Part 2 - Chapter 1 - Memories

Holden's face flashed before my eyes...

 

He ran so fast. I couldn't catch up. My little legs didn't seem to want to move any quicker no matter how much I pushed them to.

 

Holden's head briefly looked back at me. He laughed through his clenched teath. He was out of breath but that didn't mean he was going to stop and let me catch him.

 

My arm reached out in front of me, trying to gain what little ground I could. I just had to touch his shirt. Just a tap and then I could decide what direction we ran in, I could say, "YOU'RE IT!" I don't think any words would sound so sweet on my lips as those, but then again, I was only five.

 

Holden kept laughing and pushed on. He somehow was able to run even faster than before. All I could do was bite my lip and try to keep up, but then, all of a sudden, he stopped.

 

I ran right into him, knocking the both of us over, breathless. I would have started laughing except for the lack of air.

 

We sat there panting,trying to regain our breathing. I turned to him and said, "Why'd you stop?"

 

He just looked at me and laughed, a huge smile forming on his lips.

 

 

"Meggie!"

 

The cry brought me back to reality. My father was calling for me from across the playground.

 

"Hold your horses Daddy, I'm comin'!" Even at such a young age as I was then, I had an attitude towards my father... Well, now that I think about it, I had an attitude towards pretty much anything.

 

I ran up to my father and took his hand as we started walking towards the parking lot.

 

"Did you have fun Megs?" My father didn't really like to talk, and I understood this, but he still had enough fatherly curiosity to ask.

 

"Yep." I smiled slightly as I nodded my head. I didn't look at him. I can't remember why not.

 

"Well what did you and Holden do?" He asked yet another question, seeing as he had finnaly realized that I was not going to volentarily tell him anything about my day.

 

"We played tag." Again I didn't look at him. I was to busy staring at the trees swaying in the cool automn breeze. In New York City you don't tend to find to many trees around, but the playground by my school had a few planted so as to try and hide the wire fence enclosing the space.

 

"Fun stuff." This was my fathers way of giving up. I didn't want to talk and he didn't really either, so I guess it worked out well for the both of us.

 

All the way back to the apartment we sat in silence. The taxi driver had some kind of Indian music playing in the front seat. I didn't mind though because it drowned a little of the honking noises out. The streets of New York are so noisy! It seems as if all of New York is angry for some reason or another, and they see fit to take it out on their horns!

 

We reached the apartment complex and started trecking up the stairwell to our 12th floor apartment. My father believed that exercise was good for the soul and elevators are a death wish. For this reason I loathed my father. I was panting and groaning by the time we reached our floor, and my father had to carry me to our door way.

 

Number 629. I liked our number for some reason. Maybe it was because I had always known it to be our number and so it felt comforting in some way.

 

"Home again, home again." My father unlocked our door and shoved. The door burst open as my father stepped inside and lay me on the couch.

 

My mother wasn't home of course. She took the night shift at her job. My mom was an apartment cleaner for the really wealthy upper-east siders. They partied through the night and slept all day, so my mom would go in and clean around 4 o'clock to 3-ish in the morning.

 

My parents never saw each other because of this. My dad worked at his friends backery down the street, so he was up around 5 in the morning and got home around 5 at night. Maybe that was what went wrong.