Free Windfall by Sara Cassidy Page B

family decided not to buy anything new for a year . Except food. I started it. I’d learned that an oil company was polluting farmland in Guatemala and not compensating local farmers. I formed Girls for Renewable Resources, Really! We protested and got the company to pay up.
    Olive joined GRRR!, but her parents didn’t want Olive getting too involved. When she couldn’t come to our protest, Olive got her parents to watch An Inconvenient Truth , a movie about global warming. They were so freaked out about carbon levels that they decided Olive had to be in GRRR! They vowed to reuse, reduce and recycle with a vengeance.
    So, if Olive is out of batteries, our walkie-talkie days are over.
    â€œMorse code?” I propose. “Telegraph?”
    Olive giggles. “How about semaphore flags?”
    â€œCarrier pigeon!” I say. “Smoke signals.”
    â€œWe could just yell,” Olive points out. “It isn’t that far.”
    â€œWe could put a string between our houses, and zip-line notes to each other.” I’m serious this time.
    â€œA laundry line would do the trick,” Olive muses.
    â€œNo.” I grin. “I’ve got an idea. Let me surprise you.”
    â€œOkay.” Liza plucks an apple from a branch and takes a noisy bite. She frowns. “Sad news about Richard, huh?”
    â€œYeah,” I say. “It’s weird. He just sat there and never talked. You would think you wouldn’t miss him. But it feels so big, so loud , that he’s gone.”
    Olive nods. “I know. Mom says he made us anxious in a good way. He reminded us how lucky we are to have a warm home.”
    â€œMaybe,” I say. “I just wanted him to be warm, in a little apartment somewhere, and not always on public display.”
    â€œWell, he’s not on public display now,” Olive deadpans.
    â€œThat’s for sure,” I say. “He has vanished. Disappeared.”
    I remember the feeling I had in the park. “Where do you think he is?” I ask.
    â€œNowhere,” Olive says. “We’re just a mass of electrical impulses, Liza. Without our bodies, we’re like a DVD without a DVD player. There’s no picture, no sound, no story. The only life after death is the worms that feast on your body and the plants that shoot up as you rot away.”
    â€œUgh, Olive! Fat worms and a crop of tulips? That’s life after death?”
    â€œWhat do you think? That Richard’s an angel, floating around looking down on us? Or that he’s”—she puts on a spooky voice—“a ghost?”
    I try to think up an answer. Then the tree house groans. It sways, and then boards tear from each other with a screech, leaving raw edges and bent nails waving in the air.
    Olive and I freeze. We stare wildly into each other’s eyes. We’re half smirking, as if it’s funny, and half terrified. Suddenly, the entire tree house skids down the tree trunk, scraping off bark and snapping branches. I protect my eyes with one hand and grab the windowsill with the other. Olive screams.
    Then— whomp —it stops . My tailbone throbs . Olive moans and rubs the back of her head. We sit for a few moments. Then, slowly and without a word, we ease ourselves out the little doorway and leap to the ground. We run like mad, yelping and laughing. We fall onto the lawn, clutching each other.

Chapter Three
    There’s a wide circle of yellow caution tape around the apple tree. Actually, it’s a yellow streamer. My enviro-mom doesn’t like plastic, but she didn’t want to pay for biodegradable caution tape. You have to buy it in bulk. “Let’s hope we never need five hundred feet of caution tape,” Mom told the hardware store clerk.
    Silas made a sign: Tree Ailing: Do Not Climb . The entire tree is on a slant.
    â€œLike the leaning tower of Pisa,” Silas comments at breakfast.
    â€œTilting,” Mom says,