It's A Strange World

The Flores Backroad

It is a strange world.

Can you deny the statement? Can you argue it isn't?

If you do, let me counter with this:

"We know more about Mars than the sea of our Earth."

I'm sure you've heard the phrase. I'm also sure you thought this is about a sea monster. It's not. The story I'm about to tell isn't a "sea tale," but it helps me open your mind, the way it opened mine.

To say I know what happened that day, at the Flores' backroad, would be a lie. I'm not sure if I'll be coherent enough to explain as I'm not creative as a writer would be. But I swear it happened. I saw it. I was there. Sometimes it haunts me in nightmares. Some days, it even haunts me while awake. As if it was happening all over again.

The day I lost my childhood friend.

And how it was my fault.

Before I continue, I should say I'm from a small town in a small third-world country. When you get further from the capital city, it's mostly hills, lakes, volcanoes, and wastelands next to crops, cow farms, and patches of land with thick greenery. The houses are old and rustic. They are built with adobe bricks and tile roofs made out of red clay.

Now, there are a few particularities with these houses. If you guessed that these old decrepit houses could fall with a puff, you'd be wrong. 

My friend and I lived three houses apart. Around five minutes on foot through a dirt road. She usually visited my house, and I would visit hers to play with marbles or dolls. We were really close. Her name is Amelia.

Pardon me. Her name was Amelia.

Like fire and water, Amelia and I couldn't be more different. While you would expect that an only child of divorced parents would be a lonely sad kid, I was not. I was loud and courageous - a troublemaker. Amelia's parents were together - they still are - and they had a great relationship; yet, she was demure, shy, and a scaredy-cat. I guess you could call it a curse to be the last kid in a family of eight brothers and sisters.

It was a hot and humid day.

Amelia and I had a round of marbles. I always lost. Then, we moved our games to my house to start a 'play-pretend we're DBZ heroes' in my  living room as my mother peeled a mango.

I complained and threw a fit when I smelled it.

Don't get me wrong, I love mangoes. But it was mango season. The tree on our patio was full of them and not one mango was spared in our house. My mom would harvest them, and we would eat them. If they splashed on the ground, we ate them. If they were green, we ate them with lemon, chili, and alguashte (a green powder made of pumpkin seeds). By that point we were having mangoes every day, I had forgotten how other fruits tasted.

Amelia didn't have a problem with it and even apologized for being childish... to my own mother.

That's the type of kid she was.

Looking back, her family was poor. Most of her siblings had started working when they reached puberty, which was normal for the rural areas in my country. Her parents were more in the old spectrum, extremely religious, and stubborn. The age gap between her and her siblings... well, let's say that menopause was a blessing for Amelia's mother.

Hearing that little pale thin child say, "I will eat whatever you give me, ma'am," pulled my mother's heartstrings.

"Yoli, go to the pastry shop near the Flores house."

And I complained again.

"We can go together!" Amelia said all excited.

That's how she convinced me. It wasn't common to see her eager.