The road to the park was filled with simple-talk. We discussed our classes, our teachers, out classmates, and a general mix of all of it, interrupting ourselves only to comment about how bad lunch was, or how funny the water tasted earlier in the day. Eventually, we started holding hands, and she gave me another one of her brilliant smiles, the kind that knocked the air right out of my cheeks and forced me to smile right back, despite all the self-consciousness I had about my smile. Her eyes, a strange shade between hazel and gray, looked into mine, and within them I saw something I could not identify, but it was something beyond admiration and beyond anything I’d ever seen in any other human being’s eyes. I did not wholly understand it, but in my heart I felt that my eyes were probably giving her the same look.
We crossed the road together and walked down to the park, and we quickly found a bench that sat on some sturdy ground to place ourselves next to each other upon. Up ahead, we could see the flowers blossoming on a tree; they were all very pretty and pink. Kids walked past us on the sidewalk further up ahead, and sometimes somebody would walk past us in the park itself. She was kicking her legs, wearing down on the ground beneath her; I watched them as they swung back and forth, taking with them a bit of the dirt and grass below her with each swing. Slowly, but surely, she was forming a hole in the otherwise flat surface beneath us. At some point, however, she exclaimed something in surprise and stooped down to look closer at the hole. Not having seen whatever it was that she was looking at, I, too, stooped in closer. It turned out that she had disturbed a worm.
Before I could comment, she had risen and started running in some direction. Half-stunned, I looked up, and I saw that she was moving toward the swings. I smiled, mostly to myself considering she had her back turned to me, and got up and followed. I took a swing next to hers; I was never good at swinging, so I sat there and watched her instead. She started off slow, but as I watched, her swings began to get longer and steadier. Very soon, I had to actually move my head to keep her in my vision; back, forth, back forth, back, forth… We remained that way for about ten minutes, her continuously swinging back and forth, and me following her with my eyes as though she were a pendulum wielded by some awful magician that had me caught in a trance. And then it all stopped; at once, her legs collided with the ground, and dust kicked into the air as the swinging slowed and ceased. For a moment, nothing moved. Then she looked over at me, shooting me another of her smiles before getting up to return to the bench.
