Imaginary Friend Read online

  Or people who were dead.

  Christopher reached the clearing. He stood silent, staring at the giant tree shaped like an arthritic hand. He saw a plastic bag on the ground, covered in dirt. He picked it up and lovingly washed it in the rain, fresh and cold. He rubbed it with his red hoodie until the dirt gave way to white. Then, he walked over to the tree and put the white plastic bag on a low-hanging branch. Christopher stared at it, dancing like a kite on a string. He couldn’t remember, but there was something about it. Something safe and comforting. Like an old friend.

  “Hi,” Christopher said to the white plastic bag.

  you can hear me?

  The white plastic bag sounded so relieved.

  “Yes, I can hear you,” Christopher said.

  i can’t believe it. finally someone can hear me.

  Christopher’s face went flush. He took a long, hard swallow.

  “Are you really real?” Christopher asked the white plastic bag.

  yes.

  “You’re not a fig newton of my imagination?”

  no.

  “So, I’m not crazy?” Christopher asked.

  no. i’ve been trying to talk to everyone. but you’re the only one who listened.

  Christopher was so relieved.

  “Why can I hear you now?”

  because we’re alone in the woods. that’s why i got you that house. do you like it?

  “It’s the greatest house I’ve ever seen.”

  i’m so glad.

  “When can I see you?”

  soon. but first, i need you to do something for me. okay?

  “Okay,” Christopher said.

  Then, the little boy knelt down at the foot of the tree and stared at the white plastic bag, dancing like hair in the breeze. Christopher sat there for hours. Oblivious to the cold. Talking about everything. With his new best friend.

  The nice man.

  Part III

  Best Friends Forever

  Chapter 20

  “Do you guys want to build a tree house?”

  “A tree house?” Special Ed said, washing down his bacon with a chocolate Yoo-hoo. “My dad made me one from a kit once. He got really drunk, and it broke.”

  They were in the cafeteria. Salisbury steak day. Christopher didn’t know what Salisbury meant exactly, but his mom had given him lunch money to buy a real hot lunch instead of his usual brown-bag peanut butter and celery. Especially because it was getting a little colder in November. The Halloween decorations had been taken down and Thanksgiving decorations had been put up.

  “Not that kind of tree house, Ed,” Christopher explained.

  Christopher opened his notebook and carefully slid the plans over to his friends. The M&M’s looked at the blueprints, all perfectly drawn on graph paper in painstaking detail. The roof. The black shingles. The hinges. Red door. And the little 2x4s snaking up the tree like a ladder of baby teeth.

  “Wow. That’s like a real house,” Matt exclaimed behind his eye patch.

  “You drew all this?” Mike asked, impressed.

  Christopher nodded. He woke up with the plans on Sunday morning. An image in his brain he could almost scratch. He spent the whole day drawing them with colored pencils and graph paper the way he used to plan his mother’s dream house. But this time, there were no video games or candy room or petting zoo off the kitchen.

  This time, it was real.

  “You would have a front door that locks and everything?” Mike asked.

  “Yeah. And shutters. And real glass windows. And a secret trapdoor with a rope ladder on the bottom,” Christopher said excitedly.

  “But why would you need a secret door?” Matt asked.

  “Because it’s cool. Duh,” Mike said.

  “Let me see those,” Special Ed said, grabbing the papers out of Matt’s hands.

  He studied them skeptically, like a surveyor, in between sips of Yoo-hoo. Christopher saw that Special Ed was getting bacon grease on the corners of the blueprints. It made him a little mad, but he didn’t say anything. He needed his friend’s help. After a moment, Special Ed slid the papers back to Christopher.

  “Impossible. We could never build anything like that by ourselves,” he said.

  “Yes, we could,” Matt said. “Our uncle George is a—”

  “—handyman,” Mike said, stealing his little brother’s thunder. “We helped him last summer. We could figure it out.”

  “But it’s already November. It’s cold as hell,” Special Ed cautioned.

  “Are you a girl?” Mike asked.

  “I don’t know. Are you?” Special Ed replied skillfully.

  “Come on, Eddie. It’ll be our own private clubhouse,” Christopher said.

  “What’s so fun about going out into your backyard and building some stupid tree house thirty feet from your warm living room with a real TV?”

  “Because we’re not building it in my backyard,” Christopher whispered. “We’re building it in the Mission Street Woods.”

  You could have heard a pin drop. Suddenly, the gravity of the plan was revealed. This was not some backyard excursion. This was high adventure. This was breaking rules. This was…

  “Awesome,” Special Ed whispered.

  “But that’s trespassing,” Matt said.

  “No shit, Sherlock. That’s what’s so awesome,” Special Ed replied.

  “I don’t know,” Mike said. “The Collins Construction Company has fences everywhere.”

  “Are you a girl?” Special Ed asked. The “touché” was silent.

  “Not everywhere,” Christopher said. “There is a path to the woods in my backyard. We don’t need to jump the fence there or anything. But we’ll need tools.”

  “Easy,” Special Ed said, now the plan’s biggest champion. “My dad has a garage full. He never uses them.”

  “What about wood?” Christopher asked, although he knew the answer.

  “Collins Construction has scrap piles all over the place,” Mike said.

  “And our uncle has plenty of loose nails,” Matt added, as if trying to matter.

  The planning went on like that for the rest of lunch. The boys figured out that they could beg, borrow, or steal almost everything they needed except for shingles and a doorknob and windows. But Special Ed’s dad had a collection of old Playboy magazines and a color Xerox and a neighborhood full of older kids.

  So, money could be raised.

  Of course, the Collins Construction Company had a strict no-trespass policy. And Special Ed knew from his dad that Mr. Collins had been cutting down parts of the woods to build subdivisions. So, this was illegal. But somehow, that was part of the appeal.

  “Breaking the law! Breaking the law!” Special Ed said, singing a line from one of his mother’s favorite songs from her college days.

  “But what about our parents?” Matt asked.

  Oh, right. Their parents. Hmmm.

  They didn’t see how their parents would ever agree to let them run around in those woods alone. Especially after Christopher went missing. Maybe Special Ed’s father could be conned, but their mothers? Never.

  His friends were stumped, but the problem actually felt good in Christopher’s brain. Kind of like a combination of a long stretch in the morning and a back scratch. As he thought of solutions, he realized that for the last two minutes, his head wasn’t hurting. He actually had an idea.

  A sleepover.

  Of course.

  They could bring sleeping bags and have a sleepover at the tree house. If they each told their parents they were staying with the other, they could work Saturday night all the way through Sunday. It was a risk. The moms would call to check on them. But with cell phones, maybe they could get away with it. Either way, they could work for almost two whole days without interruption.

  Mike loved the idea. Matt seemed scared to be in the woods, but he didn’t dare say anything in front of his brother. So, he agreed.

  “Can I be in charge of the food?” Special Ed asked.


  “Sure, Eddie.”

  With the plan settled, Christopher sat back and looked at his friends, giddy and loud with excitement. But to Christopher, the room was almost silent as the pain quietly crawled back into his mind. He didn’t mind the headache. He was getting used to them by now. He was just relieved that his friends were helping him build the tree house because without them, he knew he couldn’t have finished it in time.

  “Come on, Chris,” Special Ed exclaimed.

  Christopher snapped out of it and realized they were waiting for him, their drinks hoisted and ready for the toast. Christopher raised his drink, and Special Ed’s Yoo-hoo came together with three little milk cartons to toast the glory of the tree house. As he drank the cold milk, Christopher looked at the picture of the missing girl on the carton.

  Emily Bertovich.

  Her name was so easy to read now.

  Christopher was so excited about the tree house, he barely paid attention when he got on the school bus to take him home. He didn’t know any of the kids on his new bus route or neighborhood. Except one.

  Jenny Hertzog.

  “Floods! Floods!” she teased, even though Christopher’s mom got him new longer pants from the outlet mall.

  Their bus stop sat at the end of a long street, next to an old house on the corner. Jenny ran into her house next door with the aluminum siding. Christopher walked down to his cul-de-sac. He looked at the log cabin across the street and the Mission Street Woods that surrounded all of them.

  The woods where they would build the tree house.

  Christopher felt bad that he didn’t tell his friends everything. But he didn’t want them to think he was crazy. Like his dad. He also didn’t want to frighten them. But there were other things the nice man had told Christopher as they stayed up all night, talking. Most of them were confusing. Some of them were scary.

  But Christopher trusted the nice man. There was something about his voice. A kindness. A warmth. And even when Christopher was skeptical, everything the nice man told him was true. As it turned out, Special Ed’s father did have a garage full of tools. Mike and Matt did help their uncle George build things. Christopher was taken out of Mrs. Henderson’s remedial reading class that day. Jenny Hertzog was at his bus stop.

  And he had to finish the tree house before Christmas.

  “But what’s the hurry? What does the tree house do?” he asked.

  you’d never believe me. you’ll have to see it for yourself.

  Chapter 21

  They began on a Saturday.

  It was freezing, late November, and the trees blocked out whatever sun the clouds had spared. But the boys were too excited to care. The week could not have gone any better. The M&M’s found the place where the Collins Construction Company stored building supplies. And the team figured out a way to move everything to the clearing.

  “You ever heard of a wheel barrel?” Special Ed said in CCD.

  “You mean a wheelbarrow?” Christopher said.

  “I know what I meant,” Special Ed said with a huff.

  What he lacked in vocabulary, Special Ed made up for in business savvy. He had raided his father’s tool chests and found two dirty magazines to boot (great for resale value!).

  On Saturday morning, Christopher woke up early and got out his favorite backpack. The special one with Bad Cat asking, “Do you have any food in here?” He went downstairs and sat next to his mom on the couch. She was as warm as her coffee and smelled even better.

  “Where are you off to so early?” she asked.

  Ever since Christopher had gone missing for a week, his mother was extra protective of him leaving.

  “I’m hanging out with Eddie and the M&M’s,” he said. “We’re meeting at Eddie’s house. We were going to play all day. Maybe have a sleepover.”

  “Does his mother know that?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

  And sure enough, a text chirped through almost on cue.

  Kate. Eddie is bugging me for a sleepover. Virginia and Sage already said yes. OK with you?

  Christopher’s mom had no idea that Special Ed was the one typing and then immediately erasing the texts at precisely 8:30 a.m. Nor did she suspect that the M&M’s had already done the same thing on their end to free Special Ed for the night. The boys didn’t know how kids got away with anything when people actually talked to each other. But their texting plan worked like a charm. Christopher’s mom typed back.

  Sure, Betty. I’ll grab an extra shift at work now. Thanks.

  Phew.

  “Keep your phone on,” she said as she dropped him off at Special Ed’s house. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning at ten sharp.”

  “Mom, please—”

  “Fine then. Nine thirty.”

  “Okay. Ten. No problem!” he said before things went south.

  “You be careful,” she said. “No leaving Eddie’s house. No wandering off. No kidding.”

  “Yes, Mom,” he said.

  She put him out of the car with a hug.

  Christopher found the boys in the garage, where Special Ed’s father stored all of the camping gear that his family had used exactly zero times. Eddie was proudly showing the M&M’s his Playboy-funded windows stacked on the wheelbarrow.

  “I told you my dad had a wheel barrel,” he said.

  With that, they set to work.

  The boys grabbed flashlights, lanterns, and old sleeping bags that Special Ed’s mother was too lazy to remember to make their housekeeper throw out. They stuffed one of the bags with bread and peanut butter and chipped ham. They threw paper plates and plastic spoons on top with milk and Froot Loops. And of course, two bags of Oreos. The sleeping bag looked like a lumpy cigar.

  There was barely enough room in their backpacks for the tools.

  So, as Special Ed’s mother slept off her “bridge night,” the boys walked to the Collins Construction entrance to the Mission Street Woods. As luck would have it, the guard was making his rounds and the workers were too busy excavating a nearby site, so the boys had their pick of the woodpile. They filled their arms with 2x4s and headed to the fence. They pushed their cart under the wire and hopped over, making a small path through the field. Past the COLLINS CONSTRUCTION COMPANY sign.

  Right to the edge of the Mission Street Woods.

  They stopped. Cautious and silent. Like Hansel and Gretel in their old bedtime stories. When they believed in such things as witches and wolves.

  “Guys, maybe we should have told our parents where we’re going,” Matt said.

  “Are you kidding? Mom would never let us,” Mike said.

  “But if we get lost, no one knows where to find us.”

  “Christopher got lost in here for six days. He knows his way around,” Special Ed said.

  Matt looked to Christopher for some backup, but Christopher was staring at the big colorful leaves. The wind slow-danced around them. It felt like the woods were breathing.

  “Yeah. So, stop being a wimp,” Mike said to his little brother by three minutes.

  “I’m not a wimp.”

  “Then, prove it. Go first.”

  “Fine. I will,” Matt said without moving.

  “Come on. What are you waiting for? Trees don’t bite.”

  “I said I’m going!”

  But Matt wouldn’t take a step. He was too afraid.

  “Come on, guys. Follow me,” Christopher finally said.

  Christopher went in first, ending the game and saving Matt his dignity. The boys followed him under the canopy of trees and were swallowed by the Mission Street Woods.

  Christopher walked down a footpath, trying to find the trail from the Collins Construction site to the clearing. But all he saw was that their feet weren’t leaving footprints. Maybe the ground was that dry. And if they got lost, no one could find them. With the clearing hidden behind acres of trees, no one would ever know that they were even there.

  For a moment, he had a sense of déjà vu. Footprints of a little kid. Lyin
g on the ground like a trail of bread crumbs. In his mind, he saw himself walking down a trail. Following the tracks. He didn’t know if that was a dream or not. All he knew was that he probably shouldn’t tell his friends about it because they would say he was crazy. Something cracked up ahead. Branches like bones.

  “Look, Chris,” Matt whispered.

  Matt pointed up ahead on the trail.

  A deer was looking at them.

  It stood in the path, still as a lawn ornament. It locked eyes with Christopher, then slowly began to walk into the deep woods. A direction that Christopher had never been.

  “Where is it going?” Matt whispered.

  Christopher didn’t answer. He just followed. Step after step. The headache creeping up his neck. Finding his temples. Pushing him farther. Down a narrow path. Christopher looked to his left and saw…

  …an abandoned refrigerator.

  It lay on the ground like a rusted skeleton. It was filled with twigs and leaves. A nest for something. Or someone.

  “Chris?” Special Ed said, pointing ahead. He sounded scared. “What is that?”

  Christopher looked up ahead and saw the deer walk into a large tunnel. It looked like a cave mouth. Wood-framed and rotting. Christopher approached the old coal mine. There was something so familiar about it.

  “We shouldn’t go in there,” Matt said.

  But Christopher didn’t listen. He felt compelled to keep moving. He entered the dark tunnel. The boys followed. The world went black. The old mine cart tracks were bumpy under their feet. The whole place smelled like pee from a “long shot” bathroom.

  Special Ed turned on his flashlight. Christopher grabbed the flashlight and clicked it off.

  “Don’t. You’ll scare it away,” Christopher whispered.

  “I’ll scare it?” Special Ed asked.

  The boys followed the deer out of the mine tunnel. Christopher looked down and saw the footprints of what looked like hundreds of deer. And other creatures who lived and died for generations in these woods, never knowing that there was such a thing as man. Then, he looked up.