I was working on a short story, got disheartened, restarted it, and ended up with these 438 words. I’m tired of looking at it and poking at it and changing it. So I’m posting it. Here we go.
Late summer was immaculate. Mornings asleep, evenings at work, nights together, whenever possible. We’d try to catch a movie at the outdoor film festival in Old Town, never arriving early enough to find a decent seat, often ending up on a blanket directly below the screen. I was never really there for the movie anyway. Sometimes we’d grab a milkshake at the place down the road from both of us. It was much closer to her, but I willingly made the sacrifice. I’d walk backwards down the sidewalk, telling jokes, desperate for a smile, as she walked her dog.
On Devil’s Night, the night before Halloween, she had the idea to deface political signs for Republican candidates, something I’d never dream of doing. But I brought the spray-paint. Some girls have an uncanny ability to get you to do things you’d never consider doing otherwise, and make you glad to do it. We passed a few signs, pausing and surveying the scene, but neither of us left the car. Vandalism wasn’t in the cards for tonight. Instead, she drove us to an apartment complex where the train tracks ran perpendicular and parked. We walked through some urban woods and over the Saginaw River. She wanted to show me something.
Of the numerous fears and phobias that I possessed, this proposed ‘something’ encompassed all of the worst. She tip-toed on the ancient, rusted railroad tracks, away from the apartments and out over the river. She reached a fenced-in plateau, an area perhaps built for observing. (Observing what, I’m not so sure.) I tried to follow. I wanted to follow. She was so daring and carefree, while I was wrought with anxiety. I knew that if I attempted to make it out to where she stood, I’d take the 50 foot plunge into the pitch-black river and be sucked into the abyss, all alone, never to be heard from again. She returned to solid ground after some protesting.
We left the complex and drove further out into farm country, until the light from the city stopped polluting the sky, and found a safe spot to stare up at the stars. The night was cool, almost bitter, so we let the engine run and the car kept us warm. All I Need by Radiohead oozed out of the stereo and lingered, like smoke from a cigarette. I shouted her name from the passenger window, out into the darkness. The syllables cut through the tall grass like explorers with machetes. She wrapped her coat around her petite frame, cradled in the driver’s seat, and drifted off to sleep.
