My Friend the Leaf

The last bell always sounded louder than it needed to.

Children spilled through the school doors as if someone had opened a gate. They raced toward waiting station wagons and pickup trucks, laughing, calling to one another, already forgetting about spelling tests and homework. Teachers smiled from the sidewalk while parents waved from open car doors.

I walked.

I always walked.

The long metal slide stood empty now. Its shiny surface was scratched by years of blue jeans, belt buckles, and tennis shoes. Even with all the scratches, I could still see my face looking back at me, stretched and bent in places where the metal had been dented. On hot days the slide burned the backs of your legs. Today it didn't.

Behind it stood the pine trees.

They climbed so high I couldn't imagine where they ended. Their lower branches had been trimmed away, leaving nothing to climb. The birds didn't seem to mind. Somewhere above me they chirped from branches I couldn't even see.

To my right, the monkey bars wore chipped school-bus-yellow paint. Thousands of hands had rubbed the color away, exposing smooth gray steel beneath.

Every step across the playground lifted little clouds of dust around my white Nike shoes.

The red swoosh flashed every time I stepped.

The hard dirt slowly gave way to clover and scattered dandelions. The dust disappeared beneath my feet.

So did the voices.

I never looked back.

The pine needles covered the ground beneath the trees. Every step made a soft brushing sound, like squeezing the bristles of an old straw broom. Pinecones lay everywhere. Sometimes I nudged one with my foot until it bumped another with a hollow wooden click before rolling back into the needles.

The chain-link gate marked the edge of school.

Its metal was cooler than my hand.

I think it was already standing open, but I pushed it anyway.

The hinges complained just long enough for me to hear them.

One step through the grass.

Another.

Then both feet landed on the smooth concrete that curved gently into the street like one long letter S. Thin blades of grass pushed through tiny cracks where the concrete met the asphalt, growing where they weren't supposed to.

Across the street stood a house unlike ours.

Its front door sat high above the driveway, reached by a long flight of concrete steps. From where I stood it looked like the whole house had been built on a hill, even though everything around it was flat. The lower half was brick. The upper half was light colored. Beside it sat a garage just wide enough for one car.

I wondered what it looked like inside.

I stayed close to the right edge of the road, wandering between the asphalt, the curved concrete, and the strip of grass. Sometimes I dragged my feet. Sometimes I kicked another pinecone.

The farther I walked, the quieter everything became.

The first street slipped behind me.

Tall hedges blocked the houses beyond them. Younger pine trees stood thick with branches almost to the ground, hiding even more of the neighborhood. Small trees with oval green leaves caught bits of afternoon light before disappearing back into shadow.

Nothing stood out anymore.

Every house seemed to belong to the one before it.

Every yard looked much the same.

Even the bright blue sky disappeared behind the trees. Sunlight found its way through the branches only in small patches that danced across the pavement. The backpack on my shoulders seemed heavier than it had at school.

Ahead stood the stop sign.

The house beside it hid behind the trees.

Across the intersection and to my left stood another house behind a split-rail fence. Its garage looked big enough for two cars. The front steps climbed even higher than the first house. Beyond it, taller trees swallowed the road until they disappeared into the sky. Far beyond them, I could just make out one of the mall's giant department stores watching over everything.

Straight ahead was Gentry Road.

The street I was supposed to take.

I kept walking.

I never stopped to decide.

I'd already decided somewhere back along the road.

The next street might have something worth seeing.

Coach House Lane.

The houses there caught my attention immediately.

Not because they were bigger.

Because they were different from one another.

Some sat high above their driveways.

Others rested close to the ground.

A green transformer sat beside the curb, shorter than I was, looking like something meant for climbing. A blue car rested farther down the street.

Maybe it was a station wagon.

Maybe it was a Subaru like my mom drove.

I don't know.

A green pickup truck sat beside a yellow house.

A little boy jumped from a car and ran toward his front door.

His mother followed behind him with a burgundy purse hanging from her shoulder. She reached the storm door just before it closed.

Life.

Then the roar found me.

I looked up just in time to watch a military jet race across the sky before disappearing beyond the trees.

Its sound chased it across the neighborhood long after it had vanished.

Then...

quiet.

Another step.

Then another.

That's when I felt the breeze.

It came from behind me carrying the smell of pine needles, dry leaves, and the faint salt of an ocean I couldn't see.

The leaves answered first.

They scraped across the asphalt.

Skipped over the curved curb.

Drifted into quiet yards where they rested beneath shrubs and trees.

One leaf had other plans.

It slipped past my shoulder from behind, close enough that I wished it had brushed against me.

It landed only for a moment.

The breeze curled it backward.

It flipped over itself.

Spun once.

Then floated ahead again.

I followed.

Every time I came close enough to reach for it, another gentle breath of wind lifted it just beyond my fingertips.

Not farther.

Just enough.

Somewhere between reaching and laughing, I began making up a song about leaves.

I don't remember the words anymore.

Only that they were about falling.

Dancing.

Playing together.

Soon there were no houses.

No cars.

No transformer.

No stop signs.

There was only my friend the leaf...

...and me.

I stopped running.

I stretched my arms into the air and spun beneath the trees while the breeze carried the leaf around me. For a little while we danced together, each of us following the same invisible music.

When I stopped spinning, I looked for my friend again.

It was gone.

I never saw where it landed.

I smiled the rest of the way.

I turned the corner.

Then another.

I opened the storm door to the babysitter's house.

The kitchen was dim.

The television murmured from another room.

Someone called out that I had arrived.

Outside...my friend kept dancing.