The Playground Slide Page #4

• Fiction

								

It was pitch dark now. The winter nights get darker with every rise and fall of the sun. Evelyn could barely see six feet in front of her. All she saw was the illumination of Lukas’ mask he had roughly stuffed in his hoodie pockets. Until they got only a block away from her house. Her neighbor's pool illuminated out of the fence and into the black sky. Pearl stopped, and for the last time tonight, she whispered something to Lukas. He didn't laugh. He barely smiled. He just said to her back, a bit louder, “Oh, that's a good idea. Evelyn!” He turned around to look at her. “You're gonna go up there.” he pointed to her neighbor, Mrs. Jacobson's roof and he and the other two ran and jumped her fence, and then started climbing up.
Mrs. Jacobson's roof was high off the ground. The gray tiles of her roof were slick and slanted. All in all, incredibly hard to stand on. Evelyn’s whole body shook. She tried so hard not to, as she was afraid to make any movements for fear of falling off. Yet still, she shook as she was even more scared about what was about to happen. Her face was covered in the bright blue light of the large pool.
“You see that pool down there?” asked Lukas in his sniveling little voice, choking back chuckles. “You're going to jump into it.” He started laughing for real now, and soon followed Georgie and Pearl. They were crazy kids; crazy, cackling kids just trying to get a wicked laugh out of life. The pool was far from the roof. Maybe a whole three meters but you couldn't really tell from this bird’s eye view. Evelyn thought maybe she could jump it, but she knew that was crazy. She would fall from the second story house and land like lightning on the deck’s concrete. 
“No,” Evelyn gulped out timidly. “It's impossible.”
“Nothing’s impossible!” spewed Pearl, sillily. She died laughing at her own joke. 
“You're gonna do it,” snarled Lukas, “or Georgie will break you worse than any pool could. It'll be fine; you're just scared of a little water, aren't you, twit?” The hyenas growled, roared with each other's, individually terrible laughs. They were ready to pick the flesh off another carcass. Georgie was terrifying and he grinned at the chance to pummel another kid. His fists clenched harder and harder and he leered at evelyn. She scooched back from him, inadvertently getting closer to the edge.
Evelyn took a deep breath and tears welled in her hazel eyes. She looked at the pool before her. She was doomed if she jumped or if she didn't. Her feet hung off the edge, she bent her knees, and still she couldn't do it. She swiftly turned around and tried to run. But Georgie stopped her. He grabbed her shoulders, dragged her to the edge, and pushed.
Lukas, Georgie, and Pearl all stood on the slick roof of Mrs. Jacobson’s house. From there, they watched, for only a few fractions of a second, Evelyn Doll fall from the roof and land like lightning on the deck’s concrete. They heard her scream; her high pitched scream of pure terror all the way down, and stopped with her at the concrete. She was silent and lifeless for a few moments, excluding some twitches. Then they heard her. They heard her sob of pain. It was so, so loud. It was then that they realized what they had done and how much trouble they would be in. they realized after the scream, after the cry, and after Mrs. Jacobson’s lights turned on. 
“Oh, Damn,” said Lukas, as solemn and serious as the wind. The three jumped down from the roof, and ran away as fast as they possibly could. 
Evelyn was found by Mrs. Jacobson, who added herself onto the list of screams. She promptly called 911 and then followed it up with a call to Evelyn’s mother, who only lived a few blocks away. Evelyn had a broken arm and a blank look on her face when they checked her there. When asked why she got on the roof, and why she jumped off, and why she screamed so loudly, she responded with, “I thought it would be fun.” She lied and mentioned nothing to do about Lukas, Georgie, and Pearl. Her mother drove her home, lecturing her in the car about how scared she was as a mother and how she should never do that again and how she’s grounded for two whole months. All Evelyn could release past her lips was a hushed, “Yes, ma'am”. 
At home, Stickers ran up to her chest and licked her nose. He did not like the cold fiberglass of her neon green cast with her mom’s signature on it when it brushed up against his fur. Evelyn walked straight to the television and searched for something to watch. She was lucky that her grounding didn’t prohibit television; it just wouldn’t let her walk to school or home alone anymore. She was also lucky that in the hospital she missed the first part of a day of school and didn’t have to attend the rest of it. She lay on the brown leather couch with Stickers resting his head on her stomach and stretching out farther than she could. Her mom entered the living room and when she walked past Evelyn, she kissed her on the top of her head and then walked away. Evelyn proceeded to put on a cartoon and stare right at the screen, for hours and hours.
But then, when she was finally getting up, she noticed that her mother laid a fairly large, soft parcel on the arm of the couch. She shoved Stickers off her chest and he recoiled in his own comfort, scooching closer to the warm parts of the couch. Touching the parcel in her hands, she could tell there was something very light in it. And she could see there was a note on the top. It read, 
“Dear, Evelyn, 
I noticed you lost your coat, so I decided to give you your Christmas present early. Don't worry about anything that happened. I'll make you some hot soup for you for dinner. 
Love, Mom.”
She had drawn a smiling face on her note that was taped to the bag.
Evelyn pressed the parcel to her chest and ripped the paper wrapping up to reveal a nice, deep blue winter coat, much nicer than her old one. It felt smooth on the outside, and very warm on the inside. It could repel rain or snow. It was a bit big for her, but that was how she liked it. She liked to grow into things. She put the coat on and zipped it up straight up to her throat. It was very hot. The sleeves slid perfectly over her cast and were so bulky, you couldn't even see it. Stickers’ tail wagged as he cuddled up to the big, blue marshmallow now here. Evelyn got on her mittens, hat, and boots now too and went outside. It started snowing very, very lightly. Yet she felt no cold. She would be sure to thank her mom after dinner.
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