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this dance

"Roar!" she cried, rounding the corner of the wall.

I smiled as she did this, just as she always did on this blind corner. The cinder block wall provided a dark covering for, she imagined, an equally dark shape ready to pounce.

"Ha! I got you, Jacques!" She laughed, pointing behind the wall. My grin continued; she was pointing at empty air. This was a well-rehearsed game.

"He thought he'd jump out and steal my chocolates!" she continued, wagging he finger at the darkness. "Yes, you were! Don't shake your head at me."

"Good-bye, Jacques." I tipped an imaginary brim in the general direction of the void and pulled at her arm. "Come, now; he must get his own chocolates."

"You don't like Jacques, do you, Tad?" She laughed, giving in to my pull with a shrug over her shoulder. She took my hand as we turned to face the open street lined with dark houses and lit streetlights. We walked in the middle of the road, barefoot as usual.

"You spend too much time with him," I teased.

"Hey. I came all the way here just to see you, didn't I?" She squeezed my arm with her other hand as we walked on, enjoying the crickets and an occasional neighborhood mountain lion.

This was only partially true. She actually came to stay with her best friend who moved downstate, to my very neighborhood. Truth be known, she spends more time with me than her hosts. Jacques seems to follow her from home, always invisible and hiding in dark corners.

"Let me wear your shoes," she commanded, stumbling on a rock I couldn't see.

I let her.

"That's a nice hat you have on tonight," she broke the silence, brushing my bare curls with her fingertips. I pulled a hat from behind my back and winked at her. She didn't seem in the least bit surprised.

"I bet you couldn't--" I started, but she shook a hat of her own from one sleeve and stuck it on her head with a look of triumph.

"Can I have a chocolate now?" She held out both hands.

"But I thought you didn't have enough money to get them."

"I didn't," she answered, scooping handfuls of air out of my pocket and popping the candy in her mouth. "But they're better than store-bought ones, I think."

I laughed, wiping some brown stains from her bulging cheeks. "We're almost home."

"Tad, I don't want to go in yet," she sighed, chocolates falling from her hands, disappearing into the ground.

"Then, may I have this dance?" I pulled her under the streetlight, spotlighting us like a stage.

A mother figure peered out the window of her white-sided house, staring at the scene unfolding at the end of the driveway. Under the streetlight, at a bare-headed, barefoot girl raised her arms and begin dancing dreamily. "What's she doing?" she asked her daughter, standing behind her.

"Dancing, I guess," her daughter answered wistfully.

"I thought you were such good friends once, but all I ever see her do is go off and talk to herself." The mother paused. "What's really disturbing is I'm sure I saw her hugging a tree she called 'Tad'."

"Tad's not a tree."

"Then who is he?"

The girl outside dipped herself backward, laughing. "Your hat fell off!" she cried, and chased the wind.

-amanda johns