i love you, i'm sorry

EIGHTH GRADE, NOVEMBER 2018

There was dust on our cupcakes, and it was all Gavin's fault. Well, mainly Gavin's fault. It was partially due to the decrepit, neglected, and most certainly rotting treehouse we should take care to visit more often. Our moms had built it with us the summer we were nine and obsessed with Bridge to Terabithia. Don't worry, it was located safely away from bodies of water. In fact, it was located safely away from most everything.

"I told you not to bring them up here," I sighed, staring glumly down at the pale pink box. They were Mom's famous lavender lemon cupcakes with thick vanilla bean icing. My favorite. Gavin was partial to the dulce de leche, but he was also objectively wrong. They were beautiful and moist and dusted with silver luster, and now, silt, rendering them unfortunately inedible.

Gavin raised one to his eye level, dark curls brushing the cobwebbed ceiling. Suddenly, I was grateful he'd surpassed me in the height department as I frantically ran my fingers through my braid in search of arachnids.

"Looks fine to me," he declared, blowing lightly on the top of the cupcake.

I rolled my eyes, "Oh sure, like that's going to—" Gavin took a giant bite, teeth sinking into frosting and sponge and dirt. "Oh my god, there is no way you just did that."

"Tastes fine too," he shrugged, and promptly took another bite of gargantuan proportions. He finished the cupcake on his third.

I wrinkled my nose, "Ew."

Gavin shot me a frosting smeared grin, "Well they're certainly not as good as the dulce de leche ones, but I wouldn't go that far." He had silver on his nose. Nope. Dirt. He had dirt on his nose.

"You ate dirt," I informed him. He was already shoving another one in his mouth. "And probably bugs."

"Want some?" Gavin smirked, lunging towards my face with the contaminated confection.

I shrieked, dodging him and diving into the pile of pillows in the old reading corner. He dove after me, dust raining down around us. The treehouse groaned beneath our combined movement and weight. I couldn't place when it had happened, but somewhere in the past three years we'd begun to outgrow our little hideout. Not only that, but we'd frequented it less and less.

There was a point in time where we biked to this field every day after school, spent hours holed up inside these four walls. We put Christmas lights up, and hung our artwork on the walls with old gum, a glue stick, and a prayer. There was a bird feeder we always kept well stocked with peanut butter, and a shelf we kept even more well stocked with the junk food our mothers would never let us eat.

We pooled our allowances every weekend and headed to the corner store to buy our weight in snacks. Chocolate covered raisins and salt and vinegar chips for Gavin, trail mix and Oreos for me, and a family size bag of Doritos for the both of us. I hated raisins, and would always make Gavin eat them out of the trail mix.

The rest of the shelves were lined with leaves and sticks and jars of rocks we found outside, plus the entire Harry Potter series, and anything by Shel Silverstein. Our stuffed animals kept watch on the windowsill, looming over our old, moth bitten sleeping bags and the unfinished game of Monopoly. Gavin was always the shoe. I, the top hat.

The rug, which had once been purple (I'd won rock, paper, scissors), was now distinctly brown; a result of muddy shoes and avid puddle jumpers with a penchant for worm hunting.

The Christmas lights hadn't worked since we were in sixth grade, and drooped sadly on the buckling wood.

We didn't quite fit here anymore. Our bodies too large and too lanky for the space. As Gavin tried valiantly to smush cupcake on my face, my gaze caught on a peeling sketch of a blue jay, shaded in crayon. The wax had melted slightly, perhaps from heat or water damage, and had dripped downward onto the two Sharpied stick figures below it. One was drawn with coiling, crazy, zigzagging red hair, the other with a green baseball cap and comically large eyes. The top read, in Gavin's messy scrawl, "G + J". The smell of lavender filled my nose.