Page 65 of Shifting Gears

“This one is still pretty popular,” Dani says. She fiddles with the knob on her radio to tune it to the right channel for the movie audio. “People like the nostalgia.”

It is a deeply nostalgic kind of experience, even for Nora, who has never actually experienced one. The three screens each have their own parking lot where people arrange their cars in haphazard rows, and the gravel is scattered with people in folding lawn chairs braving the mosquitoes for a better view.

Everything here seems like a relic, a slowly aging pocket in time from the 1950s—the rusty fences between screens, the aging playground equipment, the concrete concession building that smells like decades worth of popcorn and spilled drinks. It’s all new and yet somehow familiar to Nora, like a strange sense memory absorbed through films, and Dani moves through it like she’s been here a hundred times.

They arrive long before the movies start, before the sun has gone down. After Dani has found the perfect spot and killed the engine, she leads Nora toward the playground with no sign of irony.

“Dani?” Nora asks as Dani hops the short fence that surrounds the park—completely ignoring the gate that sits open nearby, which Nora uses instead—and heads to the swings. “What exactly are we doing?”

“What does it look like?” Dani sits down on one of the rubber seats, her hand still in Nora’s, and moves her legs to get a half-hearted swing going.

Nora chuckles, but she doesn’t sit down on the adjacent swing. Something of her childhood lingers in her bones. A voice that sounds eerily like her second stepmother is telling her that this is inappropriate, that she shouldn’t be seen here.You’re wasting time playing, Eleanor. Do something productive.

“This place is for kids,” Nora finally says, tugging on Dani’s hand in a vague attempt to get her to stand up.

Dani holds firm, digging her heels into the sand. “There’s nobody here to judge you.”

In all fairness, Dani is right. The playground is empty. No kids and no judgmental parents. No father. No stepmothers. There’s nobody here to see what they’re doing. Nobody but Dani.

Dani makes another more serious attempt at swinging, moving Nora’s arm along with it. “Come on, Nora. Get silly with me.”

Nora’s hesitation stretches out. But Dani is so open and hopeful, her expression full of more straightforward affection than Nora has ever experienced. The image of childhood disapproval wavers and then evaporates entirely, obliterated by Dani’s smile.

When Nora gingerly sits on the next swing over, Dani’s shout of joyful victory echoes across the playground.

The swings, as it turns out, are just as fun as her child self always thought they would be whenever she watched her peers play through the library window. Her stomach swoops on every arc. Dani encourages her to go higher and higher until she feels a moment of genuine weightlessness at the height of each swing. Her hair whips around her face and then blows back, and when she sees Dani beside her, syncing up their rhythm, she lets out a loud, carefree laugh.

It feels like she’s flying.

“Jump, Nora!”

Nora snaps out of her reverie. Dani’s hat has blown off—her ponytail is fluttering—and she looks completely serious.

“What?” Nora shouts back, but Dani just says it again.

“Jump! Let go at the top of your swing!”

“That sounds like a bad idea,” Nora calls back, but it’s too late. Dani has already reared back for a hard swing, and when she reaches the apex of her forward momentum, she lets go of the chains and flies into the air. For a moment, she soars, her arms spread and her hair flying—but soon enough her legs start to windmill and she hits the sand with awhumph.

Nora’s heart stops. But Dani is up again almost immediately, her hands thrown in the air as she lets out a whoop.

“Come on! I’ll catch you!” Dani calls out, getting bigger and then smaller again as Nora swings back and forth, still clinging to the chains.

“That seems like an even worse idea!” Nora shouts. But Dani’s arms stay open. In the split second between downswing and upswing, Nora makes the decision.

In the split second between release and landing, she regrets it immediately.

It does feel freeing at first. She’s in the air, weightless, and for a few moments, all she feels is pure exhilaration. But once gravity starts to do its work and Nora is pulled back toward the earth, hurtling toward Dani, the exhilaration is tinged with terror.

Nora grunts as the impact takes them both down and Dani, for all her strength, crumples like a pop can. They both hit the ground in a shower of sand, and Nora rolls off Dani as soon as she’s able. When she looks over, Dani is on the ground, laughing just like the night they danced by the river.

“I was right,” Nora grumbles, struggling to her feet and dusting the sand from her legs. “This was a terrible idea.”

“But you had fun.” Dani is lying on the flat of her back with a lopsided grin, but she hauls herself to her feet to lead Nora around to the rest of the playground equipment: a see-saw that Nora outright refuses to get on, a tetherball stand, a tire swing—and while Dani is attempting to make her way across the monkeybars, her legs curled up underneath her so as not to touch the ground, Nora climbs up the stairs to the top of the rickety steel slide.

It seems like the most harmless of all the equipment, the one the requires the least skill, but that might make Dani smile. She plants herself down at the top, her hips almost not fitting the narrow width, and pushes herself down the chute.

She should have remembered that she’s wearing shorts. Nora doesn’t even remember when she started wearing shorts regularly—she hasn’t worn them since the gym classes shealways got permission to skip—but here she is, in denim cut-offs, making a huge mistake.

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