I brought my Nalgene but it was filled with limeade and gin. We drove up in your Grand Cherokee, listening to loud, vaugely sad music from San Diego. At first everyone was talking and singing. I sat in the front seat, which is where I always sat in your car, and I smoked cigarettes out the window. The wind of the highway against my face and turning back, laughing at what David and Nicky were saying as they sparked a blunt. You took your hand off the steering wheel and gripped my leg above the knee. Isabel, with Rose on her lap, was already beligerant.

When we pulled up to the gate, you turned off the music and we sat staring at the padlocked fence. Summer sounds crept over to us and suddenly the building looked sad, no longer the menacing and stubborn character we remembered it as being. Should we get out and climb it?, said David, leaning in so that his face was between yours and mine. His breath was hot and purply: a fake grape scent clung to his saliva. Nicky, without saying anything, got out of the car. We watched him in the yellow glow of the headlights, his back to us. He shook the chain-link and paused. And then, a resounding pop and clang of metal and the gate jerked open. We drove in and you stopped the car right next to him, and I could see blood on the white canvas of his shoes. He held his right hand in his left and said, Hand me that Jack. He took a long pull on the flask. His face was pale. You cut the lights.

We had thought we'd go in and do some damage. But as we piled out of the car, I realised that all I wanted to do was look. To watch the place as it was without us: deserted and sweaty.

The paint cans stayed in the car.

We walked out, a silently wobbly group, towards the baseball diamond. The floodlights were on. We sat on the bleechers. This wasn't the scene any of us had been expecting. I got tired and laid my head in your lap. I wanted to have sex with you in the outfeild. You put your hand on my shoulder. And then, David in his clear bell of a voice said, My children are going to go to this school. And we all nodded, like Yeah, mine, too.

(in collaboration with wag scala)