Page 3 of The Tree of Spirits
“Oooh, what happened? What did Dante do?” I felt my mouth stretch into a very wide, very eager smile.
“The whole reason you had bloody feet was because Dante egged you on about how much better of a runner he is,” Mom said.
“Hey, she didn’t have to try to prove me wrong!”
“Sure I did,” I told him. “It’s kind of my job to always prove you wrong, bro.”
“I’m sure you would have exercised some restraint in this situation if only Dante had told you about his othergoal.” Mom bit out the last word like it was poison on her tongue.
“What goal? What am I missing?” I looked back and forth between my mom and my brother.
Dante just rolled his eyes. “Mom thinks that if I hadn’t egged you on, we wouldn’t have run out of bandages. She was irrationally paranoid that I was going to spontaneously split my head open and she wouldn’t have anything to cover the wound.”
“It was a very rational concern!” Mom chimed in. “You were always trying these crazy stunts, Dante. Remember the time you tried to do a backflip off the roof of the old bus stop?”
So that was his ‘other’ goal.
“You tried to do a backflip off the roof?” It was easy to laugh now since I knew he was ok. “Glad I missed that one.”
Dante was sometimes such a doofus.
“You missed a lot of awesomeness, Savi,” he told me. “I almost nailed the landing.”
“On thethirdtry,” Mom said, her lips tight.
“Wait, you tried to do a backflip off the roofthree times?” I gawked at Dante.
He nodded proudly. “I can tell you’re impressed.”
“Uh, yeah, I’m impressed…that you survived! You have got to be the most reckless person I’ve ever met. Seriously, bro, how are you still alive?”
Mom sighed. “I ask myself that same question every day.”
My brother flicked his hand, sweeping our concerns away. “I had everything completely under control.”
I snorted. “I’m surprised you would risk a skull fracture. That would mess with this whole…thingyou have going on there.” I waved my hands around his head, indicating his messy hair. It always stood up in a hundred different directions.
“Yes, my hair is awesome. Thanks for noticing.”
“Awesome?” I raised one brow. “Not exactly the word I would have used.”
Somewhere high above, the sky roared.
I looked up, smiling into the blanket of clouds overhead. “Thanks for backing me up.”
“Who are you talking to?” Dante asked me.
“The spirits.”
“My sweet, idealistic sister,” he said, wrapping his arm around me, “that wasn’t the spirits. It’s just the coming storm.”
Mom frowned at the rapidly darkening sky. “I hope it’s not a bad one.”
“The news says it probably will be,” Dante told her. “Maybe even as bad as that storm we had a few years ago in Bayshore. It knocked out the power to the whole town. And when the lights in the building went out, Savannah was totally freaking out.”
I blushed. “It was really scary!”
“You cried until I agreed to go find a flashlight.”
