Trampoline

Trampoline - Chapter Two : Electric Blue

I updated! ^^ Sorry for the delay.

TRAMPOLINE

CHAPTER TWO: Electric Blue

It’s a Wednesday. It has barely been a few days back at school and I am already bored sick of it. I’m sitting outside on the grass in my back garden, savouring the last few rays of feeble English sunshine before it turns dark and trying to comprehend the maths problems I’ve been set as homework.

I’ve never liked maths and probably never will, no matter how much homework I’m forced to do. Instead of paying attention to the equations in front of me I let my gaze wonder to the bottom of the garden where I always used to play as a child. I saw the crumbling wooden playhouse that I couldn’t bear to get rid of, the scattered skipping ropes that I never used anymore and the trampoline. My mum had tried to remove the trampoline from the garden several times but I was insistent that it stayed. ‘Just for the memories,’ I had said to her.

 I’d long since convinced her that I was too old for the trampoline now andthat I’d outgrown it. I knew that wasn’t true. Sometimes, when nobody was there I would climb onto the elasticised fabric that was stretched over the now rusty steel frame and bounce till I felt dizzy.

Placing down my maths book I look quickly around for any people who may be watching me, and when I am sure no one is there I leap up and sprint for the trampoline. In one fluid movement I roll onto the bed of the trampoline and am up on my feet, bouncing up and down.

I brace myself then I let myself fly into the air and flip mid-bounce. I remember when I was little Drake and I had decided that we were going to be the best trampolinists ever. Every day after school we’d sprint to my house and bounce to our hearts content and weekends were just full of endless days of bouncing up and down together. We loved that feeling, the feeling of flying endlessly through the air till you hit the springy surface and bounced back up again, higher than ever. I never got bored on the trampoline with my childhood best friend, we could spend hours flipping and laughing, never caring about the world outside the springy circle.

I’d stopped going on the trampoline when Drake left. I stopped bouncing altogether.

Maybe I wouldn’t be thinking about him so much if it hadn’t been the anniversary of his disappearance today. It’s been seven long years since I found out he was missing, yet I still can’t get over the fact that he’s gone. I hate myself for the weakness, for my incessant worrying and wondering. I know that wherever he is, if he’s even still alive, he won’t be thinking about me.

But that doesn’t quell my worrying.

I just can’t stop thinking about that day – the one when Drake’s mother had turned up at my door and taken him away from me forever. That had been the last time that I’d seen him. Then my thoughts lead on to another and yet another one after that. Now I’m thinking of this day seven years ago when Drake’s mother called mine for the first time since she’d left. My first thought had been that if they still had our phone number why hadn’t Drake called me? But then she’d asked us quite seriously if we had seen Drake because he had gone missing. That’s when my beliefs that I’d see him again collapsed, I can still remember the sinking feeling in my stomach as I heard those words – I’d known that Drake was never happy with his mum but not so much that he would run away from everything her knew.

Admittedly our communication between each other had faltered after he moved for the third time, so I didn’t know how much he could’ve changed or what could’ve happened to trigger this. He’d simply stopped writing or even calling me once in a while. I had no idea where he had been living before he had been missing and no idea where he could possibly be.