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Of course, I know why Ethan’s back in Mirror Valley this time around… his granddad Alfie passed away last week. It wasn’t a surprise—he’d been sick for a long time. I used to visit him all the time. Pops, as we called him, was a huge part of my childhood, too.
I should’ve expected to see Ethan again, but I couldn’t have done anything to prepare for this particular scenario.
All of a sudden, Ethan lifts his head towards me.
I squeeze my eyes shut as my heart skips a long beat. No, no, no!
Silence.
I carefully open one eye, see that Ethan is looking away, towards the massive tree trunk.
Phew.
While he’s otherwise occupied, I take my chance to assess him. For all the work I’ve done avoiding him over the years, I haven’t actually, properly looked at him. My perch affords me a pretty unobstructed view for creeping.
Ethan looks… the same. But different. Like someone took the boy I grew up with and added angles and facial hair and a sort of unaffected confidence you only get when you’ve graduated at the top of your class in culinary school (I assume). His jawline is sharper than it used to be—in fact, he’s lost a lot of his chubby-cheeked baby face. Maybe it’s the stubble though, which is longer and more stubbly than I would’ve expected for him. A faint tan line skates along the edges of his cheekbones. Clearly, it was a sunny summer wherever he was. Montana, still?
My eyes follow the line of his nose as he stares at the gargantuan trunk. Growing up, his nose was too big for his face, but he certainly grew into it. Really well, I might add. It’s a strong nose, the kind of nose you see on those statues of naked Greek gods.
Yeah. That’s what matters right now, Val.
He runs his hand along the bark of the tree, then, to my surprise, he places his fingers in the wide, almost perfectly rectangular gash in the trunk.
He remembers.
We used to call that hole the “letter box,” and we’d leave each other notes in there. Though he’d leave my notes hanging out a little so I didn’t have to risk any encounters with lurking spiders.
That all feels like a lifetime ago.
He’s fiddling with something, but I can’t see what it is. I lean further out, trying to see what he’s doing. Why is he…?
At that moment, there’s a brush along my hand.
A chill rockets down my spine.
A horrifically huge, fuzzy thing is scuttling across my fingers.
“ARGH!!!!” I shriek, shaking my hands out. It’s only then that I realize the fuzz was actually a large piece of dark lint from an old blanket and not a spider.
But it’s too late, because I’ve lost my balance.
And then, I’m falling. Flopping unceremoniously out of the treehouse and towards the ground.
I’m still screaming, limbs flailing, as I succumb to gravity.
I clench my eyes shut, waiting for impact.
It doesn’t come. Instead, I’m caught—that is the literally the only way to describe it. I’m caught like my body’s an old rug: an arm below my knees, an arm cradling under my back.
My hands instinctively grasp for the catcher’s shoulders. My body’s tensed from the anticipation of pain, and my scream catches in my throat. I open my eyes, find myself staring into lazy, dark ones I’d recognize anywhere.
“Hey, Teeny,” Ethan drawls in his smooth, pepper-grinder voice. “Spying on me again?”
2
Val
Four Years ago
