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Josie
This town is exactly how I left it.
What did I expect? I’ve only been gone three years, though sometimes it feels more like three decades. Short of a well-placed sinkhole, nothing could change Maple Creek that much in the meantime.
Still, it’s all so similar as I sputter through the wide streets in my asthmatic car—those faded storefronts with wooden signs twitching in the breeze; the old cinema, with black letters spelling out this week’s single offering; even the drunk cradling his brown paper bag on the pharmacy steps is no different.
It’s all a little older. More tired, too.
Guess I’ll fit right in.
It’s evening, the sky tinting lilac above the rooftops, and the scent of honeysuckle drifts through my open car window. As I drive past the video arcade on the corner of Main Street, a slideshow of memories batters my brain.
So many afternoons spent there after school with my teenage boyfriend Harry, tinny music rattling out of the beat-up machines. The games were ancient even then, but that was all part of it. Part of the charm.
Maple Creek is stuck in a time warp.
Now I’m back here too: part of the town’s set dressing. Driving through these streets is surreal, like waking up from a dream.
Like I was never gone.
We used to rock up to that arcade right after school, backpacks weighing down our shoulders, already chewing on red strawberry laces that turned sticky in the afternoon heat. They’d tint our lips pink, and as we ate our candy and played games, we’d slowly ingest more and more sugar until we were both jittery and sick.
Then we’d spill out onto the Main Street sidewalk, laughing and clutching at our stomach aches, and call Harry’s uncle Everett for a ride home. Then do it all again the next day.
I can remember it all so clearly. Can taste those sickly strawberry laces; can feel the lurch of Everett Bray’s truck as it bounced through the potholes to my parents’ trailer park. Can hear the rumble in his chest when he grunted answers to my questions.
Everett Bray was never a chatty man.
Is he still here too?
This is my fourth lap of town already. At some point, I need to pick where I’m headed. Options are slim on the ground in Maple Creek, and that’s assuming you have money weighing down your back pocket. But I’ve got all of ten bucks in cash, and a few more nickels and cents’ worth in my bank account.
My gas tank is getting low.
So where am I sleeping tonight?
There’s the old abandoned farm out by the highway, but the local hell-raisers used to use it for parties, and I don’t fancy rolling over in the night and accidentally jabbing myself with a dirty needle. Then there’s my parents’ old trailer park, but Mom and Dad are long gone, and none of their neighbors will want to cram a long lost stranger into their single wide.
I guess I could find a comfy ditch on the school sports field. It’s summer, after all. No chance of getting trampled by a morning gym class, and the ticks will be some kinda company.
Chewing on my bottom lip, I run through every empty building and public bench I can think of in Maple Creek—assuming they all still exist. But I don’t know who I’m trying to kid, because even as I list out barns and sheds and abandoned pick-up trucks, I flick on my turn signal and drive away from the center of town.
I know where I’m headed. Know this road as well as the freckles on my forearms.
Will Everett Bray remember me?
* * *
Growing up, I think I spent more time at Harry’s uncle’s place than I did in my own home. Harry and I were best friends all the way from kindergarten, and at fourteen we kinda fell into dating without ever even talking about it. Two gawky teenagers following a well-worn script. Like it was just an extension of everything that had come before—the natural next step.
I didn’t mind. So long as I got to spend most of my hours out on Everett Bray’s property by the creek, I didn’t care what we called the bond between his nephew and I.
And Harry was a sweet boyfriend. He gave me cards and flowers on Valentine’s Day, and he matched his buttonhole to my dress at the school prom. He never mentioned how my outfit was clearly from a thrift store, and he never complained once about calling for me at the trailer park.
But we never, you know, did much of anything. An awkward peck here; a wander through the town holding hands there. We were best friends more than anything truly romantic, play-acting at being more. Rehearsing for our adult lives.
Even so, Harry’s uncle used to make us leave the bedroom door wide open on the days we hung out at his place, just in case we got any ideas.
