Place Prewrites: Places that are gone.

a.      I used to have teal blankets on my twin bed. I used to cuddle up under them with my Winnie the Pooh as you sat next to me. We used to read about Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever, every night. You would read. I would listen under my fuzzy teal covers.

      Sometimes after we finished the chapter, you’d stay with me in bed, and I’d curl into a ball and you’d curl around me. I always faced away from you. One night, after an especially emotional chapter, I realized that I slept turning away from you every night. I ran downstairs to find you and mom at the kitchen table doing bills. I told you both I loved you, and that when I slept turned away from you, it didn't mean I didn't want you there. You understood. But pretty soon, you stopped sleeping there anyway.

b.      We had the coolest treehouse in town. On top of a giant think tree in our backyard, stood a wooden castle, complete with a tent-style tarp roof, trapdoor leading to the metal ladder, front castle doors leading to the climbing net, and the two metal slides. The problem with the metal slides is that they were combined into one big slide—end of one to the start of another. So if you were going fast enough, you would fly off the first one and land halfway down the next, which hurt pretty bad sometimes—but we didn’t care.

      We were popular back then. If anyone wanted to come over, we just said “Our house is the one with the massive castle treehouse in the back,” and they knew where to go. We had parties in it, campouts in the rain and in the snow. We had contests and taught our dog Shiloh to climb the metal ladder into the fort. Sometimes we’d open the trap door to go down, and Shiloh would be sitting right there, waiting for us to let him in.

      One time we made a whole city of boxes underneath it. We had the coolest tree fort and ground fort too! The boxes were all duck taped together so that there were tunnels leading everywhere. It took up almost our entire backyard. Some parts even had a second floor, but the second floor didn’t last long before caving in under me. That eventually came down, but we always had our treehouse.

      I don’t even remember when it came down. I remember Dad telling us it was rotting, and that it wouldn’t last much longer. I remember getting too busy with school and sports to play in it anymore, so I must have at least been in middle school. Maybe 7^th grade. I didn’t even pay attention to it until it was gone. And then it was gone, and I felt like I’d lost part of me, but I couldn’t explain it to anyone.

c.       That basement has been everything. It used to be my hideaway. I would explore the cubby hole, conceal myself in blankets. Then it was the family room. We got the big TV and the couches and watched movies and superhero shows together. When I got older, I brought my friends down there, and it became the party room. We had Yu-Gi-Oh tournaments, air hockey games, Crash Bandicoot Playstation Marathons, Pokemon trading parties. We never left that place. We would stay up for 24 hours playing against each other, sleep for the next 18, and do it again.

      My first winter break during college, I reopened up the basement, and Brandon and I watched five seasons of “Smallville” consecutively, almost never even leaving that basement even to eat. But the next time I came home for break it was different. Kayla was graduating soon, and she wanted her own apartment. The basement was hers from then on. Sometimes I’d venture down to that old spot without thinking and get kicked out, up to my own room. My friends don’t hang out there anymore—we’ve moved off to other houses, other basements full of binge playing and sleep deprivation.

      Sometimes Kayla invites me down for a Lord of the Rings marathon.