Northern_Lights_2021

22 Tomorrow I go to the place again, but this time I bring Joe and a flashlight I found in the junk drawer. Me and Joe aren’t scared this time, cuz we know what the place is like already. We army-crawl in and I turn my flashlight on. Now we can see everything. We see the pretty rocks on the wall are all different colors and the pattern looks like pictures if you stare hard enough. We take a left again because the roof is still on the ground. Left isn’t as long as last time, because now I know my way and can go fast. I turn off my light, so I don’t scare the sponge. I grab the jail bars and shake them, pretending I’m a robber. Joe thinks it’s funny. I climb myself onto the table and scoot back until I feel the squish. I tell the sponge not to be scared because of my flashlight. I turn the light on, and I’m confused. I want to see a bunch of yellow with some holes in it, but I see blue. There’s blue and buttons and... a hand. I jump up and hit my head on the wall hard. Me and Joe start running real fast out of the place, but then we stop. I remember Joe being on TV and saying that we don’t leave soldiers behind. I look at the Joe in my hand and ask him what to do. We decide that we’d better go back and make sure the sponge man isn’t a soldier. We go back with the light on, so we can see the sponge man up close. When I have the light on, I know the table isn’t a table—it’s a flat place for people like the sponge man to stay dry. I crawl up next to him and get my light in his face. His eyes aren’t closed. They’re open. They’re open and white, like the fish in the supermarket. I make Joe poke him in the face to make sure, and then I know he’s dead. I’ve never seen a dead guy before, even when Dad was a dead guy. No one would let me. This dead guy is fat and his hair is almost gone. His hands aren’t the right color, and neither is his face. He doesn’t look like alive people, more like a balloon person, all puffed up with air. I’m not scared. My dad is a dead guy too. I leave the dead guy alone, like Mom said about the fish for almost a whole week, but I feel too bad to leave him alone. I feel bad he’s stuck down there wearing blue and not red. I feel bad he’s fat and bald and his eyes are white. I pack my backpack full of stuff and go back to the place. It’s hard to get my backpack into the hole with me and even harder not to get it wet. I tell the sponge man how smart I am when I get there, for putting my backpack on my head like a hat. I show him all the things I brought. I put one of Dad’s old baseball hats on his head to cover the bald and put my old red scarf around his neck. I have to shove his head back up straight after that one. Then I show him the cool American flag sunglasses I got from the fair and put them on his eyes, so he doesn’t have to have fish eyes anymore. I tell him how I’m sorry I can’t get him out cuz the hole isn’t big enough for a fat man, then I tell him about my dad and how he’s a dead guy too and that maybe they know each other. I tell him not to worry, that I’ll come back all the time because we’re soldiers, and we don’t leave other soldiers behind. I do come back all the time, every day even when it’s snowy and gross. Then the leaves grow back, and I keep going. I bring more stuff for the sponge man like a red flag I found in our yard and a blanket for when it’s cold. We’re friends now, even though no one else wants to be friends. But now that Mom has a job, after school Emily takes care of me. Emily says that she’s my friend and not my babysitter. So Emily plays GI Joe and fire truck with me and we go on adventures together, but not to the place. Not yet.