A skinny, thirteen-year-old Adonis still skates around my block, if only in the meandering memory that belongs to a mousey, twelve-year-old girl—who I long to be again. I wish that I still ran out to meet this demi-deity when he knocked on my door, but he stopped knocking when time faded perpetual summer afternoons into autumn. I wish I had knocked on his door when he stopped knocking on mine.
Adonis lived around the curve of our street, in the house with the boat in the driveway. He had freckles splattered across the pale skin of his nose and more trailing down his thin arms, a mop of red hair on his head. Many pursuits interested him, but his love of hockey brought us together. Adonis taught me how to skate. He strapped rollerblades onto my feet, dragged me into the unrelenting afternoon sun, and pelted me with hockey pucks.

Still, I adored him, for all the bruises that painted my shins were mirrored on his shins. We wore the scrapes like friendship bracelets, or as Adonis preferred to call them, battle scars. Desperately wanting to grow up, we bled on the sidewalk and considered it a sin to cover out wounds with band aids. The afternoons with Adonis meant danger and thrill. Daring.

Before the days ended, Adonis and I skated to the top of my driveway, a steep, monstrous mouth that spat a rollerblader down its curve in a heartbeat. He flew down its curve performing various precarious acrobatics without a helmet while I twisted my fingers with fear. He threw out his arms like they were wings and closed his eyes, exemplifying everything I ever wanted. Then Adonis yelled over his shoulder, “I dare you!” Carpe Diem, his body whispered.

Yet I never sailed down.

After he flew down my driveway, we rested, talked, snacked, and laughed, sprawling across the warm pavement of our cul-de-sac. His father paged him as night advanced over the playground of our day. Adonis skated home under the streetlamp light, hockey stick guiding the plastic yellow puck before him, an assortment of gummy bears tucked in his cheek. I clamored back up my driveway and inside my house to wait with apprehension for the next day when everything repeated itself.

Then our summer ended. Adonis hardly had any time to spare for me after school, but every other weekend or so, he came by to knock on my door. We began to lounge about more, trading skates for video games. When autumn became winter, Adonis dropped by less and less frequently until in January, my thirteenth birthday, he begged out of my party. It was the last time I spoke to the boy who skated around my block.

I saw him again a few months ago. I watched him for a long while, talking to the new girl he knows, me in my broccoli green choir dress, straight-backed and proper, no scrapes across my shins. I remembered how he used to rollerblade in circles around me and detail the artful way his favorite hockey team slaughtered their opponents.

Suddenly, he drives a blue car and washes it shirtless after school, the California sun pointing out what a pale redhead he is. I cannot help but still see him as my gorgeous Adonis. We drifted apart. Someday, we will not even be neighbors. Four years ago, when he dared me to live, I wish I had accepted his dare because I lost him when I did not. We cannot reclaim our childhood, for no man is rich enough to buy back his past, according to Oscar Wilde, but I will miss his rollerblades for the rest of my life.