Free The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z. by Kate Messner

so tall he has to duck down when he walks through the doorway to his office at school, and then he looks all hunched over at his desk. Kids leave that office crying all the time.
    Those fan-shaped leaves are calling me, though.
    I check the driveway. No cars. And no lights on in the house. I find a foothold and pull myself up to sit on the fence. I perch there for a minute, waiting for the dog. I don’t actually know if he has a dog, but it’s been my experience that if a vicious dog is going to show up, it shows up when you’re trapped somewhere, like inside a fence you’ve just jumped. There’s no barking, so I drop to the other side.
    It’s the coolest backyard I’ve ever seen, and not just because of the funky fan-leafed tree. Exotic-looking shrubs decorate all the corners, and some bright fuchsia flowers are still blooming next to the pumpkin vines along the fence, even though we’ve had three nights of frost.
    I grab a few leaves from the short tree—it’s nice to be able to reach them, for once—and then notice another tree whose leaves I don’t have yet. This one towers over the yard—a Mr. Randolph tree. It has feathery leaves with a whole bunch on each stem. I think Mrs. Loring’s leaf key calls it a compound leaf. Whatever it is, it would look great in my collection.
    There’s just one problem. The lowest branch is at least eight feet off the ground. On my very tallest day, I’m five four. I look around to see if there’s anything I can stand on. There’s a little rocking chair out on the patio. It’s not very big, but it would probably give me enough of a boost that I could grab onto the branch and pull myself up.
    I jog over, pick up the rocking chair, and settle it under the lowest part of the tree. Carefully, I step up and wait to catch my balance. I can’t quite reach, but I decide it’s jumpable. I bend my knees, shaking when the chair wobbles, and spring up into the air.
    I grab onto the branch and dig my fingertips into the scratchy bark on top. My body is sort of swaying back and forth from my jump, and my sneakers are dangling above the seat of the rocking chair. It occurs to me that jumping back onto a rocking chair will be a lot harder than jumping off it. Why do I always think of these things too late?
    Well I’m here now, so I might as well get the leaves. Except the leaves are way out at the end of this branch, swaying in the wind.
    I’m clinging to the middle of the branch, also swaying in the wind.
    I decide my best bet is to imagine I’m on the monkey bars, so I dig my fingernails deeper into the bark, force myself to let go with my left hand, and move it in front of my right hand. I’m swaying like crazy, and the bark is digging into my palms. But I manage to scoot forward a few more times. The branch gets skinnier out at the end, so it actually gets easier to hold on. I’m within one scoot of the leaves when I hear a soft crackling and then—
    Crack!
    The branch snaps off in the middle, I tumble to the ground in a heap, and it bounces off my shoulder into my lap. I rub my barky hands together and do a quick check for injuries.
    My ankle is a little sore from landing on it wrong, but otherwise, I’m okay. And I got the leaves—a whole branchful.
    Then the sliding glass door in the back of the house slides open.
    Mr. Randolph is standing there in a gray Navy sweatshirt and baby blue flannel pajama bottoms, which doesn’t sound scary, but it is. He has the look he gets on his face right before he screams at kids in the lunchroom. I wonder if I can be expelled for this, since it’s not actually at school. I decide not to ask.
    “Miss Zales.” He slides the door shut behind him and folds his arms. His feet are bare and he has enormous toes. They’re tapping the deck planks while he talks. “Somehow, you seem to have wandered into my yard.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Somehow, you failed to notice the fence that encircles my yard.” Tap, tap.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Yes, you