text: The rocks below looked pretty small. Yeah they looked pretty small. But if I hit them they'd probably look real big before I died. Look how tiny that dead tree was next to them. I started thinking about this rock I used to keep in my pocket for good luck because it had been such a pretty, smooth rock, black and shiny with a slightly cool touch. I liked to imagine it was from some beach even though I don’t think this type of rock was ever found on beaches, it was just because I’d bought it near the beach at some antique shop in Monterey Bay that I associated it with the beach. And when I looked at it, I could hear the seagulls, smell the salt and fishy seaweed, with the flies buzzing around the clumps of mangled green giantess’s hair that was the seaweed washed up on the shore...I’d avoid them and run along the sand till my feet were numb. That rock was lost somewhere now. Christ, the pocket of that blue hoody I used to wear never kept anything for long. I was always running in that big field behind school playing tag, so things fell out pretty quickly. The saddest thing I lost was at the end of 6th grade, I got this Pikachu figurine from a cereal box, he was my best friend and stayed in the pocket for all of summer and fall, and I’d talk to him and swear I’d never lose him, and tell him that he'd made it the longest, and then I played a long thirty-minute game of freeze tag with my classmates in which I almost won until Jonathon freeze-tagged me and then the bell rang for class. When I felt for Pikachu he was gone. I looked for hours after school but never found him. I remember, it was the end of autumn and there were a lot of red and orange leaves, and I crunched through all of them but no luck. That field ate everything and never gave anything back. Looking back I wondered why I kept putting things in that pocket. Why I didn't put them in my backpack, or wear a jacket with pockets that zipped. Things kept going wrong and I kept doing the same thing. And now I was here, looking down on those tiny rocks way down below. I leaned over the railing and started counting down from ten. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0. I opened my eyes, expecting God to say “Hey, I erased your life back to before, Sarah's not dead go and live your life with your husband,” but there was nothing. Just the empty sound of the deserted bridge behind me and the water rushing softly down below. I thought of that day, I'd just wanted to send a cute panda gif back to Jason, I'd done it a million times and never had an accident, but then that drunken guy in the Honda had swerved from the left and then the next thing I saw when they took me out was my daughter in the back, her head jutting out the glass like a distorted doll-- Just then I heard a low “Hey” next to me. I turned and saw someone standing next to me on the rusted rails. She was wearing a jacket with the hood pulled down so I couldn't see her face, and her hands stuffed into her pockets. “Can you do something for me?” she asked me. I stared, wondering where the hell she'd come from. She sounded like a little girl, wasn't this an abandoned bridge--wasn't it like 7 o'clock already--the park was a bit far from here-- “Please,” she said, taking something out of her pocket and shoving it into mine. "Don't follow me." I froze at the touch of her hand. It felt small and familiar. I wanted to curl my hand around it and keep it safe forever but then it had slipped away and returned to its owner. She turned and ran back into the fog. "Sarah?" I croaked. "Sarah!" She was gone. My legs suddenly started working again, and I ran into the fog for a good long mile, feeling out of breath like when I was young and playing tag in that field again, but there was no one to tag. Finally I walked back to where the air was clearer at the edge of the water and took the thing out of my pocket. It was Pikachu, his red cheeks almost faded from the little yellow figurine. I stood at the bridge for a long time, looking down at the rocks being eroded by the river. Then I too, walked away, in the opposite direction. If that's what Sarah wanted. \ Follow my writing at .