees died, so did they.”
“Well, this one’s almost dead, and it can’t get you. And you’re going to have to walk past it to reach the street, and I know you want to go to that party, so take my hand and come on.”
Gilla held tight to her friend’s firm, confident hand. She could feel the clammy dampness of her own palm. “Okay,” Kashy said, “on three, we’re gonna run all the way to the curb, all right? One, two, three!”
And they were off, screeching and giggling, Gilla doing her best to stay upright in her new wedgies, the first thing even close to high heels that her parents had ever let her wear. Gilla risked a glance sideways. Kashy looked graceful and coltish. Her br**sts didn’t bounce. Gilla put on her broadest smile, screeched extra loud to let the world know how much fun she was having, and galumphed her way to streetside. As she and Kashy drew level with the tree, she felt the tiniest “bonk” on her head. She couldn’t brush whatever it was off right away, ’cause she needed her hands to keep her balance. Laughing desperately from all this funfunfun, she ran. They made it safely to the curb. Kashy bent, panting, to catch her breath. For all that she looked so trim, she had no wind at all. Gilla swam twice a week and was on the volleyball team, and that little run had barely even given her a glow. She started searching with her hands for whatever had fallen in her hair.