The Tire Swing

I always liked to think of myself as dependable. Some people liked to describe it as boring. But life just went smoothly with a solid routine. 

Every day at 7 am, my alarm clock would go off. I would roll out of bed, switch it off, and get in the shower. This morning wasn't any different. I rolled out of bed at 7 am sharp, switched off my alarm, then went to the bathroom to shower. It took me exactly 7 and a half minutes to shower every day. I went to my closet and picked out an outfit that I thought would be good while going over my schedule in my head. Marching band practice for the Independence Day parade from 9 to 5. Come home around 5:30, two hours of study. Mom would make dinner, then my favorite video game, Battle Men 3, with my friends until an early bedtime in preparation of the ACT the following morning. 

Around 10 pm I took of my headset, ears red and aching. I stretched a bit before finally climbing in bed. 

Thunk. Outside my window. I glanced at my alarm clock. 1:34 am. I closed my eyes, convinced I had imagined it. 

Squeak creak thunk in rapid succession, on the roof just outside my window. I pulled up the duvet on my bed, conviced it could protect me from the horrors of the murderer outside my window. I imagined a man with thick frame glasses holding up a chefs knife outside of my window. 

Scrape as the wooden frame of my window slid open, a dark figure silhouetted though the blinds. I heard the metallic crunching as the intruder cursed under their breath. I pulled the covers up to my eyes, too frozen with fear to close them. 

The figure pulled off its hood, blonde bob falling onto her shoulders. She crept over to the bed. 

"Carrie," she whispered, her voice throaty and high pitched. "I've come for you Carrie." She reached the foot of my bed and grabbed my blanket, slowly pulling away my safety shield. 

I started to whimper. 

"I'm going to skin you alive and make a leather jacket out of your flesh," the figure said, pulling the blanket out of my clammy hands. 

The feeling of the cold night air on my skinny body finally shocked some sense into me. In a flash, I grabbed the heavy ACT prep book off my nightstand and flipped on the lamp, raising the book above my head. 

Instead of the crazy ax murderer I thought I'd see, I saw my childhood best friend, Liz. She was different than I had last seen her. Her blonde hair was chopped into a short cut that stopped right below her chin. She wore an oversized zip up hoodie with a flannel shirt underneath it. The flannel was unbuttoned to expose a black tank top underneath. She had black shorts on with black tights underneath, and a choker necklace on. She had gotten her eyebrow pierced, giving her normally sweet face an edge.

"Liz," I exclaimed, pulling the blanket up to cover my exposed body. "Jesus Christ. I thought you were Jeffery Dahmer here to eat my heart." She laughed a bit, sounding like a delicate bird. 

"I'm pretty sure Jeffery Dahmer is in jail. Or like, dead." Liz walked over to my closet and started pulling out articles of clothing. She threw most of the clothes onto the floor, only holding onto a few black items. 

"Okay Jeffery," I said, climbing out of bed and putting on my robe. "What's the big idea behind climbing in my bedroom?" 

She shook her head at a red and white polkadot dress before throwing it on the floor. 

"Really Carrie, why do you still have this? I feel like I fell through a wormhole and ended up in 2012." 

"Ouch. I'll try not to be offended." 

Liz finally grabbed a pair of black sneakers from the top shelf of my closet and thrust the outfit she had chosen toward me. I didn't take it. 

"Seriously Liz, why are you in my room at one in the morning?"

She sighed and walked over to my vanity. She grabbed a wipe and cleaned up some smudged mascara I had failed to notice from under her eyes. 

"I was thinking about that tire swing. You know, the one out on your grandparents property that we would play on all the time."

I remembered it clearly. My grandparents owned a huge farm about 45 minutes outside town. On the day they moved in, my grandpa planted an oak tree on the edge of the property. When my mom was born, he hung a swing from it. The tree was about 80 years old now and absolutely massive.

"I wanted to visit it again."

I groaned. "Seriously Liz? You snuck into my bedroom like you did when we were kids the night before the ACTs after years of not talking to me. You scare me half to death by making me think that you're gonna murder me, and now you tell me it's because you want to play on a tire swing? My grandpa doesn't own the property anymore. He sold it when he had to move into a nursing home seven years ago. I don't even know if the tree is still alive, much less if there's still a swing attached to it!" 

Liz finished cleaning up her smudged makeup and crossed the room to me. She gently placed her hands on my shoulders. I felt the electricity tingle from her fingers into my arms.

"Carrie," she started. "You have had months to study for the ACTs. You already know everything you're going to know. Plus, what's going to be more important to you in four years? Getting a perfect 36 on your test, or going on a midnight adventure to relive your childhood before beginning the rest of your life?"

This time she held out the outfit, I didn't hesitate to put it on. 

After an intense climb out of the window (the rose trellis broke underneath me and I landed on my mom's favorite garden gnome), we loaded ourselves in my 2006 Volkswagen Beetle and drove off into the darkness.

Liz blasted the radio the whole drive, singing and head banging along. I didn’t say anything to her. I was just enjoying her presence after so long apart.

After a quick walk from the road, we found the oak tree. It was just as huge as I remembered, gnarled branches shooting out in every direction. The tire swing was nowhere to be found.

”Well, it looks like the drive was for nothing. No swing.” I turned around to leave and saw Liz sitting on the grass, curled up in a ball with her shoulders heaving.

I reached to touch her shoulder for comfort, but she shoved my hand away.

“Liz, it’s just a swing,” I said, walking up to the tree. “Besides, what’s really important isn’t the swing itself, it’s the memories we made.” I touched the trunk fondly. Just above my fingers was a carving. “Liz and Carrie. BFFs 4 eva”.

“Liz come look at this. Do you remember this carving?”

I heard a small sniffle, then the crunching of grass. I smelled Liz’s perfume as she came up next to me. Vanilla with a hint of lavender. I turned and smiled at her.

”I guess this trip wasn’t for nothing, right?”

She grasped my shirt, desperately pulling me toward her, and she kissed me. I had waited for this moment my entire life. Finally, the moment was here. She embraced me tightly, locking her arms around me. My entire body felt stiff, worried if I made any sudden moves, I would wake with a start to realize it was all a dream. 

When we were done, she laid on the grass next to me, panting slightly, fingers trailing absentmindedly in the grass as she stared up at the stars. 

"Do you ever think about it," she said, interrupting my thoughts. 

"What," I responded, trying in vain to tear my eyes from her body. 

"How we live under a graveyard." 

I didn't understand what she meant, but she seemed to understand my confused silence and continued on. 

"Every star that we're looking at right now is dead. That one is dead, that one is dead, and even that bright one is dead." She pointed up at every star as she talked about it. 

"Well, that last one is actually a planet," I joked, as I noticed she had pointed to Venus at the end. 

She continued unfazed. 

"All of them are dead. They stopped burning a long time ago. Just, we're so far away from it, we don't see that they have burned out until millions of years after they actually died." She rolled over, locking her eyes with mine as she did so. Her tone was so matter-of-fact, as if we were in science class and the teacher asked us to tell them everything we know about the night sky. 

I gently placed my hand on her cheek, worried that she would push it away again. Instead, her gaze softened with my touch.

"We're all made of stardust you know. Our universe started with just hydrogen in it. But when the first stars started, with their intense heat and gravity, they were able to combine the hydrogen molecules together to make things like gold, uranium, and the carbon that makes up most of the living things on earth. And when that star died in an explosion of power, the matter went flying across the universe until it eventually became the matter that makes up us. We're all just dead stars walking, trying to find a meaning in the emptiness of the universe."

I woke with a start that morning. I hadn’t even realized I’d fallen asleep. I felt the cold morning dew starting to saturate the blanket I vaguely remembered grabbing from my car. I reached over, trying to pull her closer to me for warmth, but my fingers just grazed the cold, wet grass.