He is walking alone down the dirt path. I can just see the top of his head with its soft cold shaggy hair as he crunch-crunches through the leaves.
I come here every day to watch him. I climb up into the tree every afternoon at three and wait for him to come by on his way home from school. The high school, I'd imagine.
His backpack is red, and I always see that first. Then his white, white hands, and his real white face against his dark hair. He walks fast and steady, usually - always in a hurry. I guess he has important places to go.
We always have important places to go, too, so I can never stay up here too long. We have to go down to the church for the homeschoolers' social hour on Mondays. Tuesdays and Thursdays are clarinet lessons. Weekends are cleaning days. But Fridays are all mine. At least until 4:30.
When I come home every day I go into the backyard and watch the dog tied up next door. He is blue and black and has a four foot leash. He resigns himself to the flies slowly eating his bloody ears. I imagine they were sweet, with flopped-over tips.
The day I run away I plan to take the dog with me. We will get on the city bus and ride across the train tracks to the pristine neighborhood where John lives. We will free that beautiful Plymouth Fury that he locks up to rot in his garage for fear of a scuff. I will grab the keys from their hook and the dog can shed on the supple leather upholstery.
It is a Friday now, and only about twelve-thirty, but I am here in my tree, legs encircling the thick limb overhanging the path like I am riding it. I am not really watching for him yet, but he suddenly is there, the flash of artificial red canvas against all the falling leaves.
He looks upset-real upset, actually. His cheeks are real red instead of the flat eggshell white they normally are. I imagine him seeing me, me coming down. We will talk like they do in the movies my parents and I watch sometimes when my dad stops at the family video store on his way home from work. We will go to his house and I will miss my 4:30 curfew.
Whenever I leave here, it hurts, it's resistant. I can almost hear the slow sucking sound, like the sound when you squeeze all the air out of your mouth and then open it back up, the sound the hatchet would make when I pull it out of a prize watermelon. Out of the tree. Out of my ankle. Out of the dog. Whether out of respect for the dead or out of self interest or because I had just swung it.
"Let's run away," I said to him, but he didn't hear me.
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