Fugue #70

- Ana?
- Paul?
- Come with me.

They leave the football field, the marching band’s echo bounding over the terraced fields all the way to the horizon. They walk across the gravel road ringing the high school and out into the fields.

- Is this where...
- Yep.
- Wow.

Ana walks between haystacks. They surround her and buoy her up, figuratively toward a blue sky full of clouds.

Dreams, now a drifting white cloud, pass behind your eyes. Ideas forming about your life, and what do you want to do? Yes and no, and maybe this is so, this is not, and I could be anything.

The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

She spins around and again. Then stops.

Paul is sitting on the ground, hands behind, legs out, knees bent. He twirls a straw back and forth in his mouth, then tosses it to the ground. His eyes fill with tears, which wait, then pour down his cheeks, as he lowers his head.

"Hey," Ana sees him, "hey..." She kneels next to him, "It’s ok."

He nods.

"We’re going to find it again. It’ll be different, and in some ways, not as good. But we’ll find it. We’re going to. This is the way."