Sentence 8

Here is a story based around a sentence suggested by my lovely wife nonosays. It's complete, so no cliffhnager this time. I've bolded the sentence in the story. Plus I've added a little commentary at the end in the comments.

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It wasn't an unusual tree. For Los Angeles, anyway. A stubby palm, as palms go, the top of its crown just barely taller than the roof of the two story craftsman house that suffered the tree to live in its backyard. Perhaps it was necessary, being in L.A., to have the tree right there on the property. A symbol, proof that the house was at the foot of the Hollywood hills, even if it was only one street up from the flat ribbon of Franklin Ave. The road the house faced was only a gentle slope that presaged the steep and winding curves in the more affluent areas above. The squat palm a link to its soaring, slender cousins on the boulevards that everyone has heard of.

The tree had taken root on the west side, very close to the south west corner, and grown unhindered until the trunk almost completely blocked the side-by-side windows in the second smallest bedroom. The boy living in the room didn't mind. First he had known no other way, the tree having been there for as long as he could remember and, in fact, longer than he had been alive. Second he had figured out that the setting sun, it's sometimes blistering heat and blinding light, was dampened considerably by the plant. And finally, he had windows on the south side, giving him a view of Los Angeles unrivaled by any other in the house so the lack of a view of his own backyard was a small thing.

He hardly ever thought about the palm, truth be told. It was a fixture, like the doorframe. Even with his high bed under the west windows it was rare that he gave it more than a cursory glance. In his 13th year there was a sudden burst of intense interest in the trunk. But it lasted only until the lapped, saw-toothed edges of the trunk proved completely unsuitable for climbing to effect an undetected escape into the night to do whatever his parents would forbid him to do at 13. It was only four feet from his sill (he measured) but the edges, each one the truncated end of a branch that had fallen away as the tree grew, wouldn't allow for an unscathed descent. Instead he learned where the wooden stairs creaked and became adept at climbing them silently. The palm once again shuffled into the background of his mind as teenage exploits took precedence.

It was perhaps a year later that the palm tree spoke to him for the first time.

The weather was hot and the old craftsman had no air-conditioning. A feature he complained about, secretly certain that his parents refused to upgrade out of spite rather than finances. He understood quite clearly about heat rising, the climb up the stairs to the second floor the only object lesson in that phenomenon anyone would ever need, and threw open all his windows on these sultry summer nights in an attempt to flush out the interior air with the slightly cooler atmosphere of the greater L.A. basin. It never helped as much as he hoped, adding frustration to his physical discomfort, but doing something seemed better than stewing.

And on that night, the one he'd remember for the rest of his life, he was laying on his sheet, windows open and eyes closed. His lids were shut with conscious nonchalance as though the act of keeping them closed would be a baited trap to lure sleep through the thick air and into his body.

The voice was dry and rasped at the beginning, smoothing and cooling as it worked through the words that sounded above him.

"I need the rain, but I like it better when the air is hot. Though I sleep better when it's wet. Do you like the rain?"

Opening his eyes, the boy saw a girl's face looming over him. The image and surprise made his breath catch in his chest. Her skin was crossed in overlapping lines like deep, neat scars marking a herringbone pattern over her features. Her color reminded him of fancy mustard, the kind his father coveted and he hated, a dusty beige with flecks of brown like freckles. A weak chin rested in scaly hands, the knuckles like gauntlet joints, the backs scarred in the same pattern as her face. The girl's hair grayish green in the low light, each strand finger-thick and stiff. She lacked lashes and brows, giving her an innocent and open look despite the other alien attributes.

The boy tried to breath and he tried to yell, the opposing reflexes compromising on a gasping cough as he scrambled out from under her view and flipped up onto his knees, facing her.

She followed him with her eyes but made no other move. Her elbows rested on his windowsill, her body stretched out like a plank across the open air, toes tucked into a lapped edge of the palm tree. There was no strain on her face, no indication of the effort it took to hold herself so.

"Ah," he said at a conversational volume. It was supposed to be a scream but lungs and brain hadn't sorted themselves out from the initial shock. "Ah, ah, ahhhhhh," he continued.

The girl's eyes opened wider and her mouth turned down in a sympathetic pout.

"I see I've already worried you," she whispered, "but that wasn't my intention."

Her hands gripped the sill and she folded the rest of her body forward, bringing her feet under herself slowly and ending in a crouch on his window. It was a feral pose, a creature collected in on itself for a pounce, and it registered as such somewhere far back in his mind.

Closer to the front, however, he was 14. And, it could not be denied, she was naked.

The curves of her body were not pronounced but they were evident. The swell of hips and tapered waist. Rounded breasts and feminine legs. The angular scars, he noticed, covered her frame, the color of her skin unlike any he had seen on the very colorful streets of Los Angeles. Darker in between the lines, grading to a light gold the nearer it got to the scars. She moved with a lithe grace though he couldn't see any muscles under the skin, limbs smooth and straight. Her short hair fanning out from the center of her head like a hat brim, green, he realized now.

He felt a tug somewhere within himself, a pin being pulled and releasing a new feeling. His eyes widened and moistened, the breath in his lungs deepened, each draw seemed to fill him full of a tingling liquid that suffused his skin and sparked between his fingers.

It was a frozen moment. And in it he learned why his mother had books of paintings, why she dragged him to museums to look at images of haystacks and dead people. His father's obsession with restored houses and deco posters. With a clarity he wouldn't have been able to explain just then it became obvious why his parents always pointed out mountain views during long car rides that he'd rather have skipped. Why they would stop to look at the still quiet forms of trees that didn't do anything and, to his mind, didn't serve any purpose.

"I wanted to talk before you go." The girl said. She stared at him a moment then became interested in his pillow, a rough hand poking at it cautiously, then sinking into the soft material with a grin.

"Go?" he asked, unsure she had heard him over the sound of his heart.

She slapped the pillow once more and looked back at him. "Don't you have to go soon?" Her stiff lips parted to show jagged saw-blade teeth as she spoke.

"Go where?"

"Leaving the nest, right? Don't you do that?" She stood and stretched, arching her back to avoid the bottom of the window frame. Stepping onto the bed she left a dusty foot print on the sheet before stepping down to the floor of his room. Bending at the waist, almost folding in half, she touched the hardwood floor. Her fingers stroked the grain.

Suddenly worried he scrambled from the bed, standing by the door to his room as he gestured to the floor. "I…uh, I didn't do that." He stammered.

As though she hadn't heard, the girl straightened and stamped her foot on the boards. He could feel the surprisingly heavy thud travel up his legs.

"Oakish," she snapped with a frown, "hate 'em. Oh, I'm so old, so smooth and pretty with all my leaves." She stamped again and gave a dry and rustling snort. "Well now you're a floor, stupid twig."

He felt her anger melt as she glanced at his book shelves. Unsure how she'd feel about paper he grabbed through his brain for the question she had just asked.

"Leave the nest? Uh…you mean move out? I won't be leaving for a while. I've gotta finish school, maybe when I go to college…" he was babbling.

She regarded him again. "Soon though, you'll have to go."

"Well," he was still struck by her, watching her sway from foot to foot as she stood there, "well, not for five years. That's a long time."

It was odd to hear her laugh. "Five years?" she asked incredulously. She clapped her hands and hopped in amusement. "You don't talk to many trees, do you?"

He didn't figure that was worth answering.

"In five years," she continued, her tone softening, "…how do I put this?...I may remember something funny I wanted to tell you tonight. And in another fifty I might figure I should check and see if you're there to tell it to."

She reached out a hand and rested it on his arm. Her skin was cooler than his, rough and itchy. He could feel loose, fibrous strands like small threads where her fingers were worn from use. The touch was evidence that she was there, solidifying her presence.

He hadn't even begun to consciously question the encounter, the reality of it all. Then the contact made him realize that some part of him had been reeling, unsure and off-balance. He noticed it only for a moment, her fingers stroking down his arm soothing away the doubt.

"Do you see? You have to go soon."

Numbed and slightly embarrassed, he nodded.

She smiled at him, gave him a motherly pat and twirled once around. "I just wanted to say hello before you went. I hardly ever get to talk to anyone."

With that she bounded up onto his bed and launched out the window, her body stretched to it's full length as she leapt onto the palm. The smooth arms and legs wrapped around the trunk in a hug before she started to hike herself up.

The boy went quickly to the window, stumbling onto the bed, his face hitting the pillow before he leaned out to look up at her.

"Wait, wait!" he shouted, then looked behind himself quickly, as though his parents were going to burst through the door at the noise.

She stopped her ascent and looked down at him, saying nothing.

And he didn't know what to say. There was so much he wanted to ask.

Or was there? What was there to ask? He thought furiously for a few seconds, the girl staring with her wide eyes and a patient calm. No questions came that didn't sound dense. His mother had read him myths, he knew what the girl was. And beyond that, what was there?

One question, but it revealed something. And at 14 it was hard to ask. Haltingly, he spoke.

"Will you be watching me?" his lips pursed tight, fearing the need was too evident in his voice, that laughter or worse would follow.

The girl smiled, but without any meanness in her eyes. "Of course, stupid. I'm right here." She gestured to the four foot gap between the palm and his window. With grace and speed she turned back to the trunk and scurried up into the branches at the top, disappearing from his sight.

The boy stared for a moment longer, then pulled his head back in the window of his room.


"Oh, hey," her voice dragged him quickly back out, craning to see her face, hanging upside down from the fronds. "Don't get caught talking to a tree too often, ok? It didn't work out so well for the last one."

He laughed at that and with a final nod she drew back up into the foliage and out of sight.