three scenes
Abandoned socks and shoes. Two children sit at the edge of a small pond in a golf course at [[dusk]].
[[I.]]The girl thinks about their summer. How they raised three ducks and let them free. How they caught fish without fishing rods by tying lures to long pieces of clear wire before chucking them out onto the lake as far as they could. Tied the free ends of the wire to the dock. Watched and waited for the slack lines to pull taut. They never kept the fish. The one time they tried, it [[died]].
<img src="https://pro2-bar-s3-cdn-cf4.myportfolio.com/65888eee-5e46-4f85-a67e-6c6a4c2c32c0/5025bf9a-5a40-47a6-95f4-f28fefa249e3_rw_1200.gif?h=85b490c992f818b332a2cd29a8a7aabd"
width="70%" height="70%">Sometimes they would sneak out to this small pond to catch minnows and tadpoles. They were unbothered by the geese and ran alongside them, flapping their arms like wings. They hunted for golfballs in these woods, half buried in leaf litter and covered in geese droppings, and they scrubbed them clean to sell them to golfers for a quarter a [[piece]].
She stops thinking.
<p>“We can’t,” she says. “But if you ever go, take me with [[you]].”</p>
<img src="https://pro2-bar-s3-cdn-cf3.myportfolio.com/65888eee-5e46-4f85-a67e-6c6a4c2c32c0/e8aa451b-0412-4279-9e11-cc47429d7a0f_rw_1200.gif?h=f98be89a4bb4fbd495205e5635d5828f"
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The boy peers into the mountain dew bottle he’s been holding in his lap, halfway full with water and algae. Through the green plastic and floating scum he counts four minnows. He slowly pours its contents back into the [[pond]].
The girl lays down on the manicured grass and the sprinklers go off.
[[II.]]The last time I biked to his house we weren’t kids anymore. He saw me dismount, shaky.
I wanted him to ask me if I was okay but he asked me if I wanted to play basketball in his driveway. The sky was pink.
<img src="https://pro2-bar-s3-cdn-cf6.myportfolio.com/65888eee-5e46-4f85-a67e-6c6a4c2c32c0/a47c0a3b-679e-4e80-b2cd-454970036c0a_rw_1200.gif?h=9581686c4f90a0f61e9f5333d392b5cc"
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We played for a couple hours, careful not to hit his honda civic with the ball, and we sat on the still-warm concrete when the sun [[disappeared]].
I wasn’t [[there]]. <p>I was sitting with him at the small pond from the golf course at dusk with our abandoned socks and shoes.</p>
<p>I was getting my first period at his house and unafraid because he was with me.</p>
<p>I was in his father’s study hiding beneath his desk with my ear to the carpet, listening to him cry.</p>
<p>I was driving home three nights ago, when I got lost in our neighborhood, fumbling with the GPS in the [[dark]].</p>
<p>Hours earlier, my mind had quietly packed a suitcase and walked to the upper right-hand corner of my field of vision.</p>
<img src="https://pro2-bar-s3-cdn-cf2.myportfolio.com/65888eee-5e46-4f85-a67e-6c6a4c2c32c0/3ac78013-e074-41e8-bf04-b430e15c26cb_rw_1200.gif?h=905acd35b9f105852a43bfbf0b76fc35"
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I was in my room but I was in the corner watching myself sliding down onto the floor, pulling out my phone, googling things and swallowing down vomit without tasting bile. I was in the corner watching myself stand on the Ma On Shan pier beneath a slice of orange light, staring down at black seawater, wanting to [[jump]].
Hours earlier when my mind left its post it had been like stepping out of an ice bath, all [[calm]].
<img src="https://pro2-bar-s3-cdn-cf.myportfolio.com/65888eee-5e46-4f85-a67e-6c6a4c2c32c0/10fa28d9-d2f6-42be-9a74-b274461affef_rw_600.GIF?h=8b4331780e2f8f9b4fdb730aa87f7903"
width="80%" height="80%">I was biking to his house on autopilot, empty-headed, breathing hard and fast.
[[III.]]<img src="https://pro2-bar-s3-cdn-cf6.myportfolio.com/65888eee-5e46-4f85-a67e-6c6a4c2c32c0/75ef0c44-00d0-4d6b-bda7-01fb3b99240d_rw_1920.jpg?h=b63b933c474d631e0ac69254c5e2478c"
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We rarely touch by design. When you rested one heavy hand on my shoulder, I came back from the upper right-hand corner of my consciousness and settled into my cross-legged silhouette on your driveway, feeling all of the nothings compound into everything all at once. The sweat on my thighs against the basketball in my lap. The weight of what we weren’t [[saying]].
You unfurled your fingers to let it go, and it hesitated on your sticky [[palm.]]
https://pro2-bar-s3-cdn-cf4.myportfolio.com/65888eee-5e46-4f85-a67e-6c6a4c2c32c0/f7759a20-977d-4430-bb34-eecac99f491f_rw_1920.png?h=a6e3ee0587845d09bdfea40282d7c926
<img src="https://www.w3schools.com/images/lamp.jpg" width="80%" height="80%"><img src="https://pro2-bar-s3-cdn-cf.myportfolio.com/65888eee-5e46-4f85-a67e-6c6a4c2c32c0/897dcb04-bba7-44d0-adca-a01829f6b33e_rw_600.gif?h=be9de55d1cf2baaeacb7f9bfadb183d3"
width="100%" height="100%"><img src="https://pro2-bar-s3-cdn-cf4.myportfolio.com/65888eee-5e46-4f85-a67e-6c6a4c2c32c0/f7759a20-977d-4430-bb34-eecac99f491f_rw_1920.png?h=a6e3ee0587845d09bdfea40282d7c926"
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You lifted your hand and caught a lightning [[bug]]."Maybe we don't have to go back," says the boy. "We can run [[away]]."
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