"Waaaaaaaah!" A young boy, who I remembered as being my childhood neighbor but whose name I don't even care to remember, cried. "I don't want to play with you guys anymore!"
Death and I found ourselves in the middle of a playground. It wasn't just any playground but the gigantic playground in our childhood neighborhood. It had everything (well, technically not everything) a child would want in a playground: slides, swings, sandboxes, monkey bars, carousels, absolutely everything!
Except for laughter.
The playground was filled with them, not until the boy's outburst. All giggling ceased and turned into eerie stares at Dante and me.
The young boy, who acted like the group leader, motioned for them to leave as he sobbed and nursed the wounds on his arm. So, they did. Slowly, each of them left one by one until only the two were left in the playground.
Once they were completely alone, young Evangeline spun angrily. "Dante!"
"What?" Dante said in equal annoyance.
"Why did you push him?!" She demanded.
Dante looked away from her. His tiny hands were balled into a fist. "Because!"
"Because what?"
"He's being too close to you!" He shouted back.
"Of course, he'd be close to me." I rolled my eyes with as much attitude as an 8-year-old could muster. "We're playing house! He's the husband!"
"I want to be the husband!" Dante shouted indignantly.
Dante had this thing about him. He was usually a sweet boy, but when it was about my friendship with other kids our age, he tended to get overprotective.
The two kids, who were friends for two years, usually got along well and rarely fought. But when they do, it was generally because of his jealous streak.
I would usually let it slide since I was fully aware that Dante considered me as his only true friend in the whole neighborhood, and I honestly felt the same way.
However, this time, I had enough. "You can't keep acting like that towards other people, Dante! You're driving people away!"I sputtered. "You're driving potential friends away!"
"But I only need you!" Dante argued with tears welling up in his eyes.
If you were a girl who thought a boy was overprotective of you as cute and swoon-worthy, I wasn't. This wasn't the case when I got older, though.
"Sadly, Dante," I said calmly this time. "I want to have more than just you as my friend."
Perhaps it was how her tone changed or how she structured her sentence. I wasn't sure myself, but on that day, Dante looked like he was about to cry. This was the first time that I saw this expression on his face.
The Dante I knew was always smiling, protecting, and always there for me. I immediately regretted my words at his pitiful expression.
"Are you saying… I'm not enough?" Dante's voice trembled.
"That's…" My gray eyes widened as I felt a sense of guilt that started to haunt me already. "That's not what I meant, Dante–"
"Fine!" Dante screamed at the top of his lungs. "GO TO YOUR 'OTHER' FRIENDS! I BET YOU'RE GONNA BE HAPPIER WITH THEM THAN YOU ARE WITH ME!"
Before I could say anything, he walked out and never returned. Unbeknownst to me, that would be the last time I would see him. I didn't know back then. If only I knew, I would have run after him, but I didn't.
Instead, I allowed him to storm off with a heavy heart because I was too mad at him for ruining a fun day at the park with their neighbors.
I went home that day with tear-stained cheeks from frustration and sadness.
I didn't know that my current and past sources of sadness would also inevitably be the extension of my despair when I grew older.
It went dark again. I looked at Death, expecting another childhood memory to unfold, but it seemed like the location of the memory had just changed, and the same memory only continued.
"This happened the next day of your fight with Dante." Death explained.
I merely nodded. We were now in my childhood home's dining room.
The next day, when I woke up, I headed downstairs, and Mom greeted me with her sweet smile and calming gaze. Mom was a beautiful woman, too beautiful for Dad, if I were, to be honest.
She had long brown hair and stormy gray eyes, the only things I inherited from her.
Aside from that, I looked more like Dad.
Her cheeks had enough meat to make her face look angular without looking like the Corpse Bride. Her eyes were big and doughy and so expressive that you couldn't help but get caught by the storm that was her eyes. Her nose was cute and what people would describe as a "button-nose." Her lips were full and were always red with lipstick.
She could be a model and seduce any man she wanted.
That was precisely what she did.
I went to the dining room and sulked at the dining table. Mom, with her motherly instincts, sensed that something was wrong.
She went to sit with me and gave me honey lemon juice and sliced apples. My favorite.
"Oh no, Darling." Mom frowned. "What's with the long face?"
Without missing a beat, I sulked even more. "It's because of Dante."
"Is it because he's moving away today?" She asked with worry.
There was a long pause between Mom and I. I stared at her with my equally stormy eyes, but Mom didn't get it as Dad would. We don't have the telepathic connection that a father-daughter tandem has.
"That's not the reason?" Mom asked slowly, noticing my fragile state of mind.
I wasn't exactly sure what I felt at that moment. But I looked like a frozen statue as I silently stared at my mother. I saw her gray eyes widening in horror, and her lower lip trembled.
"What do you mean by he's moving away today?" I asked with my voice shaking a little.
"I talked with Dante's mother. She said his husband was reassigned to another state, so they need to move away…" Mom trailed off as she noticed that I was shaking, and tears started to well in my eyes.
"He didn't... tell me… anything…" As soon as she said the last word, I burst out crying.
I didn't know what to do. I just made Dante cry yesterday; apparently, he was about to leave me without saying a word. I felt so ashamed of myself.
I made the only person in the whole subdivision who made me feel not alone shed tears just because of a petty fight. I didn't even have the chance to apologize to him.
"Oh no, Honey!" Mom whispered soothingly. "Don't cry!"
Mom wrapped her arms around me. I buried my face in her bosom. She threaded her fingers on the strands of my hair, sending a comforting yet tingling sensation to my spine.
"You might still catch up to him if you went to his house right now!" Mom encouraged me.
'That's right! I can still catch up to him if I try!'
"Yeah, I'll run to his house as fast as possible!" I proclaimed.
"That's my girl! Never lose spirit!" Mom cheered.
After kissing Mom on the cheek, I ran outside of the house.
With all my might, I ran as fast as my feet could take me. Dante's house was on the other block, so it took quite a while before I arrived due to my short, tiny legs, but that didn't matter.
I had already devised a script on what to tell him when I saw him. Everything was going great until I arrived at Dante's house.
A "for sale" sign was already in front of their lawn. From outside their house, I could see that it was empty. Not a single piece of furniture was in sight.
I fell to my knees, scraping against the hot summer pavement and inevitably causing a slight abrasion on my knees' skin. On regular occasions, the small wound would've made me cry.
But it didn't matter. Nothing mattered.
He was gone.
She couldn't even say goodbye.
She couldn't even say sorry.