Taken By Surprise

by Jessica Frances

  ***

  Lunch turns out to be at a little place we used to frequent when we were younger. We even have a root beer float to celebrate. I haven’t had one in a really long time and after finishing one, I realize why. It gives me a head rush and a sugar overload. As we leave the restaurant, I can’t keep the smile off my face. I really love Dana.

  “Thanks for spending today with me; it’s been great.”

  “Don’t even mention it, where else would I be?” Dana is practically bouncing as she walks.

  “You never finished telling me what happened the other night between you and Drew. What did he have planned that was so important and top secret?”

  Dana literally jumps in the air and smiles. “Zee, it was amazing. He—” She suddenly stops speaking.

  “Yes?”

  “I can’t say.” Her face falls.

  “Why not?”

  “Today is your day. I’ll wait until tomorrow.”

  “You can’t do that. What if I’m dead tomorrow, I’ll never know what your news was,” I say lightly, but inside me I feel the weight of my words.

  “If you’re dead tomorrow, then I give you permission to haunt me for all eternity.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that. Seriously, though, tell me.”

  “It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.” She shrugs it off.

  We get into her car and she begins driving me through familiar streets, going the long way back to my house.

  “I have a surprise for you.” She changes the subject.

  “What is it?” I begin to feel weary. A surprise? Like a surprise party?

  “You’ll see!”

  I feel queasy and worry about where we’re going. What if she has decided to throw me a party? What if my insistence didn’t work? What if I do die in front of all those people? I fear a panic attack is about to come on. I look over at Dana just in time for her to turn the music up loud and start singing out of tune to the song that’s on the radio. She doesn’t seem to have noticed my heavier breathing or wild eyes. I try to get myself under control and focus on my surroundings. I’m surprised to notice we’re heading towards something very familiar. Somewhere we both had gone to nearly every day of our younger lives. We’re heading to the park next to our old school.

  Dana pulls over and stops the car on the edge of the park. It’s then I notice what she is wearing right now. She’s in jeans and a hoody. In my dream, she had been in a cream dress. I look up at the weather and see the overcast day. For most people, today would be considered cold, but I’m fine in it. I love the cold weather, which is why I’m only wearing a light grey t-shirt with my dark blue jeans. Is this what I had been wearing in my dream?

  “How long do you think it’s been since we’ve hung out here?” Dana looks like her mind has drifted far away.

  I look out at the park and see it’s mostly empty. Further away, there is a small playground with kids jumping all over it, but otherwise, the park is vacant. The thick, tall trees are all still the same, nothing has changed.

  “It’s been ages.”

  We both get out of the car and I breathe in the fresh air. It’s nice to be able to taste fresh air, after spending most of my time in the city where car fumes are just a way of life.

  “I thought it might be fun to walk around here. Rehash old memories since you got the ball rolling on that the other night.” She runs over to a large oak tree that’s on the edge of the park. “Do you remember when we were twirling ourselves around and around one afternoon because we were bored, waiting for our Moms to pick us up after school? You went so fast and quick that you nearly knocked yourself out on this tree!” Dana laughs hard and then runs her fingers over the tree trunk.

  I wander over to her and look up at the tree. I used to stare at this tree for hours every week while I would wait for Mom to pick me up. A lot of times, Dana’s Mom would just take me home. Mom was a workaholic even back then. Usually, if she did pick me up, she would just drop me off at home and then go back to work for a few hours, but would be home in time to cook me a late dinner. As I got older, I would simply take a bus home and cook myself a meal.

  I reach out and touch the tree trunk, too. “I remember I had a headache for days after that. I’m sure it gave me a concussion.”

  Dana giggles. “It was so funny, though! How old do you think we were?”

  “I think we were about ten or eleven.” I think it might have been just after Frank died.

  “Do you remember in fourth grade, we taught ourselves to read upside-down?” Dana skips around the tree, acting like she is a six-year-old as she speaks.

  “I think you were the only one who could read upside-down, Dana. I was still struggling to read the normal way.”

  “I taught you, though, remember?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “So really, you owe me a lot, you know.” Dana winks at me as I roll my eyes at her.

  “Oh, yes, thank you Dana for opening my eyes up to reading.”

  “I got you to read some wonderful books. Oh, how I wish I could go back and read all the classics for the first time again.”

  “Well, I never quite got your love of reading, so I probably could go back and read them and, since I don’t remember them, it would be like the first time for me!”

  Dana pokes her tongue out at me and it really is like we’re back in fourth grade again.

  “I remember we somehow managed to lock ourselves in the girls’ bathroom for four hours. They had to call a locksmith to help us get out,” I chip in, feeling a rush of memories coming back to me. I sit down on the bench by the tree, leaning back and looking up at the sky. So many times I used to lie on the grass and look up at the sky, watching the clouds pass over me.

  “Weren’t our Moms called and everything?” Dana asks me. She, too, sits on the bench and looks upwards.

  “Yeah. My Mom was so annoyed with me. She had a big meeting that day.”

  “Do you remember Mr. Lyons?” Dana takes my hand.

  “Was he our fifth grade teacher?” I ask her, all my old teachers get mixed up now.

  “Yeah, remember how he would always sneeze in eights?”

  “Yeah, and he would get so angry when we would say ‘bless you’ eight times afterwards.” I laugh, remembering the angry look on his face when Dana and I would do that. I hadn’t thought about that in years.

  “Do you remember the hot dogs they had at school, so yummy. I remember eating one nearly every day for a month!” Dana speaks proudly, like that is a great accomplishment.

  “Yeah, that was kinda gross.” I smile at her fake outrage. “Food probably isn’t what it used to be, with all that talk about healthy eating at schools. I bet they have only health bars and fruit nowadays.” I sigh dramatically.

  “Well, we were pretty lucky we didn’t become obese kids, especially with what you used to eat.” Dana looks serious all of a sudden.

  “Hey, I didn’t eat four bags of M&M’s one time for lunch!”

  “Yeah, but you drank those five cans of Coke that one day. Now that has to be worse than chocolate.”

  I remember the stomach ache I had after so much sugar and caffeine almost like it had only just happened.

  “You’re right; we are lucky we didn’t turn obese.”

  We continue talking and I try to put all thoughts of a surprise party out of my mind. I want to enjoy this walk down memory lane.

  “So, no word from Joel?” Dana looks at me carefully, as if accessing if this is an okay subject to bring up.

  “No.”

  “Not even today, on your birthday?” She sounds surprised.

  “He wouldn’t know it’s my birthday today, Dana. We aren’t close.”

  “He came into MAY the other day. He’s looking horrible. I’ve never seen someone look so ill before.”

  “Why doesn’t he just go to the doctors or something?”

  I feel a cool shiver whenever I think about Joel. I know I should have tried to
talk to him one last time, to find out more about his dream, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t want to know more, not now. The fact that he had dreamt it, too, meant I’m destined to die today and wasting any more time on Joel is pointless.

  “I think he has, they don’t know what’s wrong. He’s suffering from bad nightmares or something.”

  Nightmares? Is he still dreaming about my death or is he seeing other things now?

  “Zoe?” Dana’s voice wavers and I know she’s assessing me. Best to nip this straight away before she notices something is up.

  “Let’s take a walk. I’m getting cold sitting still.”

  We wander around the park, remembering more tumbles I had taken. I hadn’t thought of myself as clumsy, but all these memories hitting me at once are making me reconsider.

  “Oh my God, is this still here?” Dana runs over to a paved part of the park and I stroll over after her, seeing the hop-scotch lines that have mostly faded on the ground. Dana throws her handbag to the side and immediately starts to jump along it.

  “I haven’t done this in years!” She smiles as she gets through it, making it to the end. “Here, you try, Zoe.”

  I drop my bag next to hers on the ground and wonder if any other twenty-one-year-olds in the world find themselves playing hop-scotch on their birthdays. It doesn’t matter, I’m having fun and I can still jump through it like a pro.

  “Over there is where Drew first asked me out, remember?” Dana points to the large, plain patch of grass where the boys would always play football after school.

  “Yeah, and you turned him down pretty harshly!” I can easily remember how it all went down.

  “I wasn’t mean about it!” Dana protests.

  “You said that if he was going to want to date you, then he had better come up with something better than a casual offer of taking you to the movies.”

  “Well, I had just read some really romantic novels. I didn’t want to settle for less than what I deserved.”

  I roll my eyes at her. “I had to do some serious research for him, you know.”

  “What do you mean you had to do some research?” Dana narrows her eyes at me.

  “Well, I could see the poor guy was devastated that you turned him down and it was obvious that he liked you a lot.” I shrug. “I just maybe stole a book you just finished with and read the ending to figure out what you might think is appropriate for asking out material.”

  “I thought he was just being romantic!”

  “He was! What fifteen-year-old boy wants to sing you a song that he wrote for you in front of a group of other kids while giving you a rose and being on his knees?”

  “So he wrote the song, not you?” She looks uncertainly at me.

  “Of course I didn’t write the song! I just gave him some ideas about how he could win you over.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why help him?”

  “Because I thought he was sweet.”

  “And because, as my best friend, you pulled the ‘I know what’s best for you’ card?”

  I smile, happy to get out of this discussion. “Sure.”

  “Well, okay then, I guess I can forgive you since it did kinda work out for the best.”

  “You mean, I totally made up for you teaching me how to read upside-down?”

  Dana laughs and then looks like she’s contemplating something really difficult, her finger tapping her chin. “I guess so.”

  “Well, thank you so ever much.” I roll my eyes at her again and we continue to walk around the park.