This is a product of time.
 
Time, and assumption.
 
Through the long, dreary years both my mind and body have taken their licks in stride, but not without a few irreparable consequences.
I’ve not stood upon my own two feet for a fair number of years and neither will my two beautiful daughters nor my upstanding well to do son take a moment from the hussle and bussle of their extraordinarily ordinary lives to visit a lame old man in his lame old countryside home, barely living off the lame old checks the Navy still sends him on the first of every month as they have for the last 10 years.  But I ramble, not a soul alive cares about a foolish old man’s recollections of his younger years. Lucky for us old folk not to pay any mind to the opinions of such people. If we wanted to talk just to hear ourselves, we’d record it with one of your newfangled devices and play it back whenever we please. No, we tell our stories to remember them ourselves. The mind has a curious way of getting the facts mixed up, so we need something to help keep said facts straight.
 
If one were to neglect this small act, as I have for far too long a time, one might begin to remember them incorrectly.
 
And so the story goes, all assumptions aside.
 
Back in time we go, to the time of clear skies and white picket fences. So long ago even I was still but a lad at the whopping age of 8 years. My parents weren’t rich, they didn’t have a big fancy house and pool. There was no second story and the attic was unusable due to a very large number of hornets that decided to nest up in the cracks in the roof. Our neighbors weren’t kind, their children were rambunctious and immoral and liked to take that which did not belong to them. Before we’d moved in a year prior we’d lived in the back of a van, my parents and I. We’d travel all over the states and camp out in alleys and forests alike. We ate our meals cooked over a campfire with wooden plates and cheap silverware. (Most of the set having either gone missing, stolen or lost to the fires over which we cooked.) My parents were proud of the little place they had managed to buy up with all that money they saved from labeling holidays and birthdays as just another day on the calender; I wasn’t even allowed the privilege of believing in old Saint Nick.
 
But I ramble yet again, this is not about my childhood as a whole, but rather a single moment therein.
 
School was fun at the time. I remember my teacher bringing in a big plate of sugar cookies at the start of every week since she’d transferred in from the school across town around April. It was about a week before the school year was to end and summer to begin in it’s place.  Since the beginning of the year, there was another student in my class which I had had quite the thing for. As far as I can tell she shared the sentiment. She was quiet, kind and kept her long red hair up in pigtails during class, but she’d always let it down during recess while we played around on the monkey bars and jungle gym. Well, one day after school the two of us decided to take a shortcut while walking home; more often than not we’d walk down the street from school then part at an intersection. Being as young as we were, neither of us really thought about how our houses were in two different directions and on completely different sides of our stale old town despite our usual parting of ways at the end of every day. We walked down a few alleys; some familiar, some not. The cold gravel crunching beneath our feet coupled with the incessant barks and howls from dogs on the other side of tall wooden fences made conversation scarce, but we were kids and didn’t really care that the other had nothing to say. Even the simplest thing such as being together was enough to keep us cheerful. For what seemed like hours we laughed and walked, pointing out silly things we’d find as we go. Graffiti on the walls was especially fun as we’d crack up at the silly faces people had drawn alongside foul language we’d been told never to say and freely cursed with one another knowing we’d never get caught. As time went on, our environment started changing from barren back roads lined with old and abused metal garbage cans with things stirring around just under the lids to abandoned roads surrounded with the greenest of grass and bright yellow flowers lining the tall white walls on either side. The sun shining down from almost directly above, the walls glowing with it’s reflection seemed to squeeze us in while lighting our way down the straight narrow road with no end.
 
I don’t know how long we followed that road and I can’t remember how we came to or left it, but once I’d found we were gone from it I’d noticed the sun left with it and we were back in one of those cold and now dark alleys. We were hardly dressed to be out late at night, I pointed out and suggested we make our way back home as quickly as possible. I turned to my friend expecting to grab her by the hand and run back the way we came and call our parents at one of the public phones we’d come across earlier that day. I grabbed air and air alone. Like the sun and that narrow road, she was gone without a trace. My parents found me after I called them with quarter left over from my lunch money they’d given me that morning and told me I had been gone for days. I tried to tell get them to help me find my friend, but they told me it wasn’t possible so late at night and took me home. She’d given me her phone number a few days before our adventure and told me to call once I had the chance. I had forgotten all about it up until then. So, I had my mother dial the phone the next day after school when I noticed she still wasn’t back and her mother told me over the phone that she still hadn’t returned. Without another word, she hung up and wouldn’t pick up again.
 
My parents took me out of school for many years after that, and every time I asked about my friend they would tell me having an imaginary friend was a bad sign; that I should just ignore “it” and pretend “it” never existed. The next few years were hard for me psychologically. They insisted that it was all in my head, but the fact that I had disappeared was no illusion. And if that was real, then surely the girl I had spent all that time with was also real.
 
And if she was real, then she must still be out there somewhere.