4.

 

 

            The hazy, think summer air is suffocating but blissful.  I am outside, hanging on monkey bars, my sweaty palms from the summer heat making it so hard to hold on. I feel a finger slip.           

“Don’t let go!” cries a happy voice. It is a young girl, a few rungs in front of me, trying to inch her way across, bar by bar. Long wavy blonde hair cascades her back, so long and pretty. Another finger slips. I inhale. My thumb slips. I drop to the ground; my hands catch my fall and string with the pain form the gravel smacking my palms at impact. The girl falls right after me. She laughs and turns around. Her eyes are bright, happy. They look like electricity.

 “Jill! Come on!” She laughs. I wonder how she knows my name. She’s in long plaid dress, white sandals. I am wearing the same style plaid dress, but in pink. Weird. I look around, and realize where I am. I recognize it instantly. The drive-in movies I used to go to as a little kid.

            The blonde girl grasped my hand and pulled me along, giddy and sparkling.

“Jill! Come on! The movie’s starting!” The girl seems to be around the age of ten, I would guess. She pulls me along the row of cars to a dusky blue mini-van. It looks so familiar, I feel like a spring is coming lose in my head, like broken clockwork.

            There are two adults sitting in chairs by the car. I know them. But I can’t remember who they are. File cabinets in my mind frantically pull open, looking for a name, a person, something. I just can’t reach it.

 “Jill, come on! What’s wrong?” the blonde girl asks me, searching my eyes for answers. I look back at the van. Whose van is this? I look at the window of the van and gasp. The reflection in the dusty window looking back is me, but I’m so young, I’m a little child. I look like I did when I was eight- skinny, very long, wavy, black hair, freckles, pale, except for my flushed cheeks- it’s me.

The girl takes my hand again, and we climb onto the top of the van, and lay out some blankets on the roof, to make it more comfy. Like I used to. These familiar blankets, I know them. Faded plaid, fuzzy, warm, they smelled like clean linen. We lay on the blankets, above everyone else, just so we could get a special view of the big screen. We are just two little kids enjoying life, our shining faces look toward the movie in high anticipation for the movie to start.

            I love the commercial on right now. It’s that classic one, the one for the refreshment stand that they play at every drive-in theatre. The one with the dancing boxes of popcorn, the hot dogs jumping around, and the candy twirling around. It makes me laugh. Not many things make me laugh anymore.