Wondering about my life

The Old Playground

The park was smaller than Chen recalled. The swing set was rusty and creaked in the wind, the chains long stripped of color, and the slide now a graffiti-tagged relic. But the oak tree at the center still stood, its trunk carved with initials from decades of kids who'd outgrown this place.

Why were we here again? Rafi kicked a soda can, its metallic clang echoing through the silent street.

It was because of Chen's crisis about nostalgia said Luna, kicking the basketball about with her free hand. She is here to savor in all the melodrama.

Chen waved them away, kneeling down at the foot of the oak. The roots had grown, but the little "X" he and Miguel had etched into the bark at 12 was still legible. "Dig here," he said, throwing Rafi a shovel.

"Wait, the time capsule?" Miguel's eyes brightened. "Dude, we were so cringe at 14."

The shoebox was soggy but intact. Inside lay:

A Pokémon card (Charizard, "for when we're millionaires").

A mixtape labeled "Bangers Only" (featuring High School Musical and early BTS).

A letter from Chen's mom: "To Future Chen: Don't forget to laugh. Love, Mom."

The group fell silent. Chen traced his mother's handwriting, the paper brittle under his fingers.

"She wrote one for me too," Miguel admitted, pulling a folded note from his wallet. "Miguel—keep Chen out of trouble. Or don't. ;)"

Luna snorted. "She knew you'd fail."

For the first time in years, Chen laughed until he cried.

 The Demolition Notice

Sophia spotted it first: a bright orange flyer stapled to the oak.

"CITY DEVELOPMENT PROJECT: PLAYGROUND DEMOLITION STARTS 11/15."

"They can't do this!" Luna exclaimed, tearing down the flyer. "This is where Coach taught me to shoot hoops!"

Rafi read the fine print. "They're replacing it with a parking garage. Classic."

Chen clutched his mother's letter. This park is where his mother had taught him to ride a bike; this is where she had cheered his first terrible slam dunk. "Don't forget to laugh." But he felt only anger.

The Plan

They sat down at the booth they had appropriated since freshman year—sticky table, cracked vinyl seats, and all. Luna slapped a notebook down. "We are saving the park," she declared. "Step one: petitions. Step two: viral TikTok campaign. Step three:."

"S-step three: call the councilwoman," Sophia interrupted, her fingers swiping through her phone. "She has a kid in Greenvale. That kid's actually in my chemistry class."

Miguel raised his milkshake in toast. "Pissing off the system!

Chen paused. "What if it doesn't work?"

"Well, then we've at least tried," Luna said. "Your mom would have wanted that."

That evening, Chen video-called Jia. Her new room was all sterile white walls, her pink hair tucked under a beanie.

"Remember this?" He held up the Charizard card.

She grinned. "You cried when I beat you with a Pikachu."

They talked for hours about the park, the campaign, the hollow ache of missing someone. Before hanging up, Jia whispered, "Save that place, Chen. For her."

Afterwards, Chen wrote a letter he'd never send:

"Mom, I'm trying not to be afraid. But it's hard. P.S. I still can't dunk."

The town hall was packed. Chen paced back and forth in front of the mic, his father's nodding face steadying him from the back row.

"This park is not just dirt," he said, voice shaking. "It's where my mom taught me resilience. Where my friends learned to fight for what matters. You can't pave that.

Luna ushered in a sequence of townspeople reminiscing. Rafi wore a full Charizard costume "for dramatic effect." Not even Ms. Alina was spared, brandishing a 500-signature petition.

The councilwoman's smile spoke volumes. "We will make our decision public next week."

Rain the night before judgment falls. Chen sat in the treehouse with Miguel, the plywood leaked through, the wind screamed.

"Remember when we thought this'd survive a hurricane?" Miguel said, wringing out his sleeve.

Chen laughed. "We were idiots."

"Still are."

They sat in silence, listening to the storm.

"If they tear it down," Miguel said quietly, "we'll build something better. Promise."

 The Verdict

The council voted 4-3 to save the park.

The group let out hugs and tears, with Rafi crowd-surfing in his Charizard costume. But Chen slipped away, kneeling under the oak with his mother's letter.

"We did it," he whispered.

The leaves rustled with the wind, and for a moment, he could have sworn he heard her laugh.

They buried a new shoebox beside the oak:

Luna's MVP medal.

Jia's paintbrush.

Chen's scholarship letter.

A joint note: "To Future Us: Don't let the world make you cold. P.S. Rafi still can't dunk either."

As the team broke apart, Chen's phone vibrated.

Unknown Number: "Check the slide."

Spray-painted across the metal in bold pink letters: "Jia Was Here."

He beamed with pride and snapped a photo. "Always getting into trouble."

There was a text message reply from Jia: "Someone's gotta keep you on your toes. See you at winter break?"

Epilogue: The First Snow

Chen woke to a white-blanketed world. At the park, he found his father building a lopsided snowman, carrot nose and all.

"Your mom loved snow," he said, tossing Chen a mitten. "Said it made everything feel… new."

They built the snowman up to their freezing fingers, its stick arms pointing toward the oak. To tomorrow.

The oak tree, it seemed, stood taller against the autumnal light. Its branches took on the contour of arms holding up the sky with the weight. Chen pressed his palm to the trunk. The bark was rough and familiar against his fingertips. The park had been saved, but it still carried that metallic tang of unfinished battles like the world was holding its breath, waiting for the next storm.

Lanza dribbled her basketball around to one side, the rhythmic thud-thud-thud echoing off empty swings. You gonna stand there and stare at that tree all day, or are we playing? she teased, but her voice came sharp with its teasing.

"Give him a minute," Miguel said, slumping against the spray-painted slide. He'd been quieter since the demolition fight, his usual jokes replaced by a simmering restlessness. Chen knew why. Miguel's mom had taken a second job cleaning offices downtown, and the dark circles under his eyes mirrored hers.

Chen took a step back from the tree. "Let's play."

They formed teams Chen and Rafi against Luna and Miguel but the game rapidly degenerated into a shambles. Rafi, always the loose cannon, dived at Luna for the ball, and they both ended up in a drift of crispy orange leaves, laughing until Luna swore she'd dislocated a shoulder.

"You both are banned from sports," Luna groaned, flopping onto the grass.

Says the girl who tripped over her own shoelaces last meet, Rafi shot back, flicking a leaf at her.

Chen sank onto the bench beside Miguel, their shoulders brushing. The park was different now. The victory had etched itself into the cracks of the playground, but so had the weight of what came next. College applications. Goodbyes. The slow, inevitable unraveling of their shared orbit.

One evening Miguel turned to him and squinted at the sunset: "You ever think about leaving?"

Chen followed his gaze. "Sometimes. But… I don't know how."

Miguel nodded, quiet. They'd never needed words to understand the unsaid.

Jia's texts came like clockwork every Friday night, a ritual as steady as the moon. Chen sat cross-legged on his bedroom floor, his latest message glowing on his screen:

Jia: Aunt's town is all cornfields and creepy gas stations. Send help.

Chen: Trade you for Rafi's mixtape.

Jia: Deal. Also… I painted something. For the park.

She attached a photo a mural sketch of the oak tree, its branches twisting into hundreds of paper cranes. At the base, tiny figures held hands: Chen, Miguel, Luna, Rafi, Sophia, even Ms. Alina with her ever-present coffee mug.

Chen: You're coming back to paint that, right?

Jia: Try and stop me.

He tacked the sketch to his wall next to her paintbrush, the one she'd left him. It still smelled faintly of turpentine and her dad's cigars.

The first frost came early, coating the park in a brittle silver sheen. Sophia found Chen there one morning, his breath curling in the air like smoke. She sat beside him, her gloves mismatched—one striped, one polka-dotted.

"I brought you something," she said, pulling a folded crane from her coat. Inside, she'd written: "Trig is still the worst. But you're not."

Chen laughed, the sound startling a flock of sparrows from the tree. "You're getting better at jokes."

"Desperate times." She hesitated, then added, "My dad lost his job. We might have to move too."

The words hung between them, fragile as the ice on the grass. Sophia's dad had taught her to fold cranes when her mom left a ritual Chen only knew because she'd whispered it to him once during a late-night study session.

"Where?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Somewhere with cheaper rent. Maybe closer to my brother."

Chen handed the crane back. "We'll visit. Every weekend."

"You hate road trips."

"I'll learn."

She smiled, small and sad, and the park felt too big, too empty, like it was already mourning the pieces they hadn't lost yet.

The booth in the diner was sticky with syrup and nostalgia. Rafi slid into the seat beside Chen, his hair electric blue for "emotional reinvention." Luna and Miguel argued over the last pancake, their voices arguing louder than the jukebox's tinny din over what song played what.

"Remember that time we were going to bum the tree house?" Rafi said, out of the blue.

"You tried," Luna corrected. "You used a magnifying glass, and a cheese puff bag."

Scientific Curiosity, she said, sweeping him aside with the wave of fork.

"And doesn't it do exactly what works?" he kept saying.

"You got it for five seconds."

Chen let his hot cocoa go cold to the point its marshmallows had dissolved.

These moments borrow now, moments rehearsing of a play as if it too would end.

Ms. Alina slid into the booth, her scarf powdered with snow. "No offense, but you all look terrible."

"College apps," Miguel muttered.

"Existential dread," Rafi added.

Ms. Alina nodded solemnly. "Ah. The teenage special." She drew out a stack of envelopes from her bag-thick, creamy paper stamped with university logos. "I've been holding these. Thought you should open them together.".

Chen's hands trembled. His mother's journal kept burning a hole in his pocket, the voice in his ear: "Chen will change the world."

Luna went first. A full athletic scholarship to State. Then Rafi,—accepted into an art school he'd applied to as a joke. Miguel's envelope was thinner, but the word "Congratulations" made him slump in relief.

Chen's letter was last. The paper crackled as he unfolded it.

Dear Mr. Li, We're glad to be able to offer you…

The diner exploded. Miguel whooped, Luna spilled her coffee, and Rafi tackled Chen in a hug that nearly toppled the table. Ms. Alina snapped a photo, her smile softer than Chen had ever seen it.

But then, spilling out into the parking lot, the chilly air sharp in his lungs, Chen felt a ghostly touch of his mother's hand on his shoulder. This is what you wanted, right?

He wasn't sure.

Jia came back for winter break, her pink hair pulled under a knit hat. They met at the park at dawn, the sky bruised purple and gold. She knelt beside the oak, her fingers brushing the new time capsule.

"You kept it safe," she said.

"We tried.".

She pulled out of her bag a small canvas. The mural came alive with colors. The cranes glowed gold, and tree roots coiled around their shoebox of memories. Underneath she'd painted a single sentence: "We were here."

They put it on the slide, and the canvas flapped in the wind like a flag.

"It'll fade," Jia said.

Chen shrugged. "So will we. Doesn't mean it didn't matter.".

She chuckled, misting air with each breath. "How long have you been poetic?"

"Ever since I started hanging out with you,"

They sat side by side as the day took on some semblance of daylight: the park vibrating with the quiet truth of beginnings and ends.

On his last day off, Chen found his dad standing in the kitchen, burning toast like always.

"You're leaving," his dad said, not a question.

"Not yet."

"But you will." He pushed a plate across the counter charred toast, a perfect egg, a slice of orange. "She'd want you to."

Chen ate in silence, the taste of home and hope mixing on his tongue.

That night, he wrote another letter:

"Dear Mom,

I'm scared. But I'm ready.

Love,

Chen"

He folded it into a crane and let it fly out of his window, watching as it caught the wind, like a promise.

Or a prayer.