Excerpt: Solo

At night, the park was deserted. It was in a residential neighborhood, but at ten o’ clock at night, with the temperature in the forties and dropping fast, no one was eager to be outside, not even the bum middle school kids who liked to sneak out of their houses and smoke—or pretend to smoke—in the gazebo. At first, that’s where I headed, but then I veered off to the right and went towards the playground equipment. It was some of the best playground equipment I’d ever seen, and I loved it when I was little. When I was little, we’d lived in a different apartment complex, further away, so I hadn’t spent as much time at the park as I’d have liked. Ironic that once I was too old to use it I’d wind up so close by.
My fingers clenched the cold metal rungs of a ladder leading up to one of the platforms of the play structure. Once up, I went across a bridge made of logs and chains that wobbled and swayed as I walked. It led to another platform, which led to another ladder, which brought me to the tallest part of the structure, a large enclosed platform on tall wooden legs. It was like a treehouse without the tree, and it had a long steep slide leading to the ground. It had been my favorite slide as a kid. I’d spent a lot of time up there—I’d called it the lookout tower, and the rest of the playscape was a great castle, a fortress where my best friend and I had played all kinds of crazy games.
I stood in the lookout tower, surveying the darkened playground. A few streetlights cast some illumination, but mostly it just succeeded in making the shadows longer and scarier. Nothing moved except whenever a slight breeze rustled the trees. My breath made little clouds of fog in front of me. I shivered a little but sat down in a corner of the tower anyway, sliding my back down against the wooden boards, feeling the fabric of my puffy coat snag on a few splinters. I didn’t care.
Then I sat there, breathing hard. I could feel my throat close up again as my thoughts inevitably turned back to Sydney. Her grey tabby fur. Her tiny baby face. Her bright green eyes.
The sobs boiled up and out of me, and I buried my face in the sleeve of my coat to muffle them. It didn’t seem to matter though—out here, it felt like I was the only person in the world. And I couldn’t stop the crying. I’d cried a lot in the last three weeks, and it had been pretty bad, but I’d never felt quite like this before. I’d known Sydney was going to die for a while, but now she actually was gone. I’d never see her again. I felt like there was an actual hole in my chest, a gaping bleeding wound.
When I was little, maybe seven years old, my grandma died. She was the only living grandparent I had left, and I remembered how sad I’d been to know I’d never see her again. But the feeling didn’t last. The only times I really noticed her absence were when she didn’t send me a birthday card in the mail or show up for Thanksgiving dinner. Everything else was how it had always been. I lived with Mom and visited Dad in Arizona for a few weeks in the summer. My uncles on Mom’s side both lived in town, so I saw them sometimes. And my best friend, Alicia, was always there, always coming over to play or sending me notes at school. Nothing in my life really changed much after my grandma had been buried and all the funeral casseroles had been eaten.
Part of me wondered why I was so much more broken up over losing my cat than I’d been about losing my grandmother.
Mostly, though, I didn’t think about anything except Sydney and the illness. I wondered if I’d made the right choice today. I wondered if I’d overlooked anything that might have saved her, some miracle cure or experimental treatment. If she hadn’t gotten sick so fast, if I’d done better research, if I’d somehow been able to prevent the illness in the first place…
I cried and cried and cried. Sometimes, I felt like I was ready to stop, but then the tears would start again with renewed intensity, drawing on some inner reserve that seemed like it would never end. It felt like I’d be crying for the rest of my life.
When I finally heard the noise, my body was ice cold, my head was throbbing, and my brain was so heavy with exhaustion that it took me a moment to react. Then I realized that I was hearing footsteps moving across the playground. Immediately, I stood up, trying to move quickly but being hindered by my stiff joints and aching back. My body hadn’t enjoyed being cramped against the walls of the lookout tower.
I relaxed when I saw the figure moving toward me, but only a little. It was obviously female, and it looked vaguely familiar. After a moment, as the girl walked closer, I realized that it was Aerin.
Aerin Lee lived in my apartment complex. In fact, she was in the building right next to mine, and her bedroom was opposite my bedroom, so that if we’d wanted to, we could have opened our curtains and looked right into each other’s rooms. She’d moved back in August, starting her senior year in a brand new school, my school, and spent a few days looking lost. Whenever a new student started at Austin High School, I always entertained the idea of befriending him or her. I imagined what it would be like to have a best friend again, someone I could trust with absolutely anything, someone who would stay up late at my house on a school night or go with me to movies on Friday nights. But I was never outgoing enough to walk up to someone and try to make friends. I didn’t even know how to make friends. Which was probably why, a year and half after my best friend moved to Seattle, I still hadn’t met anyone new.
Aerin Lee and I knew each other because of our proximity, but she usually hung out with a different group of people at school, so the most we ever did was give each other those awkward little smiles in the hallway or if we passed each other on the street—you know, the kinds of smiles you give someone you don’t really know well enough to talk to but who you still know too well to ignore? That’s how Aerin Lee and I were.
As I watched her coming towards me on the playground, I wondered what she’d think if she found me here. My instinct was to stay hidden. I didn’t want her to see my tear-streaked face or my puffy eyes, or hear me say hello in a thick voice.
But then I got paranoid that she was actually going to come up to the tower. She was certainly headed in this direction. And if she found me hiding up there, then she’d really think I was a freak.
So finally, I did the only thing I could think of, which was to head for the nearest exit. The nearest and quickest exit, which happened to be the slide. As I was about halfway down it, it occurred to me that coming down the slide wasn’t exactly the greatest way to avoid attracting attention, but it was too late. I hit the bottom with a slight grunt, landing harder than I ever remembered landing as a kid.
Several feet away, I saw Aerin stop walking, but that was the only sign that she’d seen me. I put off looking at her for as long as possible, making a show of adjusting my coat and brushing sand and dirt off my jeans, but finally I was out of excuses. I glanced up.
She was staring at me with a blank expression on her face, something completely unreadable. I didn’t know if she was surprised or annoyed or uncaring that I was there. But light from one of the street lamps lit up her face just enough that, as my eyes adjusted, I realized she’d been crying too. There were streaks on her cheeks and her eyes were quite watery, still brimming with tears.
“Oh. Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” she answered back. We were both staring at each other, and I could tell she’d noticed my swollen red eyes. “What are you doing out here, Cara?”
I shrugged. “Just felt like a walk. You?”
“I felt like a walk too.”
There was another brief silence. It was at that moment that I could have asked her what was wrong. I was working up the guts to do it, afraid of how she might react but also feeling a tiny glimmer of hope, hope that maybe we could each share whatever was bothering us. Maybe we could talk about it. And maybe we could talk about Sydney. Maybe other things too. I’d been starved for someone to talk to since my best friend moved.
But the moment passed. Aerin Lee suddenly glanced away, yawning. All traces of tears disappeared from her eyes. The tracks on her face even seemed to fade a bit as she shifted position, the streetlight no longer illuminating them.
“I love this playground,” Aerin Lee commented. “It’s the kind of place I would have loved as a kid. Too bad they didn’t have one like it in Portland.”
“You’re from Portland?” I said, even though I already knew she was. Someone had mentioned it back when Aerin first transferred and it had stuck in my brain. My brain is really good at storing up useless knowledge.
“Yeah. My entire life, until my parents decided to come down here.” She rolled her eyes. “Thought it would be better for me.”
“Really?” I shifted my weight, uncomfortable in this situation but also eager for it to continue. There was something surreal and completely ordinary about our conversation. I couldn’t figure out what made it feel so strange—maybe the fact that we were on a dark playground in the dead of night?—but I was both twitchy and intrigued.
“Yeah,” Aerin Lee continued. “The only problem is, they never listened to me when I said it wouldn’t be good for me at all.” The last two words were said with a tired forcefulness that suggested she’d said this many times. I wondered who she told the story to—her friends?
“Do you hate it here?” I asked.
“Oh, not really,” Aerin shrugged. “But it’s too hot.”
“Yeah, definitely hot,” I agreed, a small smile tugging up the corners of my lips.
“So, what are you doing out here, Cara Spencer?” The question took me by surprise. “Do you just enjoy haunting playgrounds late at night?”