Free Finding the Worm by Mark Goldblatt

until she was back on the ground. It took her less than a minute. She
was
a better climber than I was. She called back up, “So are you stuck, or what?”
    “No!”
    “Are you sure?”
    “I’m fine, Beverly. Just leave me alone.”
    “C’mon, Julian. You can do it.”
    “I know I can do it! I got up here, didn’t I?”
    “I’m not leaving until you’re down.”
    “All right, I’m coming down,” I said.
    She was making such a big deal out of it that I had to remind myself that I
wasn’t
stuck. Still, I was thinking about falling—which always makes climbing feel harder than it is. You don’t want to let go of the thing you’re holding on to, and you don’t trust the thing you’re reachingfor. It was only after I got to the last few branches that I relaxed again.
    Beverly started to laugh as I hung from the bottom branch and dropped to the ground. “You’re the world’s slowest climber.”
    “That’s
real
funny.”
    “It’s
kind of
funny.”
    As we were talking, she walked over to where Quentin’s sneakers had landed. She picked them up and slung them over her shoulder.
    “Why do you care about those?” I said.
    “It was a stupid thing that Lonnie did.”
    “How is that your business?”
    “You came for them too!”
    “Lonnie’s my friend. I didn’t want him to get in trouble. Or Quentin. I didn’t want either of them to get in trouble.”
    “Well, I came for the Quakers,” she said. “You know what? I think you did too.”
    I couldn’t think of a good comeback for that. She had me dead to rights. She and I were there for the same reason. There was no use denying it, which meant there was nothing more to say. We were staring at one another, on the lawn behind the Bowne House. It felt weird, like a gunfight in a Western movie, except it also felt different,since now the two of us had a secret, and we had to trust each other to keep it between us.
    “You don’t have to admit I’m faster than you.…”
    “C’mon, Beverly!”
    “As long as we both know it.”
    She turned and walked toward the stone wall, then jumped down to the sidewalk below. I wasn’t going to follow her, but then she stopped and looked back. We were going in the same direction. If I waved her away and waited until she turned the corner, I’d only wind up walking home half a block behind her.
    She rolled her eyes when I hopped down to the sidewalk beside her, but I let it go. I’d had enough of the Bowne House and Quakers for one night. Counting the painting, I’d had enough of them period.
    As we started to walk, I said, “What are you going to do with the sneakers?”
    “I’ll tree them on the block.”
    “Lonnie’s going to be mad.…”
    “If you’re worried about that, you can tell him I did it.”
    “I’m not going to tell him who did it. I’m just saying he’s going to be mad.”
    We walked another half block without talking. Then, at last, she said, “Do you think they’re grateful?”
    “Who?”
    “The Quakers.”
    “How can they be grateful? They’re dead.”
    “Didn’t you ever hear of the Grateful Dead?”
    “That’s the worst joke I’ve ever heard,” I said.
    But then the two of us cracked up. Hard. We kept cracking up the entire walk back to Thirty-Fourth Avenue.

January 16, 1970
Rabbi Salzberg and the Apple
    It turned out Lonnie’s reaction wasn’t the one I should’ve been worried about. He noticed Quentin’s sneakers hanging from a tree in front of the Hampshire House, where Quentin lived, a couple of days later. They were real noticeable, swaying back and forth in the breeze. He asked me if I was the one who’d done it, and I told him no—which was the truth, even if it wasn’t the
whole
truth.
    The two of us stood there, staring up at them, and Lonnie nodded. He had to admit: whoever had done it had done a good job. They were even higher than he’d treed them behind the Bowne House. Plus, the sneakers were back on the block, right below Quentin’s