The Other Side of the Tree

by Amanda Bintz

“You know how when you’re a kid, you’re always looking for portals?”

My boyfriend, James, takes a moment to process what I thought was a rhetorical question before responding. “I… guess?”

Our feet crunch on gravel of the old playground. The swing-set has turned to rust since my grandparents sold the campground. We’re technically trespassing. I brush past spiny blackcap brambles to enter the forest.

“Y’know. The wardrobe to Narnia. Platform 9¾.”

James follows, deftly avoiding the thorns. “Maybe I didn’t have a good enough imagination.”

I don’t look back when I speak. “I spent a lot of time in my imagination.”

He reaches forward and grabs my hand, holding me in place. I turn and smile, reassuring: I’m okay. “C’mon, let’s go. I don’t want to be late.”

“Late for what?”

***

—13 years prior

“Stop,” I say.

Ashley, a willowy girl with a wide mouth and large teeth, counts the tally marks she’s drawn in her notebook. I am sitting with her and my cousin Samantha on the grass beside the swing-set. Ashley consults the MASH board on the opposite page and brays like a donkey. Samantha peers over to see what’s so funny. Samantha looks much like me, except she’s thinner and her hair is a different color.

Ashley shakes out the paper and clears her throat. “You live in a shack with 40 cats. You’re a cat lady. You’re married to no one.” Ashley looks at Samantha. Samantha stifles performative giggles.

“Hah, yeah. That’s funny,” I say. “I do like cats.”

“Must be why you always smell like tuna,” Ashley mutters.

“Ashley!” Samantha hisses. Ashley brays again.

I stand abruptly. “I think I heard my mom calling. I should—”

“Okay,” Ashley quips. “Bye.”

The peals of cruel laughter fade as I walk into the forest. When I’m out of their sight, I run. I run until I lose my breath and have to stop and lean against the support of a tree to find it again. As my lungs fill with the heady, pine-scented air, my eyes fill with tears. I sink to the forest floor and hug my knees to my chest as I cry.

When my family moved here, to the place where my parents grew up, my only comfort was that at least I already had a friend in my new school: my cousin Samantha, who I had loved playing with at this campground when we were younger. I thought she would make me feel welcome, but after a year here, I’ve never felt more alone. I thought this week at our grandparents’ campground before school starts up again next month would give us an opportunity to grow closer, for me to form a meaningful allyship with which to enter eighth grade, but of course she invited Ashley. I cry harder as I think of the friends I moved away from—the friends who, by this point, have all stopped writing back. I can’t stop crying now that the floodgates have opened. I cry until I hyperventilate, and choke, and gag; I’m shocked to calmness when I feel bile rising in my throat.

In the shared campground restrooms, I splash my tear- and snot-streaked face clean over the dirty sink and pat it dry with thin, brown paper towels. I stare at myself in the clouded mirror. I move my eyes slowly, from side to side, up and down, to try to settle my contacts, which feel gluey and foreign on my eyeballs. I wipe the smudged makeup from beneath my eyes with a clump of damp paper towel and throw the black-smeared brown pulp away.

I stare at myself in the clouded mirror. My contacts settle as I blink through fresh tears.

There is a voice outside: an old woman, calling out to someone else. I can’t hear the individual words, but the cadence is clear; she’s letting whoever she’s with know she’s going to go use the restrooms. She’s too close for me to leave now without being seen. I don’t want to be seen right now. I duck into a stall to hide. I sit, jeans on, on the toilet.

The new arrival opens the door. She hums to herself as she walks to one of the three coin-operated shower stalls on the far wall. Her foam flip-flops shuffle and smack against the cement floor. I hear her open and close the curtain and slide two coins into the slot. I tip-toe out of the restrooms just as the hot water she paid 50 cents for hisses forth.

I return to the forest.

I walk over moss-covered fallen trunks. I step carefully around circular gatherings of spongy white-capped mushrooms. Sunlight filters down in slants. Blue peeks out from the grand canopy of summer-green leaves.

There is an oddly shaped tree in the distance that I have never seen before, standing alone on a rise. It looks like someone tried to chop it down but gave up a third of the way through. I pick my way across its large bed of dead branches and leaves and acorns.

Within the trunk of the tree is a chair. Roughly carved, but clearly intended to be a chair. It is set back in the innards of the massive tree. Its wide, deep seat is patterned with many rings. Its high back slopes upward and melds with the bark of its towering trunk. Its feet are gargantuan roots. The whole thing worn smooth by time.

I inspect it for splinters and spiders before I sit.

***

Twigs snap under our feet. Birds call in the canopy above.

“Here we are.”

“Oh!” James exclaims. “O… kay. Did you, uh… carve that chair?”

I snort. “Yeah. I brought you here to reveal my secret passion for woodworking.”

“Hey, anything’s possible!”

“Keep that open mind, will you?”

“What?”

In a blink, she’s there. I’m there.

I don’t materialize pixel by pixel, or shimmer in see-through then grow solid, or poof in on a cloud of ethereal smoke. There are no sparkles or fizzles of static or glimmers. I’m just there, where I wasn’t before. Like a movie that’s skipped several frames ahead.

James stares. “What?”

“Hi,” I say.

Younger me has long bangs swept to the side. I fought the natural wave in those bangs with my straightener every morning before school. I’m wearing a favorite old gray zip-up hoodie I still own and beat-up purple Chuck Taylors that look like they must have given out at the end of that summer all those years ago.

“Uh… hi?” she says. “Are you…?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“Woah.” She looks around. “So is this, like, a time-traveling tree?”

James points stiffly. “That’s you, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I say. “Me when I was 12.”

“Huh,” he says. Then he jolts with abrupt concern. “Wait! Isn’t this a paradox? Aren’t we going to break the space-time continuum or something?!”

I snort and pat his shoulder. “Calm down, Doc Brown.”

12-year-old me chuckles, despite her confusion.

As I approach her, I think about how much stranger it is from this side of the tree. Because I remember being her. I remember running away from those girls. I remember crying in that bathroom. I remember this chair. I remember me.

“Wow. Okay,” she says. (I say.) “So do you have like… a message I’m supposed to bring back to the past to save the world or something?”

“Nope.” I shrug. “I’m just here to tell you it’s all gonna be okay.” I meet her eyes, which are starting to go a little glossy. They are done up with shimmery green eyeshadow and unobscured by glasses. “I know it sucks right now. Like, it really sucks. But it’s a blip. You leave. You forget all those people. You’ll start to forget their names, even. You live a better life than you ever thought you could. A life you’ll be happy to have. Trust me. You only have to go back there for major holidays. And family tragedies.”

She takes all this in quietly. She looks at James then glances away, too shy to maintain eye contact. “And we… we have a boyfriend?”

I laugh. “Yep.” I sling my arm around his shoulders. “And he’s pretty great!”

James shrinks under the compliment. “Eh, I’m nothing special. Don’t trust men. That’s my advice.”

I laugh again. So does she.

We stare into our own eyes. She stands and allows herself to be folded into my arms. She’s hardly smaller than me, but she is still just a child. She’s crying again, but they are silent, gentle tears this time. I hold her (myself) tighter. “I know it sucks that you have to go back to that now. But when you feel stuck, just remember. Remember that one day you’ll be on this side of the tree. Okay?”

“Okay.” She wipes her eyes and gives me a wobbly smile. “Thank you. Uh… see you next time around, I guess?”

“You will,” I say with conviction.

I blink back my own tears. James takes my hand and squeezes. She sits back down.

We look into each other’s identical eyes. I blink again.

The chair is empty.

This story first appeared in “Issue 8” of Livina Press, published April 2024. Purchase on Amazon.