I turn off the exit, blinker clicking like film in a teacher’s old projector. Click. There’s the McDonalds where I used to get breakfast. Click. There’s my old bus stop. Click. There’s the turn-off to my old neighborhood. Click. In the distance, I see it coming.

I’m back in town for the first time in years. Couldn’t avoid it. My mom’s remarrying. I’m happy for her, but I don’t like being back here. Too much is the same. Too much has changed. 

The mall rises up like a ruin in the driver’s side window. I slow to a stop at the red light, drumming my nails against the wheel. The parking lots are empty, plastic grocery bags windmilling like tumbleweeds over faded lines. The Sears sign has been taken down, but not away. Busted out and faded, it leans over padlocked glass doors. 

The light turns green. I press the gas. The mall slips past, hollow and howling. Like a crumbling castle, a haunted house on a hill. Ghosts walk its marble concourses, charm bracelets clattering like chains, moaning. Come try. Come try. Come buy. Come by.