Window #12

The most beautiful time to see the girl with the tree growing out her spine is autumn. The leaves that make up her hair shift from green to fiery orange, to burnished gold. Sometimes, when she walks down the aisle of the bus, leaves drop from her hair, and she doesn’t like that. She’s worked hard at perfecting the most graceful walk you could imagine. She could easily be a bottle dancer in Fiddler on the Roof. In fact, last spring, we all encouraged her to try out for the school production, but she wouldn’t. It’s rare to see a leaf fall now. She barely moves in the seat, eyes pitched forward as if she’s scouting the road for bumps. She’s discovered a way to brace herself when we hit a pothole. So, leaf loss is minimal, which means all the girls are jealous of her hair. Jill was the first to shake her. One morning, she sat next to the autumn tree girl, grabbed her shoulders with both hands and shook her hard. The girl was too startled to even scream as leaves rained down from her hair. Some of the boys wanted to rake them up and jump in the pile, but the girls quickly collected the leaves and decorated their own hair with them. They compared their red and orange highlights, talked of how they’d never go back to their normal color. Of course, that was it. Pretty soon, the girl would barely make it on the bus before someone would grab her by the shoulders and shake. The boys were intimidated at first. The girls were so quick to gather the leaves. But soon, the boys formed small, roving bands armed with rakes. The girls countered with pruners and garden shears. They even brought those trimmers for cutting the high limbs. The girls almost always outsmarted the boys. Nobody even bothered shaking her any more. A couple of the girls grabbed her and held her in place while the others trimmed her branches. A week of that and there was nothing left. We can’t even call her the autumn tree girl any more. Better to call her the spine pole girl. Her walk’s not the same either. She tried to maintain it for a while, to walk with her hands out to her side, as if she balanced books on her head. She tried to keep it up, but we could see her hands drop after a few days. Then by the start of the next week, her shoulders curled in, her head began to droop. There’s no way she’d make Fiddler now, not even the chorus. We kept waiting for the leaves to return, but they never did. So, Jimmy got some of us to give a few of the leaves we’d saved back. They were yellowed and a bit crinkly, but they were still nice. He sat behind her one day and scotch taped a bunch of them to her bare trunk. We felt pretty good the rest of the day. But the next day when she got on the bus most of the leaves were gone except one still dangling by the half-peeled scotch tape. We felt miserable, and now we don’t know what to do.