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Alex could hear Lucy’s breathing from where he stood and waved her off the swings. “Hey, let’s take a break,” he said. Lucy extended an upturned thumb and swung back and forth a few more times. She was grinning and counting aloud. “Lucy, stop.” Shaking her head, she let go of the chains midair and catapulted herself off the swing. Her cries of glee caught in the wind and carried across the park like the brown leaves that crushed underneath Alex’s feet. “I’m flying,” she said, and Alex ran as fast as he could. He caught her, her stomach smashing into his shoulder, face smacking into his lower back. His knees buckled and Alex went down. He grabbed Lucy’s sweater and pulled her off him. Hugging her to him, he felt his heart pushing against his chest. She squirmed in his arms, but he couldn’t let go. He had to make sure she was still there, that she wasn’t so cold. Alex scanned her face for a nose bleed or a busted lip but found her all together, at least as much as he could see. On the outside she just looked like Lucy. “Let me go, Alex.” “I can’t,” he said, his breath coming out all at once. “You have to.” His legs felt weak and he’d stopped blinking, his eyes frozen on the moment when her small body hung in the air. She’d looked for a second as if she would keep going and sail far over his head to someplace he could never find, but then she’d faltered and fallen back down to him. The knit fabric of her sweater caught in his mouth and he spat the lint out. “Don’t spit on me,” she said, slapping at his shoulder. She wiggled out of his arms and stepped back from him. On his knees they were at eye level, and he could see the shadows under her eyes, puffy and pink where the eyelashes had fallen out and the cracked lips. He knew Lucy didn’t like it when people looked at her like that, like someone they might have known a long time ago. She looked away from him and went to sit on the go-round. Alex leaned forward, his hands splayed on his knees. Lucy pulled her sinewy legs underneath her, tucking the feet into her sweater. Rusty and cracked like everything else, it shook even under her weight. “You gonna come push me or am I going to have to waste my lung capacity?” She adjusted her cap and waited for him to get up. When he did, the world spun and he felt it turning towards morning, to another day gone, and taking the two of them with it. There was no stopping it, just a quiet resolve that they’d lost another day. Alex then wondered if Atlas, the great orchestrator of the earth’s turntable, ever felt bad for making people leave today for another tomorrow, dragging everyone towards the inevitable. He must know what’s coming, but he still allows the world to keep going round and round. Didn’t it stop for anyone? If Alex had that kind of weight on his shoulders, he would’ve dropped the world a long time ago for something with better benefits. Alex didn’t bother to brush the sand off his jeans. He came to stand by the goround and took hold of one of the handle bars and gave it a push, starting the go-round off with a slow turn. Lucy circled around with the rusted contraption, making funny faces at him when she came back to face him. Humming, she closed her eyes and Alex pushed faster. It was something they used to do when they came here years ago. One of them would sit on the go-round with their eyes closed while the other pushed faster and faster. It made their stomachs drop and the sky spin. It almost made him smile to be there again, but with every turn he saw Lucy’s face grow thinner and yellower until she wasn’t there anymore, just a poor molding of his sister. He found a spot on the ground to stare at and waited for the image to go away. When her eyes opened she fell backwards, and Alex let the go-round spin on its own for a while. His arms were tired. Lucy stared up at the sky and giggled. When Alex found he could look at her again, he stopped the go-round with the tip of his sneaker. They stayed quiet and let the wind talk for them. It seemed to have more to say, and anyway it could say things better than he could. Lucy was frowning at the sky and
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