VI
416 Words
VI“HERI – THAT YOU?” I smiled “Missed you. Been awhile.”
“Yea, I know. Not like I had a lot of choice in it.” She smiled in her voice.
“I always wondered what happened to you. But where are you, really? I don't see you around, just hear your voice in my head.”
“Oh, yea. Well, try this: close your eyes.”
WE WERE IN THE BACK of my 50-something Chevy. RV lights on, curtains closed. Stacks of books behind our heads and on the floorboard by our feet.
“Heri – wow. This is what, my dreams?”
“Something like that. It's how I remember our last night together.” She sniffed at that.
I looked over and saw a tear running down her cheek. And went to wipe it off with my hand, then stopped. “You are still cute, and I'm sorry you're upset. But did you have to make me a teenager again?”
Heri smiled at this, and wiped her own face. “You are such a dork, don't you know? Just listen to yourself – who wouldn't want to be young again with all you now know?”
I smiled in return. “OK, I've got forty more years of experience. But I tell you what, I'd have quit school that year if I could have. Mom made me stick it out – either that or I was going to college and do even more years at the same grind. I just couldn't hurt her like that. So the easier route was seeing how to game their system. You should have seen my senior schedule – all I was there for was the PE credit and some history class. It was all rigged.”
Heri smiled at my story, but I could still see she was sad.
“Hey, kiddo. Cheer up. We're here, now. Tell me what you've been up to for the last forty – and what's with all this dream stuff?”
“Sol, I actually don't know where I've 'been' for the last forty years. To me, our last night was minutes ago. And then I showed up at the high school again, then the library, then thought of you – and here I am. I'm not apparently real enough to be seen with your actual eyes.” She looked down and the tears really started flowing.
I pulled her to me. “Heri, just let me hold you for awhile.”
And we sat in the back of my old Chevy for as long as it took for her to feel real again. At least to herself.
Of course, it made me feel good again, too. Something I'd missed for a very long time.
- Writer
