You have to stay on the tar lines, I tell myself. I unsteadily put one floor in front of the other. I don't usually walk Indian style. My feet drag on the ground a little and my steps are wide and short. But adjustments must be made.

My feet are bare, and my mind is nervously twittering because reading mysteries makes me feel like I'm in one. The book is clutched in my hand, the arm attached to the hand dangling idly at my side. I think of the start of another book, one of those ones where a girl is secretly a mermaid or something, and it says the asphalt is bubbling on a hot summer day. I had a mental image of the black lines simmering like some green goo a witch would stir in a cauldron. But as I look at the spider webs stretching across the road, I see small air bubbles rising and I see that things don't have to be intense or as you thought they would be to be there.

I wish I could say the patterns the tar made was intricate, but what I saw was black slabs slapped on the road, which honestly was in dire need of replacing (I don't have a background in this realm of work, but walking barefoot is a fair way of judging the condition of what you're walking on). Even though the tar was more of a poor concealer than a solution, I took advantage of walking on it when the patches appeared. It was hotter than the cement, but it was smooth and I swear it was squishy.

The ground under my feet feels borderline burning at some points, but everyone of my bad experiences added up could probably be less excruciating some people's best days in the world, so I welcome shade and every once in a while wonder at how lame it would be if I got lost in my own neighborhood.

I think about whether my parents would freak out at me being gone, probably shocked that I was somewhere other than on the computer or watching TV. It hadn't been a very eventful summer. Then I wondered which would be sadder; the previously listed, or no one noticing I had been gone.

I didn't decide.

Sometimes just thinking is enough.