swing was all of Little Bear’s things—just right.
Cedar branches hung low over our palace,
and the right swing could get us high enough to kick
the umbrella of leaves with naked feet, free from
the incarceration that shoes entailed. The chains
of the swings, long since crusted over by rust, were
sheathed in plastic. That armor dug into our hands
until blisters popped out like numbers on a scratch
ticket. When it hurt more than it was fun, we’d finally
let gravity bring us to a halt.
She’d sit on the monkey bars or the tire
swing, which I never used because the inside was
full of rainwater and pupating larvae. I’d pull the left
and right swings up so only the middle one was left
—“Crazy Middle Swing,” we called it, because you
could swing in any direction. We’d talk about school
and how much multiplication tables sucked, except
without using the word “sucked” because that was
a bad word. She’d talk about Star Wars, since she
was one of those dime-a-dozen fans who can list off
any fact about the movies or its universe. One time,
she narrated a full two seasons of Clone Wars while I
swung in circles in the middle swing.
On that swing set, we decided the method
of our death. We pumped our legs until we soared
to giddy heights, and competed to see who could
kick their shoes off the farthest onto the lawn. She
always won.
“I bet I’m going to die from falling off a
swing,” I said as I accidentally flung my shoe straight
up instead of forward. The height seemed dizzying
to a ten-year-old, but I could’ve slingshotted off and
gotten nothing more than a scraped knee for my
trouble.
She told me that when I die, she’ll die too, so
she’ll go out by falling off the same swing set at the
same time. Best friends forever, right? We always did
everything together. Swinging, when we were kids,
when we were seven and met for the first time. Ten
year later, studying, and talking about Jane Austen
and Charlotte Brontë and boys over tea.
After that, nothing.
Our last year together, we cut our hair short,
the same length it was back when we practically
lived on the swing set. It seems that every girl goes
through phases like that. All my friends cut their hair
short as a tween, when tomboyishness reached its
peak. Then teenage years would hit, and they’d grow
it out until junior or senior year before taking the
shears to it again because long hair was “too main-
stream.” Then everyone had short hair. We were no
exception.
If our lives were a movie, the mournful violin
music would’ve started playing in the background
during our junior year. Neither of us heard it, though.
Her name sank lower and lower in my phone’s list
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