Warped Minds

Chapter 3: Friday

Chapter Three: Friday

The swing cries out under the stress of my weight, the metal ropes cause my feet to hover above the sodden wood chips that cover the area. This is my favorite place. Technically it's a park but I think that it's just an empty skeleton that used to be something great. No children roam here, no bright paint and colors. All this 'park' is is a rusty set of two swings, one of which is occupied by me, a merry-go-round that spins in the wind and creates quite a racket, and a hard metal slide that burns your legs something horrible in the summer sunshine. The metal is cold and damp now. The park is concealed in woods which is probably why know one comes here. A little girl was kidnapped from this park a few years back. I was six at the time so I didn't realize and my mother didn't really care. They found her eventually, hidden away in some distant apartment. Happily ever after.
Paramore blasts through the small speakers of my earbuds. I saw them live last year and have been obsessed with them ever since. They would understand. I feel like there's someone behind me, almost like a breath on the back of my neck, a slight change in the atmosphere. I pull out of of my earbuds and turn around, attempting to stun the person behind me.
"Chris! it's just me!" I had startled the only person in the world that calls me Chris with my abrupt motions and now my best and only friend, Kellin, stands with his arms outstretched and his face twisted into a wince.
"Maybe you shouldn't sneak up on me like that!" I kick some of the wet woodchips in his direction and watch as they barely hit his denim clad shins.
"Can I at least sit down without getting physically assaulted please?" He has a sarcastic tone so I sit and act like I'm deep in thought and controversy over whether I should let him sit in the empty wet swing next to me.
"Eh why not." He reveals his rare smile, grinning like the devil himself, and sits down next to me.
"Chris, why did you call me?" I had sent him a text earlier telling him to come to the park. It's Friday and I'm leaving tomorrow and I intended to tell him that but instead I just begin to cry.
"I have to... Leave" I choke on my words and spit them out in haste.
"Where are you going? Calm down, take a breath, come here" he stands and pulls me up and wraps me in his arms. I cry on his shoulder, trying to grasp words to say. "M...Michigan" I attempt to stifle my sobs and pull myself together to at least tell him what's going on.
"I'm.. I'm moving. To Michigan." He wipes away the remnants of tears from my cheeks with the sleeve of his sweatshirt.
"Where...?"
"I'm moving to America". He stands there for a second, looking dumbfounded but not exactly surprised.
"America. Well Um, that's far away." I laugh because now seems a good time to laugh. He pulls away and places his hands on my shoulders, staring me straight in the face. He knows I don't like eye-contact but he's trying to make a point and he's Kellin so it's ok.
"Chris, when are you leaving...?" He carries on slightly, dragging out the sentence because he know he isn't going to like the answer.
"...tomorrow" he covers his face with the palm of his hand, concealing his true expression.
"Kellin, I only found out yesterday." He's not surprised, he knows my mother well enough. He sits down and I do the same. The air turns surreal, both of us sitting at an abandoned park with sunlight streaming in through the dead canopy of branches and what little brown leaves are left clinging to them. I met Kellin on the first day of primary school. Some kids had decided to beat me up and steal my lunch (how original) and he jumped in front of me to protect me from them. He literally murdered his social life in cold blood but it didn't matter to him. So he decided to stick around with me and he's still protecting me today.
"Wanna spin?" Kind of an old phrase we used when we were kids to say the merry-go-round. One of us would sit criss-cross applesauce in the center of the spinning death trap and the other would run circles, pulling the rusting metal behind them and spinning the other person around and around and around.
We walk over to the merry-go-round and I step up onto the metal, laying down on the center of the turntable. Kellin begins to walk slowly, the wind only blowing my red curls slightly. He's walking, sprinting, running full out and I'm spinning like the devil himself and the wind is loud and and I'm laughing and Kellin is laughing and we are both kids again, small 10 year olds enjoying the glory of a playground and each others company. It was always just us, other people would come and go or get hurt or hurt us but Kellin and I, we were always there. We were the constants in the equation. All the other numbers changed and moved and were forgotten by we were here and we always had been here. Once the contraption was spinning enough Kellin jumped on, shaking the surface beneath me. He laid next to me staring up at the leaves turning circles above our heads.
"You're 17." He spoke after some time of sitting in the comfortable silence.
"Yes thank you for pointing that out to me. You're 18 by the way" he rolled over to sit up, staring at me.
"No no, you're 17. Your birthday is in exactly 28 days. Once you're 18 you can move out, I know you have been saving don't lie." He's not kidding, I will be 18 in 28 days. I could stay here. I don't have to leave.
"Kellin?" I sit up too and look him straight in the face.
"Yeah chris?"
"You are a genius."