CHAPTER seven

A/N Hello lovelies!
Here is chapter seven! Yay :)
A warm welcome and massive thank you to all of our wonderful fans and followers from Twitter and Scratch!! We love you guys :))) <3

"Izzy!" I scream into the reciever. "Izzy, I'm so glad to hear from you!"
Issac chuckles. "I miss you, Birdie."
"Me too." I tell him, sliding down to the ground. "How's New York?"
"Wait, first I want to talk about you!" Izzy says and I can hear the smile in his voice. "I heard the hurricane was pretty bad... I was really worried about you guys."
"Oh. How'd you even get this number?" I question. Ty sticks his head around the door and peeks in. I wave him away.
"I called the Marina like a billion times." Issac explains. "Finally, that girl,
Katie or... what's her name again?"
"Kittie." I inform him and he continues.
"Yeah, she told me that you guys were staying with Larry."
"Leon." I correct, twirling the phone cord around my fingers.
"Yeah, Leon and his grandson Tyson." I don't bother to correct him this time. "Was the storm really bad?"
"It was awful." I moan. "Our house has a tree in the roof!"
"Oh no!" Izzy cries sadly. "Can Papa fix it?"
"Of course!" I answer. "It will take a while though..."
The other end of the line is silent for such a long time I have to ask, "Izzy? Are you still there?"
"Yeah, yeah. I'm here, little bird." Izzy says with a sigh.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing!" Izzy cries. "Nothing's wrong! I'm so glad the your guys are okay. I was just really worried, that's all."
"Oh."
"Now, let me talk to Papa, Birdie."
"Okay." I say goodbye and then set the phone down. In the kitchen, Papa and Leon are still eating as Ty taps away on his phone.
"Who was on the phone, Birdie?" Leon asks, swallowing a mouthful of food.
"Izzy." I tell him and Pa stands up.
"Is he still there?" he asks and I nod. My father leaves to talk to Issac and I sit back down at the table.
"We have to go out of town tomorrow to get the lumber." Mr. Koppinger states, scraping the remainders of his foods into the trash. I nod.

The next morning Ty hobbles sleepily into the kitchen, his eyes drooping.
"Morning!" I say cheerily and he grunts.
"I'm going to the marina." Papa calls from the other room. "And remember, we're going to go pick up the wood in a few hours"
I nod, then remember my fallen tree house, the shattered fort. I get up and call, "I'm going out, I'll be back in a bit."
"Oh, Tyler! You should go with her!" Leon smiles, tapping the boy on the shoulder. Ty
shakes his head.
"Oh, go on, Ty! It'll be good for you to get outside more."
I sigh as Tyler tucks his phone into his pocket and follows me to the door.
"Where are we going?" he grumbles, pulling his hood over his head and stepping outside.
"My old treehouse." I explain, ignoring his little eye roll. "I want to see if it's okay."
Tyler trails behind me as I stalk through the woods. Many trees are twisted and
fallen, snapped into little splinters of wood.
When we reach the thick, but stubby downed tree that once supported my treehouse, I
feel my heart catch in my chest. Magazines are scattered everywhere, stuck to
branches, the pictures smeared making the women's faces with stab mark through
them distorted and eerie. The house itself is shattered, the boards spread out
across the forest ground.
"Oh no." I whisper. "No, no, no."
Ty stares at me like I'm a lunatic.
"I am a lunatic." I tell myself and Tyler chuckles.
"Now you're starting to get it!" he exclaims, stepping forwards to step beside me.
"What is this place, anyways?"
I don't reply. He'd never understand. He'll never know what it feels like to have
the whole world against you for no reason at all. He won't understand the
feeling where you just need to get away from everyone, to go somewhere where
it's your own, where no one can judge you, hurt you, or bring you down even
farther. There are somethings that are impossible to comprehend unless you've
done it.
I kick at a magazine, searching for the pocket watch.
Ty reaches up and tears down a picture stuck through a tree branch. "What the
heck?" he murmurs, staring down at the ripped picture in his hand. "Birdie, what
happened to her face?"
I take the picture from him and stare at the eyeless woman. I crumple it up at
hand it back to him.
"Nothing."
I lie, turning away so he can't see how terrible of a liar I am. "That must have happened in the storm."
I continue poking through the dozens of magazines as Ty exhales, clearly
bored.
"Ugh," he moans, sitting down on a fallen trunk. "Why are we here?"
When I don't acknowledge him, he drones on.
"God, this place is so boring." he whines, rolling his head back. "Can we go home
now?"
"Would you just shut up for a minute?" I snap, getting down on my knees to spread out a
different pile of magazines.
"Don't tell me to shut up, Kessie." Ty sneers, getting up and hanging from a sturdy
branch. Or at least it looked sturdy before it crashed to the ground.
"Oww..." Ty groans, lying flat on the ground. I can't help but let the giggle escape my
lips. Ty pushes himself up into a sitting position and glares at me. He has a
leaf stuck in his eyebrow, dirt covering his blonde hair. His appearance is so
hilarious that I laugh even harder, doubling over and clutching my belly.
Ty stares at me in horror as I explode in laughter.
"I'm sorry Ty." I manage to squeak out between my cackles. "It's just so-" I'm
laughing so hard I can't breathe, but the laughter fades quickly as Tyler holds
up his arm to show the blood seeping from the cut ranging from his wrist to
nearly his elbow.
He swallows hard, fighting back tears as he climbs to his feet, his injured arm tucked into his chest.
"I really didn't think that you would be one to laugh when someone got hurt." he
spits, turning and limping exaggeratedly back down the cluttered path towards
home.
"But Ty!" I call after him, getting up from the ground. "Ty, I didn't know!"
He doesn't turn around to face me before turning the corner and hobbling out of sight.
The
forest screams silence as guilt crawls into my gut. I search through a couple
more stacks of magazines before lowering myself down onto a stump and resting my
throbbing head in my hands.
My pounding head replays Tyler holding up his arm to show me the blood dripping
from the wound over and over again, my laughter echoing hauntingly in my head. A
new memory pushes its way through, one I had tried to bury with new thoughts,
but never really succeeded.

I laugh amusedly as Izzy and I throw the ball back and forth on the dock. Papa is
busy on one of the boats, finishing getting them ready before they depart for
their long trip the next morning.
It's one of those days that all of Wrenside's habitants enjoy, starting off sunny and
warm and then cooling off as the sun gradually climbs across the sky and sinks
past the horizon. The first stars were starting to peek out when we heard the
scream.
"Papa?"
Izzy calls in the direction it came from, catching the ball and holding it in his hands.
"He's fine." I tell him, anxious to get on with our game. Izzy shrugs and tosses the
ball back to me. We play for another hour until it's too dark to catch the ball
in front of our faces.
We sit down on the bench to wait for Papa. We wait five minutes, ten minutes, half
an hour. After an hour, Izzy pokes me and tells me to go find our father to tell
him we've been ready to leave for a long time.
I step onto the big, creaky boat and go down the stairs into the belly where Papa was working and where I had been stacking boxes earlier. I hear a moan and gasp as I spot Pa, twisted and lying on the floor, his mouth gaping open, eyes shut with the heavy crates fallen on top of him. Blood drips from his skull, his back bent in unnatural angles.
"Papa!"
All I can do is scream at my motionless father. "Papa! Get up!"


I shudder, my eyes growing damp. I shove the pile of books I was looking through off my lap and they land in the mud with a splat. I get up and pace back and forth, shaking the flashback from my brain, but the image of Papa lying there unconscious is burnt into the back of my eyelids.
After I'm calmed down, I head back to Mr. Koppinger's house through the fresh woods, trying to imagine what to say to Tyler.
"I'm sorry." I practice on the trees. "I didn't mean to laugh. You see, I'm just a very strange person and..." I shake my head and decide to improvise my apology, humming loudly to prevent anymore flashbacks.
When I get back to Leon's house, Mr. Koppinger is seated on the couch, attempting to hem a pair of trousers by hand, and from what I could tell, failing miserably.
"I can't sew." Leon sighs, dropping the pants into his lap. "So what's up, Birdie?"
I look around the room and ask "Is Ty home?"
Mr. Koppinger shakes his head and folds up the pants messily, dropping them on the table, obviously unsatisfied with his handiwork. "I thought he came with you...?"
"Yeah."
I sit down on the armrest of the sofa. "But he came home a little while ago..."
"Hm."
Leon rests his feet on the wooden coffee table. "Maybe he went out with some
kids from town."
"Yeah."
I say, sliding onto the couch beside Mr. Koppinger and resting my head on his shoulder. He pats my frizzing red hair kindly and then gets to his feet with a grunt.
"Well, I'm gonna go help out your father at the marina." He smiles, pulling on his shoes. "Do you think you could find Ty and then the two of you could make some sandwiches for our ride to get lumber this afternoon?"
I wrinkle my nose. "Yeah, if you're alright with lunch tasting terrible."
"Such self-confidence." Leon chortles, tugging his coat onto his shoulders and zipping it up. "See you later."
"Bye."
I lie lazily on the chesterfield for a little while, the drag myself outside.
"Where would Ty be?" I ask myself, entering the green forest.
"Tyler!" I holler, the wind carrying my voice and bouncing it back to me. "Ty!"
I'm almost out of the woods when I notice a single trail of footprints down the
overgrown path that it rarely ever used.
"Idiot." I mutter, following the tracks farther into the bush. I walk down the narrow
path with the gnarled roots poking from the long grass for what feels like hours
until I see him.
Ty sits on a swing hanging from a tall branch, rocking back and forth on his heels. He looks up as I clear my throat, then scowls back at the ground. I swallow at the sight of dried blood on his shirt sleeve, but work up the courage to walk up to him.
"What is this place?" I peer up at the treetops blanketing us and shielding us from
the sun.
"I don't know, I think it's probably some little kid's hideout or something." Ty mutters, kicking up a cloud of dust.
"Let me see this." I lean over and gingerly lift his arm. He cringes and tries to pull away as I gently roll up his sleeve, but I grip his arm tight enough to keep him steady.
"Oh, God." His arm is bloody and torn, scraped with bruises creeping all the way up to his shoulder.
Ty inhaled sharply as I slip off my sweater and press it firmly against the cut to stop the little blood still oozing from the wound.
I help Tyler to his feet and then we head home, where I clean and bandage his injured arm.
"You're okay." I assure him as he flinches while I spread on a large glop of cream on
his forearm. Once he has the gauze plastered well enough to satisfy me, I lead him to the kitchen and start piling ingredients on the counter. I slap on a scoop of mayonnaise and start slathering it on the bread when Ty grabs it from me.
"Ew, Birdie! That's way to much!" He scrapes over half the mayonnaise off the slice and into the sink.
"Sorry." I shrug. "I'm a really bad cook."
Ty sighs. "I'll worry about making the sandwiches. You just..."
"Chop things up?" I suggest and he nods.
"Sure, just don't cut yourself." he warns. In no time at all, we have six sandwiches sliced diagonally and zipped into plastic baggies. Ty places them neatly in a cloth bag and I sling it over my shoulder. We don't speak as we walk down to the marina, but Tyler walks beside me, instead of dozens of metres behind me to pretend as though he doesn't know me.
"Mm these look great, guys." Papa takes the bag and looks into it as we arrive at the marina. "I just need to put some stuff away and then we'll be off!"
The car ride is incredibly boring. I stare out at the blur of trees rushing past my window, my eyes growing heavy.
"Ew, get off!" My eyelids flutter open, and I realize my head landed on Ty's shoulder. I sit up straight and stick my tongue out at him. Papa and Leon exchange smiles as we speed down the bumpy highway.
Pa unwraps his sandwich and takes a big bite. After chewing for half a second, he turns around to face me, alarm in his wide eyes.
"What's wrong?" I cry, worried. "Are you okay?"
My father swallows the mouthful of sandwich. "No, I'm fine. It's just-" he wipes the mustard from his face. "It's delicious!"
"Oh. Yeah, Ty made them."
Papa nods, and sends me a smirk. "That makes a little more sense"
I pout half-heartedly.
Tyler doesn't say anything, just continues to stare out his window, but I see the tiniest proud smile creep onto his lips before disappearing as fast as it came.

We finally reach or destination; a yard with neat stacks of freshly cut lumber piled everywhere. The old owner races out to greet us and leads Pa and Leon away.
"Now what?" Ty asks, looking around the shady enclosure. I shrug, poking through a pile of wood aimlessly.
"Hey, come help us, kids!" Leon gestures for us to come over, then piling an armful of planks into our arms. We haul them to Papa's pickup truck and dump them into the back. After many trips, we have all the necessary boards and Mr. Koppinger, Tyler and I pile into the car while Pa goes to pay.
"Wait!"
Ty clambers out of the car and runs up to my father. He explains something, pointing at the wood, at the truck, at the wood once more. Papa nods and grabs some more boards and adds them to the others. Tyler climbs back in and sits beside me.
"What'd you say?" I ask and he just shakes his head.
"Nothing." Papa returns to the vehicle and sits flops down in the passenger seat.
"Thanks for driving, Leon."
"No problem." Mr. Koppinger winks. "It keeps me young."
Ty snorts, resting his head against the glass pane.
We bounce down the gravel driveway, our hair nearly bumping the ceiling as we fly over every bump.
"That's a lot of wood." I remark, twisting in my seat as far as my seatbelt was allow me to look out the back window at the tons of planks rattling around.
"Sure is." Papa grins. "We'll be able to fix up our house and Redman's with this stuff. Oh, and Ty came up to inform me that you wanted to rebuild your treehouse."
Tyler's ears are bright red. I try to remember saying that, but nothing comes to mind. Still, I wanted to rebuild my fort, even if I was already too old. I had no idea how Ty knew.
"You said that?" I ask him and he nods sheepishly.
"Yeah..." He mutters, turning to look at me. "I just... You really seemed upset."
I nod and blink at him. "Thank you, Tyler."
He doesn't smile, but politely replies. "You're welcome, Ke-Birdie."
I turn to look out the window so he doesn't witness my smile growing into a full beam.


A few hours afterwards, the four of us have finished driving the wood to different places around town. Papa is setting up a sawhorse, and I am sitting on the dock with my feet in the water. It's very serene. Every once in awhile, a little fish comes up to swim around the surface, but otherwise I am left alone.
I can see fog whisping above the water, and in the distance, there's cliffs on the other end of the bay that are reflecting in the ocean.
"Look who we have here" Ty and Claire stand behind me, with a boy from my childhood that I can't put a name to.
"Why don't you go help your Papa with rebuilding your house, instead of being completely useless here" Claire smirks. Her outfit is disgustingly revealing, and even though they're feet away I can tell there's goosepimples across her arms and legs. "Right? Ty? Kenny?" My brain identifies the lanky teenager as Kennedy O' Keefe, who is the son of the lady that owns the embroidery shop downtown.
Ty looks at his two friends guiltily before answering.
"We should just leave her alone. Someone as weird as Kessy doesn't deserve our attention" I smile at him, not paying attention to his insults, but to the real meaning behind his words.
Tyler is trying to help me.
The mere thought is preposterous, but at the same time, comforting. Not only does he think of me as a human being. Ty wants to help me, and that's a giant improvement from only a week ago.
Smiling the whole time, I stand up and walk away from Claire, Kennedy and Tyler.
"I know" the other two stare daggers at Ty, who has his hands up. I'm just far enough away to hear their short conversation.
"What the hell?" The girl bickers, crossing her arms across her midsection.
"Hey, sweetie, I got her to leave!" Ty pouts, running fingers through his quiffed hair.
"I don't know why I even TRY" Claire gives up being provocative and tugs on Kennedy's sweater. Without another glance to her friends, she storms off towards town. I dodge her as she thunders past me.
Once Claire's out of sight, Ken pats Tyler's shoulder before leaving.
"You did what you should have, dude"
Instead of getting run over, I sprint off the dock and meet Pa by the house. He's destroyed the whole roof, and is in the process of tearing up uneven floorboards with a crowbar.
"Need help?" I crouch next to him,  examining my father's handiwork with the crowbar.

"No thanks, I'm fine" he flashes me a smile before going back to his work. "You can
go home, it's getting pretty late"
"If you say so"
I catch myself popping into my crushed room before I leave, and scanning the dusty furniture. It's hard to leave the scene, but Papa insists that I go home and have some rest.


When I get back to the Koppinger's, there's no one home yet. I venture over to the fridge and notice a slip of paper clinging to the rough cork board on the wall. Carefully, I unpin it and read the note.

Going to Yarmouth for food and supplies. 
Be back late this evening.
-Leon

I crumple up the piece of paper and toss it into a wastebasket. Even though Yarmouth is only about a half hour away, but I silently hope that Leon doesn't stop to visit a knickknack shop on the way home.
Being alone in the house of someone I've known for barely a month has a bit of a strange effect.
I snatch a pudding from the fridge and plastic spoon from inside a cabinet, before burrowing into the blankets on the chesterfield and grabbing the remote, even
though there's barely any interesting programs that I can find on the
television. Once my snack is finished, I stick to a random channel and have it lull me to sleep. 

I wake up to the sound of footsteps. Pushing myself up onto my elbows, I look around to see Ty sneaking across the dark living room.
"Ty?"
He stops. "Yeah?"
"Thanks. For... earlier."
Ty awkwardly scratches the back of his neck.
"You're-" he coughs. "You're welcome, Birdie"
I smile and close my eyes once again, letting my mind wander.

***************************************************************************************

"Ow!" I suck on my purple thumb, rocking back and forth on the roof of Redman's.
"C'mon, you're almost done!" Gregory whines, looking up to me from the back lane. He takes a sip from his slushie, and I pick my hammer back up. There's only a few adjustments left to do to the aluminium. I shove the hurt hand into my pocket and bang at the roof. A couple of raindrops splash onto my head as I finish up nailing it in place. I cautiously climb back down the ladder to the cement where Mr. Redman sits.
"Done?" He takes another gulp of his drink.
I nod. "This should be good. Well, for a while, at least."
Papa sticks his head out of the door from inside the store.
"Good work, Birdie. This looks perfect."
"Thanks." I brush back the hair sticking to my face and gather Papa's tools. I spot a girl standing farther down the lane, her hands in her pockets. 
"Kittie!" I call. She turns her head and gives me a little wave before continuing.
"Hey..." Gregory pats his pant pockets. "Where did my wallet go?"
I look back at Kittie and without a hesitation, I sprint towards her. She panics and starts to run, but I manage to grab her wrist and hold her back.
"What?!" she screams, yanking her arm back.
"Did you take Mr. Redman's wallet?" I accuse, jabbing her in the ribs.
"No way! Get away from me!"
"Don't lie! Did you take his wallet?"
"No!" Kittie shoves me away. "I didn't! How dare you-"
"Okay!" I raise my hands in surrender. "Okay, I believe you."
"Thanks." Kittie snarls, marching away. I stare after her for a second and then walk back to Gregory.
"Oh!" he exclaims when I get close. "I was sitting on it the whole time! Silly me!"
Guilt punches me in the gut as I turn to look at the sad girl hobbling away. 
"You ready to go, Birdie?" Pa asks, carrying his toolbox.
"Yeah."

A/N- Sorry, this one's a tad bit short...
chapter seven! Wowee... this is crazy...
I (What. it seems it's mostly me who makes these Author Notes) have been real sick lately, so we're pretty much pooping out chapters. haha. Hope they're good...

WEEP