Keeping Up With the Wind: A 'Burban Tale by Suleyma Moon

Prologue

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Li'l Jay! No!

            I still wake up every night from the same dream. We're all together again. All of us. Like it used to be. Like it was before...well, I guess before things fell apart. There were eight of us back then and I thought we'd be friends forever.

Back then, I couldn't even imagine life without them. I mean, some of them had actually been a part of me all my life. The friends...no, the family...that I lost that summer was the only thing keeping me grounded back then and let me tell you, when they left, my sanity left with them. Seriously. I straight cracked when I lost them. Please believe it.

            You know what? Now that I think about it, forget them! Who even needs friends anyway? When I was a kid, I just knew that my friends would be around forever. I mean, what kid wouldn't buy that load of crap? Call me naive, but I really did believe that we would always be together and that nothing could ever happen to change that.

Of course, this was all before that summer.

That's just what I call it now, too. That summer, because it was literally the absolute worst ever.

And I would know just which summer you were talking about if you said it, too. When did you say that was? Oh...that summer. See what I mean?

            I'm telling you, it didn't even take the whole three months to have me laid out. We're talking TKO'd, people. And I never even saw it coming.

I learned so many things that summer. Things that I never even wanted to know. For the most part, these were the usual lessons that I should have learned back when I was a little kid, but didn't – don't do drugs, don't go to the park with strangers at night, not telling the truth can and probably will make things way worse before they get better...you know, the usual.

            But there were two very important lessons I learned that summer that some adults don't even know. One is that no matter how much a part of your life you think things and people are, nothing is ever permanent. The second lesson, the one that I will always hold above all others, is that if you love someone, you should tell them right then how you feel about them because in the next second they could be gone from your life forever.   

            Like I said, during that summer, I learned a lot and grew up a lot. Maybe a little too much. I really don't like to think about the past a whole lot now, but sometimes I just can't help it.

            Sometimes, when I find myself all alone for way too long, I just sit and think. I think about the family that I used to have, and just how quickly I lost them all. I even find myself thinking about how I would give anything to have just one of them back.

But you see, that's impossible. You can't just take back today what you should have tried harder to hold on to yesterday. I knew when I watched my last friend slip out of my grasp like sand through an hourglass that I would never be getting any of my friends back...and that I should have fought harder to keep them in the first place.

            But the thing that really gets me is that I stayed. I stuck it out and they all left. Every last one of them gave up and left me out here all alone. What the hell is that? They knew that I would never make it without them and they all just gave up on me...on us...on life...anyway.

Bastards! Nobody deserves to have their lives change as quickly and as drastically as mine did in one summer. Nobody! Even in my wildest nightmares...and believe me, I was the nightmare queen back then...I never would have seen what we had coming to us. Never. Ever.

But the thing is, I feel like it's finally time to let this part of my life go. I have to get that summer off my chest and out of my mind for good.

I've been holding on to it...to them...for way too long.

I'm actually glad you showed up when you did. I was about to go freakin' nuts over here, thinking about what coulda, woulda, shoulda been.

You mind sticking around for a few? I really do need to talk. I need to finally tell somebody how that summer really went down.

Now let me just say up front that I know you won't believe me.

Seriously.

This story is just that crazy.

I mean, I still don't even believe it, and I saw it with my very own eyes...