Page 122 of When Stars Collide
“Point noted. Since I found you, why don’t you come down?”
“No.”
“W-Why?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“Fair enough. But you realize that means I’m going to have to come up there, right?” I was met with nothing but silence from the tree stand. Damn it was high. “Okay, I’m coming up now.” I stepped up on the bottom rung, immediately withdrawing my foot when my heel slid on its surface.Kicking off my shoes, I stood barefoot in the dirt, psyching myself up to make the climb, only to once again withdraw my foot after stepping onto the first rung. “I’m for real climbing up there this time.” I think I said that more to motivate myself than anything else. “You’d better prepare yourself for a stern rebuke.”
At least it’s high enough that if I were to fall, my death would be relatively quick.
Shut up, brain.
Taking a deep breath, I stepped up on the first rung, willing myself to keep my eyes trained on the stand and not the ground below. Beads of sweat formed across my forehead; my heart rate increased. To add insult to injury, the rungs became even more unforgiving on my feet the higher I climbed, until, at last, I reached the stand. Once inside, I found a platform and a bench seat just large enough to hold Jackson and, probably, myself. On shaky legs, I walked on my knees over to Jackson and took him in my arms.
“It took you long enough.”
I laughed in spite of myself, wiping a tear away from my cheek as I faced him. “You’re going to hear this like a hundred times today, anyway, so let me be the first to tell you, don’t you dare ever do this again! Seriously, Jackson, what were you thinking?” Knees already aching from the metal platform, I moved to take a seat on the bench next to him.
“So, you’re going to yell at me, too?” He let out a sigh. “You’re just like them.”
“Jackson, you ran away. We were all very worried about you. Look, I know it may seem like I’m yelling at you, but I’m not. Adults, we jump to the worst-case scenario, especially when it comes to kids. Our adrenaline is running as high as our emotions and we react. Your mom and dad are no exception. You’re their son and they love you very much—they only want the best for you.”
“Adults are weird.”
“I can’t argue with that.” A minute amount of light came through a small window in the front of the cover. In that light, I noticed Jackson relax his shoulders as he inspected some dirt underneath his fingernails. “Do you want to talk about why you ran away?” He shrugged his shoulders, remaining quiet, his eyes never leaving his fingers. “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.”
“Mom and Dad have been fighting a lot. I thought that if I wasn’t there, maybe that would get them to stop.”
“You know that whatever their reason is for having their disagreement, it has nothing to do with you, right?” It broke my heart that he would think otherwise.
“Dad has been sad a lot and busy with work and school. He forgets things sometimes and it makes Mom mad.”
“He’s stressed, and when he forgets to do things, it makes your mom stressed, too. When adults get stressed out, they can get mad easily, but it’s not your fault. No matter how mad they may be with each other, they will always love you, and they would be devastated without you.”
The corners of Jackson’s mouth tugged upward into a smile that lasted shorter than a millisecond. “Dad was always happy when he was with you. He misses you. So do I.”
“I miss you, too, buddy.” I put my arm around his shoulders, drawing him in closer to me. “How about I make you a deal?”
“What kind of deal?”
“If you agree to come down from this tree stand, then whenever I’m in town, I promise you that I’ll call your dad and come pick you up so that we can do something fun together.”
“Like go to the fair?”
“Yeah, I don’t think I’m welcome at the Virginia State Fair, anymore. I was thinking more like going out for pizza or something.”
“You’re bribing me?”
“Some would say bribery, some would say skilled settlement negotiations. Do we have a deal or not?”
He thought for a split second before breaking out into a grin that revealed a missing incisor. “Deal.”
“Glad doing business with you.” I shook his hand, pleased to have brokered a successful business deal with a second grader.
“All right, we can get out of here now.”
My stomach sank at the thought of my feet touching the ladder again. Apparently, human teleportation hadn’t yet come to fruition in the minutes since we’d been up here.
