I thought I would never get there, but I reached the top of the hill in good time. If I wanted to, I could stay for a few hours, drinking in the moist air and fresh green grass. Sitting down gingerly on the soft slope, I shut my eyes and shut out the present.

I drifted into a blurry memory of my younger days on the hill. It was like being in a big, choppy sea. I swam around blindly for something solid. And then, it hit me clearly like catching a pebble in my hands.

I said it aloud suddenly, wanting to know if I had got it right after all these years. The empty air had no reply. Of course.

She had only told me her name once, just that once when we first met on this hill.

She snorted when she heard mine. “That’s a lousy name.”

“Well then, what’s your name?” I challenged meekly.

I wasn’t impressed by her answer. “I didn’t come here to argue about names,” she shrugged.

She had come to escape her family. An ugly, controlling lot that created frowns on her face. My background was different – my parents didn’t care at all – but the feelings between us were the same.

Gradually but surely, we moved beyond discussing random events under the stars. Once, in the privacy of night, she confessed that she didn’t know what to do after leaving school.

I smiled and said recklessly, “Who cares? Only now matters. Us. And here.”

Our busy days meant that we gave up sleep to come to the hill through the secret entrance, but it always seemed more alive to us than our real lives. We did a million pointless things: climbing the tallest tree, racing stick-and-leaf flying machines, spotting fish in little ponds by flashlight.

One night she arrived with beautiful flowers in her hair and a tear-soaked face.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Nothing. Let’s make a pebble fort.”

We gathered pebbles from the hill’s bottom, but I was worried about her. Both of us built the fort quietly. I noticed flashlights shining, approaching, but she was absorbed in slipping flowers in between the cracks in the pebble pile. She took my hand and looked at me like she wanted to disappear into a crack, too.

I looked at the lights behind her, growing brighter and understood… so her parents knew, and were coming.

“No – the pebble fort isn’t finished – ”
She pushed me down the hill.

The last I saw was her squinting against the lights on her face, and kicking the pebble fort so it exploded at the tip of her foot, cascading down the hill like a landslide. I ran away from my childhood.

Now, right now, the sky is turning dark, but I don’t think she’s coming. So I busy myself with gathering pebbles, and rebuild my past, alone.

And then, the sun finally and truly set on my pebble fort for the first and last time.