4/27/2024 Ghosts who Had SkinBy: Corrina Mazza The neighborhood at my dad’s house was packed with kids. I was the second youngest out of the whole cul de sac, not counting toddlers or babies. Most of them were fifth graders up until eighth graders. The majority of afternoons we would be playing a huge game of hide and seek at the small sports and dog park a few blocks down the road or Infection along the backways of the neighborhoods. We’d all come home sweating, completely out of breath, knees and arms slightly bloody, and grinning wide.
Some nights though, mostly the weeks leading up to Halloween, we would get together at the prime of twilight and take on a game of Ghost in the Graveyard. The nit-picky rules haven’t stuck in my mind after all these years, but it was another take on Sardines, where one person—the ghost—hid and once they were found, it turned into tag. The ghost had to chase down everyone until the person caught was the new ghost, and it repeated and repeated until our parents yelled to get back home, it was late. The first ghost was always the last shoe left in Blue-Shoe. When the counter’s finger landed someone’s grimy Converse, they would whoop and yell in glee and skip to the circle of other “alive” people. In the times where my shoe was alone, Naomi, who was like an older sister to me, always volunteered to take my place; she felt bad that I, one of the youngest, had to go first. Even though I loved Naomi, I always yelled at her that I could do it and that I didn’t need help. And every time I scolded her, she ended up having to be the second ghost with me after ten rounds of me catching nobody. We were ghosts together, yet when we sprinted past each other, both reaching out in hopes of grabbing someone’s hood, we were beaming. We were ghosts, but we were alive. When we—Naomi—caught somebody, sometimes it was already late enough for everyone to go home. But when it wasn’t, when it was the rare nights when somehow every single one of our parents got stuck watching a movie or the news, we got another hour or so to jump behind bushes, scale up trees, scramble into the bed of a truck, or to just keep running and hope the ghost just slips right past you. When we decided we were done, we’d all sit in a circle in the little grass area and just breathe. I would sit next to Naomi while she braided my hair or I braided her’s. We were the ghosts who turned out to be alive. We could run and breathe and braid. We could always smile while we did so. Comments are closed.
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