By that time most of the kids had gathered for the bus. They weren't saying anything to me, just looking up at me and turning from time to time to talk to each other. Then Bryce appeared, so I knew the bus was about to arrive. I searched across the rooftops and sure enough, there it was, less than four blocks away.

    My heart was crazy with panic. I didn't know what to da! I couldn't leave and let them cut down the tree! I cried, "You can't cut it down! You just can't!"

   One of the men shook his head and said, "I am this close to calling the police, You are trespassing and obstructing progress on a contracted job. Now are you going to come down or ar we going to cut you down?"

    The bus was three blocks away. I'd never missed school for any reason other than legitimate illness, but I knew in my heart that I was going to miss my ride. "You're going to have to cut me down!" I yelled. Then I had and idea. They'd never cut it down if all of us were in the tree. They'd have to listen! "Hey, guys!: I called to my classmates. "Get up here with me! They can't cut it down if we're all up here! Marcia! Tony! Bryce! C'mon, you guys, don't let them do this!"

    They just stood there staring up at me.

    I could see the bus, one block away. "Come on, you guys! You don't have to come up this high. Just a little ways. Please!"

    The bus blasted up and pulled to the curb in front of the trucks, and when the doors folded open, one by one my classmates climbed on board.

    What happened after that is a bit of a blur. I remember the neighbours gathering, and the police with megaphones. I remember the fire brigade, and some guy saying it was his blasted tree and I'd Dorn well better get out of it.

    Somebody tracked down my mother, who cried and pleaded and acted not at all the way a sensible mother should, but I was not coming down. I was not coming down.

    Then my father came racing up. He jumped out of his pickup truck, and after talking with my mother for a minutes, he got the guy in the cherry picker to give him a lift up to where I was. After that it was all over. I started crying and tried to get him to look out over the rooftops, but he wouldn't. He said that no view was worth his little girl's safety. 

    He got me down and he took me home, only I couldn't stay there. I couldn't stand the sound of chain saws in the distance.

    So Dad took me with him to work, and while he put up a block wall, I sat in his truck and cried. 

    I must've cried for two weeks straight. Oh, sure, I went to school and I functioned the best I could, but I didn't go there on the bus. I started riding my bike instead, taking the long way so I wouldn't have to go up to Collier Street. Up to a pile of sawdust that used to be the earth's most magnificent sycamore tree.