Sidewalks

A semi-true story.

Part One

"You're lying."
"No, I'm not."
"I bet it was like half a Mike's at a football game."

Everyone laughed, except Rose. Joe continued to mock our cousin for sport, fueled only by his own boredom. It's not like I didn't feel like a hypocrite for feeling uncomfortable, I often took part in joking around with Rose. For me, though, it was always about her unusually picky eating habits. As always, Rose only pretended to be bothered by Joe's raillery. We could all tell that she didn't care and that Joe spoke with no ill intention.

"You probably only threw up because your one sip or whatever tasted so bad."

 I stared at my feet, pushing back and forth against the cold basement floor in my grandma's swivel chair. I could have retreated to my room if I really wanted to, nobody in the basement would've cared. My eyes were drawn to the small space beneath the stairs in a corner of the room. In the space was an old solid suitcase, probably used when my grandparents were younger. A few old throw pillows and the suitcase made for the only items in the small space. My cousins, Joe, and I had organized this makeshift furniture no more than three or four years ago during some Thanksgiving or Easter. The suitcase contained paper for Rose, the scribe, to record the minutes of club meetings. The top provided a hard enough surface for her to write on as we would review the previous mission and evaluate success. Our spy missions led us through the secret, bizarre world of the adults. Our aunts, uncles, and older second cousins fell victim to our carefully executed investigations. The missions were sometimes as simple as holding one ear against a closed door, behind which was a room of adults. Those papers inside the suitcase contained the reasons for why our second cousin, Carl, had so many girlfriends. The pages from a past December revealed Christmas presents for a couple of us. This, of course, spoiled surprises for our younger selves. We were too young to care, though. I wanted to go back in our clubhouse as badly as I didn't want to.

Part Two

Frozen feet moved at the ankles of my legs. The air was so cold and bitter that I was sure my blood cells had become balls of ice; I expected my toes to be completely blue when I removed them from my socks and tennis shoes. Grosse Pointe, Michigan sees snow far earlier than my home in southern Ohio could ever imagine to. I seem to forget this every November when we come up, my body brought to near shock each time. Making the walk to the commercial zone of the town is only a couple blocks, thankfully. My cousins, Joe, and I wandered through the town in search of dinner. Joe walked ahead with another of the boy cousins, maintaining a pace slightly faster than what most of us were comfortable with, especially in the bitter air.

Rose brought up the back of the group, as usual. I kept my pace with her as I sometimes do. She was looking at the footprints in front of us in the thin layer of snow, occasionally brushing her blonde hair behind her ear. I noticed the sidewalk underneath the freshly fallen snow, a sidewalk which I had walked on many times before. This sidewalk I had stepped on in probably nearly the same place exactly one year ago, but not exactly the same place. My frozen feet connected with the ground in a way that seemed exactly the same to any observer; I didn't walk any differently than I have my whole life. One could say the sidewalk was and always has been the same, too, just as I walked on it the same. But when it really comes down to it, it's physically impossible for myself or the sidewalk to be exactly the same at different instances in time.

"Hey Rose?" I asked.
"What?"
"Do you ever, uh, think about sidewalks?"
"What?"
"Never mind."

Author's Note

Ignore grammar and punctuation problems.