Reliving Yesterday ✔

Chapter 2.

When I pulled into the parking lot on Monday, I could see that the summer had brought new cars for a lot of my classmates. I turned off the engine and pulled out my keys. My key chain hit me and I looked down at it and I was immediately taken back.

Nine Years Ago

"Alex," I heard his familiar voice cut through the stillness of the forest. I held my breath, hoping that he wouldn't see my yellow dress through the leaves.

I slowly leaned forward to see him. There he was, right under the tree I was hiding in. I don't know how, but he always managed to stop at the tree I was hiding in, without a doubt. I cupped my mouth with my hand to muffle my heavy breathing.

"Alex," he sang again, in a low musical voice and I knew that he knew I was in the tree.

I smiled beside myself, but stayed quiet. I watched him bend and pick something up. He looked up into the tree and in the morning sun, I could see the green in them glisten like marbles. I could also see the mischief in his eyes. I bit my lip.

Slowly, he pulled his hand back and flung whatever was in his hand up into the tree at me. I watched closely at the thing that came up close to my feet. It was a rock. A smooth rock that we often played with. He threw them again and again, his aim so wonderful, even for a boy of nine, the rocks never hit me.

"Parker, Parker, stop," I called to him, making him drop his arms and smile.

"I knew you were there," he told me as I slid down.

"Parker, look at the rocks," I told him and he looked down at what he was holding in his hands. Slowly lifting it up to the light, he saw the veins in the rocks spread to form different shapes and the one he was holding in his hand had a light shape of an A on it. He smiled.

"It says A," he told me, squinting in the sunlight.

"I know," I said and bent to pick another few, going through them till I found one that resembled P, "And this one has a P."

Parker reached into his pocket and pulled out a compass with a sharp tip and started edging away at the A to make the cut deeper and I watched him in fascination. When he was done, he blew on it and handed it to me. He took the one I had in my hand and started to work on it. I turned the rock he gave me over and over in my hand, feeling the grooves of the A he carved underneath my fingers.

Later that day, he handed a proper polished rock to me, with a key ring dangling off it and smiled. "For you," he said, "Because you're my best friend."

He had gently carved designs into it as well.

I still had it. It's what Eric had thrown into the pool two nights ago. I know a tear threatened to fall.

Not today.

Parker wasn't going to get the satisfaction of making me cry on the first day of Senior year without even seeing me first.

Sighing, I dropped it into my backpack and slid out of the car. I hadn't taken a step away from my car when another sleek, black one pulled into the lot three spaces away from mine. The sound of the engine made every student at John Harmon High turn to see what the ruckus was, but the way everyone turned to look at it, they knew exactly who was going to disembark from the confines of the dark, tinted windows. I had a pretty good feeling I knew, too.

Soon enough, the driver's door opened and Parker stepped out, shades covering his eyes. Without even looking anywhere else, but straight ahead, he reached into his car and pulled out his backpack and shouldered it, while a pretty, but agonizing cheerleader slid out of the passenger's seat of his car, adjusting her lipstick. I was beyond disgusted.