There are two houses that are particularly unlike the rest on the street: one white, the other baby blue, one decorated with a garden, the other enclosed with a fence. They aren’t different because they are extravagant mansions, but because they are akin to each other like identical twins who grew up separately. They have different styles, different personalities, and different morals like alien beings to one another and only sharing the same people who created them. Across from the houses is a playground, though not really a playground, but more like a playset with nothing truly special about this kids’ haven. Alternating canary yellow and forest green monkey bars that make up a ladder with two plastic swings lead to the main wooden area elevated above the ground that children can exit from through a swirling slide. It had always been there across from 2 Anchor Street and 4 Anchor Street ever since I moved to Mulberry Manor. A mystery as to why it was there in the middle of ample yard space where a cozy house or a three-car garage could’ve easily been built. A mystery as to why it had its own “address,” 3 Anchor Street, when it didn’t belong to anybody that the people on the street knew of. A mystery but a part of how things were where I grew up starting from 2nd grade.

After analyzing my hometown like an outsider, I unlock my seatbelt, ready to climb out, but I stop. My hand remains enclosed around the door handle, and my legs are stiff from the 6-hour ride from South Dakota. I shouldn’t be hesitating, not when I made the decision to stop by home for Thanksgiving break instead of staying on campus. I was fully aware that I would have to face him. It would happen eventually. Nobody in Mulberry could pick up groceries from Marty’s Supermarket without knowing they were fully obligated to have at least a 5-minute conversation with whomever they ran into. Everybody knew everybody, and everybody went to the same places to run errands. No, I wouldn’t hide forever, especially not from him when our childhoods and social circles were indefinitely intertwined together like vines circling around and around each other, their growth unable to untangle after so long. And if you tried to untangle them, you’d only get caught in between or pricked by their thorns. I knew all too well from the day I left.

***

“Abigail, while you’re at Marty’s, can you pick up graham crackers for Elliot? He just woke up and is moody as ever,” Mom complained, her words voiced over by the static of my phone. “It’s because you’re leaving. He’s trying not to show it, but he really doesn’t want you to go.” A small smile creeps up on my face just thinking about little Elliot trying to articulate that he was going to miss me. He would never.

“Sure, Mom, I can do that. I was just about to go in.”

“All righty then, see you soon.”

I hang up the phone and drop it in my purse. Staring out the window, I scan the cars in the parking lot, none of which are a silver Honda. Good, okay. Now there are about ten cars in the lot, half of which are probably workers. I should be fine. It was 7 o’clock in the morning and only adults or the elderly would be here at this hour.

After taking a deep breath, I climb out of my car and into the store, grabbing a navy blue plastic basket on my way in. The air freshener is easy to find with household items at the front where I let Marty yammer on about the latest updates in politics that he read about in this morning’s paper. Then the graham crackers. By the time I get to the food aisles in the back, I’m cold from walking through the freezer aisles and eager to leave.

“You’ll never guess what my daughter told me.” I stopped in my tracks at the end of the candy aisle, hidden from where the voice was coming from. I recognized that voice, but there was no way they’re talking about...

“Abigail Trent broke it off with Jaxon Holland.” So they are talking about me. I focus on taking deep breaths, trying to ignore the trails of goose bumps that have tiptoed up my arms.

“Really?” a second voice asks.

“Yes! And it was right before they were leaving for college. She was stringing him along the whole summer. My daughter said Jaxon was devastated since they’ve been together for so long.” 

“Wow, they really have. They were childhood friends too.” I try slowly peeking into the aisle, but something else catches my eye—beige Timberland boots parallel to where I stood on the opposite aisle.

“I know. She was using him…I have to say I always got a bad feeling from her family. Her mother was in the same grade as me in high school, a dropout. Years later when she moved back, she was with Abigail. My guess is that she got pregnant in high school.” I am slow to move my eyes upward. I see grey sweatpants, then a grey sweatshirt that says Mulberry Soccer.

“No way!” Then I see his chin and jaw, sharp and clenched. His nose, seemingly straight but slightly crooked from a jump off his swing when we were 9. 

“Yeah. You know what they say; the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. Holland dodged a bullet, that poor boy.” Then I see his eyes tired, widened, and long lashed. Hazel, golden, honey, on me.

I wasn’t sure what hurt more, what the women said or the fact that he did nothing to stop them. But I knew one thing. That if I refused to let Jaxon in, I wouldn’t let him see me cry. Dropping my basket on the floor, I run out of the store hand on mouth to muffle my cries threatening to spill over.

***

I brace myself, blasted immediately with the cold winter wind that whips my black hair every which way about my face, a contrast against the white scenery and my ghostly pale skin. Each step I take leaves a footprint in the snow until I get to the very spot that could explain the very essence of my youth, where I’ve sat an absurd number of times in my life and spent maybe too much time in: my swing. It has become mine, such a familiar place that when I lay awake at night, I picture myself right here suspended in the air, pulling my legs back and forth until the soaring feeling floats me to sleep. I lightly tug against the railing, looking at where the rusted metallic chains meet a wooden plank, and expecting it to snap apart right before my eyes, but it’s still sturdy as ever even after all these years. I look from one swing to the other. Both have canary yellow seats, the same color as the monkey bars, but one swing is higher than the other. I would always sit in the lower one, and he would sit in the higher one. As we grew from childhood into our adolescent years, I was able to reach the seat easily, and probably even reach the monkey bars without having to climb a ladder or jump, but that was the seating arrangement, an unspoken rule about the way things were. I reach up to grab the handle, just grazing it from the added height of my worn-out leather boots. Standing on my tippy toes, I latch onto it with no problem as my feet dangle from the ground. I laugh at my absurdity, wondering if the neighbors were watching Abigail Trent, a grown adult, acting like a child. Letting go of the bars, I collapse into the swing seat, maybe a little too forcefully. Perhaps I was testing its safety or perhaps I wanted it to come crashing down. How did the playset last longer than we did? How did we fall apart before this thing did? This boring and old playset was stronger than us, and now it mocks me for what had happened. It mocks me with taunting memories that I hold close to my heart, one too many memories for me to count. It calls me to blame.

***

“You’ve been quiet, Abigail,” my mom comments as she takes a sip of her iced water.

 “Have I?” I force myself to smile and cease playing with the straw wrapper in front of me.

“Yes, I didn’t drive 6 hours to talk to robot Abigail.” She did drive far just to see me over Labor Day weekend; girl time she told Elliot and my stepdad Frank when they asked to come too.

“Sorry, Mom.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks casually.

“No, it’s just schoolwork.”

“Schoolwork? I know it’s more than just schoolwork,” she narrows her eyes at me. They are chocolate brown like mine, and they look black now in the diner’s yellow lighting.

“Does it have to do with Jaxon?” I look down intently at my lap at the sound of his name, Jaxon. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, sweetheart, but I know you better than anyone. You have to get it out at least in front of me or it’s going to keep eating you up.” She’s right; it has been eating me up. I was a shell of Abigail Trent the first two weeks of college. I barely went out and struggled to keep up with my classes and lived like a hermit. If not for my roommate who forced me out of the dorm room, I would’ve been friendless and hopeless.

“So what happened, Abby?” He used to call me Abby. My eyes start stinging just from hearing my nickname.

“Oh, honey, did he break up with you?” I shrug and bite down on my lip, so the tears don’t start.

“Gosh, I’m so emotional. It’s so annoying,” I swipe quickly under my eyes before a tear comes down and tuck my hair behind my ears. “It’s just that we were talking about the future, and I just couldn’t give him answers.”

“What kind of answers? Like if you love him?”

“Yeah, you know we say it all the time to each other, but then he got all serious and said it and then said that he wants us to get married soon and have kids, and we should settle down here when we are older...” I press my head into my hands propped up on the table.

“And you don’t want that?”

“I don’t know, Mom. I just don’t know.”

***

 I was never attached to this place, just the memories it held. Memories that are painful and nostalgic all at once. A boy and a girl meet at the age of 8. A girl asks a boy if they can be friends. A boy pushes a girl riding on a swing for the first time. The boy cries in the girl’s arms. The girl beats the boy running from their bus stop to the playset. They gaze at the stars at night until their parents usher them inside. He beats me to the playset; I call him a cheater. He holds my hand; I push him away. We stay up all night talking. We gaze not at the stars, but at each other, then cross the street to our separate twin houses, only to talk again on the phone.

Vroom vroom…vroom vroom. It’s a faint sound of a weak car coming closer and closer. Jaxon’s car. I knew it by heart. A part of me wanted to run back to my car and drive away; a part of me wanted to hide behind a tree and just watch him from afar; a part of me wanted to run right up to his car and analyze his face up close to see if he’s changed since last time. But I don’t do any of this. I stay put on the swing. No more running. No more hiding. I watch as the silver car slows before parking behind my car, its top covered in inches of snow and the window fogged, so I couldn’t see his face. I grip the railing of my swing as he steps out of the car, turning towards me. It’s become windier, so I tighten my black puffer jacket. The wind whooshes about my ears in and out, in and out like my deep breaths that I take to try to keep my heart from beating so fast. Then Jaxon goes to shut the door, but he ends up tripping in the wind and landing in the snow on his knees, which makes me laugh. Then his beanie is whipped by the wind, and he jumps up to catch it. This also makes me laugh. I missed him. Stupid Jaxon. Now he’s looking at me. I close my mouth. I can see him clearly now, hazel eyes, crooked nose, small smile. I hope he can read my eyes. I hope they say I’m sorry. I missed you. I love you, and I wish I realized sooner. All the things I’d tell him later.