Anyway, normally I wouldn't care about someone's yard, but the Bakers mess bugged my dad big-time, and he channeled his frustration into our yard. He said it was our neighbourly duty to show them what a yard's supposed to look like. So while Mike and Matt are busy plumping up their boa, I'm having to mow and edge our yard, then sweep the walkways and guyer, which is going a little overboard, if you ask me.

    And you'd think Juli's dad - who's a big, strong, brick-laying dude -  would fix the place up, but no. According to my mom, he spends all his free time painting. His landscapes don't seem like anything special to me, but judging by his price tags, he thinks quite a lot of them. We see them every year at the Mayfield County Fair, and my parents always say the same thing: "The world would have more beauty in it if he'd fix up the yard instead."

    Mom and Juli's mom do talk some, I think my mom feels sorry for Mrs. Baker - she says she married a dreamer, and because of that, one of the two of them will always be unhappy.

    Whatever. Maybe Juli's aesthetic sensibilities have been permanently screwed up by her father and none of this is her fault, but Juli has always thought that that sycamore tree was God's gift to our little corner of the universe.

    Back in the third and forth grades she used to clown around with her brothers in the branches or peel big chunks of bark off so they could slide down the crook in its trunk. It seemed like they were playing in it when ever my mom took us somewhere in the car. Juli'd be swinging from the branches, ready to fall and break every bone in her body, while we were waiting at the stoplight, and my mom would shake her head and say, "Don't you ever climb that tree like that, do you hear me, Bryce? I never want to see you doing that! You either, Lynetta, That is much too dangerous."

    My sister would roll her eyes and say, "As if," while I'd slump beneath the window and pray for the light to change before Juli squealed my name for the world to hear.

    I did try to climb it once in the fifth grade. It was the day after Juli had rescued my kite from its mutant toy-eating foliage. She climbed miles up to get my kite, and when she came down, she was actually very cool about it. She didn't hold my kite hostage and stick her lips out like I was afraid she might. She just handed it over and then backed away.

   I was relieved, but I also felt like a weenie. When I'd seen where my kite was trapped, I was sure it was a goner. Not Juli. She scrambled up and got it down in no time. Man, it was embarrassing.

    So I made a mental picture of how high she'd climbed, and the next day I set off to outdo her by at least two branches. I made it past the crook, up a few limbs, and then - just to see how I was doing - I looked down.