We walked. We were two, connected by long ties of friendship like old ropes scraping the sea floor, decaying over time. After all this time, years apart, we’d found ourselves together again in the same old town we swore we’d escape from. We walked in a silence made more oppressive by the absence of life. No birds chirped from the dormant trees, no children played in the vacant streets. We only heard our feet scraping and our nostrils breathing the stale air.
Before us, rows of identical track houses perfectly plotted in numbers, previously manicured lawns in disrepair, dry weeds taking over, one bony tree in every yard. So different was the place I remembered. It seemed like we’d been walking for miles, but everything looked the same. I remembered evenings with kids playing in the street, playful shrieks and giddy laughs, parents chatting under the shade of rustling leaves, music pouring out of open garages. This neighborhood was a cold imitation of the one I knew. I stopped and turned in front of a driveway, and my friend came up behind me.
“I think this is it.”
Two story house, dead tree on the left, snaking weeds coming up from concrete cracks, faded, flaking paint, broken wind chime, smashed window, unhinged screen door banging with every slight breeze. I walked up the steps and rang the doorbell. Listening for movement inside, I rang again. Then I pulled back the screen door and knocked.
“Whatcha looking for?” A voice called behind me. I turned to see a woman dressed in an old bathrobe at the edge of the sidewalk across the street.
“My parents,” I said. “They live here.”
“Oh, they’re gone,” she said.
Slowly, I came to the sidewalk and stared over the crumbling asphalt. “Gone?” I asked. “Gone where?”
“They’re dead,” she said plainly, harshly.
My mouth dried as my eyes found the ground. I started across the street, but the woman took a step back, so I stood there. “How long?” I asked.
“Few years ago. Frankly, I didn’t know they had a kid.” She looked me up and down, scorn dripping from her scowl. Before she turned away, she said, “Obviously they didn’t have a good one.”
My friend met me in the street and put his hand on his shoulder. I felt it, but he felt far away. He said, “Come on, bud. There’s nothing for us here.”
I looked at him through watery eyes, hot tears and pressure distorting my mind as I nodded and we took off down the sidewalk.
After a dozen of long blocks, there was not a soul in sight. Our wandering led us to an overgrown park. We walked through it in silence. Vines twisted along the playground. I remembered blissful hours swinging there. I remembered birthday parties on the benches. I remembered hanging out in the grass after school with friends. I took my first love here. We carved our names in a tree, and I looked her in her hazel eyes and told her this would never end. Now, I traced that scar with my fingers. Half of the tree was dead now, and the other half would soon follow.
I spun around. “Hey remember when we--”
My friend stood at the edge of the park. I went over to him. He said, “Let’s get out of here.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I was just…”
“I mean, we should leave this town. There’s nothing left for us.” His eyes were hard and his mouth tightened in a small line.
“Yeah. There’s just one more thing.”
We left the park behind, but the memories clung on for miles as the sun sunk behind the hills and the night crept from the other side. A dull full moon hung in the sky, casting the world a pale grey with ghostly shadows stretching from every building and blade of grass.
My friend asked, “What are we still doing here? Haven’t you found what you were looking for yet?”
I didn’t respond. The answer was obvious, so we continued walking our footsteps in unison. He fell slightly behind me as we passed by darkened street lamps and empty houses. There was not a light on, not a car passing, no signs of life besides our own.
After a while, I stopped at another house. “This is it.” I turned to my friend, but he wasn’t with me anymore. I looked left and right and turned around, but he was nowhere to be seen. He’d gone away without saying anything, but worse yet, I didn’t know when he left.
Sighing, I turned back to the house. It looked like all the others. In a state of disrepair, but not quite falling apart yet. I walked up the steps and rang the doorbell. There, in the dark, I stood. Lifting a finger, I nearly tapped the doorbell, but decided not to ring again. Just when I was thinking of turning around and leaving, the door opened to a old man and woman. They looked like they’d aged together, wrinkles changing them both until they had identical faces.
“Why, hello, young man,” the father said. “How can I help you?”
“Hello,” I said. “I’m looking for your daughter actually.”
The man took a pair of glasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on. He smiled, “Oh, I think I remember you, son. Come on in.”
I followed him into the house. No lights were on, so I stumbled through the dark, following their faint outlines. He and his wife offered me a seat at the kitchen table where the moonlight poured in. Smiling inexplicably, the man stared intently at me. The old woman brought us water and sat next to him. Grey light illuminated half of their faces, leaving the other side obscured in shadow.
“It’s kinda dark in here,” I commented.
“You think so?” the old man said, making no effort to move.
His wife said, “It’s been so long since we’ve had any visitors.”
I gazed toward the stairs. “Is she home?”
“Hope?” The old man laughed. “No, no. She hasn’t been here for years. I wish she’d visit every once in awhile though.”
The old woman chimed in. “It’s just been so lonely here.”
I asked, “Well, where is she?”
“Who knows,” the man said. “She went to Miami, then to Toronto. Last we heard, she was in Seattle.” He leaned in, almost whispering, “She’s very successful you know.”
“Well, I’m looking for her, and I’m sure she’s around here somewhere.” I stood and headed down the dark hallway, and they followed me. When I came to the door, the old man opened it, but the old woman grabbed my hand looked me in the eye.
She said, “I know you two really loved each other, but…” she hesitated. “Don’t go looking for things you don’t really want to find.”
I stumbled back out to the street. Clouds covered the moon, blanketing the world in a cold pitch black, and a chilling breeze pushed me along. I walked endlessly through the night, passing row upon row of identical houses, rooftops like shadowy ghostly steeples for a dead church bleeding into the flat sky.
Finally, the first hint of sunlight appeared on the horizon, and a grey haze spilled across the sky. Up ahead, I saw a shadow I recognized. It was my first love, standing, waiting for me. I quickened my pace, but as I got closer, she danced away so she was always the same distance from me. She called my name, and I whispered hers as she led me out of the neighborhood and into a cool valley. I followed her shadow, trying to catch a glimpse of her face, to see a hint of her smile or her hazel eyes.
The pink and orange rays of the sun streamed before her, keeping her in silhouettes as she walked over a hill. There she stopped, and I could only see the shadow of her head and shoulders as I approached. I walked up the hill, joy making my steps weightless. I was ready to embrace her and watch the sunrise with her.
She didn’t move a muscle as I approached. And as I came closer, I realized what I thought were her head and shoulders must be something else. The dimensions distorted with every step, her shadow shrinking down. She wasn’t standing just on the other side of the hill’s peak. She wasn’t standing at all. The figure I’d been following was not my first love.
It was a tree stump.
I fell to my knees before it. I knew what was etched into the bark, but I didn’t want to look. Our initials scrawled in big, bold letters in a heart-shaped frame. Past the stump was a field of lilies, stretching as far as the eye could see, painted pink and orange by the sun's first warm rays.
