Green Rusted Doors

-childhood story-

I wish I were invisible, so that he could not get me. He drives around in a green car, with rust covering the sides of the door, like a dirty child left uncared for.

I watch for Him.

He passes my street when the sun is high set in the sky, at the time of the day when it's too hot to run to the mailbox without sandals, black concrete on my driveway melts my feet like hot lava. When the driveway begins to melt like lava,

I look for Him.

I wish I were invisible. Now, I have to look & hide. Molly lives across the street. Her mom did it. This one real hot day when were doing the slip & slide she stomped across our yellow dying grass, ringing our doorbell three times in a row, but not by mistake. With that look in her eye, that mom worried look. She told my mom all about the man who drove around, she said he stopped up the street, asked Sandra to look at his kittens in the back of his car, but she said no and ran away. Her mother taught her not to talk to strangers. I used to be jealous of Molly's mom. they would bake cookies and do crafts, because she was the oldest, and her mom wasn't tired of kids yet. But now, my throat gets all tense like like I'm swallowing a golf ball when I see her. I am mad at her.

Now I look for Him.

Before the day she marched over to my house, I didn't know that HE was alive; I was just playing slip & slide but now...

Now,

I wish I were invinsible. The other night I heard channel 11 blaring from the TV, 9 (that's how I know dad is home from work). I crawled up right next to him and slipped under his warm arm. He smiled and gave me a cheese cracker w/a spot of mustard on top, his creation. Crumbs fell from my mouth all over the bed but he doesn't care.

"Dad?"
"Yes?" he muttered, his eyes fixed on the TV.
"I don't think I'm going to be around for my high school graduation."
Tears began swelling up in my eyes; I got that choked up feeling again in my throat. He looked at me suddenly and said:

 "Don't say such a thing! You & your thoughts. You worry too much!"
 I thought-See, I will be gone by then.

Some afternoons my girlfriends & I lay in a big field across from my house. We lay on our backs in the soft green grass, (not yellow like ours. Dad doesn't water it often). Our eyes skim the clouds. We imagine they are creatures crawling across the sky. We laugh. And sometimes for a moment, I forget about Him. Other times, though, I'll hear a car drive by, and if it's that time...I will sit UP real fast to see if it's the green car. Molly will look over at me, "You act strange sometimes," she says simply unblinking. I'll lie back down, imagine myself climbing on top of a cloud & floating away. I begin mapping out which clouds I will hop on to get to the biggest one in the sky, that one that will become my own sky island. But then, the dinner bells rings, & I see my mom smiling there on my front porch, with splattered flour speckled on her cheeks. She looks silly-I wave & run inside wondering what is for dessert.