a walk off space street | {joplin/van}

He wasn't entirely sure how he ended up where he was currently, but he knew that it started when he finally got around to cleaning his closet out. It always went that way though: sitting cross-legged on the floor wearing a neck pillow as a scarf, playing the handheld game his father restored for his twelfth birthday while a mass of blue and black clothes collected dust on the bed behind him. Ah, glorious untreated ADHD. This time, though, it was a crusty old photo album that stole his attention. It was embroidered with white roses that'd faded to yellow with time, and it creaked when he opened it, and every time he flipped to a new page.

At first, he wasn't really certain what he was looking at: a bunch of random pictures of trees and people's houses, random strangers he didn't recognize at block parties, but on the fourth page there was a picture of his father, maybe seven or eight. Other than the missing front tooth, he looked exactly how Van looked at that age: tall, gangly. Big ears and a mass of dark curls to compensate. Curious, expressive eyebrows. Van realized this must have been Gramma Phoebe's, though how it had ended up in his closet, he hadn't the slightest clue. Maybe his mom had put it there after the funeral.

He kept flipping through, eventually recognizing the inside of his grandparents' old house, his aunt riding a tricycle down the sidewalk. Time progressed as he continued peering through, eventually coming to the very last photo: his parents at their wedding.

He stared at the photo for a long time, studying it almost. His mom smiling bigger than he could remember her smiling ever before. The oak tree behind them, with a strangely low-hanging branch, the way the ground steeply dropped off in a hill a couple hundred yards behind them, his father looking right at the camera, every detail. Eventually he pulled the picture out and returned the album back to its place on the shelf in his closet.

And then, before he knew it, he was standing in front of Joplin's bedroom door, his fist banging on surface one singular time before he barged in.

"Hey Jop, get up! We gotta go on a walk. I wanna show you something."

A pause.

"Don't worry, it's legal and I think you'll really like it."

Their parents had told them a hundred times that they got married in a park, but not ever which one. And now that their dad was gone, finding things like this- little ghosts of his memory- maybe it helped to compensate or something. For Van, it was either this or catching things on fire, so, you know, on to better coping mechanisms, as his therapist said. Though she'd been referring to his recovery from rose plague- crazy that it was already so long ago.

But because of all that, every time he walked past a park, he quietly wondered if it was the one his parents got married in. Now, thanks to this photo, he knew which one it was. He recognized the tree.