The Last Friday I Ever Sent

The empty end of the driveway

At one o’clock, the yard was full of eight year olds playing some game with rules only they understood. At two, we did musical chairs with a boombox propped in the kitchen window, and Zach won two rounds by cheating in the sweetest, most obvious way possible, and everybody let him.

At two thirty, I noticed Zach had started walking to the end of the driveway between games. Just standing there for a minute, looking down the road toward town, then walking back to the party like nothing had happened.

At three, one of his presents, a fishing rod my mother had told him she was bringing, still sat unwrapped and expected on the porch step, next to the one from us that he had already opened.

By four, the last goodie bag had gone home in the last minivan, and the yard had that particular quiet that comes after a party, sticky with spilled pop and confetti stuck to the grass, and Zach was still standing at the end of the driveway.

“Maybe they got the day wrong,” he said, which is the kind of grace an eight year old extends to adults who have not earned it yet.

I went inside and called my mother.