Ice-Cream

It had been a weird day. He had been silent throughout, not telling me what was wrong. So I took him to the park, to the swings, where we both had grown up together.

My best friend.

We raced against the groaning swings, going higher and higher with each thrust, and screaming with laughter at the top of our voices. I noticed him looking up at the swing, a look of darkness passing over his face, and instantly being replaced with dumb glee. I didn’t think of it.

We went to get ice-cream. That place had been our most favourite haunt in all the years of our friendship. He got 4 flavours, while I got 3. Strawberry, chocolate and vanilla had never tasted so fulfilling together. As we sat on the sidewalk, watching the cars pass by, I saw that look again. It went by as fleetingly as it had earlier. I didn’t know what to ask him, though. So, we sat, as we talked of our first ice cream together, when he had been the new kid on the block without a friend, and how him mom had talked to us inside the ice-cream parlour, with the both of us eyeing each other warily. A wonderful start to a wonderful friendship. He always used to say, “Friendships which are based on food, always last forever!”

His girlfriend joined us. We all went to the mall, where she and I bored him to death with our window shopping and trying on clothes we’d never buy. He had never liked this one store where the both of us used to go a lot. The mannequins were headless there, and they used to creep him out. I would fall to the floor laughing when he would put his head inside his sweatshirt and try to scare her. She would run away from him, screaming, all of us making a nuisance in that store.

I came back home for dinner. He had been smiling when I’d left him at his place.

It had been a good day.

I woke up in the morning, groggy, and with a stomach ache from all the ice cream from yesterday. My hand reached for my phone, and with one eye open, I saw that there had been a missed call from him at 2:49 a.m.

And a message too.

“I love you. Come find me at the park.”

My best friend.

He hung himself on the swing-set. His eyes looked like a chipmunk’s, big and wet. His face was turning blue. I pulled him down, though it was difficult. And I used the rope from his neck, to find him. The way he had told me to.

The ice-cream parlour is still our favourite haunt.