Rock House - Julia Lyon (top 50 books to read .txt) 📗

by a splash of bright blue paint; the one closest to the wall was unfinished.
Caroline heard a door creak upstairs, and remembered suddenly that she didn’t want to be caught down here. She scrambled for the stairs and hurried back to bed. The storm had passed, but she still couldn’t sleep. She had too much to think about.


The first sunny morning, Caroline woke with a jolt. Blake was standing at the edge of her bed, asking her something.
“Want to go exploring?”
“I’m asleep.”
“Not anymore, come on.”
“Fine,” Caroline growled.
Blake was already heading out the door. Caroline slipped into the clothes she had been wearing the day before and ran after him. She was curious.
The McKine house seemed to be situated in the middle of a forest. But really it was just a grove of trees that ended abruptly and gave way to desolate fields. There were huge rocks everywhere. It looked like the house had been built out of the smaller ones.
“Dad says that’s why no one will farm out here,” explained Blake, “there’s too many rocks.”
Blake knew his way around out here, but Caroline was slower, unsure of her footing on the rocky earth.
“Come on, I’ll show you my treehouse,” Blake called over his shoulder. He was carrying a knapsack, wearing the most ridiculous bright purple hat Caroline had ever seen, and no shoes. “My mom helped me build it.”
“Your mom?” asked Caroline.
“Yeah, Dad didn’t know how. He’s good at painting though; after we finished, he and Chris painted all the walls camouflage so no one can ever find it.”
He was right. All Caroline could see when Blake stopped was a rope ladder hanging down from a tree. Blake dropped all of his stuff into a crate beside the ladder and started to climb up. Now, standing directly under the ladder, Caroline got her first glimpse of the structure. It was huge. Not your typical square plywood tree house with a hole cut into the floor; no, this was incredible.
“Wow,” breathed Caroline when she finally reached the top of the ladder and pulled herself inside. The tree house wrapped itself around the trunk of the tree. It was big enough to stand up in, and there were windows all the way around. Limbs cut through the open space. One supported a pulley system that Blake was now using to raise the wooden crate with his knapsack into the tree. There were books, and paint. Maps of places Caroline had never heard of covered the walls. Caroline picked up a book and noticed it was covered with a layer of dust. She blew it away and then looking around, realized that everything in the tree house was covered with dust. Most of the walls had been broken in places.
“Why--?” she began, but Blake cut her off.
“I quit coming, after.” He stood pointing out a particularly large window. It overlooked a hillside dotted with purple wildflowers.
“What?” she said.
Blake just kept staring. And then she saw it, mixed among the wildflowers was the subtle outline of a grave.
“Oh,” she said slowly, “I get it. You know both of mine are dead, right?”
“Yeah,” came the response, “Let’s patch up some of these holes.” Blake pulled a hammer and a bag of nails from his knapsack. Caroline surveyed the situation.
“I think we’ll have to fix some of these from the outside.” She took the hammer from Blake and moved toward the largest hole.
“It’s too dangerous,” said Blake, “Let me do it,”
Caroline thought about arguing for a second, after all she was older, but then she decided against it. It was his tree house. She relinquished the hammer. Blake crawled through the opening and onto a branch outside.
“Be careful,” said Caroline, but before she could even get the words out she heard him fall.


When Blake didn’t respond, Caroline ran for the house. Mr. McKine met her in the yard. All she had to say was “treehouse.” The look on her face told the rest of the story. She sat with Christopher on the back steps, as instructed, until Mr. McKine returned carrying a semi-conscious Blake. As he headed for the car, Caroline noticed the tears that filled the corners of his eyes. The thought hit her deep in her gut, this is my fault.
“He’ll be fine,” Chris reassured her, “kids do dumb stuff like that all the time.”
As soon as the car was out of sight, Caroline ran into the house and to her room. She stuffed her clothes into her duffel bag, glanced at the row of paint cans lining the floor one last time, and then she ran.
Usually when she decided to leave a place, she had a plan. But now she just ran as hard as she possibly could, in no particular direction, with no particular destination in mind. She just ran. When she started breathing so hard that she thought her lungs might burst she stopped, dropped her bag, and sank to the ground beside it. She was on the hillside, the one that the tree house overlooked. She picked at the wildflowers and let them blow away. She watched a ladybug crawl all the way to the top of a flower stem, only to be knocked down by the wind. She thought hard about her next move and finally decided she really didn’t have one.
She sat there for what seemed like hours. And then suddenly she felt Mr. McKine sitting down in the grass beside her. She couldn’t bear to look at him.
“Caroline,” he whispered. “You scared me.” Caroline pulled away slightly.
“Blake’s fine,” he answered, reading the question on her face. “He broke his arm, but it’ll heal.” They sat in silence for a few minutes and then he added, “I thought you had left us for good.”
Caroline looked into his face now and saw that his eyes were filled with tears just like they had been a few hours earlier.
“Mr. McKine,” Caroline said and then corrected herself, “Don.”
“Yeah?”
Caroline took a deep breath and then did something she had not found the courage to do in her entire life. She looked Mr. McKine in the eye. “Do you think I could stay?” she asked.


When the two of them got back to the house, Caroline ran up to Blake’s room, but he wasn’t there. She looked in the studio, checked Chris’ room and downstairs, and then finally her own room.
And there he was, sitting on the edge of the window sill, arm wrapped in a new cast and hung in a sling. He was there, waiting for her.
“Want to help me with something?” she asked Blake. He stared at her a little tentatively and then nodded.
“My favorite color’s green,” she said and picked up a paint brush.

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Publication Date: 01-09-2010

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