I didn’t even have a cell phone. There was something so freeing about that.
Still, all this made me feel that gnawing absence inside me that much sharper.
“What makes you think we can get your clothes back?” I asked. I wanted to change the subject. I didn’t want to bring her down with me. “Won’t the good ole’ boys still be there, waiting for us?”
“They probably got bored by now,” she said. Perhaps sensing my mood, she gave me a sidelong smile and added, “Besides, if they’re still there you can just beat them up for me.”
“Right,” I said. I thought about how my Kevlar body armor sat on the bureau in Ellie’s spare room. Armor that could stop a punch. Maybe even turn a knife blade.
Suddenly my cotton button-down didn’t seem like such a good idea anymore.
I glanced out the window again. I didn’t recognize this row of houses. More two-story affairs. “Are we going a different way?”
We passed an intersection and I saw that we drove on Poplar St. We’d just passed Grove St.
Some naturalistic person had apparently named many of the streets in town after trees and other forest things. Something I hadn’t really remembered about the town from my teenage stint here.
“Yeah, this way will take us around to the other side of the block so we can get in through the alley… so, think maybe I’ve earned that last name of yours yet?”
I didn’t have to look to know that she kept glancing at me. The steering wheel creaked a little when her fingers squeezed around it.
“Not yet… stop!”
I said it so suddenly that Ellie, her instincts kicking in, pushed the brake to the floorpan. The tires squealed when they locked up.
The truck stopped at a canted angle on the road, the rear end over in the opposing lane.
And the lurch of it made the seat belt bite into my stomach and shoulder.
“What are you…” Ellie started, too startled to be upset.
The seat belt would have hurt if I’d been paying any attention to it. But I wasn’t. No, all my attention focused on a small park that sprung up between one block and the next.
My fingers, numb with shock and excitement, pried first at my seat belt then at the door handle. I stumbled out of the truck, my heart humming in my chest like a high revving race car engine.
I know this. I know all of this, I thought. I mounted the curb and within two steps found myself on the grassy pitch of a small, disused but well-maintained park.
“I know this place,” I said. My hands bunched up into fists.
Chapter 8
ELLIE
I squinted in pain. The seat belt did a number on my shoulder, and it already started throbbing. Another car came down the opposite side of the road, the elderly driver pausing when he saw the obstruction I made.
I smiled through my teeth and waved while I maneuvered into a parking spot along the curb.
“Next time I want something with anti-lock brakes,” I muttered. I threw the Ranger into park and climbed out of the cab. I intended on giving Dash a piece of my mind. Something along the lines of Are you crazy? What the hell was that?
Except when I saw him, I couldn’t.
He stood on the grass of old Pine St. Park, gazing about like a castaway who’d just found himself stranded on a desert island.
One that, judging by his look, he’d been on before.
“Dash?” I said, coming up alongside him. I had expected maybe a look of open mouthed shock to go with his posture. However, when I saw his face he looked almost calm. Intense was a good word for it.
Calm on the surface but he roiled beneath those faux-placid waters.
“My mother used to take me here. Every day after school,” he said. “I used to like the swings, and I wouldn’t let her push me. I wanted to do it myself. I thought I was too old to let my mom push me on the swing.”
“That sounds like you, all right,” I said. It struck me how strange it was to say that. How could I possibly know what sounded like him or not? No matter the case, it still felt right.
There was a strange, hot feeling in the pit of my stomach. Why did I say that? This is weird.
I looked around as well. I spotted the old merry-go-round. The groundskeeper had slapped a new coat of red paint on it. It already flaked from the rusty patches.
“That was my favorite,” I said, nodding towards it, “I used to get it going so fast my dad would look at me after and say, I thought you were going to shoot out of it like a marble from a slingshot.”
I smiled. It was a nice memory.
“I remember that, too,” Dash said.
Chills went up and down my back. “There’s no way!”
“But I do. And every time he said it he would laugh like it was the first time he’d thought of it and that it was the most hilarious thing he’d ever hear. There’s something about this place. There’s something about you, Ellie. I feel like I’m just beginning to figure some things out…” Dash said.
“Who are you? Really?” I asked.
The fine hairs along the back of my neck stood up with a prickling sensation. Again, I looked at him and felt that I knew him. Somehow, somewhen. And all this stirred something inside me, some deep, recessed memory.
Dash was an unusual name, but up until then I’d figure it was entirely fake, no matter what he said.
Because I used to know a boy named Dash. Not for long, not even a year, back when we were both 12 or so. And we did used to meet in this park.
He was a boy I hadn’t thought about in probably a decade or more.
I remember it took a lot of effort to stop thinking about him. About us.
On first glance, this new, adult Dash didn’t resemble the boy in my memory much. That boy didn’t have such broad shoulders, or such chiseled features.
But could it actually be him? I thought, looking at him. I could see how that boy could become this man. And his eyes, weren’t they the same eyes?
Oh my God, I thought, that prickling feeling in my spine intensifying.
Dash didn’t answer right away. He walked over to the swing set, apparently conscious of every move he made. From the way his riding boots pushed into the grass, to the way the breeze rippled in his hair.
He reached out and grasped one of the swing set supports. I followed him. I stayed a few feet back.
“Until I was fifteen, I spent most of my life on the road with my mother. I can’t remember if we were running from someone… running to somewhere, or whether she just had the worst case of wanderlust in the world. When I was twelve, we spent six or seven months here in Pleasant. This was my favorite place, this park. Except, I couldn’t really remember any of it until you drove us past here.”
The blood quickened in my veins. I looked at his face closely, tried imagining him younger, not even a teenager, but not really a child.
Then, as though his face had been there all along, I recalled him. At least, I recalled some small part of that time. Neither of us were out of our twenties yet, but it was still a gulf of time.
“I think I remember, too,” I said.
He turned to me, his eyes bright and intense. “Tell me what you remember.”
For a second there, I thought he might grab hold of me and will the secrets out of me just by sheer force of will.