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I thought about it a minute and finally asked, “Did her brother have the cord around his neck when he was born?”

He shook his head.

“Well, then …”

He leaned forward even farther and whispered, “You did.”

“
I
did?”

He nodded. “Twice.”

“But …”

“The doctor who delivered you was on the ball, plus apparently there was some slack in the cord, so he was able to loop it off as you came out. You didn't hang yourself coming into the world, but it could very easily have gone the other way.”

If I'd been told years or even weeks ago that I'd come down the chute noosed and ready to hang, I'd have made some kind of joke about it, or more likely I'd have said, Yeah, that's nice; now can you spare me the discussion?

But after everything that had happened, I was really freaking out, and I couldn't escape the questions tidal-waving my brain. Where would I be if things had been different? What would they have done with me? From the way my dad was talking, he wouldn't have had much use for me, that's for sure. He'd have stuck me in a nuthouse somewhere,
any
where, and forgotten about me. But then I thought, No! I'm his
kid
. He wouldn't do that … would he?

I looked around at everything we had — the big house, the white carpet, the antiques and artwork and
stuff
that was everywhere. Would they have given up all the
stuff
to make my life more pleasant?

I doubted it, and man, I doubted it big-time. I'd have been an embarrassment. Something to try to forget
about. How things looked had always been a biggie to my parents. Especially to my dad.

Very quietly my granddad said, “You can't dwell on what might have been, Bryce.” Then, like he could read my mind, he added, “And it's not fair to condemn him for something he hasn't done.”

I nodded and tried to get a grip, but I wasn't doing a very good job of it. Then he said, “By the way, I appreciated your comment before.”

“What?” I asked, but my throat was feeling all pinched and swollen.

“About your grandmother. How did you know that?”

I shook my head and said, “Juli told me.”

“Oh? You spoke with her, then?”

“Yeah. Actually, I apologized to her.”

“Well…!”

“And I
was
feeling a lot better about everything, but now … God, I feel like such a jerk again.”

“Don't. You apologized, and that's what matters.” He stood up and said, “Say, I'm in the mood for a walk. Want to join me?”

Go for a walk? What I wanted to do was go to my room, lock the door, and be left alone.

“I find it really helps to clear the mind,” he said, and that's when I realized that this wasn't just a walk — this was an invitation to do something together.

I stood up and said, “Yeah. Let's get out of here.”

For a guy who'd only basically ever said Pass the salt to me, my granddad turned out to be a real talker. We walked our neighborhood and the next neighborhood and the
next
neighborhood, and not only did I find out that
my granddad knows a lot of stuff, I found out that the guy is funny. In a subtle kind of dry way. It's the stuff he says, plus the way he says it. It's really, I don't know, cool.

As we were winding back into our own territory, we passed by the house that's going up where the sycamore tree used to be. My granddad stopped, looked up into the night, and said, “It must've been a spectacular view.”

I looked up, too, and noticed for the first time that night that you could see the stars. “Did you ever see her up there?” I asked him.

“Your mother pointed her out to me one time as we drove by. It scared me to see her up so high, but after I read the article I understood why she did it.” He shook his head. “The tree's gone, but she's still got the spark it gave her. Know what I mean?”

Luckily I didn't have to answer. He just grinned and said, “Some of us get dipped in flat, some in satin, some in gloss….” He turned to me. “But every once in a while you find someone who's iridescent, and when you do, nothing will ever compare.”

As we walked up to our front porch, my grandfather put his arm around my shoulder and said, “It was nice walking with you, Bryce. I enjoyed myself very much.”

“Me too,” I told him, and we went inside.

Right away we knew we'd stepped into a war zone. And even though no one was yelling or crying, from the look on my parents' faces I could tell there'd been a major meltdown while my granddad and I were out.

Granddad whispered to me, “I've got another fence to mend, I'm afraid,” and headed into the dining room to talk to my parents.

I wanted nothing to do with that vibe. I went straight to my room, closed the door, and flopped through the darkness onto my bed.

I lay there awhile and let the dinner disaster play through my mind. And when I'd totally burned a fuse thinking about it, I sat up and looked out the window. There was a light on somewhere inside the Bakers' house and the streetlights were glowing, but the night still seemed really dense. Like it was darker than usual and, I don't know, heavy.

I leaned closer to the window and looked up into the sky, but I couldn't see the stars anymore. I wondered if Juli had ever been in the sycamore at night. Among the stars.

I shook my head. Flat, glossy, iridescent. What was up with that? Juli Baker had always seemed just plain
dusty
to me.

I snapped on my desk lamp and dug the newspaper with the article about Juli out of the drawer where I'd tossed it.

Just like I thought — they made it sound like Juli was trying to save Mount Rushmore or something. They called her a “strong voice in an urban wilderness” and “a radiant beacon, shedding light on the need to curtail continued overdevelopment of our once quaint and tranquil community.”

Spare me. I mean, what's wrong with letting a guy cut down a tree on his own property so he can build a house? His lot, his tree, his decision. End of story. The piece in the paper was gag-me gush.

Except
. Except for the places where they quoted
Juli. Maybe it was just in contrast to the reporter's slant or something, but Juli's parts didn't come off oh-woe-is-me like I was expecting. They were, I don't know,
deep
. Sitting in that tree was seriously philosophical to her.

And the odd thing is, it all made sense to me. She talked about what it felt like to be up in that tree, and how it, like, transcended dimensional space. “To be held above the earth and brushed by the wind,” she said, “it's like your heart has been kissed by beauty.” Who in junior high do you know that would put together a sentence like that? None of my friends, that's for sure.

There was other stuff, too, like how something can be so much more than the parts it took to make it, and why people need things around them that lift them above their lives and make them feel the miracle of living.

I wound up reading and re-reading her parts, wondering when in the world she started thinking like that. I mean, no kidding, Juli Baker's smart, but this was something way beyond straight A's.

A month ago if I'd read this article, I would have chucked it in the trash as complete garbage, but for some reason it made sense to me now. A lot of sense.

A month ago I also wouldn't have paid any attention to the picture of Juli, but now I found myself staring at it. Not the one of the whole scene — that was more emergency rescue equipment than Juli. The other one, on the bottom half of the page. Someone must've used a killer telephoto lens, because you can tell that she's in the tree, but it's mostly from the shoulders up. She's looking off into the distance and the wind is blowing
her hair back like she's at the helm of a ship or something, sailing into the sun.

I'd spent so many years avoiding Juli Baker that I'd never really looked at her, and now all of a sudden I couldn't stop. This weird feeling started taking over the pit of my stomach, and I didn't like it. Not one bit. To tell you the truth, it scared the Sheetrock out of me.

I buried the paper under my pillow and tried to remind myself of what a pain Juli Baker was. But my mind started to wander again, and pretty soon I had that stupid paper out from under my pillow.

This was insane! What was I doing?

I made myself shut out the light and go to bed. I was slipping, man, and it was definitely time to get a grip.

I'd never been embarrassed by where we lived before. I'd never looked at our house, or even our side of the street, and said, Oh! I wish we lived in the new development—those houses are so much newer, so much better! This is where I'd grown up. This was my home.

I was aware of the yard, sure. My mother had grumbled about it for years. But it was a low grumbling, not worthy of deep concern. Or so I'd supposed. But maybe I should have wondered. Why let the outside go and keep the inside so nice? It was spotless inside our house. Except for the boys' room, that is. Mom gave up on that after she discovered the snake. If they were old enough to adopt a snake, she told my brothers, they were old enough to clean their own room. Matt and Mike translated this to keep the door closed, and became quite diligent about doing just that.

Besides the yard, I also never really wondered about the money, or the apparent lack thereof. I knew we weren't rich, but I didn't feel like I was missing anything. Anything you could buy, anyway.

Matt and Mike did ask for things a lot, but even though my mother would tell them, No, boys, we just can't afford that, I
took this to mean, No, boys, you don't deserve that, or, No, boys, you don't really
need
that. It wasn't until Bryce called our home a complete dive that I started really seeing things.

It wasn't just the yard. It was my dad's truck, my mother's car, the family bike that was more rust than steel, and the fact that when we did buy something new, it always seemed to come from a second-time-around store. Plus, we never went on vacation. Ever.

Why was that? My father was the hardest-working man in the world, and my mother worked for TempService doing secretarial jobs whenever she could. What was all that hard work about if this is where it got you?

Asking my parents whether we were poor seemed incredibly impolite. But as the days went by, I knew I had to ask. Just had to. Every day I'd ride home from school on our rusty bike, pull past the broken fence and patchy yard, and think, Tonight. I'll ask them tonight.

But then I wouldn't ask them. I just didn't know how.

Then one day I had an idea. A way to talk to them about it and maybe help out a little, too. And since my brothers were working at the music store that night, and nobody was saying much of anything at the table, I took a deep breath and said, “I was thinking, you know, that it wouldn't be hard to fix up the front yard if I could get some nails and a hammer and maybe some paint? And how much does grass seed cost? It can't be that much, right? I could plant a lawn, and maybe even some flowers?”

My parents stopped eating and stared at me.

“I know how to use a saw and a hammer—it could be, you know, a project.”

My mother quit looking at me and stared at my father, instead.

My father sighed and said, “The yard is not our responsibility, Julianna.”

“It's … it's not?”

He shook his head and said, “It's Mr. Finnegan's.”

“Who's Mr. Finnegan?”

“The man who owns this house.”

I couldn't believe my ears. “What?”

My father cleared his throat and said, “The landlord.”

“You mean
we
don't own this house?”

They looked at each other, having some private wordless conversation I couldn't decipher. Finally my father said, “I didn't realize you didn't know that.”

“But … but that doesn't make sense! Aren't landlords supposed to come and do things? Like fix the roof when it leaks and clear the drains when they're plugged? You always do that stuff, Dad. Why do you do it when he's supposed to?”

“Because,” he sighed, “it's easier than asking him for help.”

“But if—”

“And,” my father interrupted me, “it keeps him from raising the rent.”

“But …”

My mother reached over and took my hand. “Sweetheart, I'm sorry if this is a shock. I guess we always thought you knew.”

“But what about the yard? Why keep up the inside but not the outside?”

My father frowned and said, “When we signed the lease, he assured us he would fix the fences, front and back, and plant sod in the front yard. Obviously that never happened.” He
shook his head. “It's a major undertaking, and fencing is not cheap. I can't see putting that sort of investment into a property that's not ours. Plus, it's the principle of the thing.”

“But we live here,” I whispered, “and it looks so bad.”

My father studied me. “Julianna, what happened?”

“Nothing, Daddy,” I said, but he knew I was lying.

“Sweetheart,” he whispered, “tell me.”

I knew what he'd say if I told him, and yet I couldn't not tell him. Not with the way he was looking at me. So I took a deep breath and said, “The Loskis have been throwing my eggs away because they were afraid they'd have salmonella because our yard is such a mess.”

My father said, “Oh, that's ridiculous,” but my mother gasped, “What?” Then she cried, “Did Patsy say that?”

I looked down. “No, Bryce did.”

“But it must've been a family discussion! A boy doesn't come up with that on his own … !” My mother looked for all the world like a doe waiting to be shot through the heart. She covered her face with her hands and said, “I can't go on like this! Robert, things have got to change. They've just got to!”

“Trina, you know I'm doing the best I can. I'm sorry about the yard, I'm sorry about the situation. This isn't the picture I had for my life, either, but sometimes you have to sacrifice for what's right.”

My mother looked up from her hands and said, “This is not right for
our
family. Your daughter is suffering because we won't fix up our own yard.”

“It's not our yard.” “How can you
say
that? Robert, wake up! We have lived here for twelve years. It's not temporary anymore! If we ever
want to have a decent place with our own yard, if we're going to help the kids through college or do any of the other things we've promised each other, we're going to have to move him into government care.”