December Park

by Ronald Malfi

“Hey,” Scott said, pausing in front of the RadioShack. A TV in the window informed us of Kurt Cobain’s suicide, and we all watched in silent disbelief. Scott undid the Nirvana patch he had on the sleeve of his jacket and pinned it over his heart. “What happens now?” Peter asked no one in particular. It seemed that while we weren’t looking, occupied as we were with the Piper, the world had stolen something important from us.

And just like that, Malfi has summed up so eloquently the way anyone who was young in the 90s felt when Kurt Cobain died.

After all, it was summer vacation. It was a time for running wild in the parks and racing bikes in the streets. It was a time for jumping off the docks at the Shallows and swimming out to the barges. It was a time for losing yourself in the air-conditioned darkness of the Juniper Theater, watching public domain horror movies and shouting at the actors on the screen.

“Adults don’t know all the city’s secrets, all the places to hide. Not like we do. We’re kids and we know, and that’s what we keep bringing to this thing over and over that the cops can’t.” It was true: there was a secret society of children throughout the city, like an underground network of rebels in a distant and war-torn country.