Summary

At the beginning of Chapter 4, spring has come. The children play “rapturously” outside and they meet the Dolans, a family of four who lives across the forest from them (39). Gavin goes to school with Ada, the youngest Dolan, and Pei-Pei knows Collin from high school. By car, the homes are nine miles apart, but the children travel between the homes on foot through the forest.

While playing outside, Natty makes a vase for grass out of an old liquor bottle he finds outside. Gavin notices that the liquor bottle is next to empty bottles of the same brand of beer his father drinks. Natty brings the vase inside the house for their mother, but their mother screams at the children, telling them the bottle is dirty.

A few days later, as Gavin, his siblings, and the Dolan children play together, a big tree falls...