There's a Playground

“Wendy…”

“Yeah, Maxie?”

“Can you make me a promise?”

“Sure. What do you want?”

“Promise we’ll always stay friends. No matter what.” He held out his hand, pinky finger extended and I smiled as I hooked mine with his, nodding firmly.

“Okay, Max. I promise.”

“Good…I love you Wenders…”

“Love you, too, Maxers.”

Childhood was so simple. I remember when I made that promise with him. All those years ago. We were seven at the time and couldn’t care less about what the world thought about us. We’d grown up together, nothing huge about that. Lots of kids grew up together. Were best friends their entire lives. Stuck to the silly little promises that they made that were so like ours. But Max and I…

God, I should have known back then that Max and I couldn’t ever be friends forever like we‘d wanted to. It just wasn’t possible and something was bound to go wrong. As I learned when I was eight. My mom decided that she’d had enough of my dad and his “heathen ways.” Vegas does that to people, apparently.

But I was seventeen when I came home from school to see that my mother had packed up everything in our house and put it into the back of a moving van. I couldn’t believe that woman had managed to do that in the span of the roughly seven hours I was sitting in a classroom bored out of my fucking mind.

“Uh…Mom?” I’d asked, standing awkwardly in the yard of our little house as she ordered around the movers carrying our couch out of there.

“Yes, Wednesday?” I was surprised that she’d actually heard me. Generally when my mother was really focused on something, she stayed focused on it. And she looked incredibly determined to get all this moving shit taken care of as quickly as possible. I caught sight of the inside of our house between one of the movers’ trips. It was completely bare and looked really friggen weird. It looked just as it had when we’d moved in nine years ago.

“What are we doing?” I asked, shifting my weight so that I could see the look on my mother’s face a little better. She was grinning like a psychotic mad woman. Lovely…

“Vegas.”

“…We’re moving back?” I asked, stunned. Ever since my parents got divorced, I hadn’t been back to Vegas. Nine years without seeing my best friend in the entire world when I was little. Nine years without seeing my father.

“Oh yes.”

“…Why?” I was still in shock. She grinned and grabbed my arm, pulling me along behind her to our car, shoving me into the passenger seat before closing the door on me and climbing into the driver’s side quickly. “Mom, is everything okay?”

“I got a really good job offering over there. And you always wanted to go back to Vegas again,” she explained, starting up the car while I situated myself so that my bag wasn’t taking over the majority of my seat and making it uncomfortable for me to sit.

“Um…well, yeah, but I wasn’t exactly expecting to actually go back…I meant like for visits and stuff, not move back there. It‘s been nine years, Mom.”

“Well, too late. We’re moving back there,” she said, sounding rather bored. She brushed her platinum blonde hair out of her blue eyes and began pulling out of the driveway, beginning to lead the way out of Colorado and back to Vegas.

“Um…okay…” I said, not sure what else to say to any of this. This whole entire thing had just crept up on me and tackled me down hard. I never thought that she’d actually want to go back to Vegas. I was pretty sure, with the way that she generally talked about our lives back there, that she hated it. But apparently, something happened with Dad or something. “What about Dad?” I asked, wanting to know what would happen with living in the same town with him again.

She shrugged at me as she slowed to a stop. “I don’t know. We’ll deal with him when and if he shows up.”

“You know he will, Mom.” She shrugged again, falling silent as she pushed a CD into the player and music began flooding everything. I sighed, running a hand through my hair and staring out the window sadly. It was a good thing that I really didn’t have any friends here in Denver… Everyone would hate me if I left without notice. Oh well…

----

“Wednesday, we’re here.” My mother’s voice penetrated my thoughts as her hand shook my shoulder. I sighed, yawning and opening my eyes drowsily. Looking down at the clock, I saw that it was midnight. Ugh…great. Now we had to go in and unpack everything…

I sighed, yawning again as I shifted, tilting the crank out of my neck. “Where are we sleeping tonight?” I asked between yawning once more.

“I had the movers take out the couches. They’ll be back in the morning to help us with everything else.”

“Oh…okay…” I stated, sighing as I opened my door, climbing out to look at my new home. It was really nice, I could tell that much. And I wondered how the hell my mother had managed to afford it.

It was just her and me living together ever since my grandmother passed away six years ago. Grandma was the reason that we moved to Denver in the first place… Other than my parents’ divorce, that is. Grandma got sick and Mom felt like she had to take care of her. I think that was just an excuse for Daddy and her to get a divorce though…

But what do I know? I was never really told the full story of everything…

“Mom…”

“My lawsuit, child support, and Grandma’s life insurance. She told me to use it to get a house one day.”

Well, that answered my questions. I yawned, nodding and sighing as I stretched my arms overhead. I could hear a party happening next door and I looked over to see a two-story house much like our own that was all lit up. I could hear the loud music coming from it and I had a feeling that we were going to be getting a lot of that back here in Vegas. Sighing, I trudged my way up to the new house and fell onto one of the misplaced couches.

Despite the noises from next door’s party, I passed out pretty damn quick.