Kylie

I ran as fast as I could, the crunch of dead winter leaves beneath my feet and my heartbeat a resounding drum in my chest. She was several paces ahead of me, her golden pigtails bouncing against her shoulders each time her feet hit the ground. The smell of clean foliage and smoke from a nearby trash fire mixed with the heavenly scent of her shampoo and all at once I wanted to stop and soak it all in. But I kept running because she kept running. We were eleven.

At last, just when I thought I would die from exertion, we came to a clearing in the woods and she stopped. I trotted up beside her and put my hands on my knees to suck up the available oxygen.

"You're really out of shape," she noted. I glanced up, reproachful, but was disarmed by the way she looked in the dimming light from a short winter day. The sun was glowing dark orange through the trees, swimming for the horizon. Though it was still an hour before full dark, a few stars were visible in the dimming sky. She was beautiful.

"I have...asthma," I said between breaths.

Kylie rolled her eyes and punched me in the shoulder. "You do not. Admit that you lost fair and square-to a girl-and we can move on."

I conceded.

On the far side of the clearing was an abandoned shack. It was the color of rust and the shingles were few and far between, like the grin of a very negligent brusher. What was left of the original white paint was yellow and curling, and it would flake off if you so much as touched it. The front door, as it were, hung by a single hinge and was operated now by simply sliding it to the side. It was heavy, though, and it occurred to me that it would probably be the cause of some poor kid's concussion one day. Kylie and I had discovered the shack years ago, and had made it our home away from home. The Fortress of Solitude, I called it. Kylie declined to use this name, or supply an alternative.

We went inside and I sneezed a couple of times, as I always did when we first entered. There was dust and dirt everywhere. For a home away from home, we did little housekeeping. Of course, the shack wasn't exclusive to us. We had told our other friends about it-Brynn, Jared, Mandy-and other kids discovered it by themselves. We suspected some of the older kids in the neighborhood knew about it as well, judging by the occasional used condom and the one time we found a bag filled with what we assumed to be marijuana. I had suggested halfheartedly that we smoke it, but Kylie had smacked it out of my hands and punched me for even contemplating the thought. It was just as well. I'd had little concept of how such a thing would be done.

The shack was empty for the most part. There were a couple of old tools here and there, and there were several bales of hay in one corner. We walked over to one of these and sat together. A spider hurried away at our arrival, and I suppressed my revulsion. We kicked our heels against the side of the hay and I turned on the radio we kept hidden behind the bales. Paula Abdul inundated the shack with the sounds of "Straight Up". I guess if I could go back and make everything perfect I would put something different on the radio. It's odd to assign so much sweet sorrow and nostalgia to such a bubblegum tune.

I was preparing to proffer a game for us to play (we liked this one called "connect the dots" which was sort of a precursor to the popular "Six Degree of Kevin Bacon" game) when Kylie said, "I'm moving."

The first thing that came to my mind was Reid Tanner. Reid had lived next door to me for a couple of years and we had gotten to be pretty good friends. Then Reid and his family had moved a few miles away and we didn't hang out quite as much but we still saw each other at school and still made time to come over to each other's houses at least once or twice a month. It was a bummer, but it was manageable. I couldn't stand the thought of not seeing Kylie every day, getting together after school for exploring or sports or just talking until supper time, but you couldn't control those kinds of things. Maybe if it wasn't too far, we could still ride our bikes to meet each other, especially in the summer.

But that wasn't what she meant.

"To Florida," she said next, and I was certain that I would never be allowed to ride my bike that far.

"When?" I asked, amazed at my capacity to keep my voice steady in the wake of tragedy.

"March," she said. "My dad got a job with the city of Orlando."

"Disney World," I muttered.

Kylie nodded. "Disney World."

Paula Abdul was inquiring as to whether or not she was caught in a hit and run and I felt like the odds were rather good that I would soon decorate the floor of this rickety shack with the remnants of my lunch. My parents had taken me to Disney World a year or two before. We'd flown out of Charlotte and the plane ride had lasted about an hour. When we landed, it was like stepping into another world. Palm trees, electrical poles in the design of Mickey Mouse, 7-11's on every corner. It had taken only an hour to get there, but it was so far away.

I fell silent for a moment and Kyle asked me what was wrong (as if that shouldn't have been obvious), but I didn't respond. I prayed silently to myself. My mom had told me that God was willing to grant small requests, if they came from the heart and they were for the best. I prayed for God to make it untrue. I prayed for something to happen between now and March. I prayed that the job would fall through, that Kylie's dad would get a better offer to stay, that my dad would get a job offer in Orlando, anything. Anything that would keep us together. I had moved to this neighborhood when I was six and I had met Kylie the next day. We were riding our bikes, and we stopped in the middle of the street, her facing one way and me facing the other. Both of our bikes were still equipped with training wheels. I introduced myself and she introduced herself. I asked her if she wanted to be friends. She did. I don't think these things happen by accident.

Five years is an eternity when you're a little kid. It got to the point where I couldn't imagine a childhood, or a life, without Kylie in it. We did everything together. We swam in my pool, we played elaborate games of pretend, we played baseball and basketball with the other boys in the neighborhood (who never accepted Kylie as anything less than one of the guys), we played video games, we even went on vacation together. My mom and her mom were best friends as well. I would always make a face and roll my eyes whenever someone referred to Kylie as my "girlfriend", but I guess I didn't mind so much. We talked sometimes about getting married when we got older. I suppose, in a matter of fact way, we actually thought we might.

Tired of waiting for me to finish my prayer, Kylie grabbed my face and turned it toward her. Tears stood out in her eyes. She blinked and they rolled down her cheeks. She looked at me for a moment and I looked at her and finally she whispered, "I don't want to go." I nodded but I didn't know what to say. I don't want you to, either sounded lame, even though it was true, and would have been a lot better than saying nothing, which is what I did. I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to so badly my stomach hurt with the thought of it. I wanted to tell her that I loved her and she was the best friend I had ever had, and the best friend that I ever would have. Instead, I gave her a weak hug and stared off into space and I guess it would have been easy for her to think that I didn't care that much.

That night I cried myself to sleep. I had never cried so much in my life, and I never cried like that again. My heart felt empty and broken. The next morning I awakened feeling numb, but the immediate heartbreak was softened. The day Kylie and her family left for Florida I didn't cry at all.

We wrote to each other every week for about six months. Then it was every other week. Eventually, we wrote to each other only on the holidays, and I would read her cards and it wouldn't seem like the same girl I'd known. I guess time and distance conspire to steal the people we love and turn them into people others will love. After a few years, we stopped writing to each other at all.

The other day I started thinking about her and wondering what she had done with her life. Twenty years have passed since we last saw each other. I wonder if she ever thinks about me, and our time together in North Carolina. I wonder what kind of man she wound up falling in love with and if she ever got married. I wonder what her reaction would be if I somehow found her phone number and just called her out of the blue. I smile when I imagine my wife's reaction to such an endeavor.

I hope, wherever she is and whatever she is doing, she is happy. Happiness is never as sweet and uncomplicated as it can be when you're a little kid, but I hope she's found what she can. I think I have. I think, really, that's all you can ask for.