Unbreakable (5 page)

Nina nodded slowly. "After you wash your hands and as soon as I call and get us hooked back up to the Internet."

His shoulders slumped. He'd forgotten about that.

"Aren't you going to tell him about your tree climbing fiasco, dear?" Mrs. Chilton reminded her daughter helpfully, ignoring the high-wattage glare she got for her troubles.

"No," Nina ground out, dusting her hands off on her jeans. "As a matter of fact, I wasn't."

Robbie's jaw dropped. "Mom climbed a tree?"

"Don't make it sound like a physical impossibility." Nina gave him a mock sneer. "I'm still in pretty good shape, you know."

"Yeah," he snorted. "Right, Mom."

Nina reached out to tickle Robbie but only felt a wisp of contact as he bolted from the steps. Not to be outdone, she was hot on his heels, and the chase was on. They ran around the yard, circling the streets, and skirting a large hedge for nearly ten minutes before Nina was forced to admit that her days of running like the wind were long gone.

Chest heaving, she stopped in front of her laughing mother and bent at the waist, her dark blonde hair, laced with the barest hint of gray, falling into her eyes and sticking on her wet cheeks and neck. "Stop looking at my hair, Mom," she said in a flat voice, not needing to see her mother to know what she was thinking. "I don't want to start coloring it."

Mrs. Chilton unconsciously ran a hand through her own, permanently light brown hair. "You'll be sorry. Remember Bob Barker when he let his real hair color come in? He looked like he'd seen a horrible ghost and aged 20 years overnight. You're a young woman. You don't want to look old, do you?"

Nina sucked in an enormous gulp of air. "Too late. I'm pathetically old."

"Men don't like gray hair."

Nina bit her tongue, then addressed Robbie. She was still out of breath. "How do you like my hair, champ?"

He shrugged. "It's pretty."

Nina grinned. "Well, there you go, Mom.
All
the men in my life are happy with my hair."

Mrs. Chilton grumbled something Nina was quite glad she couldn't make out.

Nina motioned her son closer. "I surrender, Robbie."

The boy stopped dancing just out of her reach and stepped forward to pat her on the back, feeling the heat through her thin tank top.

With disgust, she noted that he wasn't even breathing hard and his faced was wreathed in an enormous smile.

"That's okay, Mom. You're pretty fast for an old lady. You nearly caught me." Impossibly, his smile grew. "Not." He began to giggle.

Nina groaned, forcing herself upright to wipe the sweat from her eyes.

Robbie flopped down next to his grandmother on the steps and fished a mostly-melted ice cube from his mom's glass. He stuffed it into his mouth. "Tell me about Mom climbing a tree, Grandma." He leaned forward so he wouldn't miss a single word.

"Mom," Nina whimpered. "Shouldn't you be too senile to remember things like that by now?"

"Hush." Mrs. Chilton reached out and swatted her daughter twice and Robbie squealed in delight at the sight of his mother not only being bossed around but punished.

"Thanks a lot." Nina winked at Robbie, then rubbed the recently molested thigh before joining her son and mother on the steps. She leaned back on her elbows and crossed her ankles as she readied herself for what she was certain would be a distorted version of her childhood.

"Well, it all started…." Mrs. Chilton paused and turned twinkling eyes on Nina. "On second thought," she said, smoothing the fabric of her crisply pressed cotton slacks, "why don't you tell the story? I'm sure your perspective would be far more exciting than mine."

"Fine. Fine." Nina sighed good-naturedly, knowing when she'd been beat.

Robbie moved to the edge of the step he was perched on and settled in to listen to his mother's clear, melodic voice.

As Nina thought back, she chuckled, then blushed.

*  *  *

Summer 1973
Hazelwood, Missouri

The summer heat was scorching and even in shorts, shoes without socks, and t-shirts, the girls were miserably hot, their clothing sticking to irritatingly moist skin.

Nina looked up into the tree with wide eyes. "Nuh uh." She shook her head violently. "Sorry, but n-no way."

Katy threw her arms down. "Come on, Nina! You're the lookout. The smallest member of the group is always the lookout. They're lightest and so they can climb the highest. You can tell us if you see Stinky or any other boys."

Usually the girls played in the field behind Jacie's house or in Katy's basement, because her house was the most central to them all. But today the Mayflower Club had gathered at Nina's. They were about to begin their daily meeting when Katy noticed Stinky, a boy from last year's class, going into a house only three doors down. Wanting to ensure the privacy and sanctity of their club, which had an inviolate "No Boys" rule, she had devised a plan under the protective branches of a sycamore tree in Nina's backyard.

Nina glanced at Audrey, who for once was looking quite pleased about being chubby. She scowled. Then she looked at Gwen, who was looking back at her expectantly. Finally her attention turned to Jacie. The slim girl had her hands on her hips again, a sign that would forever mean she was running out of patience and about to blow. Nina sighed internally.

"Why don't you let me do it?" Jacie said, already reaching for the tree's trunk. "Then we can get on with this meeting. I wanna watch TV later."

Nina chewed her lower lip as she considered her current predicament. She could let Jacie go up the tree for her. That would mean, though, that she was nothing more than a puny chicken who would never get any respect from anyone. "No. I think I c-can do it."

Jacie pinned her with a serious, though not unkind look. "You don't have to, Nina."

Nina's insides were quaking, but she did her best to push that feeling aside. "I know," she told Jacie. "But I-I want–"
To be like you and Katy
.

Audrey threw herself down on the ground at the tree's base and quickly moved onto her hands and knees. "You can use my back for a ladder. And don't look down or you'll get scared."

Nina swallowed hard. "Okay." She stood on Audrey's back and then Katy and Gwen put their hands on her butt and pushed her up to the first branch as Jacie looked on worriedly.

"Be careful," said Jacie, regretting that she hadn't simply climbed up the tree herself. She enjoyed high places and the euphoric feeling of freedom that went along with seeing the world laid out beneath her. It was far more nerve-wracking watching one of her friends do any of the stunts she regularly engaged in.

Audrey scrambled to her feet and looked up the tree and watched Nina go. "Far out, Nina!"

Katy nodded her agreement with her cousin. "She can
really
climb. I knew she'd make a good lookout."

Nina grinned recklessly as she continued her path up the tree, the branches getting thinner and thinner as she went. She cleared her mind of every thought except for putting one foot higher than the next. The smell of the damp grass and dirt from below was replaced by the pungent odor of sap.

"What do you see?" Gwen asked in a raised voice. "Any B. O. Y. S. or can we start the meeting?"

Nina's fair eyebrows drew together so tightly they nearly touched. "See? I thought I wasn't sup-sup-sup-posed to look down. All I see is the t-tree," she yelled.

Jacie rolled her eyes. "You have to look down sometime, Nina. Or what's the point of climbing?"

Nina licked her lips. She was as high as she could go. Her calves and arms were burning from the exertion and the sensitive skin on her palms felt raw and itchy. Reluctantly, she tore her eyes from the tree trunk and peered across the neighbors' yards. Instantly, her knees went weak and her stomach lurched. "Uh oh." She closed her eyes again. "I don't feel s-so good." Whimpering, she wrapped both arms around the tree trunk, holding on for dear life.

The girls on the ground all looked at each other and shrugged, unsure of what was taking so long.

"What did you say, Nina?" Gwen called up. "We can't hear you."

Tears filled Nina's eyes. "I-I-I-ARGHHH!"

Four sets of eyes went round. "Is a boy coming?" Katy whirled around to defend their territory.

Jacie adjusted her ponytail and continued to peer up at Nina. "I don't think that's it." She chewed her bottom lip. "I think she's stuck."

"Only cats get stuck up trees," Gwen decided. "Nina's not a cat and she can just come down the same way she went up."

Audrey circled the tree for a better view of the top. "I dunno, Gwen. Something's not right."

Jacie felt her anxiety rise. "Nina, come down now, okay?" She and Katy were confirmed tomboys and climbed trees nearly everyday. But watching her openly frightened friend try the same thing was making her a little sick to her stomach.

"Yeah, Nina," Audrey and Gwen agreed. "Just come down."

Nina heard their voices, but she couldn't seem to make her mouth work. A sharp branch was digging into her side and without letting go of the trunk she adjusted her position, causing her to sway dangerously.

Nina and Gwen screamed bloody murder at the exact same time.

"Shut up, Gwen!" Katy hissed, covering her now ringing ears.

Audrey began to fidget and circled the tree several more times, reminding Jacie of a puppy who needed to pee and couldn't find a good spot. "What do we do?"

The girls looked at Jacie, who was surprisingly pale. "Jacie?"

The auburn-haired girl scrubbed her tanned cheeks. "We have to help her."

Gwen gave her an exasperated look. "We know that! What should we do?" She threw a nervous glance towards Nina's back porch. "I could go tell her mom?"

"Right," Jacie grunted, her eyes still glued to the top of the tree. "Then she'll just get a spanking or be grounded for sure. "

"That's better than falling and twisting your ankle or something," Katy reminded.

"Or landing on your back and becoming a cripple."

The girls all stared at Audrey, uncomfortably reminded that her oldest brother, Willy, had come back from Vietnam in a wheelchair.

A gust of wind caused the tree branches at the very top of the tree to sway, and Nina cried out, pressing her cheek against the rough bark of the trunk until her face hurt.

"I'm going for help!" Gwen took off running towards Nina's back door.

"I'm going for Nina," Jacie said grimly, her eyes quickly traveling up the tree for the best route to the top. Without another word, she leapt for the first branch and struggled to pull herself up. A second later, Audrey and Katy were grunting with the effort as they pushed her up from below.

"I'm coming, Nina. Hang on." Jacie tested a branch with her foot, hoping that it would hold her weight.

Nina pried her eyes open. "Jacie?"

"That's me," she heard from somewhere below her.

"You can't fit up here," Nina told her quickly, hoping she wouldn't try to come up the same way she had. "You're too big, Jacie. You'll fall." Resentfully, she realized that Katy had been exactly right about the smallest person being the best person to be the lookout.

Jacie frowned, squinting as she peered through the branches. Nina was right. She'd never make it. "I'll come up a different way." She altered her course where the tree trunk split into two and continued to climb.

Katy rocked back and forth below her. "I can't stand it!" she said finally, unable to take the sense of helplessness that had crept over her. "I'm gonna rescue Nina, too."

"What?" Audrey punched her cousin in the shoulder. "Are you a retard? Jacie is already going to save her and Gwen went to get Nina's mom."

Katy lifted her chin a little. "What if Jacie needs my help?"

Audrey stood motionless for a moment, unable to think of a good answer to that question. "Okay, but I'm going, too. You can push me up and then I'll stick my arm down and help you, 'kay? You could never lift me."

"Deal!"

And within minutes, Katy and Audrey were weaving their way up the tree, no more than a branch behind Jacie.

Gwen banged on the Chiltons' back door. When no one immediately answered, she began dancing around the back porch in a panic. "What do I do? What do I do?" she asked herself, her pulse racing. Gathering her courage, she opened the back door, which led into the kitchen and barged into the small home. "Mrs. Chilton?" she called out. "Mrs. Chilton?"

Upstairs, Agnes Chilton's head was inside a large, turquoise-colored hair dryer. Hot air pounded her curlers, setting the utterly natural-looking style that would, with a hefty dose of Ms Breck Superhold, last for no less than four days. "Oh, tie a yellow ribbon 'round the old oak tree," she sang softly. "It's been three long years…"

"Mrs. Chilton?" Gwen poked her head in the dining room. "Rats."

Agnes flipped the page of the magazine she was reading. "Do you still want meeee?"

"Mrs. Chilton?" Panting, Gwen surveyed the empty living room. "No!" In desperation, she bolted back through the kitchen and out the door, leaving the screen wide open.

The wind ruffled the long layers of her red hair as Gwen sped back to the tree. Under its boughs, she abruptly skidded to a halt, her eyes widening as she looked around. She was alone. "Where is everyone?" she wailed. Just then she heard crying and looked up.

Nina was still near the top of the tree, clinging to the trunk, her fingers locked together. But what had Gwen's mouth hanging open was the sight of Jacie, who was nearly as high as Nina but on a different set of branches and unable to reach Nina, with Audrey and Katy directly below Jacie.

"What are all you guys doing up there?" No one was moving.

"We're stuck," Katy cried pitifully, her arms wrapped so tightly around the tree trunk that her hands were turning white from lack of circulation.

"No," Audrey and Jacie said in unison. "Katy is stuck!" Audrey kicked at Katy's head, but the girl refused to budge, issuing a curse that Gwen had never heard from a girl before.

"Move it, Katy!" Jacie roared in frustration. "My arms are getting tired and I want to get down." This wasn't quite the heroic ending to the rescue that Jacie had pictured in her mind.