Rubber Tire

The tire hangs by a thick rope, its black rubber baking in the afternoon heat. Kelly walks over to it, running her fingers over the grooves. Kelly can feel the memories embedded in the dark canals, snaking jaggedly all along the tire forming a maze without a beginning and without an end.
Kelly pulls her legs through the hole of the tire and sits down, her legs dangling in the warm summer air. She can hardly believe that she fits, as she wraps her arms around the top of the tire, her neck leaning against the twisted rope.

The first day her parents set up the swing, Kelly was celebrating her fifth birthday. She remembered waking up, jumping out of bed to rouse the rest of the family for the most important day of the year. She ran by her bedroom window and saw something large by the trunk of the tree. As she looked closer, she can still remember her high-pitched squealing before thumping down the stairs.
While she swung there, a small girl walked past and noticed Kelly sitting on her new tire swing. The girl shyly edged over and stood there, watching. When Kelly stopped spinning, the girl spoke. “That’s really cool,” she said, looking at the tire in complete wonder.
“Thanks,” Kelly said in her small, five-year-old voice.
Kelly to this day doesn’t remember exactly what happened after that, but she knows that it was the beginning of her friendship with Nicole.
In middle school, every afternoon right after class they would catch bus number six (Nicole’s favorite number) and head to Kelly’s house, or more importantly, her tire swing. They pretended to be co-hosts of a talk show with strange and unusual guests, most including the nearby squirrels and Kelly’s cat. They would twist the tire as tight as it would go, then quickly clamber on top, the rope unwinding, sending the tire spinning. Every time the tire spun, they were transported to a new location for their talk show. The only talk show episode that Kelly felt she remembered well was the one they hosted deep in the rainforest. They trudged through the woods behind her house, dodging giant bugs and keeping a watchful eye out for black panthers. With help from Kelly’s cat, they were able to escape the Amazonian dangers and make it back to the tire swing that would transport them home.
“I want to travel the world someday,” Nicole would say most days after their adventure.
“We do!” Kelly said after their rainforest trek. “Where are we going to go tomorrow?”

Kelly watches a golden yellow leaf float down onto the grass in front of her. She touches it lightly with her foot, flipping it over. She remembers these leaves and trees being so much larger when they were younger. Kelly can’t decide whether it was because she had been physically smaller or if her imagination back then had made the forest more significant. She watches one of her old contestants scuttle across a branch, its thick grey tail twitching.
By their freshman year of high school, the games of imagination slowly started to fade away to make room for homework and gossip. Kelly and Nicole spent hours talking while sitting on the tire. But eventually their talks continued on inside the house, and after they got their licenses, out into the world. The tire swung lazily in the breeze, now without two young girls and their microphones made of oak branches.
“Kelly, there’s a letter here for you from a certain university!” Kelly’s mother calls from the house. Kelly slowly gets out of the tire, much slower than when she had been in middle school. She walks to the house to read the schedule that University of Rhode Island sent her. Kelly wonders if Nicole is reading her schedule from Edinburgh College.
The tire slightly swings back and forth, its black shine faded to a dull grey. The wrinkles resemble nothing more than shallow streams, with a trickle of imagination weakly curving through.
Kelly’s father walks out to the tire, and begins to gnaw at the tie with his rope cutters.