Emmerson Park

Me and Nate often fought about who had to ride the bike, and after a while I’d always win ’cause it was harder for me to pedal, ‘cause I wasn’t as long as him, and ‘cause I was much more stubborn. Even though he would get tired of fighting he’d still complain ’bout how hard it was to steer a bike with a flat tire and how I was going too fast for him to keep up. I just told him he was doing a great job keeping up and that he was such a great friend who brought light into my life and I appreciated him choosing to stuff it up. And he’d say something, and I’d say something, and he’d say something, and we’d be at the park in no time.

It was Friday, and Nate rode his scooter over to my house and he sat in the living room while I rushed through my homework—skipping the boring parts. We took off, and I spent the whole time talking about the book I was reading where spies with animal DNA were taking down aliens invading Earth and Nate was asking all sorts of questions. I couldn’t answer most of ‘em ’cause the summary I just had to write was all I remembered.

There wasn’t a bike rack so we would lock the bike and scooter to the fence. Nate always told me ’bout how he worried that someone could easily slip the scooter out or they could just take the bike, but I’d told him how sure I was that no one would want our junk—and by now he was tired of arguing.

There was a sign by the entrance that said Emmerson Park—it used to say some dedication message too, but someone scratched out most of the letters a while back and now it was a warning about ecto-man. I thought it was hilarious, but Nate wasn’t amused.

He was dead serious while he told me about ecto-man.

Dewey Higgins was a sixth grader who moved away last month. Across from the swing set was a tube slide—which was the playground’s main attraction. Nate said that some kid got caught by the park cops carving bad words and his name into the slide, so the park cop put a curse on the slide. Anyone that went in it, he said, would get real sick—and their skin would turn green just like the slide and they’d turn into a lizard-ghost thing after a week. Nate said that Dewey wasn’t one of the cool sixth graders and that he was dared by some eighth graders to go down the slide. Dewey did it ‘cause anyone would’ve done it ’cause if you got the respect of the eighth graders you’d be extra cool, so he was the first person in like a million years since the curse to go down the slide. And Nate said that as Dewey went down, he heard the janitor laugh, and when he came out, he saw a park cop laughing at him. And Dewey was all sick after and he looked more yellow then he did before—which only got worse, and greener.

And Nate told me he knows this is true because Dewey’s mom knows his mom and they came over once before he moved. Dewey was much more lizard-like and man he was so green, and I swore I could see scales is all Nate was talking about, but I wasn’t buying it.

I remember hearing my mom on the telephone with Nate’s mom about Dewey, and that they were moving to Tennessee cause the jobs out there are better and that driving to the hospital every weekend would be too expensive—and definitely not be often enough. And Dewey’s dad had seen some nice jobs making carpets in Menfists, which was real convenient for all of ’em.

We made our way up the playground as Nate told me the rumor. When we got to the slide, Nate pointed out all the carvings made by this person or that guy or whoever. I wasn’t listening until he pulled out a dime and shoved it in my face. The slide was boarded up after rumors and after the older kids came around and really started to wreck it all—and Nate had a way around it. He was gonna take the dime and use it like a screwdriver and open the slide and go down to see if the rumor was real. ’Cause if he made it through the slide then he’d be the coolest person in town, and he thought the curse had to have worn out by now.

I thought it was a terrible idea, so I decided to go sneak the scooter and practice my tailwhips on the concrete outside the park—when I saw a group of older kids coming up and ran and told Nate, who was even more excited now that he might have an audience. There was three of ‘em on nice, new bikes that looked like they were made for little kids, but when I asked ‘em about it they told me it made it easier to do tricks. Then one of ’em with hair like a girl did a jump which was cool and I told him it was very cool and he chuckled at me. I went back to practicing my tail whips and the shortest older kid told me I was doing great which I thought was cool.

I was probably on my twentieth tail whip when I finally messed up and scraped my knee real bad. I only thought I should have stayed up there with Nate and helped him get the slide open ‘cause I got no better luck not doing it. I looked over at him still trying to get it open as the older kids glanced at him in between tricks and felt real bad ’cause Nate almost had their attention, but my knee hurt real bad. So I cried out and in between tears I told him I scraped my knee real bad and that we had to go to his house, cause we never had any band-aids at my place.