The Last Summer in Brentwood

Growing up I lived in a small, sleepy town called Brentwood. We had a large park towards the center that I begged my parents to bring me to every day. It was my favorite place, with a big playground and woods with paths that seemed to lead everywhere and nowhere. When I got older, my high school was just up the street from the park and my bus drove by it every day.

My best friend PMac and I spent our free time hanging out by the picnic tables after class. The heat of the summer was our favorite time to be there. We ran around in the sun for hours and played games well into the night, chasing fireflies while our parents yelled for us to "be careful!" and "stop feeding the lightning bugs to the dog!"

A new girl transferred to our school when I was a sophomore-a really pretty girl with blue eyes and blonde hair. Her name was Sandy, and she had all the boys' heads turning and all the girls in our grade jealous. She started dating my friend PMac, and we found out she'd moved here from Tennessee. Sandy mentioned her dad only in passing-always vaguely, like she was talking about a stranger. "He's bad news," she said once. "My mom, my brother, and I left to get away from him."

The three of us became close that summer after sophomore year. We'd sneak out to the park at night, once it cooled down enough, and drink sodas or whatever beer I could convince my brother to buy us from the corner liquor store. The drinks made the June bugs buzz louder-and made it ten times funnier when one landed on PMac's head. Sandy and PMac were a good pair; she was quick to keep him in check, and she even brought around a friend for me once or twice, saying she thought we'd "hit it off."

Sometimes Sandy would act distant, her gaze fixed on the treeline as if she were seeing something beyond it. "You guys ever think about getting out of here?" she asked one night. "Like...leaving town, leaving all of it behind?" PMac laughed, saying he couldn't even leave his neighborhood without getting lost. She smiled, but something about the look in her eyes stayed with me, like she knew something we didn't.

The fun was endless-from playing "manhunt" in the woods by the park to convincing our friend Justin to let us into the community pool after hours, swimming until the cops got called and Justin got fired. It was one hell of a summer.

When school started again in the fall, we made sure we all had the same homeroom so we could carpool. My brother would drive us around the neighborhoods in his Corolla, listening to loud music, and we'd have to run to make it to school on time. Of course, we rarely did. It didn't matter, though; detention was fun as long as it was the three of us.

One morning, we waited outside Sandy's house, honking the horn until my brother finally made us go up to the door. No one was home, and we figured Sandy must've forgotten to tell us about a vacation her mom was planning. We went by every morning that week, just in case they came back, but they didn't. The house stayed vacant.

After the second week, PMac's parents called the city's police chief. She told them no one with Sandy's mom's name had ever lived at that address. PMac and I searched for Sandy everywhere, driving around the city looking for her before and after school for a month. The police wouldn't help, and the school said they hadn't heard anything from Sandy or her mother.

"She wouldn't just leave me like that, without saying goodbye," PMac told me one night as we sat on the swings at the park. It was late December, and the air was crisp, the leaves on the trees finally starting to change. Autumn always came late in California. PMac returned to the park every night, hoping he'd find Sandy on the swings or emerging from the forest, smiling and telling him this was all some big prank.

Four months later, they found Sandy's mom and brother in a dumpster on the outskirts of a warehouse district 50 miles away-brutally murdered. PMac and I skipped school for a week. The police came back around and finally took our statements. We told them all we knew-which admittedly wasn't much-about her dad in Tennessee and the time we spent with her, leaving out the underage drinking and mischief. My mom called it a "tragedy."

Months passed, but they never did find Sandy's body. PMac never stopped his search, confident that her not being found meant she wasn't a victim. "She'd always talked about leaving town," he'd say. "Maybe she saw something she shouldn't have and had to leave sooner than she planned."

He got his driver's license and started taking long drives by himself. Most days at the end of junior year, he didn't show up for school at all, and our teacher said he would have to repeat the grade and could "kiss a decent college acceptance goodbye."

He never joined me at the park that summer, and the beer just tasted bitter without them to share it with. Time flew by as if nothing had happened, even though everything had changed.

One evening after I graduated, I found myself back at the park. I had avoided it after everything that happened, but I was driving by with my dog on the way home and decided to stop. There had once been a path into the forest, and I walked him through to its overgrown entrance. The sunset danced on the golden leaves, casting long shadows as I stepped over the bushes and into the woods. I wandered for a minute, maybe ten, lost in a memory as my dog pulled me along the old path.

His leash caught on my hand as I realized he'd stopped at a tree not far off the path. I walked closer and noticed marks on the tree-faint but visible. The letters "H-E-L" were scratched into the bark, followed by a long line down the trunk. Perplexed, I felt my dog's leash pull again as he started to dig at the leaves just below the tree. It was getting dark, and we had a bit of a walk back.

"Stop it! Let's go!" I tugged on the leash, but he was determined to dig. After another minute of scratching, he barked. It took me a moment in the fading light to realize what he'd uncovered.

The cops arrived ten minutes after I called. The woods were pitch-black, their flashlights blurred like stars in my damp eyes. They confirmed the worst possible outcome: Sandy hadn't gotten out after all.

PMac skipped town when the news broke, off to a community college up North, his mom told me. I didn't take it personally when he didn't say goodbye.

Years later, I drove past what had once been the park, only to find it replaced by rows of apartments. The swing set, the trees, the trails-all gone, buried under the foundations of a city that had long forgotten Sandy, PMac, and the summer we spent there.

I pulled over for a moment, letting the memories wash over me. Sandy's laugh echoed faintly in my mind, and I could almost feel PMac sitting beside me in the dark, waiting for her.

The emptiness of that place-the strange, hollow reminder of what once was-reminded me why I never came back.

I let out a long breath, turned my car back onto the road, and drove away, leaving the ghosts of that summer and that place in my rearview mirror.