The Locket

From outside the treehouse you could hear them weeping. For something built by a couple of nine year olds, the rickety old thing had held up as well as could be expected. The same could be said about the bond between the builders, Talulah and Yamil, who over the years had shared drinks and stories here countless times. Their secret place was one of the last few around, there really were not many surprises in the growing city of Limbo. Over the last decade there were fewer and fewer strange little paths in the woods, abandoned houses to be explored and trees to be climbed. As Talulah has said many times over, the only thing that made one neighbourhood look different from another were the names of streets. It was a dull place.

Very soon, the parade of bulldozers parked down the street would demolish their little piece of woodlands and Limbo would be even duller. But this is not why they wept. Both Talulah and Yamil had their hands laid on their necks, squeezing ever so slightly. It would be the last time they would feel skin instead of the heart shaped lockets that would be placed on them. Deciding they wouldn’t spend their last moments together weeping, Yamil spoke up. “Looking on the bright side,” he sighed, never usually one to do so. “We won’t care about the stupid treehouse in a few hours. We won’t care about any of it.”

“What a relief,” Talulah said sarcastically, leaning into him. She wiped the last tear from her eye and gave a trembling sigh. “Do you think that means it doesn’t matter?”

Yamil turned his head to look at her warm brown eyes. “I don’t know.” He felt rather stupid. Not just for being unable to answer the question, but how long it had taken him to realize what the lockets really meant. It had always seemed like something to look forward to, the greatest honour one could receive. It meant a place in the world, becoming part of the family. But Yamil didn’t want a place in their world anymore. He liked his better.

“Why do they call it a family?” Yamil fired, nails digging a little deeper into the skin on his neck. “It’s anything but.”

“It sounds better than a system,” Talulah replied grimly. There was silence for a while. It was Talulah that broke it. “I hate that I won’t miss you.”

“Me too.”

The sound of an engine sent both their hearts lurching. Both teenagers stood up, the floor of the treehouse creaking. Their eyes met. And then their hands. And then their lips. They left the treehouse together, climbing down the ladder and taking a jump onto the forest floor. The two walked across all the familiar logs, ducked the low hanging branches, and made sure to give a wide berth to a small pond which was always full of bugs this time of year.

As they passed out of the woods, Yamil stuck his finger up to the driver of one of the bulldozers. The driver blinked. A golden locket rested on his chest and a hard hat on his head. His eyes held none of the warmth Talulah or Yamil’s did. Yamil slightly less so.

“I hope you get stuck in the mud, shitwad!” he roared. This insult wasn’t heard over the rumbling of machines. Hooked up to a microphone, the driver spoke in a numb and weary voice.

“Please move to the side. This land is being repurposed to best serve Limbo.”

Neither Talulah or Yamil could think of a better purpose than the one it already served. Accepting the inevitable, the two turned their back on the woods and began to walk. Yamil searched for words to say but they didn’t come to him. Perhaps he’d left them behind in the forest.

Coming out into an intersection, they jaywalked easily through the early morning traffic. There weren’t that many people out yet, but those that were had heart shaped lockets jangling on their necks and eyes that took in the world but didn’t see any of it. The two came to a tall apartment building and stopped. There were no vines climbing it, no imperfections in the brick or murals on the sides. It looked like everything else in Limbo. And everything else in Limbo looked like it. They entered together and decided to take a long and winding flight of stairs rather than the elevator. Their footsteps echoed up as they climbed.

“Come to think of it, maybe this place is a little different,” Tallulah said quietly.

“Huh?” Yamil asked.

“Stairs,” she replied, a hint of a smile on her face. “They’re not efficient. They stopped building these in the newer models.”

“Hmf. Think they’ll bulldoze here too?” Yamil snorted.

“Maybe sometime.” They opened a door and came out to a hall that stretched as far as the eye could see. Yamil walked Talulah down the hall and stopped in front of a door that read Twenty-Seven. He swallowed. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

He embraced her tightly, leaning his head against hers. Before anything else could be said, he turned and walked away, a tremble to his step. As much as he wanted to stay with her forever, he couldn’t. It would be seven o’clock soon and the day would start. Rather than being ripped from her, perhaps it was nicer for the last words he heard from Talulah to be “I love you too.”

Yamil’s room was three floors up. He didn’t stop here however, he ran further. The echoing continued, footsteps growing heavier and heavier as he ascended. He found himself on the roof.



***

At seven o’clock an envelope was pushed through Talulah’s door. The radio came on, a military march playing. The news flashed to life on the television screen and her parents walked from their bedroom. Talulah offered them a weak smile that was not returned.

Her father went to the door while her mother sat down beside her, stroking her hair gently. “Darling,” she spoke without affection of any sort. “We’re so proud of you.”

Talulah did not meet her eyes, instead eyeing the golden heart shaped locket on her mothers breast. The sound of paper tearing snapped her attention to her father. From the envelope, he fished a third locket. It looked just like her parents' lockets. And her parents' lockets looked like everyone else’s from Limbo.

“You’ll be part of the family now,” her father said in a low tone. “And you’ll join the real world.”

Talulah looked up to see her father, but her eye was caught by the television screen. On the news was her apartment building, its top stretching into grey polluted clouds. There was an ambulance and a crowd of people gathered. Red tape circling a small area and a stain on the ground. The camera switched to see a body being loaded into the ambulance, sirens blaring.

It could be anyone else.

But a part of her knew it wasn’t. Yamil wasn’t like anyone else in Limbo, and anyone else in Limbo wasn’t like Yamil. Tears sprang to her eyes, and then she heard a rattle. Looking down, she saw the locket on her chest. The warmth in her eyes became flooded with cold, the tears subsiding just as soon as they had come. She stood up, looking at her father with numbness.

He returned the look, a false smile on his face. “You’re a part of the family now.”