Another Night I'm On Another Broken Avenue

I stopped walking and looked up at the sky. I could see so many stars, endless in their cascade across my vision.

I lost track of how long I had been standing there, but I was starting to get chilly now. Walking had distracted me from the temperature drop.

I looked around me. It was then that I realized, I didn’t know where I was or how to get back home. I must have walked a few miles out of town, at least. I couldn’t really be sure. I could feel my nerves tingling. I just wanted to be somewhere familiar. I honestly felt like it could take me days to figure a way back to town.

I tried to think back to the last couple hours. I knew it was light when I started my walk. Walking always helped me clear my head. I wasn’t even sure why that was. It just calmed me down so completely and I was able to lose myself in my thoughts, so much so sometimes that I would have ‘blackouts’. When it happened the first time, I was so scared. I didn’t get scared anymore when it happened, but I was usually able to snap myself out of my thoughts before I got seriously lost. This time was only the second time I had walked so far I had no idea how to get back to my life, to reality.

I felt afraid this time, though. It’s as if my mind went blank, where just a few moments ago it was racing so fast I could barely keep things straight.

Suddenly, I could hear music faintly. It took me just a few moments to realize that my phone was ringing.

“Hi Dylan,” I said after pulling my phone out of my pocket. I had known it was him calling as soon as I realized it was my phone creating the music I heard. Only one person was worthy enough to warrant my favorite song as their ringtone.

“What are you up to?”

“Actually, I am standing in the middle of a field and I have no idea where I am.”

“Went for a walk I take it?”

“Yeah, I left my house at around seven. What time is it now?”

“It’s almost eleven.”

“Oh, shit. I’m going to be in trouble as soon as I figure out how to get home.”

“What direction out of town did you walk?”

“The last thing I remember was walking down fifteenth. I had a craving for ice cream. I just happened to lose myself in my thoughts before I made it to the ice cream shop.”

“So, you probably headed east out of town since fifteenth stops about a mile and a half out of town. I’ll come and see if I can find you, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Why don’t you turn around and try to find a road? I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

I hung up with Dylan and put my phone back in my pocket. I tried to figure out which way was west, but I wasn’t completely sure. I opted for turning one hundred and eighty degrees and walking in as close to a straight line as I could manage. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but I figured if I walked far enough I would eventually find something that I use to pin-point my direction.

Maybe ten minutes later, I wasn’t sure exactly how long, I could see headlights going in the direction perpendicular to my own. I knew I must be close to where Dylan was going to try and meet me.

As I stepped on the road, I saw a couple signs telling drivers they were on Highway Twelve. I saw another sign saying I was about four miles from town. I had gone farther than I had originally thought.

I called Dylan.

“Hello?”

“So, I found a road. I’m on Highway Twelve. The road sign said I was about four miles from town.”

“Okay. Keep walking back towards town. I’ll try and find you soon. It’s getting too chilly for you to be out walking by yourself. Don’t start thinking again. We may never find you, then.”

“You’re hilarious, Dylan,” I said, sarcasm dripping from every word.

“I thought it was.”

I hung up the phone and started walking again. According to Dylan’s logic, I was still a couple miles from fifteenth, where I needed to be. I figured the fastest way to get there would be cutting through the fields. I must have done that on the way here.

I looked to make sure there was no traffic coming before making my trek across the highway. It really shouldn’t have surprised me, but once I was in the field walking toward the place I would meet Dylan, my mind started wandering.

I thought back to the first day we met. It was so long ago now, but I could still remember every detail vividly, as if it were only yesterday.

We were young. Not that we weren’t now being only seventeen, but we were only about four. Well, at the time, I was four and Dylan was five. His birthday was two days before mine. It was almost ironic; we met on the day between our birthdays. Dylan being five acted so superior to me, being only four.

When I walked up to him on the first day of kindergarten, I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t have many children in my neighborhood growing up. Actually, there was only one other than myself. So, when I got close enough to him to start talking I didn’t know what to expect.

I was a teenager in a four year olds body. I didn’t know I was nervous at the time, but I was. I didn’t even know why. He was just a little boy.

I tapped him on the shoulder, “Hi, my name is August. What’s yours?”

“Dylan. How old are you?”

“Four. How old are you?”

“I’m five. Since I’m older than you, I get to choose what we play at recess.”

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

“Life isn’t fair. That’s what my mom says anyway.”

“Your mom isn’t here Dylan.”

“So? My mom is a smart lady.”

“My mom is smart, too.”

“Not as smart as my mom. She’s a teacher.”

“My mom is a doctor.”

I chuckled and shook my head thinking back on us as children. We were always competing about something. We always had to one up the other.

“I don’t like the doctor. It’s scary there.”

“My mom isn’t scary.”

“She’s a doctor, she has to be scary.”

My four year old self giggled.

“So, what do you want to play at recess?”

Dylan thought about it for a minute. Really, I didn’t know why it took him so long to decide on what we were going to do. There weren’t that many options.

“Let’s play tag,” he tapped me on the shoulder. “You’re it.”

He started running away across the blacktop toward the grass on the side of the school building. He must have thought he could run really fast being a boy and older than me, but he wasn’t. I caught up to him before he had even gone a hundred feet.

“You’re it,” I said as I tapped him on the back.

“No fair.”

“Life isn’t fair. Remember? Your mom says it.”

“I remember. Let’s play something else.”

Another thing about five year old Dylan, he was a sore loser.

“What do you want to play now?”

“Let’s just go sit on the swings.”

We walked over to the swings and started talking.

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Red. It’s the coolest color. What’s your favorite color?”

“Orange.”

“Orange is for sissies. Only cool kids like red.”

“Well, I must not be cool enough to play with you, then.”

We hadn’t been swinging very high or I would have gotten in trouble. I jumped out and started walking away from Dylan, looking for someone else who looked fun to play with.

I don’t remember how long it took; probably just long enough for Dylan to get the swing to stop before he ran after me.

“Whoa! That was the coolest thing ever. Cool kids can like orange, too. It’s almost like red anyway.”

I remember I had been just about to ask him if he wanted to go back and swing, but the bell rang signaling the end of recess and we both had to go inside. Luckily for me, the first friend I had made on my own was in the same class as I was.

The rest of the day went by without anything extremely interesting happening. All I knew was I couldn’t wait for the next day when I would finally be five and the same age as Dylan.

I was snapped out of my thoughts by a car horn sounding. I looked up and there he was. Dylan. I had made it to fifteenth somewhere during my flashback.

“Hey,” I said as I opened the car door.

“Why are you crying?”

I touched my hand to my cheek. When I pulled my fingers away they were wet with my tears. I hadn’t even realized I had started crying.

“I didn’t even know I was crying. I was just thinking about the day we met. That was so long ago.”

“You were such a little brat.”

“I was not. You were mean. Thinking you were cooler than me because you were older than I was.”

“Do you remember the next day and I told you I was five now, too?”

“No, not really.”

I could tell by the look on his face that he could remember, he just didn’t want to admit it.

“You were so mad that you weren’t older than me anymore. You didn’t talk to me all day. I thought you didn’t want to be friends anymore.”

“I could never not be friends with you.”

“I didn’t know that then, Dylan. I had just met you. But then, the next day, there you were acting as if nothing had happened.”

“I was probably more of a brat than you were.”

“You were.”

“Do you mind not going home just yet? There’s something I want to show you.”

“I don’t mind. I’m kind of dreading going home. I’m going to be in so much trouble.”

“I had my mom call your house before I left. It’s okay for you to stay over if you want, but it’s up to you. Your parents said you could come home when we got back from the movies if you wanted to. I had my mom tell your mom that we went to the movies tonight and that’s why you weren’t home yet. She said it was a surprise gift from me, so you couldn’t call and ask.”

“You just thought of everything, didn’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“Dylan, I’ve been trying to think of a way to tell you this all week, but I just haven’t found the right way or the right time, but I can’t keep it from you anymore.”

“What is it?”

“You know how I had the appointment last week at the hospital?”

“Yeah. What about it?”

“Well, you remember me telling you that I’ve been getting dizzy a lot and can’t really keep much food down?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, the test results came back on Monday, which is why I got lost in thought.”

“Are you pregnant?”

“No, Dylan. It’s worse than that. I have cancer.”

Dylan had already started driving us to wherever it was he wanted to show me, but when the last word came out of my mouth, he had to pull over.

“Please tell me you’re not serious.”

I could feel the tears building up behind my eyes this time.

“I am serious. The doctor wants me to see a specialist from Maryland. The doctor said that I have a large tumor on the underside of my brain.”

Dylan leaned forward until his forehead was resting on the steering wheel of his car. After taking a few shaky, deep breaths he looked over at me. “You can’t have cancer,” he said as the first tear fell down his cheek. “You just can’t. I don’t know what I would do if I lost you.”

“Dylan, just because I have cancer doesn’t mean you’re going to lose me. Remember that time at the lake when the floorboard fell out of the tree house and the rope I grabbed onto snapped as I was over the lake?”

“Yeah, how could I forget? I thought you were going to murder someone.”

“Do you remember what I said?”

“No, I don’t remember that.”

“Well, I walked right up to the guy you brought with. What was his name? Mark?”

“No, that was his brother. It was Mike.”

“I walked right up to him, looked him in the face and he thought I was going to punch him or something. The tension in the room was so high. I think his brother put his hand on my shoulder to try and calm me down, but I was still glaring at Mike. Anyway, I took another step toward him and he closed his eyes, flinching slightly, practically waiting for me to hit him. After about thirty seconds of me standing there glaring at him, he opened his eyes. He said, ‘Aren’t you going to hit me?’ And I shook my head, but said, ‘No, but I should. Bastard, you ruined my favorite shirt. You said this place was safe.”

Dylan started laughing before I could even finish the story. “I remember now. You also said he owed you twenty bucks to get a new one.”

“Damn straight, I should have gotten more than that for the trip to the hospital.”

Dylan paused, like the wasn’t sure how to word something he wanted to say.

“It’s the way you make me laugh when I don’t even want to smile that makes me realize I’m in love with you. My best friend has cancer and yet she’s sitting in my car telling jokes because I’m crying and hates seeing me upset. If anyone else had found out they had gotten cancer, they wouldn’t be trying to cheer me up after telling me, they’d be a wreck. Do you know what today is?”

I glanced down at my calendar on my phone because I couldn’t remember.

“August twenty-ninth?”

“The first day I met you; the day in between our birthdays. I was going to take you to this really pretty place I found tonight. I wanted to wait and give this to you there, but I don’t want to wait anymore. I don’t want to wait while you sit next to me, dying.”

“But Dylan…”

He cut me off, “Please, just let me finish. I don’t want to wait for you to realize that you’ve been in love with me since you were five years old. I don’t want to wait for you to make the first move, because we both know, it takes you forever to realize someone likes you. I don’t want to wait and then have it be too late; to have missed my chance. I’ve been saving my checks from my job and I finally had enough to get you this. My mom helped me pick it out, because I don’t know much about this kind of stuff.”

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small, square box. Looking over at me, he opened it, “August, I know we’re not even dating right now, but I want to spend the rest of my life with you. It’s a promise ring, since I’m not officially asking you to marry me, but I love you and I don’t ever want to be without you. Will you be my girlfriend?”

I was crying now. I never expected these words to come out of Dylan’s mouth.

I was speechless, so I simply nodded my head. He took my right hand and placed the ring gently on my finger.

“Don’t ever leave me, August.”

“I won’t.”

And then, he kissed me.