Down The Road And Back Again
I’m 12 or maybe 14: The screen door slams behind me a second before there is the sound of something shattering inside the house. I run at full speed out of the back door nearly tripping on the wooden steps, so much of me wishing, even then, that I could grow wings and lift off the ground and fly as far away as I could. I settle for climbing a tree.
“Hey jerkface you didn’t come to Girl Scouts,” She calls up to me.
“I didn’t feel like going,” I lie at the top of my lungs.
“Are you going to come down? Or do I have to go up there?”
When I don’t answer She ties her blue and green flannel shirt around her waist and climbs up settling into the V of a branch next to me. She pulls out the pen that was poking out of her messy bun of dark hair and takes my arm; starts drawing on the back of my hand.
“Did you’re mother get the tip I left on her nightstand?” She asks.
“Shut up,” I mumble and try to pull my hand away.
“I’m just saying, it rocked my world.”
“Stop.” I try to interrupt her but She keeps going and I am really tying to pull my hand back now but also laughing and I gasp out. “You’re going to make me fall.”
She looks up then, directly into my lopsided gaze. “I would never let you fall.” She says with a sudden hysterical deadpan and then drops the pen, letting it slip from her fingers to land on the ground.
“Oops,” She laughs and swings down after it.
*
I’m 16 or maybe 18: I’m hiding in the park this time. She finds me and joins me on the rusted swing-set. She pumps her feet, propelling herself into the air and leaping off the swing before hitting the sand below and then running around and jumping through the chains to land on the black rubber seat.
“You should try it,” She says.
“No.” I say shaking my head. She doesn’t pressure me. Never pressures me, never gets angry that I don’t always make eye contact and that I am afraid all of the time, and somehow makes me feel like I am cool anyway. We hide our secrets under Lisa Frank stickers and She always convinces me to go home.
*
I’m 15 or maybe 17: I pinky-promise her, sitting on the bathroom floor of the roller rink, that I will wear green to her funeral but tell her She has to promise She will visit me if I make it to California.
“You can’t leave yet, you got a part in the school play…you can’t miss my birthday…the science fair…the battle of the bands,” She says.
Don’t leave…not yet. We beg each other.
She doesn’t come to school for a week and I drive my bike over to her house. We watch South Park and pet her dog. Her mother makes us bagel bites or maybe spaghetti-ohs.
She’s battling her own demons, hiding behind black lipstick, exorcising them in the desecrated dolls hung from the ceiling of her bedroom; spinning on their brightly colored nooses and staring blankly at me with their lifeless shiny eyes through the flickering candlelight as we listen to the new Marilyn Manson album while I write all the words that I like on the toes of my low top converse knockoffs with her red Sharpie. I pretend that if I don’t name the monsters out loud, they aren’t real.
*
I’m 18 and then 23: I get out of New Jersey for good and never look back but she always tracks me down and when she tells me she is getting married I save all of my pennies to be there before running away again.
*
I’m 32 when my demons come back to haunt me. She contacts me everyday for a month and we confess our sins to each other through the screen and laugh about how when we were young video phones were science fiction.
I hope she forgives me for writing this because despite being born with flawless comedic timing I know how much she really hates being in the spotlight. She’s the Hilary to my C.C. and if push came to shove I’d be the Louise to her Thelma but it’s the Golden Girls theme song that really tells our story; thank you for being a friend.
_____________
Another flash fiction, this one is exactly 750 words (not including title)
Edit: Here's the link to the polls for this week http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/956559.html
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