22:30 - April 14, 2002
tightly closed window
It was remarkably frightening to be on the hill again, for the first time in over two years. November of sophomore year; was it really? That's what I'm thinking, but I have no written record (or it's in another room and I don't want to go get it). Everything felt fine until I got up there, sandwich dangling in my hand, fingers of my other hand freezing from the lemon coke. Then the view was there, and exactly as it was then; strange surrealistic cityscape, from the top of Lovelace Park. I had to sit down and look the other way. When Camille got up and walked down the hill, I remember how she looked at sixteen, turning around, sitting at the bottom and gathering herself, before Erik yelled, actually yelled, at her to tell him what was going on. This time she kept walking, eating my sandwich until she dropped it in the mud, and by that time Mike and I had run after her. I kept looking at him and thinking he was Erik or some weird smell or taste sensation of Taylor, so I had to get up and move for fear of having it all wash back over me. I attacked Camille at the bottom of the hill, but she spun out of the way. Then we played on the playground, and my mind calmed its box of fear; after all, it's only a playground, in a park, in Wilmette, with monkey bars and swings and slides that I climb up instead of slide down, not any sort of demon, and even talking about suicide feels like a breath of fresh, spring-scented air. And, do you know? I think I'm happy.

That said, and hopefully being kept in mind, I cried driving home; just started right under the tracks at Lincoln and Ridge for no reason I was, or am, aware of. Summer wind was blowing through the window Mike had rolled up ten minutes before as a second thought, and I smelled it, smiled, and closed my eyes.. and then remembered the window was shut. I reached out my hand to find Erik's, to steady my arm and to tell him I'd just seen myself like a film, rolling black and white and fuzzy, feeding Gabe marshmallow fluff of my finger at Grant's however many years ago, and then with the unmentionable on that stupid bed (and did Erik really open the door?) and tasting Taylor (and I did, my mother saying 'why are you crying?' and I can't tell her it's because he tasted so beautiful). I am not hardhearted, no matter who thinks I am (and a surprising number of people do; am I that convincing?), even me, at which point I remembered: Erik is not sitting next to me; he's in another state. I drove the remaining three blocks home with tears streaming like rain down my face on this warm spring day, and not at all because I had put my searching hand down on an empty, mint-smelling seat, or because Mike will, world without end, like Camille, or because my parents are suing each other endlessly, or any other reason. They streamed and I thought wildly, why, and all I could come up with was that I'd smelled sand on a breeze that came clear as night through a tightly closed window.

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