Things We Said Today

Chapter One

Richard Gamble Memorial Park wasn't much of a park at all. It wasn't much of a memorial either. I didn't know who Richard Gamble was. I had tried to Google him once, but the only man the Internet seemed to know with the name Richard Gamble was some professor at Hillsdale College who was still very much alive. The colloquial name of Sunset Tunnel Park was more fitting... though as I said, it wasn't much of a park. Nothing more than a couple benches and a sparse expanse of dog shit ridden grass.

As I trudged up the sidewalk that led to Clayton Street, one of the park's frequent visitors, a Corgi named Doug, apathetically sniffed my boot. He seemed to do this more out of obligation than genuine curiosity. I stuck my hand up in a wave to his owner— a man whose name I didn't know, but who was always clad in the Silicon Valley dress code of sneakers, dark-wash denim jeans, and a plain black t-shirt. Today, the look was finished with a puffy North Face jacket. I had secretly coined the man Skeeter as an homage to the 90's cartoon with the same name as his dog.

Skeeter waved back, said something that I couldn't hear over the Cure song playing in my headphones, then called Doug over by enthusiastically smacking his thigh. I was hit with a tingling sense of déjà vu at the dull progression of events. Though that was most likely a result of my monotonous schedule, rather than a metaphysical reminder of some equally boring past life.

I exhaled sharply as I finally emerged onto Clayton Street. One would think that after a year of the same commute from the Muni stop at the base of Richard Gamble Memorial Park to my house on Belvedere that my lungs would have grown accustomed to the hike. The opposite was true. It seemed that every day that passed my threshold for the short trek became lower and lower. Soon I may as well expect to pass out the moment I stepped off the Muni car.

I felt compelled to drag my bag behind me as I scaled the slight incline toward my house but resisted the urge only out of the fear of ripping a hole in the synthetic leather. I gripped onto the railing of my building, pulling myself up the stairs more than actually climbing them. I was a moment away from throwing the bag down and digging through its cluttered interior for my keys when I heard something comparable to a screeching pterodactyl echo from inside. Nora had beat me home.

I pulled my headphones off and stuffed them in my bag before opening the door, which was most likely a mistake considering the inhuman decibel Nora had screamed at a moment prior.

"Are we practicing our auditions for America's Got Talent, again?" I called out down the hall. "That scream could shatter glass, you might make it past the first round." I let my bag crash onto the floor near our cluttered excuse for a shoe rack, then kicked my boots off and began walking down the hall toward the living room.

"Don't fucking say anything." I heard Nora mutter under her breath before she acknowledged my presence with an exaggerated smile that seemed to reach her eyes.

"Don't say anything about... what?" I asked, glancing back and forth between my two roommates, who were standing quite suspiciously in the doorway to the kitchen.

Nora flashed Evie a glare, which she matched with a roll of her eyes. "I'm staying out of this one." Evie held her hand up and marched her way to the couch, where she sat down with the elegant grace of someone's rich stepmother— back straight, her ankles delicately crossed, her perfectly manicured hands atop her knees.

I was certain that her rich grandparents had enrolled her in some fancy etiquette class when she was a child, though I never asked. No one naturally sat like the Queen of England without being coached to do so. My mind flashed back to the scene in The Princess Diaries when Julie Andrews's character is teaching Anne Hathaway how to sit like royalty. I stifled back a chuckle at the comparison.