Playground
Cezille07
Chapter 4. The Playground.
He managed to escape the Bombo's nonsense over the shoes and locate the statue the tourists must have been looking at. And he found something else.
There it was! The highlight of every child's imagination: the swings, the seesaw, the slide...the entire playground in its vibrant colors, and the thrilled cries of its welcome inhabitants.
The three-foot child ambled over to the empty seesaw and sat on one end. He felt the cold metal handle in his tiny hands. He could imagine himself rising and falling through the cool morning air, with a shadow of a friend, laughing like everyone else. He grinned. Success.
He momentarily forgot everything that transpired today, at least until he was seated comfortably.
"Hey, loser!" a bigger kid yelled from the distance. "Zick! Get off our seesaw! It's ours!"
Zick sighed. That David…so he did like to play with others, if 'play' meant forcing your way to get what you want for fun. If this school, this playground, were to be any kid's safe haven outside home then no person like David could be in it. But he was here now. This was not the safe place he imagined out of the house. School was, for Zick, the only other place he knew now aside from home and the doctor's office, where he often landed because of his allergies.
David was right in front of him, then. "If you want your face rearranged, you can stay there as long as you like," he threatened coolly.
Please, not now, his mind begged. I've never played on a seesaw before. At least without mom worrying about me too much.
But David seemed ready for a random act of bullying he had no power to predict. Zick walked away, defeated.
At least the swings didn't need playmates, and there were six available. Except now, that is. The 'twins' Patty and Mattie were occupying the middle two. And they wore a sour face when they saw him approach.
"Keep away!" yelled Patty, shooing him. "I don't want your virus contaminating our swings!"
Mattie smirked. "That's not very nice, Patty," she said, while her 'twin' grimaced. "If you want to be really mean, you have to be very, very bad! Watch me!" She looked at Zick and, pointing, directed his gaze to a wall to their right. The broken garbage dump was a mere attraction for the trash to be piled at. "See that, weirdo? That's your place."
Zick was thinking of an answer. Then he glanced back at the girls, who walked up to him and kicked some dust into his face. He began coughing— "But I'm allergic to dust!"
"That's the point! Go away!" called Patty. The playground was laughing with her.
He reached in his pocket for the inhaler. It wasn't there. He looked again. Nothing. It wasn't in his bag either.
"Looking for this?"
He looked up at Mattie, who held it up for him.
"Give it to me, please," he begged. "Please!"
"Sorry. Why don't I pass it to David and you two talk it over?" she answered. Without another thought, she flung it in the air at David, who had been watching them.
He covered his face and ran for the exit, still coughing. He had never played there, and he will never try again.