We left Rowan’s house at 11:30, in the dark. The moon was bright enough that the sky was blue, and it cast shadows. There was no one out; it was perfectly quiet. A bit of water was running down the storm drains and the sidewalk was tilted. The streetlights shone on quiet lawns and sleeping grass.
We got to Jared’s house, and he had the window open. We got him to come outside; his parents were asleep. We went to James Burd, around the back to the playground. We played hopscotch, and Jared blew bubbles that turned vivid, vibrant colors in the floodlights. We flew through the bubbles.
I played on all of the old pieces of playground equiptment, remembered every routine I had ever mastered, everything that had happened at every piece: ghost stories in the booth, sitting on the cactus, people getting hurt on the tire swings (no longer there) and the see-saws. While my friends walked back up to the blacktop, I quickly climbed the spider’s dome. It is smaller than it used to be. I managed to slide through- for one moment I thought I would break an arm. And then I went back. Rowan said (jokingly) that she thought maybe I had been bitten by a vampire. I said no, that there were only old demons in the playground, and that I had exorcised them. I felt totally at home- a child once more beneath the moon.
We took the long way home, and Jared went back at the end of Brad Street. We walked back slowly, Erin and Laura far in the lead, Rowan and I behind. We found two beat up pennies in the street and danced under streetlights. We thought of a punk-girl doing ballet beneath a streetlight in the city- so that’s who Clara is! And we walked home in beautiful darkness. We walked right down the street: no cars, no people, no nothing. We saw a rabbit. And we were happy.
"The Whale" by Michael Whelan
