SARA, BOOK 2 (6 page)

CHAPTER
13

Friends of a Feather

“I
t’s almost like daylight,” Sara muttered under her breath as she leaned against the porch railing, gazing into the night sky.
She felt irritable but didn’t know why.

The sky was overcast and the stadium lights from the high-school football field were blazing brightly. It seemed to Sara on
a night like this that those lights lit up the whole town.

“What a waste of electricity,” Sara muttered, going into the house and letting the storm door on the back porch bang shut
behind her. This was the first football game of the season, and Sara’s old irritation swept over her, catching her by surprise.
She went to her room and closed the door. It was as if Sara were trying to put as many closed doors between her and the football
game as she could manage.

“Geez,” Sara said out loud to herself. “What is my problem?”

Sara had no use whatsoever for football season. It wasn’t uncommon for most of the town to turn out for these Friday-evening
games, and many of them even traveled to other cities when the team had an away game. Sara never went to the game, no matter
where it was played. She tossed a book onto her bed and flopped down on her stomach, turning the pages. She had no interest
in this book either.

Sara wished she could go to the river and swing from the tree; she wanted relief from this fidgety, irritable feeling. She
knew it wasn’t a good idea to wander through the woods at night, but the thought of swinging from the tree in the dark did
make her feel a little better.
The sky is so light,
Sara thought.
Maybe it won’t be too dark.

She opened her bedroom door and found her mother still in the kitchen, tidying up after dinner.

“I’ll finish up here, Mom.”

“Oh, thank you, honey. Janet’s saving seats for us, so we don’t have to rush. Why don’t you come with us, Sara? It’ll be fun.”

“No, I have some things I need to work on for school,” Sara said. (That’s one good thing about school—homework was always
a believable alibi. It could be stretched to encompass an entire weekend, or it could shrink to nothing at all; and her parents,
for some strange reason, never seemed to question it.)

Sara went back into her room, now eager for her family to leave for the football game. The idea of going to the thicket and
having this strange new experience of swinging from the tree in the darkness was feeling more and more like a great adventure.

Sara opened her bottom drawer, digging deep to the bottom, searching for her long underwear. She smiled as she thought about
how funny she felt wearing these, but she had to admit, they did make a leisurely afternoon of playing in the snow much more
pleasant.

Sara waited until she heard her family’s final “See ya later, Sara,” and the loud squeak of the big metal garage door sliding
open before she took the underwear from her drawer and pulled them onto her body. She giggled as she looked at herself in
the mirror, turning around to examine the trap door in the backside. “Who makes these things?” She giggled. “Can you imagine
what people would say about me if they knew I was swinging from trees in the middle of the night wearing
these?”

Sara finished dressing, grabbed her coat and hat and gloves, and headed out the back door. As she walked, her irritation lifted,
and her usual eagerness for life returned.

I’ll cut through the field,
Sara decided.
Half the
town will offer me a ride to the ball game if I walk on
the road!

It had seemed so bright while she was out in the open pasture, but as Sara ducked onto the trail and walked deeper into the
woods, she could barely see anything at all.

It felt eerie to be out in the dark all alone. “What was I thinking?” Sara said under her breath, wishing that she had thought
to bring a flashlight. She turned around and looked back at the dark trail she’d just traveled and then ahead to the even
darker trail before her. Neither direction was a comfortable choice; she felt paralyzed with indecision. The harder she tried
to see, the darker everything seemed. And then Sara heard a sound coming from the direction of the tree house. It was the
familiar sound of someone swinging from the tree.

Her indecision lifted instantly and she began to walk toward the tree house. It was no lighter now than before, but Sara had
no trouble moving quickly down the path. As she came out into the opening at the river, she saw a form swinging out over the
river. She heard a thud and then Seth’s voice saying, “Yes, just right!”

“Seth?” Sara called out, happy to realize it was him and surprised to find him here in the dark. “Is that you?”

“Geez, Sara, you scared me to death,” Seth called back. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d be at the ball game.”

“Nah,” Sara answered, not wanting to try to explain to Seth how she felt about such things. “I never go.”

“Me neither,” Seth answered easily.

“Why not?” Sara embarrassed herself with her quick and prying response. She really didn’t like it when others pressed her
with questions about her decisions, and here she was doing just that to Seth. But he didn’t seem to mind.

“Oh, I don’t know. I never really felt a part of any school. When I’d see a great run or pass or block, I’d cheer. But I got
in trouble over and over again, ’cause half the time they were on the wrong team. I just got tired of it.”

Sara was fascinated. Seth had pinpointed exactly what had bothered her about the ball games: She didn’t like the feeling that
she had to approve of everything her team did just because it was
her
team, and she didn’t like the idea that she had to disapprove of everything the
other
team did, no matter what, just because it was the other team. Sara didn’t know anyone else who felt the way she did about
ball games. She felt so happy to have Seth as her friend.

“How long you been out here?” Sara asked.

“Since about dark,” Seth answered.

“Aren’t you cold?”

“Nah, I’ve got on . . .” Seth stopped in the middle of his sentence. He really didn’t want to tell Sara about his thermal
underwear. He felt silly enough putting them on. He hoped she hadn’t heard him.

But Sara
had
heard, and now she started laughing.

Her laughing was contagious, and he began laughing, too.

“Are they red?” Sara whispered.

Seth laughed hard. “Yeah, how’d you know?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Sara laughed. “Just a wild guess. Seth, we are friends of a feather . . . game-dodging, tree-swinging,
red-flanneled friends of a feather.”

They laughed so hard that tears filled their eyes. It felt good to be so completely understood by another. It felt really
good.

CHAPTER
14

Searching for Caves

S
ara found Seth’s note in her school locker:
Sara,

I’ll see you at the tree house. But don’t go up until I
get there. I’ve got a surprise.

Sara waited at the base of the tree. She deliberately didn’t look up into the tree because she didn’t want to spoil his surprise.

Seth blasted through the bushes. “You didn’t go up, did you?”

“I wanted to, but I waited for you. What’s the surprise?”

“You go up. I’ll be right there,” Seth said. He had a paper bag under his arm and an unusual twinkle in his eye.

Sara climbed the ladder and Seth was soon behind her. They sat perched in the tree house. Sara looked around. “Okay, I’m ready.”
She couldn’t see anything different.

“Okay, close your eyes.”

Sara closed her eyes and Seth untied a rope that was hidden behind the tree. He put the rope in her hands and said, “Okay,
now hold on to this tight and open your eyes.”

Sara opened her eyes and laughed. “What in the world?”

“Don’t let go. Just pull gently on the rope.”

Seth had tied some pulleys to the upper branches and had threaded a long thin rope through them. As Sara pulled on the rope,
up came a large bucket filled with a bottle of water, some candy bars, paper cups, Sara’s very heavy book bag, and some plastic
trash bags.

“It’s a lot easier to pull this stuff up after we get up here than to carry it up the ladder,” Seth said, fishing for a compliment
from Sara.

“It’s ingenious! I love it! Where did you get the ropes and the pulleys?”

“The gym teacher gave them to me. He said they’d been in the equipment room in a box for years, and he was just going to throw
them out.”

Sara smiled. She’d noticed how often people eagerly opened up to Seth. She had never known anyone like him. He just seemed
to bring out the best in people, and they often extended themselves in ways she hadn’t seen them do before. This gym coach
was seen by most as a very strict, usually unpleasant, grump. And yet here he was giving Seth just what he wanted to make
their secret hideaway even more perfect.
I guess everyone likes
Seth,
Sara thought.

“Where do you come up with these ideas?” Sara asked.

“Oh, I don’t know, I guess I’ve just had lots of hideouts.”

“How many? Tell me about some of them.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Seth was embarrassed. None of them had been very exciting, none of them had been as great as this one,
and none of them had he ever shared with a girl before. Usually, he shared them with no one. His little brother had found
out about one or two of them, but Seth hadn’t intended that. A hideaway is a very private thing.

Sara’s eyes were sparkling as she tried to imagine all the wonderful places Seth had lived and all of the wonderful hideaways
he had created out in the woods. Seth saw her look of great expectation. He grinned as he felt her prodding him for details,
and he certainly didn’t want to disappoint her. He knew Sara would never see his old hideaways. He knew he wouldn’t likely
see any of them again either; and he considered, for a moment, offering a grander version of them than they really were, wanting
his stories to match up with Sara’s expectation. But exaggeration was not Seth’s style. In fact, he was more likely to play
down his creativity than to exaggerate it. But there was something more. In the short time he and Sara had been meeting and
swinging and laughing and playing and talking, he had come to trust her in a way he had never trusted any other. He didn’t
want to do anything to mess that up.

Sara pulled her knees up to her chest and waited. Seth grinned. It was impossible to deny her.

“Well, they weren’t that great, Sara. Mostly just places that I could go off by myself; most of them had to be close by, and
I never got to spend much time in any of them. But it felt good just knowing that they were there.”

“Yeah,” Sara said. “I know what you mean.”

“The first one I found by accident. It was on the back side of our neighbor’s property. He had a big place, I mean, like hundreds
of acres, and way back away from the house and away from any of the pastures and barns, I found a tree house.”

“Wow!” Sara said. “Was it nice, like this one?”

Seth laughed. “It was a lot bigger than this one. It was in a grove of trees, and the floor of it was connected to three different
trees. I don’t know who built it, I never saw anyone else near it, and I never told anyone about it. I hated to leave that
place, but we only lived there for about six months. I suppose that big old tree house is just sitting there rotting.”

“What else?”

“Then we moved to a place near a farm that had lots of barns and sheds. They raised pigs and milk cows. The barns were all
connected with fences and corrals, and it was a fun place to be because you could go from barn to barn, walking on fences
and rooftops, and your feet never had to touch the ground. They kept bales of hay in two of the big barns. It was fun to rearrange
the bales; they made great walls. That was a fun place. I never told anyone about that place, either. It was just me and a
few cats who hung around to find mice.”

“Then what?” Sara was enjoying her mental pictures of all of these neat places.

“A few of them were caves. The caves were great. Sometimes a little creepy ’cause you never know who else lives in there with
you, but I never saw anything very scary.”

“Caves? Hmm. We don’t have any caves around here.”

“Oh, sure you do. There are probably lots of caves up in the hills.”

“Really!?”
Sara was surprised. “I guess just because I haven’t seen them doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Do you think we could find one?”

“Yeah, we probably could,” Seth said hesitantly, worried about the time it would take just to get to the foothills.

“I’d
love
to find a cave.” Sara’s eyes were bright with excitement. “Please, Seth, say yes.”

“Okay.” Seth smiled. “We’ll find a cave. But I don’t think we’ll be able to go there very often.”

“Oh, I know,” Sara said excitedly. “We don’t have to go there much. I just want to
find
one.”

Seth knew that his father was always irritated if he came home late. While there weren’t as many family chores to do here
as there had been in other places they had lived, his parents still expected Seth to do his part in helping out. And even
when there wasn’t that much that needed to be done, his parents always managed to find something for Seth and his brother
to do.

“I don’t know, Sara, it would take several hours. I’m not sure . . .”

“We could cut school,” Sara said.

Seth smiled. “Yeah, we could.”

“No one would know; I never miss school,” Sara said. “No one would suspect anything. Come on, Seth, it’ll be fun. Please!”

The idea of having a whole day to explore and visit with Sara was enticing. There was nothing that Seth longed for more than
the freedom to do what he wanted to do.

“I hope you know what you’re doing. Okay, when shall we go?”

“Next week. Let’s go on Tuesday!”

Sara felt so happy. The idea of a whole day exploring for caves sounded so delicious. She stood up, grabbed hold of the swinging
rope, and without even putting her foot in the loop, leaped into the air, swinging out over the river.

“Geez, Sara,” Seth said under his breath, almost afraid to look, fearing that she wouldn’t be able to hold on and would fall
into the river.

But Sara had a firm grip on the rope, and as she swung out over the river, she beamed. She couldn’t remember ever feeling
better.
All truly is well,
she thought. She felt for the right timing to leap from the rope and landed another perfect dismount.

Sara stood on the bank and watched as Seth pulled the rope up into the tree. He gathered the candy wrappers and Sara’s jacket
and book bag and put them into the bucket and carefully lowered it down. Then, as Sara watched from below, he leaped into
the air out across the river. He, too, had a perfect landing and glanced at Sara as he landed. They beamed at each other,
remembering the first several disastrous landings. They had both come a long way in a short time. They went back to the tree,
raised the empty bucket back up into it, and tied the rope to a nail on the back side of the trunk. They felt lucky that no
one had yet discovered their wonderful hideaway.

“Seth, this is such a great tree house!”

Seth grinned.