may shatter on impact (tronnor)

77. Clarke Forest & the Old Oak Tree

Kayla has soccer practice the next day, leaving Tyde to go find some of his friends and me to just hang around the house. About ten minutes after she had gone, I get bored. Shouting a quick goodbye to Lila and Mum, I pull a coat around my shoulders and leave.

I'm not quite sure where I'm going, but I'm walking, feeling the salt on the wind from the ocean and the air that I haven't felt in so long. I find myself turning away from the town, leaving the familiar sidewalks in favor of a path covered in red and orange falling leaves, like the sky is burning and falling to the ground.

I'm surrounded by pine trees, the bark and the evergreen leaves and the ever changing colors of the sky above me. The world is darker in Clarke Forest, quieter, filled with the chirps of the birds that hide somewhere up above, and the crunch of the leaves under the feet of deer. A snake slides under a leaf, dashing away from me in a smooth arc under the mud. I'm leaving footprints in the path, where no one else has gone in ages.

The forest is really for the kids of Clarke Lake, no one else comes here. And now every parent is overprotective and no one leaves the watchful gaze of moms who are paranoid their child might never come home if they leave now.

I'm alone.

There's an old oak tree in the center of the small forest, where every kid has climbed at least once, where at least four tree houses have attempted to be built and never finished, where the leaves don't grow on the dead branches, and the birds refuse to nest because of all the children. I make my way there now, skipping over a fallen tree, and reaching out and gingerly touching the old tree.

When we were little, we spent all our time here, by the old oak tree, inside the quiet world of dimmed light and the fading sky. We played little games of flashlight tag and drip drip drop in the summer, when we were dying of heat and moaning because we weren't allowed to go back to the beach again today. We built our snowmen and our igloos here in the winter, when the snow could barely reach through the trees and there wasn't enough of it to build anything anyways. This is where we met the day before kindergarten, and the night before sixth grade, and the night before freshman year began. This is where we tried to live when we tried to run away, and the first place that our parents looked for us. Me, Jason, Kayla, and...and Tyler.

I take a deep breath, staring up at the branches, reaching across the sky, a couple of birds perched, hidden among the vines that crawl up it, choking it, trying to kill something that's already dead.

"Hey," I whisper.

What the fuck am I doing? I'm talking to a tree.

But I remember sitting here while I waited for Tyler, telling the tree that I thought I liked him a little too much. I remember sitting here after Blessing's funeral and just crying to myself and telling the stupid tree that it was all my fault.

"It's been awhile since I've come here, huh? I wonder if anyone else has come to see you." I pause, as if the tree is actually going to answer. "I've missed this place." I turn around and sit, my back against the rough bark, leaving the traces of dirt against my coat. "It's almost strange, to be here now, after moving away and everything else that's happened."

I take a gasping breath, and my voice breaks and I'm beginning to choke on my memories.