We met during the early days of school, two kids that shared a strange interest in videogames. For some reason, our favorite activity was to hide from others, seeking places to play. There were plenty of places in our huge (to our eyes) schoolyard. We could hide on the bushes, or behind walls, or in those dark and empty places no one seeks. Secret bases, made bigger by our imaginations and the thrill of adventure.
When you are a kid, days seem slow, like we were living in a diferent time where the needles of the clock changed depending on who was looking. And between those needles we got lost, searching for something but not knowing what, until we started to run out of places to search. At first, we decided revisit the best ones, but we soon discovered that secrets don't last very long.
In one of our best locations, there were others. Older kids, almost adults to our eyes, sitting there as if our explorations weren't worth anything. My friend (I can't remember his name) tried fighting them, tried to tell then that that place was ours, that we were here first, that the drawings in the sand were the limits of our territory, but I knew it was useless. We had built a castle in the air, made of hope, and reality brought it down from its foundation.
I grabbed his arm, tugging him, but he stayed still. There was a strength in his eyes, but he calmed down when he saw my tears. Something had been broken, a certain magic had dissipated from the world.
We ran, not knowing where. And when you don't know where you're going you arrive nowhere. Without even knowing how, we found ourselves in front of a huge tree, with roots larger than ourselves. We had never seen something like that, and we probably won't see it again in our lifetimes.
I stood dumbfounded by the height of what I was seeing, but my friend had his eyes somewhere else. Without any trace of doubt, he stuck his hand on the mud between the roots. Soon after, he had something shiny on his hands. There were coins, coins that shone like gold. We each put one on our pocket, and saved this moment like fire on our minds. We soon couldn't tell if what we'd seen was real or not.
My coin, however, didn't disappear. They resisted changes, movement, broken relationships. Even when I changed schools, and the friendship than we once dissipated into silences and blindness, even when I couldn't remember his voice, even when I forgot his name, it remained.
Today, I lost the coin. Only memories of its luster remain. And I feel that, somewhere on this huge planet, I have also lost a good friend.