just off of 4000 west

for creative writing again. had to describe a place that was important to us or central in our writing. i'm not that proud of it and need honest feedback. is it too confusing? vague? sorry for the highlighted parts, those are what i plan to fix.

For some reason I always remember it at nighttime in the tantalizingly warm nights of late April. Round pools of light from streetlights spill onto the grass at the borders of the hills. Sprinklers consistently hissed on at 12 minutes-til-curfew, the moist secondary-water air awakening a deadline in me. Sprawled on her pink and zebra striped blanket, we both intermittently reach to the Otter Pop box between us, our fingers numb and tongues rubbed raw from the countless number of ice pops. We mourn the loss of sell out bands that appear on The OC as the pile of wrappers slowly grows on the grass next to us.

I used to go there as a kid too. I took an adventurous turn on my bike after piano lessons at the end of the street, and it led me to the non-descript park: tennis courts, large field, playground, disappointingly short swing sets. I found no significance in it. I really was too far from home.

In eighth grade, it was “their” park, the boys in my English class whose backyards formed the borders around the grass and pavement. I met one of them there. In a nature-walk parkway we feigned romance while my dog’s leash tugged at my wrist. He wouldn’t let me stake my claim there, my house was too far down the road. But I carved graffiti in the slides and tables, professing my fatigue. This same boy I pushed off the swings asked to kiss me under the slide at 15 years-old.

She snorted, groping for a blue Otter Pop. “Don’t ever hold hands with a boy who asks you if he can first. If he doesn’t have the balls to do it himself, he is not worth your time.” I bit into the next Otter Pop in silent agreement, too embarrassed to admit that I had kissed him anyway.

He convinced me of emotions that I was sure were only articulated in movies as we sat on the swings in the park with a speed bump that scraped and ruined every car that eased over it. Making faces in the gravel with my toes, I pretended that I was mysterious. Home stopped feeling so far away; it was only a 10 minute walk or a 5 minute rollerblade, but he started to stay behind his fence in his backyard. I read Utopia in the damp grass of August, my rollerblades heavy on my feet while I attempted to look disinterested. Only sometimes would I face his backyard. This was my park too. “Alison is tired.” carved by a house key on the last blue picnic table to the left proved it.

He stopped leaving his backyard to join me.

I stopped looking for him.

Sometimes people think they grow up at 17.

I had never understood what people meant when they said teenagers believe they are immortal. But Friday nights eating pizza or Taco Bell on those graffiti ridden tables under the pavilion convinced me that nothing could change. Bands, shows, and the same best friend became the focus of my background. Drinking Baja Blast Mountain Dew, we drove to the park while the pulse of the music urged by caffeine surged through our veins. With her feet on the dash, pulling the hair back from her neck she said, “Don’t you feel like running around naked in the park, and then banging on everyone’s door and telling them exactly what you think about them?” I grinned lying back in the grass. Infinite. I felt infinite.

Standing toe-to-toe, he slipped the pop tab into my hand. I didn’t think he understood what it meant, but my friends with Frisbees swimming in and out of the pools of light caught us in the result.

“We can’t go through boys the way other girls do,” she says sitting up. “What’s wrong with us?”

I sit on my hands, attempting to unthaw them from the handling of too many Otter Pops. I muse, “We make best friends out of them. So then it’s like losing something more. It’s not just losing the boy you hold hands with. It’s losing the person who will go to the store with you or come over just to watch rich people on TV. The person you make mix CD’s for, the person who doesn’t care that it’s 2 a.m. when you call to tell him about the huge light up moose you just drove past.”

Five minutes until curfew, and the grass is getting wetter. The zebra-striped-hot-pink blanket can only take so much moisture before it starts to soak into my jeans. Secondary water makes you itch, so we move to the swing set.

Here not only romance and deeper emotions were feigned, but the simplicity of childhood came back as well. Throwing our heads back as it was on the back swing, we figured ourselves out with each stomach drop on the upswing. Back and forth, we screamed into the sleepy suburban nights, waking every last neighbor because we only had 3 minutes until curfew.

It is not safe there anymore. Everyone has moved out of the surrounding houses. Strung out preteens chase you out with fire extinguishers, and a mushroom cloud from a homemade bomb interrupts inspections of the new playground. Philosophies are no longer articulated; I save those for research papers and impressive conversations. Vulnerability bars me from lying in the middle of the field and convenience tells me to drive instead of rollerblade. Going back is impossible because it can never be re-created. We are too responsible now. I can only remember here. “Alison is tired,” is fading, and the slide has been replaced by a modern ropes course. I decided that night when drama had reached its height to not return except in drive-by tours given to out-of-town grown up friends.

We get in the car to leave, and I pause before settling into the mess of late worksheets, textbooks, and CDs in her front seat. Graduation meant growing up. Not the fake kind where you pretend you are too mature to remember what it was like to think you were in love in the 9^th grade. It was the kind that meant staying in a park past 11:30 wasn’t a rebellion against sprinklers. Once I push aside the papers and blankets and settle into the passenger seat I decide to be a grown up. Tact will replace honesty. Textbook poetry will replace swingset analogies. Planned dates will replace pop tabs at the top of the slide. We drive home in silence because before you’re a grown up, that’s okay. Everything has already been said over Otter Pops and sprinklers.