We never spoke to Mr. Bowman again. We even crossed the street if we saw him coming. At night we dared each other to knock on his door and run. Other times we ran around his house yelling. Once he actually chased us, but we could run lots faster than he could.

Last year, Mr. Bowman’s daughter moved him to a nursing home. Skylar still hates him. I feel kind of sorry for him. He was mean to us, but now he’s old and sick, so how can she hate him? “It’s easy,” Skylar said. “He tore down our tree house.”

We hoist ourselves onto the platform. This tree house is bigger and much better built than ours was. The wood is solid. We sit down and look way out across the field. From up here I see where the train tracks cross a stream and disappear into the woods. The sunlight is dazzling bright on the tracks and the water. In the other direction I see the houses on Marie Drive.

“Do you think the tree house belongs to anyone?” I ask.

“Let’s claim it,” Skylar says. “We can hang out here.”

“Our secret hideout,” I say.

“No one will know where we are,” Skylar says. “Not even your mother with her superpower eyes.”

I love this idea because somebody, usually my mother, has always known where I am—maybe not the exact place, but close enough. School, home, church, the mall, the swimming pool, the library. But here Skylar and I are in unknown territory—what old maps call terra incognita.

We sit together quietly, awed by the idea of total privacy. There’s not a person in sight. A couple of deer amble across the field. Squirrels play hide-and-seek in the branches above our heads. A train rumbles through the woods, blowing its whistle for the crossing in town where the old station used to be.

“This is so much higher than our old tree house,” Skylar says. “You can see forever from here. I love it.”

“Me, too.” I rest my cheek against the tree trunk. It feels rough and alive, warm from the afternoon sun.

“Uh-oh.” Skylar points across the field. “Somebody’s coming.”

Two faraway figures come out of the woods. We watch them walk toward us. When they’re closer, we both groan.

“Carter and Jason.” Skylar mutters a curse word she probably learned from her brother, Rob. “They aren’t in jail after all.”

We both hate Carter and Jason. Everybody does. They’re in the same grade as we are, but we’ve never had a class with them.

They get in fights and pick on pitiful sixth-graders. They steal kids’ lunch money and act up in the cafeteria. They say gross things to girls, the kind of stuff you pretend not to hear because—well, just because.

Bullies, that’s what they are, mean and nasty and ugly.