“I think I liked the idea of climbing better when we were on the ground,” he says.

His name is Sebastian. He’s another transplant to Tempest. Besides that, what I know about him is as flimsy as the name tags they made us wear at new-student orientation. He has sprigs of dark hair. He’s a nervous dancer.

“Don’t you want to see the sun rise?” I call down.

It’s the same question I asked a bunch of people I barely knew, when the house party thrown by some popular senior burned out, melted wax and crisped wick. Sebastian was the only one who actually listened to what I was asking. Who said sure. Which, I realize as I haul my stomach over a branch and pull myself to my feet, is not really the same thing as yes.

“Sure,” he says again. “Remind me why we’re doing this?”

The easy answer comes out. “We’re Californians now! We can’t just eat more avocados and talk . . . really . . . really . . . slowly . . . and act like we fit in.” I know that I sound like I’m joking, but the truth is I feel every difference between this place and the one where I grew up. The food is better. The Mexican food is infinitely better. People smile at strangers. But there’s a difference that I don’t know how to talk about, something in the air that must have a chemical interaction with my blood. It makes me feel strange, so I want to do a strange thing to match. Like climbing a tree that touches the bottom edge of the sky. “This is a time-honored rite of passage that I just made up.”

That answer peels back, and I can see the one underneath it. I don’t want to go home yet. Mom won’t stop asking if I hate the rental cottage, hate how temporary it feels, how it smells like burned dust and the brass beds scream when you turn over at night. I actually think the rental cottage is kind of cozy. I just didn’t want to loosen my grip on the night.

I just needed to breathe in the woods.

I look between my bare feet and find Sebastian’s face below me, all misery, like I’ve put him in a redwood prison and the only good part is looking up my skirt but he’s pretty sure he has to feel guilty about that.

“I don’t care, you know,” I say.

“That we’re both about to die falling from a tree?”

“That you know what color my underwear is.”

I think it’s red. I didn’t pay that much attention when I put it on, but it suddenly feels relevant.