It was like this ever since they cared to remember. Mary and Francis, the forest and the house. It was not theirhouse (although the children thought differently). And they argued over who had found it first, never mind whoever had built it in the first place, since they had left and left the old wooden cabin to be swallowed up by the forest around it.
Francis stumbled upon it when he ran through the woods after one of his brothers wouldn't stop crying. Mary found it one afternoon when she wandered farther than usual into the woods, on one of those days her mom came home from work smelling funny and with a bad mood.
He was the oldest of five children from a marriage that was crumbling apart. Francis knew that, and wished more than anything that it wasn't true. Even when he was friends with Bash, his half-brother, because his father loved another lady even while married to his mom. It was complicated some days; and others it wasn't. Bash was his brother –as much as little Charles- and that was that. But that didn't mean sometimes, when the yelling got too loud and his baby brother wouldn't stop crying, he wanted to run away.
Her father died a mere week after she was born. Mary might have been six, but she had always thought her momma blamed her, somehow. That she lived while her dad died. And maybe it washer fault her momma drank so much and went out all the time to those noisy grown-up places and left her alone at home. Mary might have been six, but she didn't feel that young most of the time.
They lived in a quiet street in a quiet town, and the forest that was their backyard was the quietest place of all, so they ran there. Met there one day. A couple of kids who didn't quite feel like it. On that house. The house was important (or so they thought, but that comes later).
It was hardly a house, to be honest. It had what could pass off as a porch on the rotting wood at the front. Inside, it was just one big room with a table and a set of mismatched plastic chairs. A place for hunters to wait out the night or the wild pigs, or run away from their wives to smoke a cigar between friends.
There was a chimney falling apart on the side, and on top of it a rusted metal box full of bullets. (Mary and Francis played with those once as if they were the marbles neither had.) Moth-eaten curtains billowed in the breeze. The only sound were the crickets and the bugs, and the occasional grunt of the old wooden board who had seen better days under their feet. It was oddly beautiful.
They were almost six when they met.
They ran into each other on their race to get there. (Literally ran, they both ended up on the floor). Then proceeded to discover that they lived in the same street but had never met, would go to the same school later that year, and the trinkets and otherwise that got moved or disappear from the house were not, in fact, the work of ghosts or the supernatural- but rather that they both had been sharing that piece of architecture for about 3 weeks before running into each other. They –unlike most six year olds- decided to share. After all, they had already been doing that without knowing.
They swore each other to secrecy, and Mary begrudgingly slapped her spit hand on his as the oath he insisted on. She wiped the saliva on her dress with a smile, less because of the rudimentary way the boy had decided to test her loyalty, and more because she had just made her first friend.
They ended up meeting there a couple of times a week, to play tag or hide-and-seek- and then almost every day, playing and talking about almost anything. Her mom let her play on the woods as long as she was back before it was late, and so did his mother. Not much happened on that town that would warrant a closer watch.
He didn't take Elizabeth with him, much to her dismay. Because the woods were not a place for 5 year olds, and he was pretty much 6 and the oldest, so he knew best. He didn't know exactly why he told her not to come, but on the second day, after she stopped crying about it and decided to stay home playing house with Claude, he was glad.
He loved his sister, but he liked it better having the house to himself, (even if he shared it with Mary). He fleetingly thought that maybe what he liked was having Maryall to himself. If he brought along his sisters they would probably end up playing dolls and he'd be left out. Mary didn't have any brothers or sisters to play with, so he felt special for the first time, after living in a house with so many children.
So the children ran through the forest every day, met at that old dilapidated cabin to play and talk, and that's how it began.
.
It changed a little when they entered school.
Kindergarten was a whole new world for the both of them, and while Mary quickly found friends in four other girls and they became a tight knit group, Francis spoke to everyone, and was friends with everyone.
It also didn't hurt that he had a brother in 2nd grade (which was a lotolder) and instead of hushing him away, the older boy, Bash, invited him to play with his friends in the playground.
So they didn't talk much at school. They would occasionally exchange a glance during class and smile and look away, as if they were sharing a secret-which they were.
They might have had other friends in school now, but still no one but them came to the house-or knew it even existed. Not even Bash. (Who knew something was up but could never dig it out of Francis)
They didn't really hung out at school, but when everyone ran home, they ran together to the forest. The minute their backpacks fell on the floor of each of their houses, they kicked off their shoes and took off running, over the same path already ran through so many times before, to the old clear in the woods and their house.
They'd laugh over who'd beaten who that time, and then jumped over puddles, and chased each other with mud-stained hands.
It was their place.
Mary had her friends, and Francis had his friends and his brother. But in the woods, they had each other and their secret house. The old screen falling off the door, the door hanging of the hinges. Their own little castle of freedom and decay, where they were the King and Queen.
The years went by.
.
They were good friends. Best friends-no matter what most of their 5th grade class wanted to imply. They'd been friends forever. And then her friends and his friends started to hang out, and soon enough they all filled two entire cafeteria tables pushed together, and everything was fun and laughter.
They didn't mess themselves up as much as they did when they were younger. Every once in a while they'd run back home in the rain, holding hands so as not to get lost, even if they knew that forest like the back of their hands. But they wouldn't play in the mud anymore, or jump into the swamps, because her hair was too long and it was a pain to wash it. And he couldn't get his jacket dirty because it was a present from Bash and it was real leather.
But either way, they kept coming back to their house, not to play as much anymore, but to talk. He told her all about his parents and the tug of war that was their marriage. She knew all his brothers and sisters and they adored her. She had been friends with Elizabeth for a year or two now.
"I still like you better, you know?" She'd told him, one too warm afternoon, when they were cooling their legs in a pool of fresh water the rains had formed.
"Huh?" He'd mumbled, his eyes firmly planted on the rock he kept turning in his arms, as if he couldn't care less what she was saying. But he did, a whole lot.
"I like you better than Liz, just don't tell her." Mary had whispered, touching his hand faintly, and then moving it away-because it felt weird now. Even if they'd been friends for years and played tag countless times. It felt different. She began to see him not as the lanky, long-legged boy with the mess of blond curls that had made her shake his spat-on hand and chased her around since they were little, but as truly her best friend, probably the only one who understood her, and he was a boy. A boy with gorgeous blue eyes that Mary felt odd she would only notice now. He skipped the rock across the surface of the water.
They stood up and walked around for a bit, quietly, picking and eating wild berries that stained their teeth and fingertips red. It was near dark when they returned to the edge of the forest, and had to drift apart to go back to each of their houses-but instead of saying the usual "night!" and running home, Francis pulled her close when she was distracted and planted a kiss on her cheek, staining it red.
"What did you do that for?!" She asked him, wide eyed. Her cheek tingling where he'd been.
"I don't know," he answered, looking down, his hand pulling at his hair and his cheeks going as red as his lips were. "I...I like you better than anyone." He said, fast; they stared at each other for a beat and then ran home even faster, not yet ready to face whatever it was they had to. There was all the time in the world.
There was a quiet humming in the air that summer that told them things were about to change. Maybe because they were growing up, and soon they'd be in middle school and it wouldn't be cool to go to their secret house anymore. Or because she had secretly started to stare at him longer, trying to gauge exactly what color where his eyes- as if it mattered. And maybe he'd thought she was different from every other girl once.
Things were definitely changing, but they didn't know just how much.
.
It was one lazy Sunday after church when it happened. Everything went as usual that day, they attended mass with their best clothes, an uncomfortable white dress for her and itchy pants for him. They turned on their pews to mouth words at each other when his parents and her mom were not looking. All the children played tag outside later (careful not to get their clothes dirty), while the grown-ups talked.
And afterwards, Mary went back to Francis' house, still in her lacy white dress- to see Henry, Francis' youngest brother who was just a few weeks old. The little baby boy had hair even fairer than Francis, and oddly enough it's one of the things she remembers the most about that day. The light on the fine baby hair, her mom's shadow on the door, and the look in Francis' eyes-as if he knew something was not right.
Her mom came through the door, an odd smile on her face, and asked her to come home-something that was not the usual for them. Mary was sat down in their old couch and told that the nice man that had been coming over the past couple of months (Mary had hardly noticed him-or tried not to) was going to be her step-daddy now. That's the word her momma used. And then told her to pack because they were moving out of that hellhole of a town once and for all. She didn't cry then. She ran.
Francis was sitting on the steps of the backdoor once she came out running, and he chased her.
"Mary!" He yelled after her, but she was running the fastest she'd ever had. "Mary, stop!" His legs were always longer than hers, but even then he couldn't catch up. And then he realized where she was running to.
He stopped and turned to the left, through a short cut they did not often use. He beat her to the old cabin, and when she came crashing through the sinewy trees she didn't stop, but instead came barreling straight into his arms.
At first he didn't know what to do. He'd never held a girl before, (apart from his sisters, but that did not count), and much less one that was crying as hard as she was. But she was his best friend. So he wrapped his arms around her and hushed her as best as he could, and eventually they ended up sitting on the muddy floor, any care for their Sunday clothes forgotten.
"What happened?" He asked her once she stopped wheezing and pulled herself away from him, embarrassed.
She just shook her head and walked the short distance to their old cabin. She touched everything on her way in. The walls that were still standing, the crumbling chimney…. dust collected on her fingertips and she wiped it off on her already soiled white dress.
"Mary," Francis said, as he watched her from the doorway, his blue eyes overflowing with worry.
"I'm moving away," she told him simply, with a voice much stronger and sure than what she felt.
"What?" He asked, bewildered. "Where?" He walked towards her, his eyebrows scrunching together and his hands fidgeting like he did when he got called on to answer a question at school.
"I don't know. But my mom said she's getting married and we're moving."
"You can't," he shook his head, curls flying everywhere.
"I don't want to," she wheezed out, containing her tears. She cleaned her nose with her fist, not even caring about how she must have looked.
"Then don't! You can come live with us!" He told her, desperately. "I'll…I'll share my bunk bed with you." He said, even if it had already been destined for his brother Charles, who did not need his crib anymore.
"We both know I can't do that." She said, even if she wanted more than anything to stay here, with him, and his brothers and sisters, and her friends, and the woods she loves to play in and this old dirty house.
"Then I'll move out too, and we can both live here!" Francis exclaimed, throwing his arms out to show the grandeur of the rotting house where they'd played for hours together. But she knew that was impossible, and he did too, for he looked at her with an angry sort of acceptance. Sadder than she'd ever seen him. He still tried to offer her a small smile.
"Francis." She just said, breathing in in gasps, she needed to stop crying right now.
"Maybe it's close by." He said immediately, and she could almost see his brain starting to work the way it always did, with logic-whereas she was always the impulsive one. "We could still see each other all the time." He nodded as if to reassure himself. "Are you changing schools?"
"I don't know," she answered him. "I don't know."
She wiped her face with the back of her hand. "But it won't be the same." She said, and the weight of how true that was almost made her start crying all over again. He looked about ready to do that himself.
"But we're always going to be friends, right?" He asked her, holding out his hand –no spit this time. "We're always going to be together, aren't we?"
"Yeah," she said, pressing their sweaty and dirty fingers together. "Yeah."
Two weeks later, she stared at him through the rearview mirror as the car rolled away from her home. From her best friend. She took one last look at the woods, where somewhere inside their refuge laid. She left, tears cooling off her cheeks and his. A part of their childhood felt ripped away like the wild berries they used to pick.
The years went by.