Without telling Eric, I took a vacation day on Friday. He thought I was flying out after work,which was the original plan, but I waited too long. The cheapest flight I could find was over five-hundredbucks. Eric would never have agreed to that, and I didn’t know how I could justify it. Not when he was right, and I hadn’t seen any of these people since I’d left there thirty-years ago.

This was real, and I was really goingthrough with it. Eric would kill me if he ever found out, and to say I wore my nerves on my sleeve would be an understatement. Anxious adrenaline pumped through my veins for three straight hours, half way across I-85. My knuckles were white from holding on so tight, my jaw hurt from gritting my teeth, and my back was sore from sitting up so straight. I didn’t really think about anything at all during the first half of my trip. I was way too worked up to think about anything, and I didn’t even know why. It wasn’t like I hadn’t snuck around and done things without telling Eric before. I had. Lots of times, but this was in another state, over six-hundred miles away.

By the time I’d made it to I-77, I had relaxed enough to enjoy an eighties station, trying to remember my high school years. The strange part was the fact my memory always wanted to go to another time. Like those years were insignificant or something. They weren’t at all, and I didn’t get that. High school was one of the best times of my life, but it was never those times I remembered. The simplest thing reminded me of those first few years, and I would drift off to that same place, once upon another time, but never high school. Like the low flying airplane descending to land not far in front of me.

It was the summer after second grade. We were bored out of our minds because it was raining, and my grams wouldn’t let us go outside. Plus, she was making me stay in the yard cause I didn’t answer her when she called me at dark time. That’s cause we wasn’t close enough to hear her. We was over at Mr. Hester’s dairy farm trying to catch the new kittens. We were going to sell them and make enough money to buy a bb gun, but we couldn’t catch any of them.

My grams took me with her earlier that day to go to town, and we had lunch at Roger’s Diner. I ate a burger and fries while she talked to Betty Jones about Marybeth from church having a baby, but I didn’t pay much attention to that causeI didn’t even know what having a baby out of a wet lock even meant.I paid attention to the blue sky and the big white clouds, but mostly, I paid attention to the airplanes I watched fly over town. Three of them in a row.

“Hey, Grams, where’re all those planes coming from?”

My gram placed her hand over mine and gave me a lecture with her eyes for being rude.

“Where? Is there an airport up there?

“Huh, Gram? Is there?”

“Stop, Jessie. You’re being rude.”

“Well, just tell me is there, and I’ll stop.”

“Yes, now stop interrupting. It’s not very polite.”

Me and Royal had snuck into a Sunday movie a couple weeks before that, and the kids laid flat down just off the runway of an airport and watched the planes go over. I wanted to do that. And now I found an airport to do it. Sure, it was a hike, but we’d walked fartherthan that lots of times. Unfortunately, my Grams wouldn’t let me out of her sight that day and not just because it was raining.

“I’m bored. There’s nothing to do in here. Can’t we at least go in the barn?”

“No, you can’t. You’re not allowed to go out of this yard ever again!”

“That’s not fair. We was just catching crawdads in the creek.”

“Yeah, that’s why Margaret saw you running from her barn.”

“That wasn’t me. I told you.”

“Right, and it wasn’t Royal either. You left the gate open. All their cows got out, and they had to round them all up again. You’re not going outside.”

“There’s nothing to do in here.”

Royal took a deck of cards from his back pocket, the same deck I’d traded him when we visited the gypsy lady at the fair. “I know what we can do.”

“I don’t want to play cards, and don’t throw them. I’m not playing fifty-two-pickup either.”

“No, it’s something different than that. Well, it’s still fifty-two-pickup, but we have to write on them first.”

“Why?”

“For the things we’re going to do. We can cut up some pictures and paste them on the cards. Then we toss them into the air and pick one with our eyes closed. Here, you get to pick half, and I get to pick half.”

“Adventures? Like laying on the ground at the airport?”

“Yes, like that.”

“What about a hot air balloon ride?”

Royal shrugged a shoulder and agreed. “Sure, I don’t care, if we can find one.”

We spent so much time on those cards it wasn’t even funny. Of course, there were a lot of things we couldn’t actually do. Like hike The Grand Canyon, ride in a hot air balloon, or go to Peru. We didn’t even know where that was, but it looked cool on the National Geographic special we’d watched on television a couple nights before, and we were going there. Our little minds were dead set on it. We did sneak to the airport though, but we got caught before we got to the runway. A policeman brought us home, and I didn’t see Royal for five whole days. He didn’t even come to Sunday school.

As I drove on,I wondered why I never went to his house, not really knowing where I was going, why I was going there, or what I expected to find when I got there. Royal always just came to my Grams. Sometimes before I was even out of bed, and usually until it was time for us to go to bed. Most of the time we were always together, but sometimes if we got in trouble, Royal wouldn’t come over, and I was pretty sure I knew why, but not then. Then, I believed him, but not now. Now I knew why he would stay away for a few days at a time here and there, and in my heart, I knew his little body wasn’t bruised because he was so accident prone. Royal could climb trees like a chimp, literally jump and swing from one branch to the other without falling, yet I believed him when he said he fell down.

At just after five in the evening, I pulled into town, astounded at what thirty years could do to a place. It was like a new town had beenbuilt on the outskirts of the real town and the old town had died. The hardware store on the corner was gone, the barbershop was now a tattoo parlor, Roger’s Diner was completely gone, building and all, and Archie’s little gas station was now a car lot. The movie theater I had spent so much time in wasn’t there either, the windows boarded up, and so was the skating rink where I’d spent so many Saturday nights. It was like the first eighteen years of my life had never existed, but they had, and no matter how much I wanted to go back and change them, I couldn’t.

I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t this heavy sadness I felt in my chest. What I felt was a knowing. A knowing that no matter how far away you move or how many years have passed, you can never really run. You can go on and pretend your entire life that you can, but you can’t. That’s what I thought about while circling town square. Even as different and grown up as it was, I still felt like I’d never left, the memories of my youth haunting me to my very core. Circling around the back side of town toward the elementary school I had attended, I slowed almost to a stop. It was gone too, replaced by a strip mall, yet the memories still lingered. The slide may have been gone, but I could still see me flying down it. Corduroy pants made you go super-fast down that thing, I remembered with a smile.

Sitting at a four-way in the parking lot, I envisioned going to school there. I didn’t meet Jan or Leigh until middle school when our elementary schools collided, but Wendy came to Grainsville in third grade because of her dad’s work. He ran the fancy hotel they had built where the old Cartlight factory used to be. She fascinated me because she was so different than the other kids. Her clothes were always so pretty, her hair was curled with long ringlets, she smelled like roses, and her lips always glistened from the many flavors of lip gloss she carried in her purse. I was barely allowed to wear chap stick, and the only purse I had was a toy with Casper the friendly ghost sewn on to it. Wendy’s was like a real purse but for little girls.

I could see us as miniature people in the third grade, waiting in line to get on one of two buses. That’s all we really needed back then. If I had to guess, I would say there were less than a hundred kids in the entire building, and half of them walked.

Royal and I were in line, getting ready to step on the bus to go home. The bus driver would never let us on until the second bell rang, even if it was cold out. That bellmeant you only had five minutes until the next one or you were left behind. Our bus driver, Charlie would do it too, but we didn’t have to worry. Royal and I werealways the first ones there so we could get the back seats, but not that day.

“Hey, you want to go cat-fishing at Willow Pond? Jimmy said he got one this big last weekend.”

I looked over my shoulder atRoyal with a frown. “He did not. There ain’t no cat-fishes that big. Different Strokes is on tonight anyway.”

The new girl, Wendy, interrupted before Royal could tell me we’d go after the show. That’s what he was about to say. I always knew what he was going to say before he said it, and so did he. We were always finishing each other’s sentences or saying the exact same things at the exact same time. Of course, I was the one who always said Jinx the fastest. That boy owed me so many Cokes it wasn’t funny.

“Why do you talk to that smelly boy? Do you want to come over to my house tonight? My mom said it was okay. She can talk to your mom if you want.”

By then I’d learned some people didn’t think fondly of my mom. Mostly the women at the church my grams went to. They didn’t appreciate the way she was raising her daughter, and they didn’t think it was right she just left me with my grams while she ran around, sometimes to other states for months at a time. They didn’t think it was right my grams was raising me either. That was what the ladies from church told Momone night while she was there, and I was supposed to be in bed. I sat on the top step and listened while they tried to save her soul and guilt her into being a mom. Of course, she told them to mind their own business, and then she told them all to go to hell. I went to bed then. I hated it when she fought with my grams.

“Okay. My mom is out of town for work. She does important stuff, but I can ask my grams.”

Wendy and I exchanged numbers and went our separate ways. Even though the bus drove right past her house, she never rode the bus. Her mom picked her up in a fancy gold Buick.

“Hey, I thought we was gonna sneak to Willow Pond, and your mom isn’t out of town for work. You lied.” Royal pouted as the doors opened on the bus.

“Shut up, Royal. You don’t know everything, and Wendy is right. How’scome you never take a bath? You wore that shirt yesterday. That’s why you get picked on. Cause you’re always dirty, and you smell like cheese and maple syrup.”

I left Royal standing there and stomped my way to the back of the bus where I sat alone with my arms crossed. Royal didn’t try to sit beside me because I put my feet up, so he couldn’t, but I did see him. This time, though, I saw what I hadn’t seen then. He was hurt, and I was mean. He kept his attention out the window, but I could see his lip quiver sometimes, and he wasn’t very good at hiding the tears he swiped away.

And I didn’t even care.

I went to Wendy’s house, but first we ate at the fancy hotel restaurant. Then we swam in her pool right in her own back yard. I’d never had a friend like Wendy before. Actually, I’d never had a friend besides Royal before. She had more Barbie’s than the whole Sears and Roebuck catalogue. She even had a camper and a pool for them. I spent the most amazing night of my seven year life that night, pampered with a rose scented bubble bath, movies on a floor model, colored television, popcorn, and soda. I also witnessed, for the first time, how a mommy was supposed to act.

Clara was the nicest mommy in the world. She was always stroking Wendy’s hair and saying sweet stuff to her. She even tucked us in and kissed us goodnight. Even me. Even when my mom did come around, all I ever got was a, ‘go to bed,’ or ‘if you get up one more time.’ I could still remember how soft the pink sheets were. My sheets were never that soft, let alone that fragrant.

A horn blowing behind me caused the elementary school to fade, turning back into the strip mall, and I moved on. “What the hell are you doing here, Jessie?”

Pulling into the parking lot of a Motel 6 that wasn’t there before, I answered my phone.

“Hey, we just landed. Can I call you when I get settled?”

“It’s okay. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I just wanted to make sure you made it. We’re getting ready to head out on the lake and slay some small mouth. Have fun at your thing.”

“Okay, I will. Love you.”

“Love you too. Bye.”

“Goodbye, Eric,” I replied in a quiet, faraway tone,like I was saying goodbye forever. Puzzled about why I felt that way, I stepped out of my car.

Once I’d gotten settled in, I showered and dressed in jeans and a Falcons hoodie, hoping to find something familiar to eat. As much as things changed, a lot had stayed the same. One of my favorite places to eat was still in business. The Hero Hutt had the best Italian sub I’d ever eaten. It was between that and a pepperoni roll from Town Hill –the same lunch I had eaten for most of my high school years. Because I wanted to walk around a bit, I chose the sub shop. It wasn’t the same either. The counter had moved, our booth was now a table with chairs, and the checkered floor was now ugly brown tile. Regardless, my sub was amazing, and I ate the whole thing.

I walked around the streets, hoping to run into someone I knew, but there really wasn’t anyone out. Not where I used to hang anyway. The other side of town that used to be nothing more than a corn field was where everyone gathered now. Walking down the streets to all the closed up shops, I felt sad. Even the Coffee Spot had been replaced by a chain. I loved going there with my grams when I was a little girl. They had the best cherry pie, and I would never get to have another piece. The Heck’s store I’d gotten most of my clothes and shoes from was now a country music club, and the grocery store was a giant fitness center. Everything familiar to me had been replaced by a Super Walmart, including the beauty salon I’d gone to with Grams so many times. She would turn over in her grave if she could see this place, I thought.

Thinking about how my Saturday would be spent making myself as presentable as I could, I brushed my teeth and got ready for bed.What I had to work with now, compared to what I had to work with back then, weretwo totally different things. I wasn’t a walking toothpick, my pretty blonde hair was more of a dirty sand color covered by dyes every three months, and there was no way I would even try to do a cartwheel now. Just like the town, I wasn’t the same either, but none of us were. Thanks to Facebook, I knew I wasn’t the only one who’d changed. Just a month or so ago, I looked at Wendy’s photos from her own daughter's wedding, judging her nonexistent chin. She looked like she had a very long neck and no chin. Not to mention the pounds she’d put on, as well. Jan, on the other hand, was still long, lanky, and skinny as a beanpole. I also knew she’d gone through a bout of breast cancer a few years back, but I wasn’t sure what the outcome had been. The only reason I even knew was Facebook and the one year cancer free badge on her timeline. There may have been more than that posted about it, but I had never really been a full time Facebooker. I was lucky if I went there once every couple months or so, and I never posted anything.

That’s one of the many things I’d thought about as I layin bed alone that night, listening to traffic outside my window while worrying about being judged,certain they would do it all in fun. That’s how we all did it back then. Even if you weren’t laughing on the inside, if you laughed on the outside, it excused the bully from being an asshole. Of course, I had been an asshole many times myself, but I never would have admitted itback then. Especially once I was a senior. Tormenting the poor little freshman girls was a normal part of our day for at least the first two weeks of school. It was a couple weeks into our senior year whenRoyal returned, giving us something new and refreshing to focus on.

We’d just sent a little freshman girl, whoasked where to find Mr. Jargan’s class, on a wild goose chase. The nonexistent steps going down to the nonexistent basement. Standing outside by our cars, we watched a group of  break dancers mess around at lunch, laughing at the gullible little girl. Johnny had his arm around me and moved into his own story of a new kid in shop class, but I didn’t hear a word he said. Something about gluing his books to his workstation. Without even knowing he was there, I turned out of Johnny’s arms and looked straight at Royal.

A burning desire to run up to him and wrap my arms around him was so strong I could barely contain myself. My emotions were suddenly all over the place, and I didn’t understand why. I hadn’t seen him since we were in third grade, but that didn’t even matter. In a weird way, I felt relieved, like I was home, or I’d just come out of some horrible tragedy, and now I was okay. I felt...free.

I stopped laughing with everyone else, watching him walk toward an old beat up motorcycle, but then Wendy saw him, too. A burning desire to run up to him and wrap my arms around him was so strong I could barely contain myself.“Oh, my God. Look, Jess. Remember that smelly little kid from elementary? We went to school with him for a minute in third grade. Remember? That’s him. What was his name? Ahhh, what was it? It was a weird name.”

“Royal.”

“The idiot has sideburns,” Johnny said, his arm drooping over my shoulder again while everyone but me continued to laugh.

With cat like precision, Wendy pulled me with her to the new prey. Only, I didn’t like it this time. “Come on. Let’s go get reacquainted.”

Still, I went, but it wasn’t like I had much choice. I knew how this worked and even though I was popular in school, I knew how quick I could lose the title. Jodi Helmick was a prime example. One second she was head cheerleader, and the next she wasn’t. All because of the punk style she decided she was into halfway through junior year. She was by far the best cheerleader we ever had because of her years ingymnastics, but none of that mattered. Not even to Ms. Gresko. There was no room for anyone with spiked hair and a tattoo on any of the Wild Cat’s teams. Nobody even talked to her anymore. Her group of friends went from the most popular to the nobodies in the blink of an eye. I wasn’t about to let some boy I used to know take that away from me. I’d worked too hard to get here.

Even though I was never really into cheering for the football team, two of my best friends were, and with that, along withme and my other best friend scoring all the shots in basketball, I had earned my status.

I did try to convince her to leave him alone though. Of course, she didn’t, and neither did Johnny. “Come on, Wendy. Leave him alone.”

“What? I’m just going to say hi.”

I’ll never forget the look on Royal’s face that day. His eyes lit up like the Vegas strip as we strolled toward him, but I pretended not to see him. I pretended he wasn’t grinning from ear to ear.

Johnny put his arm over my shoulders and slapped his books right out of his hands. “Oh, I’m sorry, your Royal Hind-Ass, did you drop something?”

“What’s your problem, man?” Royal questioned, his smiledissipating and his eyes losing their sparkle.

Of course, I tried not to notice. I didn’t do anything at all, and the only way I even acknowledged him was holding a fake smile while my friends gave him a hard time.

Mostly Wendy, but Jan and Leigh helped as well, calling him ‘Pig Pen’ and making fun of where he lived. “Just because you shit in an outhouse and don’t have running water doesn’t mean you can’t take a bath. God, I hope I don’t have any classes with you.”

“I’m not smelling your stinking ass all year either,” Jan stated.

He didn’t even smell bad. Actually, he smelled really good, but not like Johnny. This wasn’t a Calvin Klein or English Leather kind of smell. This was more natural, like sage or something very distinctive. While my Royal tried to eat his sandwich, my friends gave him a hard time, and I just stood there without saying a word.

When the first bell rang, warning us all to get back inside, I pulled Johnny by his hand. “Come on, I have to stop at my locker.”

We all walked away talking about the homecoming game, tuning Royal out like he didn’t even exist. Including me. Even though my heart was heavy, and I didn’t want to say goodbye yet, I did. I did because they did. Until he called after me anyway.

“Jessie?” he exclaimed in a questioning tone.

My heart started beating so hard it wasn’t even funny. I couldn’t believe he was calling me out like this in front of everyone, but even more, I wasn’t sure how to handle it. Turning to look at him, I read the expression on his face, and I still wanted to run up and give him a big giant hug, but I couldn’t. Even though he stood out like a sore thumb, I felt something unexplainable, a connection I hadn’t realized was missing. He really did have sideburns and long, Elvis-like,dark hair. Way longer than any other guy in the school. His shirt was made of white cotton with some sort of blue Indian embroidery print around the sleeves, the neck, and even the waist. While the rest of the school wore tucked in alligator shirts, Royal wore something from another era,like he was stuck in the sixties.

A tug of war began battling inside me on who I was supposed to be loyal to,but it didn’t even matter. I didn’t have to say a word. Johnny had him pinned against Mark Wilson’s truck in two point seven seconds. Undoubtedly, everyone within earshot congregated, chanting the same word over and over.

And I just stood there.

My eyes opened Saturday morning to the beeping of a truck backing up in the parking lot. Not only was Royal the last thing I thought of when I went to bed, he was the first thing I thought of when I woke up. I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if I would have chosen him that day. With a deep sigh, I swallowed and reminded myself once again how silly I was being. That was high school. So many years ago, and I was sure Royal wasn’t sitting around cutting himself over me. He,too,was more than likely married with a family. Still, it didn’t make me feel any better, remembering me just stepping aside while my friends picked on him. I tried my best to make sure we stayed clear of him, and I was never the one to say anything, but that was about the extent of my part in keeping my friends from picking on Royal.

I only pretended like he was someone I used to know.