Time Flies

Warning: This post contains mention of a major sickness.

The girl creeps towards the house, careful to stay out of the camera’s sight. Once in place, she searches the dark ground for a stone. Hands fumbling in the dark until a small rock is found. Hopefully she’ll only need one.

It sails from her hand to the second story window, hitting her mark perfectly. She almost shouts her joy, but catches herself, scared of waking anyone else besides the one in the bedroom. She knows exactly what lamp turns on in the bedroom, the bright pink one that the two of them cackled over in the thrift store. Eyes that she can’t see peek around the purple curtains, she waves her hands high above her head, before they’re flung open, quickly followed by the window opening, letting in the cold spring night breeze.

“Jade! What are you doing here?” The beheaded girl whisper shouts out the window.

“Get your butt down here! We’re gonna have some fun!”

“Do you even know what time it is! Its-” the girl's head vanishes, no doubt looking at the time. “Five! We have to get up in two hours for school!”

“Then you better hurry up!” Jade laughs as her best friend throws her hands in the air, retreating from the window.

The screen jimmy's out of the frame, disappearing into the room. In its place, out pops a girl, wearing sweats and a large hoodie. “Yeah! Go Naomi!” Jade encourages.

Naomi shimmies down the slanted roof towards the tree with a tire swing. Grateful now more than ever for her P.E coach making the class climb ropes. Jade bounces on the balls of her feet.

Naomi points an accusatory finger at Jade once safe on the ground, “You are a terrible influence.” Jade giggles, grabbing her friend by the hand before dashing off.

“Where are we going!”

“I have no idea!”

Noami speeds up, no longer needing to be dragged, but they stay hand in hand anyway. The slow as they reach Jade’s old, beat-up truck. Jade hops into the driver’s side, while Naomi climbs through the open window. “You really need to get the door fixed, the window keeps catching my clothes,” she pants out.

Together, they sit, the only sounds being their labored breathing. Their eyes lock, and that's all it takes for them to begin laughing.

“You- you looked like a baby squirrel that had never climbed before!” Jade snorts, earning a whole new wave of laughter from the two.

Slowly, they stop laughing, calming down to a chuckle. The truck starts up with a rumble, ready for anything, just like the girls. The wind blows through the windows as they take off. And while it’s cold, they don’t roll them up, partially because they don’t want to deal with the manual labor, and partially because they like the feel of the freedom it provides.

Naomi fiddles with the radio, eventually groaning while grabbing her phone. She grabs the cord that will connect her phone to the radio, thankful for the few upgrades that Jade had added to the truck.

“What are you playing?”

“Music, duh.”

A smile lights up Jade's face. Not a moment later, music erupts around them. Jade bounces in her seat, “I love, Electric Love!” Together they sing a duet of just about every song that comes on, only stopping when they arrive at a gas station.

“Catch,” Jade warns, tossing her wallet to Naomi. “I beg of you to go buy us stuff.” Naomi walks backwards, saluting her friend as she enters the store.

With Naomi gone, Jade rests against her truck, sighing. A quick glance at her phone tells her that her parents are aware that she’s not where she’s supposed to be. She holds the off button, shutting her phone off completely. She needs this one night. This one night where her friend won’t be worried. Where her friend won’t look at her with the look that her parents, brother, and the doctor gave her. Just one last time, where they are just Naomi and just Jade.

The gas pump thumps, signaling its end. She uses her dad's card to pay, he won't mind, not this time. A smile plasters on her face as she goes in to choose some snacks of her own.

Naomi fills a slushy cup full of sprite. “Oh! Have you seen that trend where people put candy in soda? We’re doing it by the way.”

Seven different kinds of candy, two sodas, and three chip bags, because of course they couldn’t narrow it down to two, they deposit their haul onto the counter, paying no mind to the bemused face of the elderly clerk. “Y’all having fun tonight?”

“Yup!” “Yes sir,” they say unanimously.

They scurry to the truck with their goods, giggling again as they pour candy into their drinks.

“Oh gosh! It's six!”

“Mm Mmh, that's a half hour, maybe forty-five minutes behind.”

“I gotta get home! My parents are gonna freak out if they realize I snuck out!”

“Okay, okay. Just one last thing, then I’ll drop you off.”

Naomi glares, and Jade just smiles, knowing her friend better than she knows herself. Noami groans and sinks into her seat, taking another sip of the too sour drink. She flaps a hand towards the street, earning a whoop of victory from Jade. She races down the street, groaning with the influx of people blocking the way.

She stops the truck in a park's parking lot. Dragging Naomi out of the warm vehicle, shoving the remaining candy and bag of chips into their hoodie pockets. “Why are we at a kids park?”

“Just shut up and hurry up!”

Jade corrals Naomi to the large spider web-like structure in the center of the park. Like a spider, Jade scurried to the top, watching with amusement as her friend attempted the same.

They both sit at the top, huddled against each other so as to not fall, and to protect against the chill. “What are we doing?”

Jade slaps a hand over Naomi’s mouth, “Just shut up and look over there,” she points in the direction they already face.

Together, they finish the bag of chips, and work on the candy. Naomi chokes on the chocolate bar as the sun crests over the horizon. A cascade of colors begins to blanket the sky. They don’t dare to break the magical blanket that covers them by talking. Wrappers crinkle as they are shoved back into pockets. Only one is left by the time the colors begin to fade.

“Naomi?”

“That's me,” she chuckles at her exhaustion induced humor.

“I have stage four cancer. And they can’t really do anything about it.”

Tears well in four eyes that morning. And two girls hold each other at the top of a child's park, watching the shine over their world for seemingly the last time.