The fort

Liz is sitting cross-legged underneath the castle, atop a pile of huge bark chips, the only ones on the playground that are dry. Everything else is wet, water trickles quickly off the end of the slide into a muddy puddle - you can smell the grass, the cigarettes too. I am sitting across from her, my bag between my legs, fidgeting with the shoulder straps. I know from memory that there is a Spanish-English Dictionary inside, as well as half a bag of sour patch kids, my earbuds, my binder, and my first copy of A Room of One's Own, the one my brother ripped apart one night when he was high. I am watching Liz as she finishes crying, her eyes red and swollen like some anaphylactic sadness and I'm not saying anything because my voice sounds strange around sad people. I never have anything to say anyway.

Liz is rubbing her eyes when she says “I'm gonna do it, I'm

gonna run away this time.”

I've heard this before, probably more times than I can count, or

at least care to remember, and I touch her knee and smile just like the other times she's said this. “Where do you think you'll go?”

She responds but her voice is low and quivery and I can't tell

what she says because of the sound of the rain on the play structure overhead so I think about saying “what?” But I decide to just smile and nod instead. She'll understand.

Liz still has the cigarette between her two fingers and it looks

awkward, like she doesn't know how to smoke. I know she doesn't know how to smoke because I'm the one who used to give her cigarettes and we'd walk around the mall or the cinema on weekends and she'd wave it about like at any moment she'd light it and take a drag but she never did. Now she's got it weirdly perched between her two fingers, her wrist cocked at some contrite angle and the thing just sitting there idly.

Wet car tires slosh passed on the street. Rain drops dribble onto my neck from overhead, the pale skin on my upper arms turns to goosebumps and I shiver a little but because Liz is still upset she doesn't notice. She asks me if she can stay with me. I answer that I don't know.

"My mom isn't very open to that kind of thing."

"But she knows me, she knows I'm good for it."

I tug at the strap of my backpack in an anxious spasm. I don't

want Liz living with me, I don't think my mom would say yes anyway but I didn’t need to pressure of having Liz depend on me asking. I try frantically to change the subject, "God, so I can't

believe that your mom really said you can't date Regina."

Liz's face turns a strange blend of looks and she spits

maliciously into the bark chips like she's been smoking this whole time and needs to spit.

"My mom is a fucking cunt," she hisses. "That's why I'm running away."

I want to tell her that running away doesn't mean coming

someplace her parents would check first.

"What did Regina say?"

Liz sighs and goes, "I haven't told her yet."

“Your mom doesn’t understand that you’re gay?”

Liz’s face turns to granite. “She doesn’t care. Or I mean, she thinks it’s some fucking fad like I want my tongue pierced or some shit.” Liz plucks a bark chip from beneath her knee and flings it out into the air like a wooden frisbee.

“But I mean…you and Regina weren’t really getting along though,” I try to remind her. I remember the phrase, “if looks could kill” – something my mom always says…that’s the look Liz gives me just then. I roll my eyes away in a bit of embarrassment.

“It’s easy for you Kent,” she sighs at me, “you’re a fucking hetero. You don’t have to deal with all the double-standards and all these homophobes who HATE WHO YOU ARE!” Liz shouts boldly into the air behind me, like her parents might hear her and feel some remorse or guilt.

It’s still raining. The air is heavier now, thicker, like a fuzzy blanket of wet has settled over us. I know there’s also a flannel in my backpack but at the moment I feel too lazy to pull it out. I want to go home now, I want to climb the metal stairs up to our apartment in 223 and lay beside the baseboard heater while mom makes dinner. The park is cold and wet and I know that Liz is going to be at school tomorrow.

“Listen,” I say, not even listening to myself, “you just have to go home and tell your mom you are who you are and you don’t give a shit what she says. What does your dad think? I thought he was cool with everything?”

Liz just shrugs.

“You know I still have all that PFLAG stuff in my room. Maybe your mom could read it.” I stretch my legs before me and shake them, they are numb, tingly, I’ve been sitting in the same spot for an hour. I want Liz to take the hint.

“I guess it doesn’t matter,” she huffs, and I think she’s going to cry again but she doesn’t. Instead she spits. “I need to see Regina.”

I sigh to myself in relief, achingly pulling my legs beneath me to stand. Liz just stares ahead into the night with her smudged eye shadow. She looks like a wreck just then, but I assume a lot of it is her pancaked goth makeup. I can’t leave her like this, I decide, and I grab hold of one of the metal poles and twirl around it.

“Remember when we used to play on this pile of shit?” I ask her, thinking back to when her hair was long and curly and tangled and there was no Regina.

Liz doesn’t answer but stands up rigidly and brushes the bark from her jeans. As she emerges from beneath the castle in a half-crouch she says, “yeah, that was a long fucking time ago.”

I stare off into the dark. “I know what you mean.”