Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Danny: Two Weeks Ago

The first time I saw a redwood, I had a brand-new feeling — like discovering a color you’ve never seen before, or smelling snow for the first time if you were raised in a world without cold. Mom and I were driving up Highway 101 in a mostly good mood. We’d called Dad from the airport, and he hadn’t sounded tragic, even though I knew he missed me. And I’d seen a dozen rainbow flags between San Francisco and this stretch of wildness. Every single one felt like a welcome sign.

I checked the GPS and saw that we had less than an hour to Tempest. And then I saw the trees and my breath was gone, my thoughts were gone, my heart tapped out a tight new rhythm.

Mom pulled over at the first opportunity without either of us talking about whether or not we should. I grabbed my phone but dropped it before I could take a picture. I already knew it would be disappointing compared to the real thing. My neck tilted and I drank in the trees. Green splashing against reddish brown. Trunks stretching and stretching until they made homes in the sky. I was staring at a thousand years, maybe two, pressed into a shape I’d always thought I understood. Back in Michigan, tree meant something I could run around in a single breath. Something I could take in with one glance. On the drive up to Tempest, these redwoods broke the rules.

A tree could be so alive it felt like a challenge. It could turn sunlight into long knives and stab them right through you.

“What do you think?” Mom asked, turning to me. The light brought out every drop of red in her brown hair. My hair was that color, too. But the smile Mom gave me was only hers, and I knew it too well — a thin wire of worry. She was wondering if she’d done the right thing. Even though I was the one who had looked at a map and picked Tempest. I was the one who had begged for a new life, my tears salted with guilt.

I turned from her smile, which knew all about those tears, back to the trees, which didn’t know me at all. I studied cracked patterns running up the trunks like arteries. Bark the rusted red of old hearts.

“I love them,” I said.

But it wasn’t as simple as that. This love begged, too. It wanted me to step closer, to learn how solid the trees felt under my fingertips, but I got the sense that if I did, they would pull me deeper into the woods, and I would never be heard from again.

Part One: Dawn

Danny: Now

I’m halfway up a redwood tree, wearing a dress as thin and dark as a shadow, a boy breathing hard to keep up.