Cemetery Ballroom (polished)

Ethan’s family buried Gran Fern only three weeks ago. He didn’t mind passing through, though. Dorado Middle School was in the same direction down the winding portion of Lionel Lee road as the cemetery. Ethan always bid salutations to the peacefully cryptic residents, and about half after three, the ice cream van passed down winding Lionel Lee to catch customers from Port Fern Elementary getting dropped off by the busses. On Saturdays it wouldn’t cruise by until around five. Ethan would hum that ice cream song until he got home almost daily. It reminded him of the calmness found only in a cemetery.

When Ethan began ninth grade, he began forgetting that song.  High School’s direction was opposite Shady Luxuries Cemetery. There were no tunes to recognize in that direction. There were no winding roads.

Novembers were numbingly cold, a beautiful blister representing the positively frantic local spirit – We’re here; deal with it, man and weather united.  The weather started suiting Ethan’s personal favor near Halloween, representing Stage 1 – Heavier Winds.

A week before Thanksgiving, walking home from a perky evening at some suburban darlings’ parent-less house party  in Thorn corner, known as such because within that neighborhood bore the only homes  where thorns grew naturally in the greenery. If you didn’t know where to turn, it’d be an instant miss, but Ethan stood every elementary school morning at the graveyard’s edge and was dropped of f there accordingly with Thorn Corner only a hidden block away. The road turned only east, a tree’s limb obstructed the sign naming the street, but no one ever complained about it. The people in Thorn Corner were often considered different by the other folks in town. It was an upscale community, but that was never an issue; the fragment of tension between the people went deeper, into the soil and the soul of the town where it seemed like the tension boiled into hatred.

Yet, all of that tension eased once Ethan reached the chain marking the start of cemetery ground. He was able to step over it now since his growth spurt, planting his feet on the docile territory he felt all of that uneasiness shed like a mature snake’s skin replaced by a calmness that he realized he had missed and not even known. It was a good feeling, like being reacquainted with friends long-thought-abandoned. Ethan was jovial about his return. He decided to visit his grandparents ‘plots, feeling succinctly guilty since he had not visited them either since transferring to high school. He still thought about them, he knew they were watching over him at all times which justified his excuses for not visiting them when the opportunities presented themselves.