We’re not in the mood to stay, so we get our stuff together to go home. Skylar’s halfway down the ladder and I’m right behind her when Jason and Carter appear. They’re riding their fancy new bikes, but when they see us, they dump them and head toward the tree.

“You dogs are spying on us,” Carter yells.

They’re at the bottom of the tree now, staring up at us. This is all we need. I want to go home. I’ve had enough of the tree house and the cars and even Skylar. She probably feels exactly the same way.

Before we know what he’s doing, Jason pushes past Skylar on the ladder. On the way up, he grabs my backpack. I lose my grip and fall, not far enough to kill me, but it hurts when I land hard on my butt.

Carter shoves Skylar out of his way and takes her backpack. She doesn’t fall but loses her footing and sort of slides down the trunk, grabbing at the steps as she goes and skinning her knees.

The two of us scramble to our feet. It’s no use climbing up after them. They’ll just push us off.

“Give us our packs,” Skylar shouts.

“Come and get them,” Carter says. Jason laughs.

They dump stuff out of our backpacks onto the platform and paw through it.

“Hey, Carter, look at this.” Jason holds up my book. “They know how to read.”

He says read like it’s some weird, perverted thing. He tears pages from the book and tosses them into the air. We watch fragments from the story fall into the weeds.

“Stop it,” Skylar shouts. “Those are library books!”

Carter laughs. “You’re gonna pay for them, not us.”

Jason reads a sentence out loud. His voice jerks and sputters, and I wonder if he really reads that badly or if he’s just pretending. “What a dumb title. Who ever heard of a red pony?”

After they’ve destroyed both books, they find our water bottles and empty them on our heads.

“You dogs get out of here or we’ll take your cheap bikes, too,” Carter says in that sneering voice of his. “You got no idea how much trouble you’ll be in if you keep coming here and messing with us.”

“This tree house is ours now,” Jason yells. They laugh.

“You think you’re so smart,” Skylar yells back, kicking one of the bikes. “But we know how you got these fancy bikes.”

I pull her away. “Shut up, you’re just making things worse!”

She ignores me. “If you don’t give us our backpacks, we’ll—”

“You’ll what?”

“Come on,” I beg her. “Let’s get out of here!”

Skylar gives Carter and Jason a long, hard look. Before she can say anything else, I whisper, “Don’t mention drugs. You’ll get Rob in trouble.”