A Middledge Journal
In this piece: After running from the past for so long, Matthew Heart returns home to Middledge to find some things never change.

The rain was relentless against my windshield, my stomach in knots and my mind lost in memories as I crossed the city limit into Middledge. I spent my entire adolescence longing to escape it, only to come back with a handful of spare change and a heart full of regrets. The rain wasn't going to stop pouring anytime soon, and even showed signs of getting worse, so I pulled inside the old parking garage to get out of it. I passed walls covered in bad graffiti and an old discarded sofa as I made the trek to the spot where it all began.
Sitting on the hood of my Ford Escort, I lit a cigarette and let my myself get taken back to a time where my hair was much longer and life seemed a hell of a lot shorter. Just the four of us, too blind to realize the opportunities we all had, full of angst and hormones. Too young to realize how much we still had to figure out.
"Turn it a little to the left" Chase said with a grunt as he and I struggled to maneuver a couch from the back of his father's truck. The girls giggled to each other, watching our scrawny selves attempt lifting it for the third time. We eventually just tipped it out of the truck bed letting it crash onto the cement floor of the parking garage. It suffered minimal damage, but it was still usable. To celebrate I pulled out the green magic I stole from my mother's medicine cabinet. Chase rolled it into four decent sized joints and we got lost in ourselves.
Chase and Kat had just met not long before this. Kat's parents just bought what used to be small library and turned it into a coffeehouse, which was starting to become a little hub of culture in our little redneck town.
Maggie and I had been friends for years, almost as long as I'd been friends with Chase.