A Song Of Shadows

FIVE

The tree did not bite me when I finally passed. It just stood there like a...like a tree. It just stood quiet, and tall and almost lifeless. The only movement from it had been caused by a light breeze from the east. But something about it had creeped me out.

I left school after half past four, and since we were in winter, the sun was had descended very low and shone bright orange over the school. Despite the fact that I had pleaded him to wait a while longer, Nathan had left earlier. Around quarter past three. He said he had something to rush home to, and since there really wasn't anything important keeping me at school, he thought it was illogical to wait for me.

I didn't tell him the real reason I stayed at school longer. I figured it would have been embarrassing to tell your best friend that you were afraid of a pine tree because it was giving you the creeps. Knowing Nathaniel Sunday, he would have laughed at me and probably would have called me crazy too.

So I sat at Computer Lab's porch and kept my eye on the open gate, while deliberating whether or not it was safe to go through it. The pine tree was difficult to not to look at, of course. The tree was immediately to the right of the gate on the right side, which had now been closed. Lobengula High School's front gate are really two big maroon sliding gates facing one another and separated by the guard room. The school only keeps one gate open, and the other closed. In the morning, it had been the gate to the right, but now the gate on the left was open.

I can still pass without getting too close to the tree, I told myself. It's just a tree. A hanging tree.

I wished Matthew hadn't left early. He would have walked me walked me home like he normally did, told me a few of his past experiences which usually made me laugh my lungs out. Maybe he would have told me about that one time, when he was still in grade four, a girl much bigger than he was had mistook his pen for hers, and beat him up when he tried to take it back. He would often talk about how he couldn't hit her because everytime he was about to swing, his classmates would say, in Ndebele, "What! So you're gonna hit a girl!" and he'd pull his punch. At the end of the day, the girl was looking for something in her school bag and found her actual pen. That's when he got his back. He would say he didn't bother tell the girl that he had told her so because the girl knew how to pummel.

I smiled to myself, almost forgetting about the eerie tree that was keeping me from going home. It was hard to believe any girl was ever taller than Matthew —or bigger than him. He wasn't necessarily the tallest person in the fifth form, —John was— but he was considerably tall. Tsitsi had estimated his height to be just over 180 centimetres. Being only a centimetre or two taller than I was, Tsitsi often got quite obsessed with height when it came to guys. I sort of was too, and my Matthew wasn't feeling okay.

My smile faded when my eyes drifted back to the tree. I couldn't understand why everytime I looked at it, I saw Michael hanging from it; or why it seemed to vibrate with a different frequency compare to the trees around it.

It's just a tree.

Telling myself that once more, I thought about getting up without walking straight towards the gate without giving the tree another look to escape the school yard, but my anxiety got the better of me once again.

"What's so scary about that tree," I heard a voice say from my left.

There now sat a young boy, about eight years of age, wearing a red golf shirt with thin black and white stripes, and a khaki pair of shorts. I hadn't seen him approach, nor had I seen him sit down; but I had seen his face somewhere before. His cute round eyes and small nose were vaguely familiar, but I couldn't recall where I had seen him before.