I light my fifth cigarette on the red-glowing remnants of my fourth. Alan makes a face and swats the curls of smoke sailing towards him. He reminds me of my orange marmalade cat, whipping her tail from side to side when she’s annoyed. At some point she gets fed up and dashes away from me, I keep waiting for Alan to do the same.

“Feeling suicidal this evening?” He asks, brushing ashes off my arm.

“No more than usual, dah-ling.”

“What a dreadful thought.” He says in the same upper society English accent.

“Sword in the Stone.” I mumble to myself. Alan rolls his eyes and smirks.

We sit in silence for a moment. All I can think is that he is thinking…And that he’s probably thinking about me thinking. The endless cycle.

“You know,” he jumps a little, surprised that I’ve interrupted the thinking about thinking, “living is suicide.”

“If you smoke?”

“No. Just living. We’re all going to die, and you can only die if you live…So living is suicide.”

“You shouldn’t think so much.” He shakes his head. I tap ashes off onto my hand and smear them into shapes in my palm. He clacks the toes of my shoes together and watches me finish off my cigarette. Sitting here, in the only park that hasn’t been rebuilt into a cold-metal rainbow, I’m sure I have something good to say. I could tell him I love him, I could say I’m excited for summer, I could tell him my parents told me to say ‘hi’ when I was home last. I could, but I always lie, I want a night off. Instead I tell him a secret.

“My dad told me that time kills everything.” I whisper. He looks at me with concern. I think this old wooden playground is making me morbid.

“Well…I suppose that’s true.”

“I was seven.”

“I guess you’d have heard it eventually.”

“It was my birthday.” My eyes start to burn, like I’m about to cry. It’s quiet for a few moments and I can hear the creek, littered with years of carelessly thrown beer bottles, rushing into the aqueduct. Alan scoots closer and puts his hands on my shoulders, like in a game of train. I think about us running around the playground yelling “Choo-Choo” and begin to giggle. He starts to laugh with me, the tension gone.

“Any non-scarring presents?” He coughs out, letting out a few last breathy laughs.

“Pink walkie-talkies and a dinosaur puzzle.”

“Did they soften the blow?”

“Mostly.”