Just past The Woods, the neighborhood dissolved into something wilder. A fenced-off quarry opened up first — a small lake at its center, deer wandering the edges like they owned it. The guy who owned the land had built himself a floating house out on the water, like he was hiding from the world. Every time we pushed through the fence, it felt like finding buried treasure.
Beyond the quarry was where things got serious: a junkyard full of wrecked cars, and right next to it, the railyard. Trains came in for repairs and sat along Litchfield Avenue. On weekends, when the workers were gone, we made it our own. We'd scramble up and down the cars using the ladders on their sides, and if we were lucky, there'd be a caboose at the end, door unlocked, waiting for us. One time we found boxes of flares and went wild — days of strike, light, throw, watch the sparks hiss and burn.
But one time the game got the best of me. I remember the sizzle and the smell of burning hair with unsettling clarity. I'd held a flare too high, and as I brought it down, some of that molten stuff dripped onto my head. Burned a clean bald patch right there. It took a lot of explaining to my parents.
The railyard wasn't just a playground though. It was a launching pad. The main line ran through town and trains slowed to a crawl on the long bend near Litchfield. We'd stand by the tracks daring each other to jump on. We'd gotten so good on the parked ones that the slow-moving trains felt easy. We always knew when to jump off — never wanted to stray so far we couldn't make the walk home.
This became a chapter in 9 Lives & Counting — out December 2026.
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