Page 283 of Disarm
I park and kill the engine. The sudden silence rings in my ears.
Caleb turns to me, eyes huge.
“This is real,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say, heart pounding. “We made it.”
His gaze flicks from the treehouse back to me. For a second, I see all of it in his face: the hospital, the beeping monitors, the IOP circle, the raisin, the safety plan on our fridge, and the list with the last line, the trip Miguel kept promising to this ridiculous treehouse.
He swallows hard. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s go be alive in a tree.”
I laugh, a little choked, and squeeze his hand once before we climb out of the truck.
The air smells like damp earth and pine needles and salt. My chest expands in a way it hasn’t in a long time.
This isn’t an escape.It’s a choice.
Our choice.
We haul our bags out of the back: the torta Tupperware, his journal, my Switch, and a copy of his safety plan tucked into the front pocket of his backpack. At the base of the spiral stairs, Caleb looks up, then back at me.
“Race you,” he says, eyes bright.
“Loser does dishes,” I shoot back.
He grins.
We climb.
FORTY-NINE
CALEB
Treehouses are supposed to be for kids and cartoon animals. Not for twenty-two-year-olds with safety plans in their backpacks and a mental health all-star team on speed dial. But when we reach the top of the spiral stairs and the treehouse opens up around us, for a second I get it. Why little-kid me used to circle catalog pictures with “play structure included” and write “yes please” in the margins.
It feels like stepping into another life.
The door is glass framed in warm wood and when Miguel unlocks it and swings it open, the whole place smells like sun-warmed pine and lemon cleaner. Light pours in from the floor-to-ceiling windows, filtered green through the redwoods. There’s a tiny kitchen to the left—stove, mini-fridge, open shelves with mismatched mugs. A little couch to the right, a low table. Stairs curve up to a loft where the bed is, half-hidden behind a railing.
Outside, through the glass, I can see the rope bridge leading to a deck with two chairs and a railing that probably cost more than my entire childhood.
I step over the threshold slowly, like the floor might vanish if I move too fast.
“Holy shit,” I say again, because it bears repeating.
Miguel sets his bag down and just… watches me. Volume check, I can tell, even without him asking. “What’s it at?” he says anyway, leaning against the wall, arms crossed, pretending to be casual and failing.
I take inventory. Heart racing, but in a rollercoaster way, not a razor-in-the-bathroom way. Skin buzzing. Thoughts loud, but not lethal.
“Four?” I say. “Four point five. Maybe five when I look over there.” I jerk my chin toward the window where the tops of trees sway like we’re in a ship’s mast.
He nods, satisfied. “Valid,” he says. “We’re, like, forty feet up. Your inner squirrel just needs a minute.”
“I don’t think squirrels have vertigo,” I mutter.
He grins and nudges my shoulder with his. “You wanna look around or sit and freak out first?” he asks gently.
“Multitask,” I say. “Freak out while looking around.”
