The Incredible League of Goth Pizza Haters (RH)

Part 87

---Sylvia---
They hugged each other one last time before he joined me outside. His sister waved at me and I gave a friendly wave back as I followed Ricky to the car. The rain had lightened to nothing but watery specks that dotted our jackets and hair as we pulled open the car doors.

She was a nice person. Tired from being up all night with her son but still polite and friendly and I give her credit for that. We'd stayed only briefly like Ricky had said we would. They talked and caught up. I watched Ricky play with the baby, setting him on his lap, bouncing his leg and doing the whole baby talk thing.

I'd never seen that side of him before. I thought about it the whole drive.

Ricky pulled the car into a vacant lot outside an old looking building. When I looked to him for answers he just grinned.

I followed him out of the car and into the old building. It was made of old red brick, though nature had spread its fingers along most of the outside walls and over the rusted window panes. It smelled like leaves and rain and the inside was littered with old furniture and tables.

"It was a shoe factory," Ricky began to say, his voice filling the silence, "They closed it when I was about ten. As teenagers, my friends and I used to come here just to hang out. Waiting for like, the zombie apocalypse or something."

I smiled as he began to show me around. It was a fairly big building, three stories. The bottom floor was pretty wrecked and wet. Dirty water pooled in splotches while mold and moss crept over nearly every chair and desk. Vines hugged the walls and even now old objects still remained. Rusty staplers and soggy boxes of paperclips. There was the sound of dripping water, our shoes scuffling against the damp stone and the sound of his voice threading through the emptiness.

It was beautiful, in its own way. And it looked like Ricky was walking through memories. I happily followed, honored he'd offered me this look into the person he used to be.

He told me about his old friends and then high school and a bunch of other things he'd never before brought up. At some point, our conversation carried us up to the next floor.

It wasn't nearly as torn down as the first one. The windows had all been covered in sheets of plastic, so it was pretty dry. The smell of damp had left and been replaced by the thick aroma of dust. The air was still, and everything was much quieter here.

He'd been talking but fell into silence as we entered the third floor. He smiled gently at the sight of it.

It was one long room and the whole right side was generally empty. It also had sheets of plastic over the windows but it didn't hold the same stillness the previous floor had. It couldn't. On the left side near the back was a large hole in the ceiling. It let in the gray of the sky and the wind breathed fresh air back into our lungs.

Beneath the gap was a circle of desks set on their side and other objects piled up to act like a makeshift wall. I followed him over to the site. Upon closer inspection, the barrier circled around the hole where, directly beneath, sat what looked like an old firepit. There was no wood, but a smothered black hole was burned onto the floor. Old plastic boxes of paper were stacked against the desks where there were chairs and even a few old blankets.

I turned to Ricky. He had a look on his face I didn't know how to interpret.

"Are you okay?" I asked. The ghost of a smile graced his lips.

"Yeah. I'm just a bit nostalgic is all." he turned to me, pulling me closer and kissing my cheek. "This was where we used to sit." he gestured to the few old chairs spread around against the wall. "On rainy days we would move the chairs to the other side of the wall, but.. On clear nights we would all meet here and light a bonfire."