Banished

Azure and I played beneath the shade of the great oak trees that separated our yards from each other. We were inseparable up until she moved to Illinois. Together we discovered the agony of death and losing each other; the incidents were at separate times, but each equally traumatized our lives. Both situations seemed to mirror each other because they banished the people we loved from our lives.

Azure worshipped the ground that Elvis Presley walked on. She claimed that Elvis wrote her letters and that she owned every album that Elvis ever made also she could talk to Elvis any time she wanted because her dad had been in the army with Elvis. It seemed as though everything we pretended or shared secretly centered on Elvis. Sometimes I even wished Elvis were dead so we could amuse ourselves by imitating anyone except Elvis.

At this point Elvis was still alive so I snatched up my microphone which was a twig that had abandoned one of our beloved oak trees. I knelt on one knee on my stage then planted my other knee on the small round circle, carefully I stood balancing myself so I wouldn't fall off that old tree stump. The one man crowd, which was Azure, squealed and flailed her arms sending shivers up my spine. With a little twist of my mouth I announced in the deepest voice my five year old body could muster, "Thank you, thank you, thank you very much." Then Elvis with his long blonde hair and eyes like the ocean would point a tiny finger with pink nail polish to the one man crowd and sing, "You ain't nothing but a hound dog, crying all the time." Azure would sing every song perfectly because she knew all the words, but she wouldn't be Elvis because he was her boyfriend and she was going to marry him when she grew up.

One day I waited under the oak trees for Azure and time seemed to melt from the sweltering heat because she was taking an unusually long time to meet me. The smell of rain sat in the air. I was lying on my back in the grass, mowing the lawn with my hands. I covered my snow white knees with it like they were mountains covered in green snow. Then the inevitable happened. Azure stumbled out of her house wailing, she fell into my arms drenching me from her tears. I stroked her cotton brown hair while she told me the awful truth. She repeated it over and over as if saying it would make it not be real, Elvis was dead.

We didn't play Elvis that day and I regretted inwardly all the times I had wished Elvils dead. Azure updated me that some people thought Elvis was still alive that maybe he was just hiding out. So from then on we retreated to the woods behind our houses. At the very edge of the woods there was a giant boulder with steps on one side leading to the top of the stage. We took turns being Elvis and no one knew that Elvis still held concerts in our woods. His concerts didn't last long because the next tragedy struck and took my best friend away to live with her grandma in Illinois.

My family bought Azure's house to live in though, and I moved into Azure's old bedroom so I could feel close to her. We had held one last concert in memory of Elvis with our arms swung around each other. We were best friends Elvis, Azure, and I. We were inseparable in memory, yet we were banished from each other physically.