One Page #16

The mill was on the other side of the river from the town. It stood alone, slightly above the town and overlooked the valley where the houses spread out and dispersed towards the cornfields, which then bled into the woods and eventually low mountains. The mill was abandoned now. The windows were mostly broken and the walls were spray painted and urinated on. Nomads stayed there overnight once and a while and when we went exploring we found cigarette butts and empty beer bottles. We thought the mill was haunted. Sometimes we sat on the other side of the river from the mill and strained to peer into the windows, hoping to catch sight of a ghost rat-tat-tatting on the few window panes that hadn’t been broken yet. When we were feeling brave we would cross the bridge downstream a ways and walk back up the road to the mill. We would stand around outside for a while, daring our friends to go in. Sometimes we ran away, scared off by a branch scraping against the window shards. Other times we would creep through the door, silent and stealthy. But years later, when we were in high school, we went there all the time after school. We smoked pot in the upstairs room that used to be an office. There was still an old filing cabinet that was rusted and the green paint was peeling off. We hid out stash in the top drawer. The chairs had disintegrated and cracked so we sat on the floor. Jan once found an old statue in the bottom desk drawer and we polished it with our t-shirts and put it on the desktop. It was our masthead. We paid homage to the lonely golden figure, bowing down and chanting it’s worth. When Sally found a nest of rats in a closet corner one day, we stopped going and moved our stash to a new location in the woods. But RJ and I went there one day, about a year later, and lay on the floor of the upstairs office and stared at our masthead that had collected dust and was slightly less shiny, but still dominated the room. We lay side by side, but did not touch. RJ had cut her hair off the day before and it lay floppy in front across her forehead and into her eyes. She had also pierced her lip with a safety pin. It still bled when she touched it. I wanted to touch it. The safety pin was shiny silver and gleamed in the sunlight that fell across our bodies so lonesome on the floor. I reached out my hand, sliding it slowly along the peeling boards, and put it on top of RJ’s hand. We lay like that for several moments, me reaching out to her, clasping her hand as if it were the only thing holding me down. I felt the floor tip and sway and thought we would slide down the floor and crash into the wall. But we didn’t. RJ squeezed my hand and then lifted our hands together into the air.