Stonehenge

 It always looked like Stonehenge to me. So that’s what it got named. Big, vine-covered concrete blocks in a small clearing off woods five miles up the tracks running southward. 

My secret for the summer. 

I remember standing there in the June heat, marveling at it, grinning ear to ear. What a prize this glorious ruin was. Just for me. Walking in it’s long shadows like an archeologist wandering through what little remained of humanity. There was riotous graffiti scrawled everywhere; countless signatures in countless, dizzying styles. Bold, fierce looking letters declaring obscure rivalries or tiny intimate proclamations of forbidden actions. 

I couldn’t lose my grin. It was just perfect. 

I made the trek daily. Bag packed, a smuggled pair of dad’s old boots to feel that much more powerful— as if I could become him, astride no man’s land in a war that had come and gone before I was even on this world. Unrelenting heat. Soaking in sweat. Air thick enough to drink. The secrecy of it was something unique and wonderful, a love affair. Something I kept resolutely hidden from my mother and sister (who I told damn near everything in those days.. and in these ones, too), avoiding their questioning looks like Greek heroes of old slipping through Minotaur-haunted labyrinth. 

Perfect. 

Quiet days sitting atop the highest central pillar and it’s shady platform, imagining a vast siege on the horizon. 

Rainy afternoons dozing to the tap-tap-tap of hot, summer thunderstorms splashing against concrete. 

Books piled and tucked away, notebooks haphazardly open to gentle winds as I swept the singular corridor clean. Mumbling half-remembered songs, or thinking what if Mom was right and there really was a God? 

Thoughts came and went and blended together so that each visit became dreamlike. Quiet sadness filled me on the dusky walks back home. 

I met someone. 

Someone in my hidden kingdom. 

Once you have known a place so long, touched it and lived in its structure— you know it. You know every exposed foundation, all the places the birds chirp heedless of your annoyance, rooms with weak floors or leaky ceilings. You know when an intruder has come.  

She was taller than other girls I’d met. Lithe, tanned. Long black hair tucked under a cap. Dirty, torn jeans. I don’t think she even heard me, standing there, watching as her long fingers probed at my things. Poked at collected shells and half-recovered birds eggs, eyes curiously narrow, before pulling a book from the shelf. 

I don’t remember what I said in that first moment. My heart was racing. I felt electric and violated all at once. Afraid. Eager. I just know that in a flash, the stranger was there. Close enough to touch. Bottomless green eyes so clear I could see my shock reflected in them. We looked at each other a long time. The girl looked like a wild animal, caught. My book clasped tight in a single hand.