TWO

10 yrs. Old

Daniel and I were in the middle of my peach orchard, laying on the grass and looking up at the sky.

"What to you wanna do?" Danny sighed.

"I don't know, what do you wanna do?" I asked back.

It had been going on like this for about an hour or so. As you can clearly see, we had already run out of things to do, even though school had only been out for a month.

Danny suddenly jerked into a sitting position. I sat up too, surprised by his sudden movement.

"Let's build a tree house!" Danny said, grinning at me like a maniac. I grinned back automatically. I didn't have to say anything- he already knew what my answer would be.

We went back to our houses to okay it with our parents. Both dads were ecstatic about the idea. They said they would help us get all the supplies and build it with us. Of course we all knew that they would end up doing pretty much all of the work, anyway. On second thought, they would probably fake like they were doing all of the work and end up just hiring professionals or something.

It took Danny and me three whole days to find the perfect tree that we could build our house in. We wanted it to be just right so that our tree house could be just right. A peach tree wouldn't be big enough or strong enough to hold up our perfect hang out. Let me tell you- it takes a while to find a non-peach tree that was up to our standards in an orchard filled with trees with peaches on them. We ended up finding a huge tree at the far end of the orchard. That was good so it would be more secluded. It was a ways from my house so it would be harder to get the supplies there but I knew it would be worth it in the long run.

Two months later it was built. It took so long because our dads actually did end up building it themselves which, I have to say, it quite an accomplishment. It was an awesome tree house. There were slats of wood nailed onto the tree trunk so that you could climb up. Running along the outside of the tree house, there was a deck with a railing so we wouldn't fall off. Inside, we didn't have many things because we wanted room to roll out sleeping bags for when we had sleepovers. There was one cabinet in the corner that had snacks, activities, etc and then across from that was two big beanbags- one for each of us. The only other things in there were our two sleeping bags rolled up in another corner.

There were two windows- on opposite sides of the house that closed with shutters. Then there was my all time favorite part of the whole thing- a sunroof. I don't even know how they pulled it off but our dads fixed the roof so that part of it would roll back when we pulled a cord so at night we could see the night sky. I don't know about you, but when I was nine I hadn't seen another tree house that was as cool as ours. Actually, even when I was older I still thought it was the coolest thing ever.

For about a week, we slept in the tree house every night. We would have continued but our mothers didn't really care about our opinions. So, instead of sleeping there every night, we played there all the time instead.

Sometime in late summer, I was in the kitchen grabbing some apple juice before heading over to Danny's house.

"Emmaline," my mom said, sitting me down on one of the kitchen chairs. "I know you love Danny, and of course I do too. Even though you are best friends you need other friends too." It took me aback that she was so desperate for my attention. My mother was always one to get straight to the point but I honestly had no idea where she was going with this. Why would I need other friends when I had Danny? "You can't completely rely on him. One important fact that you need to know in life is that boys are idiots. I guarantee you that at some point, Danny will think that his guy friends, being cool and… other stuff… are more important than even you." I raised my eyebrows in disbelief. "Yes, you," she emphasized. "Not that he won't love you- it is just that he is will be going through a phase. Those things, that really are important, will be forgotten for a… bit. But don't worry," she said, brightening up considerably. "The phase will end. Because of this whole thing though, you can't just rely on him. You need to have other friends and to do that, you need to play with other people along with Danny. Honey," she continued. "I don't want you getting hurt." She stared into my eyes for an immeasurable amount of time.

Huh. I wonder if mom has gone insane. Why in the heck would Danny ever leave me?

In my mind, I just couldn't fathom it. Why would he ever not want to be with me?