Like Jayla, I was too used to being a “good kid” to feel very comfortable with independence. However, my imagination presented an opportunity to escape.
The borders of our fantasyland extended as far as we were allowed to wander on foot—that is, shouting distance from the cul-de-sac. Our street was nestled too close to the Park & Ride not to be awash in the dull roar of Route 17, but our parents’ calling pierced all other noise. We knew to make our way back as soon as we were called. That way, our parents would know no one had “stolen” us.
There were five of us—me, my younger brother, my best friend, Tara, and her two younger sisters—a good number for any self-respecting company of noble adventurers. By then, most of us had read Tolkien and Rowling and Hamilton’s Mythology. When we read, these books led us to the outer edge of our little worlds and showed us where the gates were low enough to jump over.
Our inner compasses oriented, we set off to find a dragon to slay. We would assign the role of the Princess in the Tower later.
There was a public elementary school not far away whose athletic field backed into a phlegmatic creek. The inglorious collapse of soccer turf into trickling water was as close as it came to varied terrain in our concrete-covered suburb.
We stomped down into the creek with no regard for our shoes and socks. As the oldest, it was on Tara and me to lead the way. Tara’s youngest sister hung back, her buck teeth perched above a trembling lower lip.
We followed her gaze and there in the creek, haloed with clouds of tadpoles and clods of mud, was a U.S. Postal Service delivery worker uniform. A man’s jumpsuit, discarded whole, as if in an ecstatic rage. There was no other sign of human presence. The stand of woods was quiet but for us.
There was nothing overtly sinister about the mysterious object. Yet all of us, without discussion, picked up and left. The abandoned clothes, and whatever turn of events had landed them there, spoke to us of an adult unhappiness. We could not yet investigate, only flee.
Yet our desire to forge ahead in our fantasyland was not snuffed out. We had only stepped briefly out of our shared country. Emboldened, we continued our adventures out from under the trees. In open air, where we could hear our parents if they called us home.