***Sorry if there are any typos or anything, I wrote it up in ten minutes. Sorry if it's hard to understand, too, because to me it all makes sense but...well, it's my story, so of course it does to my own ear.
The sun glowed like a fireball in the sky, dousing us with blistering heat. Summer had officially arrived.
Hallie and I sat side-by-side. Since second grade we'd been best friends, countless hours spent riding dragons or adventuring to Worlds Beyond. Maybe it was the Cherokee in me, but I loved our pretend battles for chief of the shadowy Indians we claimed were in the forest. Well, I suppose other things came to tie with it. Trips to the shop where they sold homemade fudge and Italian sodas was high on the list, and boat rides along the river, racing our shadows in the water. There was the attempted treehouse, now in ruins, and the willow trees' branches that we swung from. But the poor trees only got older and weaker as the two of us got heavier and stupider. There was a lesson to be learned every summer, one that required the loss of all we'd learned in the seasons of school, and that was this--you do not mature with age. We act like we get older and wiser, but I guess summer brings out that wild-child I always was--my long, dark hair welcomes back the river's scent and prickle of pine needles. You lose your aged-ness, too. Your smile marks your face, skin welcoming the sting of sunburn. Rules are tossed away, drifting far with the wind.
But a long shadow's cast over our heads, too, because we're nearing this ride's end.
"Do you really have to move?" I asked for the 100th time. Hallie, as always, responds with a somber "yes." I was leaving too, but not across the country like her. It would feel like a lifetime away, though I'd only be moving an hour from home. Still, the little town's magic wouldn't be able to reach me there. Even here in its heart, accompanied by willows and pines, the dying town's magic faded.
We knew it too. Little towns were a dying breed, and would soon be as extinct as milkmen and dinosaurs.
"I'll call you all the time," she promised. I promised the same. But as we left the town, teary-eyed and torn, we left our befriended selves behind too. We do still talk, but we aren't ourselves speaking on the line. We don't ride dragons, or fight for leadership of unseen tribes that linger deep in the forest. And after a few strained months of conversation, strangers speaking to one another, we finally give a solemn and final goodbye. I hang up the phone. She does too. I think we both miss ourselves, but I suppose our old selves are still there in a sense. Maybe they wander as spirits, exploring Worlds Beyond together. Maybe, in the dying little town, they watch countless summers pass, side-by-side, their friendship unfrayed by the tear and test of time.
I stare up in the deep blue sky, contemplating. I wait for something, though I'm not sure of what yet. I think you're waiting too.
