"Runaways"

 

Moira swore that no one could have heard her crawl out her bedroom window. Her parents certainly wouldn't have. They never listened, just called instructions to her while they balanced their checkbooks or filled out forms for work, telling her to clean her room, or do her homework, or change bratty little Liam's diaper, though at least they never told her to change Grandma's. But it was just an endless sea of chores with them. When she sneaked through her window that night, it was as if she broke through the surface of the ocean, although she made her escape very quietly, taking care to avoid even breathing too heavily.

Which was one reason she was so surprised to find the ash tree from her front yard, labeled by the people from Public Works with a tag that read "65," following her down the sidewalk.

Moira had sat in Sixty-Five's shade enough times to feel certain that the tree meant her no harm. It was the only fact that she felt certain of when, hearing its roots tap their way over the cement like the feet of a thousand tiny insects, she turned around. She made a few stuttering attempts at a sentence before whispering, "You're not supposed to be here," thinking both of her belief that she had left the house in secret and of the tendency of trees to remain in fixed locations.

Sixty-Five remained a few feet away. It tipped the uppermost part of its trunk to the right as if asking a question.

"Trees don't move!" Moira hissed. Sixty-Five replied by slowly waving its branches, giving the impression that a small wind was stirring them.

"You know what I mean," Moira said. "Trees don't get up and walk. They have roots."

A larger branch swung around until it was pointing at her chest.

"Me? I don't have roots. I have my family. Not like they're going to notice I'm gone or anything. Not till they need the toilet cleaned or whatever."

Somehow the branch curved inward so that Sixty-Five appeared to be pointing at itself.

"Trust me, they'll see you're missing," said Moira. "But I'm not as big as you are. And no one there cares about me."

As soon as the words left her mouth, Moira saw Sixty-Five's leaves droop. At first she thought that the tree was tired of arguing, which was confusing, as she always imagined that a good shade tree was nothing if not patient. Then Sixty-Five began to back away, and she realized the weight of what she had said. All those days before, with Sixty-Five looming high above her while she sat in the yard, Moira had assumed not that the tree cared about her, but that the tree was just being a tree, indifferent to anything she did or wanted.

She had made similar assumptions about her parents.

Once she and Sixty-Five were back in the yard, Moira dropped to her knees and patted the dirt back in place over its roots. It turned out, as she saw the tree's wings unfold like moth wings in the moonlight, that the work wasn't so bad after all.