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The next time they met was at the park again a few months later, but not at the swings. Rather, Carter saw Wesley standing on the platform the flat and even slides sloped down of, her tiny fingers wrapped around the bar suspended a few feet above the mouth of the two slides, her legs bent and lifted as she held herself off the ground and swayed back and forth.
There were two little boys behind her, crossing their arms as they waited for her to stop so that they could go down the slides.
Carter pulled at his mum's shirt, pointing towards Wesley's direction. "Mummy, that's Wesley!"
"Wesley?" His mum peered at the little girl who now let her arms go and stood on her feet, then sat and slid down the slide. The two boys behind her looked overjoyed and crawled there for their own turn. "You've made a friend." She smiled warmly, reached down to pinch Carter's cheek whom the latter replied by rubbing the affected part of his face.
"It was a long time ago, Mummy." Carter declared like his mum ought to know about the friend he himself made.
"Okay, okay." She laughed. "Go play."
As soon as the words left his mother's mouth, he was bounding down the playground, the path towards Wesley in his mind. He'd thought that she'd have been able to remember him, but when he said hi, all she did was stare at him in confusion.
Her wide hazel eyes scrutinised him so intensely that it made him feel even smaller than he already patently was.
"I'm Carter. Remember?" He asked hopefully, toeing the odd red bits that the playground floor was made of, hands gripping each other behind his back.
Wesley still looked puzzled and didn't say anything to convince Carter otherwise. He frowned, disappointed but told her about what happened the day they first met. He told her about how he loved watching the swing swing in the air, and wanted to feel how it was like being on a steady swing too. He deviated a little bit from talking about their first encounter and talked about how he believed that if they swung high enough, they would be able to touch the sky.
Wesley shockingly giggled, shaking her head.
That day, she had her hair tied up in a single ponytail instead of pigtails and she wore a yellow sundress speckled with petals of white flower illustrations. She looked super kempt and proper for a kid Carter's age, and he felt drawn to that, interested because he wanted to look proper too. But all he wore was a dark blue polo shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, and a pair of knee-length beige pants, perceptibly stained with chocolate ice cream he wasn't able to stop from dripping that one time, while her dress had not a single stain.
"You won't be able to touch the sky," She chastised. "It's too far up there." As if to make a point, she reached up, her arm fully straightened and pointed at the bright blue sky.
Carter pouted. "Aw. Touching the clouds would've been nice. I bet they feel like cotton candy."
"I bet they don't feel like anything." Wesley sounded so sure and she crossed her arms as if to say that she wasn't to fight on it.
"That sounds terrible." Carter quipped, but didn't say anything more on that topic. "Want to go swing? Can you push me this time?"
Wesley looked up in consideration, like this really was an important choice to make, and as if a kid like her had many much more important things to get to. She agreed anyway, after a long moment of deliberation that made Carter feel more impatient than ever.
"Fine, okay." She pulled down the flared part of her dress as Carter grinned excitedly.
"Let's go!" He ran straight to the swings which luckily were unoccupied and sat onto one of them, hands gripping the thick, cold metal chains.
He saw Wesley walk down slowly as if it were an embarrassment to run and almost yelled at her to hurry up. But she reached not long after, going behind to put both her palms on his back.
"Hang in tight, Carter." She sounded smug and proud.
"I will." Carter said, determined, tightening his hold on the swing.
And soon, Carter was flying in the air, feeling so much closer to the sky, and he so badly wanted to touch it, even reached his foot out, but Wesley was right. The sky was too far away.
