Tear it Down.

I pushed open the black car door, but couldn't bear to bring myself to look up. I was too afraid of what might meet my eyes as I stepped out. But even looking down couldn't help me escape the horrible memories that haunted my past. My shiny cherry red heels clacked loudly on the blacktop the same as my years at school there. I immediately recognized the markings. The hopscotch lines they painted but never got used, the parking spaces people would use as lines for heated games of four square.

A floodgate opened somewhere in my brain, triggering so many memories I had worked so hard to suppress came back to me. I lifted my eyes nervously up. The scene that met them was both eerie and depressing. The school yard had been abandoned for years now, but I was still shocked by the state of it all. The bench on the edge of the blacktop I had been pushed into so many times was missing the back. Serves it right. But even though this god forsaken jungle gym encased so many ghosts of my past, it had been my god forsaken jungle gym for six years. It wasn't exactly perfect, but it still managed to make me a little disappointed at its state.

The huge, towering pine tree in the center of the yard was missing needles, its limbs dead and broken. A pool of yellow and orange needles covered the twisting roots. It almost looked pathetic, but the trunk was still standing, and it triggered memories of all the times I had been shoved up against that very trunk.

I could remember one of those times vividly. It was two against one, but it wasn't like elementary school bullies cared about fairness. Just taking advantage of kids who obviously couldn't defend themselves to feel better about their own confusing lives. They had shoved me up against the tree. The bark scratched up against my back, leaving red marks that lasted for days. It was so painful it made me cry out. They had just laughed. They didn't even push me for lunch money or anything. They had just laughed and walked away. It enraged me, but I couldn't do anything about it.

I watched the memory flash before my eyes like it was playing out right in front of me in miserable 4k. But perhaps worse than the bullies who had been shoving me was the fact that there were people all around the tree, including recess aids. They had done absolutely nothing. Of course, turning a blind eye would mean they didn't have to take disciplinary action. God forbid they would have to do their jobs. It enraged me more than I could begin to admit.

I sweeped my eyes over the rest of the area. It all seemed very pale, as though someone had put a photo filter over the landscape. The grass was a shade of at best green brown, and entirely missing in some spots. Not a single flower was blooming in the wildflower meadow that used to be next to the baseball field. The baseball field itself was covered in a thick layer of dust and dirt blown onto it. The three other trees brave enough to try to sprout in this wasteland were puny and bent over, as though they had given up on trying to grow. It made sense, nothing there had been given any attention in seven years once the new school building had been built on the other side of town.

On the other end of the school yard was the spot where the one story school building once stood. It had been a long time coming anyway. It had been built in the 60s and barely expanded on since then. None of the rooms had air conditioning, making it sticky and insanely uncomfortable in the late spring and early summer months. And of course, the lockers. Most elementary schools didn't have lockers, but ours had them for some unknown reason. They branched off from the gym and were only half lockers, but that certainly wont stop people from trying to fit you into them as I had realized. I still remembered the weird metallic smell inside of them. It certainly didn't help that I was claustrophobic.

But now the whole school was gone, including those terrible half lockers. In its place was just a large area of even more yellowed grass, and in some places thick slabs of grey concrete foundation. As I looked at the broken down school yard, I just kind of stood there for a second, entranced, ogling at how fast things had changed. I snapped out of my trance from hearing a pair of feet walk up behind me.

 “Mrs. Beldar, we need you to approve these plans before we can start work. How do you like the property?” he held out a sheet of paper for me to sign off on. I smiled “I remember this place. Glad we can finally put it to good use.”

“Certainly good use!” He exclaimed. “Your scientific research is helping millions of people! It's only fitting that you should build a bigger lab. There are just a couple floors that needed revision, so if you could look over these plans and approve them, that would be amazing.”

I flipped through the documents, then took the pen bearing my companies logo and signed my name on the dotted line. It felt like the quintessential fairytale ending. A place that once served only to torture me for six long and grueling years would soon become headquarters for scientific research that could save millions of lives. No thanks to them, I was a powerful scientific figure, and had made numerous groundbreaking discoveries. I handed the papers back to him. “Oh! And one more thing. We need to take down that pine tree, but it may add a few extra days to the building time.” I looked back at him, and said, with almost a child like giddiness, “Tear it down.”