Halfway to Viv’s nest in the Big Pine tree, the knock in my knees rattled my hands and I flashed to myself on the forest floor, a broken slump. Why was I taking such a crazy risk? The answer was always the same: Viv. She appeared at our screen door early that morning, eyes swirling and half-moons cut deep in the corners of her lips. Pine needles clung in her hair and the scar atop her left cheek rippled.

“You have got to see this,” she said.

It was code for something so amazing that words fell apart if you tried to describe it. The call went out many times in the summer of ‘66: dead squirrel with eight nipples, wasp nest the size of a beach ball, blasting cap on the side of the road, tiny skull in the old graveyard, Hermit Cave, Snakes Den, a thousand things that turned Viv to Silly Putty. It wasn’t so much what Viv found, but how excited she got, that made me want to follow. She was a lightning rod for discovery and I was ground.

I froze a spoonful of corn flakes halfway to my mouth and gestured to the mayhem around me. “You want me to leave all this… to follow you?”

The Sullivan kitchen whirled in the type of chaos my mom vowed to stamp out. She drained bacon grease in the trash and yelled up the stairs for my older brothers to clean their pig-sty rooms. At the counter, my dad slapped together baloney and cheese sandwiches like an assembly line worker. Under the table, my little sisters, Mumsy, Pupsy, and Brat, charted wads of gum like stars in a distant galaxy. Little Phil trailed a soggy diaper across the linoleum, and Angel, our forty-pound ball of fluff, panted at the screen door wanting to get out and lick Viv silly.

Viv rested her forehead into the screen, lips sealed over silver braces, ponytail high and to the side. Her answer was telepathic. You wanna have fun, don’t ya?

Fun was creed to Viv, more important than going to church and saving your soul because if you were having fun then your soul was alright, and if not, you were missing the point. This was before we learned about interdimensional beings and the Eye of God so we were pretty naive, but when Viv added fun to the code, it was a must.

“I’ll grab my canteen.”

“Not before you clean your pig-sty room!” my mom yelled.

I let Angel out. “Ten minutes, tops.”

* * *

An hour later, I was 50 feet up the Big Pine with another 50 to go, shaking with the palsy. My throat was so tight a squeak would pop out if I opened my mouth. I lowered my voice like I was 14 or something.

“Uh, Viv.”

“Don’t be a wuss, Mick.”

There it was, the one word that could get me to do just about anything. “Wuss” implied cowardice, something I felt on a regular basis. Needle at the doctor’s office, drill at the dentist’s, bully in the school yard, riding a two-wheeler, losing a tooth, I always trembled. I hated my inner wuss coming out, especially in front of Viv, so I rose 10 feet with each cannon shot.

“Don’t - you - ever - call - me - a – w-wuss!”

My voice cracked.

I was in Viv’s nest at the top of the tree, gripping the sidewall. A gust carried us side to side and I thought I’d tumble out. Viv flicked a pitch booger at me.

“Nifty, huh.”

I swallowed hard. Viv’s perch was amazing. The main leader of the tree had died back and five fingers grew in its place, a hand reaching for the sky. Viv had woven branches to make sidewalls leaving the feathery tips as padding. The view went on for miles - white steeple in the village of Swansicut, sparkling Reservoir that flooded half the town, pale hills to the West - our own little kingdom.

“You can see Winsor Farm,” Viv said.

My gut flipped. Even two miles away the abandoned farm gave me the creeps. Out buildings falling in, charred barn, fields gone to scrub, the house itself, condemned. Viv had been talking about going in before it got knocked down, but I wanted no part of it.

“I thought you got me up here to see the nest, not Winsor Farm.”

“People don’t disappear, Mick. Something happened to the Old Man.”

We had been over it many times. Old Man Winsor was friendly until a year ago when he boarded himself up in his run-down house and met all comers with a shotgun. He never came out, not even to pee, and people thought he was off his rocker, or hiding something. Worried about his safety, the town condemned his house. When police came to evict, the Old Man vanished, there one minute, gone the next. No secret exit was found, no hidey hole or false wall, he simply disappeared. The mystery drove Viv nuts, but I couldn’t wait for my dad to level the place with his pet bulldozer.

“He probably went out for a whizz one night, stepped on a yellow spot, and fell into the fifth dimension.”

“Not real, Mick. Twilight Zone, Mick.”

“I know, yellow spots don’t exist. Not real, not even close, but that’s why I’m real careful where I step in case one just happens to show up.”

Viv shuddered me off and surveyed Winsor Farm like a field general. “The clues are in the house, Mick.”

“I’m not going near that place.”

Viv shook the sidewall as hard as she could. I tucked into a ball and rolled around like an egg; a stray arm or leg and I could have pitched out. I thought, if Viv can’t take “no” for an answer, then maybe we can’t be friends.

Finally, she stopped.

“What the heck was that?!”

“Wind storm,” Viv said, examining the loose branches. “We need something to tie this all in.”

* * *

Viv zipped down the tree and waited for me on a thick lower limb. I climbed slowly, making sure my canvas high tops had a good grip the whole way. Viv had me weigh down the limb from below. She stabbed the bend with her knife, expecting it to break, but nothing happened. Viv shimmied out on the limb, adding her weight to the bend, and suddenly it snapped. She crashed down to the branch I was on and that broke as well. We were in free fall. Lucky for us, a stout limb caught us or we would have fallen out of the tree.

“Sorry, sorry,” Viv said fast and breathless. “Are you ok?”

I was anything but. There was a scream in my belly that couldn’t get out. It went round and round in there, a bloody howl trapped in a cave. Time slowed to a crawl, sounds dragged out, pollen floated up, and thoughts turned to skitter bugs. I nearly died, I nearly died, raced through my head. My heart pounded in my ears, boom-boom-boom, like I was inside a big, bass drum.

Viv clouded over and drew into herself, her head going back and forth as if to deny what nearly happened. I saw the girl who helped her mom when she couldn’t walk, who cooked for her dad when he came home drunk. She raised her eyes to me, streaked panes, and searched me out. That’s when I knew she cared about me because we only ask forgiveness from those we truly care about.

The wind gusted and we rode that limb like a runaway steed, facing each other. The sun caught in Viv’s blond wisps and the half-moons came out as she brushed back tears, glistening her cheeks. I looked in her eyes and felt myself about to tumble into them. That’s when it hit me, something that had been working its way up my brainstem for quite some time: Viv Oulette was dangerous in more ways than one.