My parents and I were always moving around, but the place we lived that stuck to me the most was a trailer park. When Mom told me we were moving there, I had pictured a congregation of homes with wheels, changing places at a whim. In truth, it was rows of pre-made homes assembled on site, with no wheels or chassis visible on any of them. A mobile home was mobile not in the sense that it could move, but because it could be taken apart, transported, and snapped back into place somewhere else.

            The home adjacent to us at the trailer park looked identical to ours, painted the type of white that people wanted on their teeth. My parents and I met the family in it a few days after we moved in; holding a store-bought pie, they let themselves in and sat around the kitchen counter. They sliced the pie into twelve pieces, the raspberries bleeding out and staining the white plate. Like my family, they had a single son, although he was older than me by a fair amount. In his mid-teens, I think.

             “Go talk to him,” Mom urged, pointing towards the son. “Get to know each other.” She said it in the way she did when she wanted me to leave so she could talk about things she thought I didn’t need to hear about. Their son was much taller than me, with platinum blonde hair that fought against the black of his eyes, irises like olives in milk. He was pushed over to me by his parents, the adults ushering the two of us outside.

            The son’s name was Ewan. I learned it in the time we spent together that day, and the next week, and the week after. With most of the park populated by retirees and young couples, he was the only person near my age. It was easier to be friends as kids, with nothing but gravity weighing down on us.

I also learned in those times that Ewan liked to scowl. It was an expression he often wore on his face, usually accompanied by some form of jeer or complaint. Sometimes it was directed at me.

            “Why do you always wear those shoes?” he asked once. It had been just over two months of my parents and I living there. “They look dumb.” Mom had just gotten me second-hand runners that were coloured bright pink around the soles.

            “They were my birthday present,” I retorted, looking down at my shoes. Ewan didn’t say anything to that, electing instead to stare at the woods bordering the trailer park. They stretched around the end of the trailer park and crept into the horizon, the edges of the trees piercing the bottom of the sun. Ewan and I often went there, though it was hard to say if he took me along or I followed.

We strafed around the trees until finding a narrow, root-stricken pathway, far away from the normal trail and barely ever used. Along it was a plastic cutout of a bear, with a sign telling us what to do in case we saw a real one. Vines and bugs covered it, the cardboard beginning to decay near the edges. Standing at the sign, a creek was audible, running in the distance. The creek was Ewan’s favourite place to stop, where he would string me along in whatever he did to kill time. Once, he had lifted me up into the branches of a tree, telling me to grab as many pinecones as I could before tossing them down. The smaller ones were the best, he had told me. The next day he was carrying a jar of black syrup that he shared with me. He had made it from the pinecones.

Ewan and I stopped at the creek, him heading along the stepping stones first before begrudgingly extending his hands to get me along the larger gaps. Despite his groaning, he always turned to help. The creek was thin but quick, the whites of the frothing water splashing up against the shore, the rocks, the dirt.

This time, there was something different about that spot. The water ran as it always did. The cutout was still there, the mould around the bottom a medal proving its age. But something had been added, something that wasn’t there before. I came to the small realization that adding was all that could ever happen – even something gone missing was only adding a disappearance. There was a time when it was still there, and that was something that couldn’t be taken away. You could never fully get rid of anything, not permanently.

            A small brown lump had formed in the branches of nearby tree, ridges of strange paper folded on top of folds on top of folds. Mom had taught me once how to fold paper into the shape of a bird – that type of folding had a beauty, a rhythm to it. The thing in the trees was more like a desperate mashing of paper melded into itself. There was a hole right at the bottom. I pointed up to the thing and called to Ewan.

            “Look at that,” I said. Ewan stuck his face close to the thing but recoiled back quickly. An insect had crawled out, orange and black with shining, tessellated wings.

            “Hornet nest,” Ewan stated. He twisted his head, trying to see up into the nest through the hole in the bottom. More bugs began to exit the nest, creeping up and down the ridges and buzzing their wings in short bouts of flight. “It’s probably better to leave it. Unless you want to get stung.” We stayed a little farther from that tree for the rest of the day.

            I remember watching that nest growing into itself. Each time we went to the creek, it was a little bit bigger. The hornets added to it themselves, Ewan told me. They would scavenge for little bits of wood and spit it onto the nest. I grew with it; by a few months I was able to cross the creek myself.

            Ewan also changed. It wasn’t the type of change I and the hornets went through, our physical forms shaping, but something in the air around him. He seemed more volatile, his eyebrows always cinched together. His voice didn’t carry the same way it had before, an acerbic but caring tone. All that was left was a sharp, acidic edge.

            When our parents got together but Ewan wasn’t home, my parents would usually stick me inside. The first time they let me out, they only did because I had begged them.

            “You’re old enough now,” Dad concluded. “Kill some time.”

            I went to the creek alone that day. There wasn’t much else to do – friends other than Ewan were few and far between. I had memorized the way there by now, which branches in the path to take. It was strangely relaxing, just me. As much as I appreciated Ewan, his demeanor had developed into something tense and dread ridden.

            Although I was tall enough to get across the creek, the hornet nest still hung far from my head. There were more of them now, the hornets. They hovered around the nest, groups of them constantly buzzing in and out. Ewan had told me about the differences between hornets and wasps. They’re less aggressive, but they have worse stings. He had caught a wasp once, trapping it in a glass jar and showing it to me, pointing out the difference in colour. I didn’t remember most of it. I was paying attention to the head, how much bigger it was on a hornet. It was like a human baby’s head, bulbous and round and oversized.

            Now that I looked at it, you could fit a baby inside a hornet’s nest. It would have to be completely curled up, the limbs crunched together and head tucked into the knees. I laid down on the dirt underneath the tree and tried, like Ewan had done the first time, to see through the hole in the nest. It was impossible to see anything, the darkness hiding the contents. I wondered what they could possibly be growing inside there, if it grew in size along with the nest, if it had bones and skin and a beating heart.

━

Near the middle of summer was when butterflies came out in full. With them would come the cocoons, spun from a single thread, and the caterpillars. I liked those the most, how they scuttled from leaf to leaf wriggling the way they did. Every time I saw one I would giggle, calling for whoever was near to me.

            “That’s no good,” Ewan said. We were together and I had just found another caterpillar, the green of it blending in almost perfectly with the grass.

            “What is?”

            “You see those?” Ewan pointed to the lumps along the caterpillar’s back. They were narrow and white, like rice, growing out of the body of the insect. “Eggs.”

            “Someone else’s?”

            “Yep. A wasp, probably. The parasitic kind.” Looking at the eggs made my spine curl, how they dug out of the caterpillar’s skin.

            “They’ll kill it soon,” Ewan continued. “When the eggs hatch, the babies will eat the dead bug.”

            I stayed crouched, watching the caterpillar as it crossed the dusty path. The trail must have seemed infinite to something so small. “Can we save it?” I asked.

            Ewan laughed. “Just get over it.”

I found myself thinking that he wouldn’t have said that when I first met him. Or perhaps he was always this way, and I simply hadn’t ever really known him. All things considered, we hadn’t been in each other’s lives all too long. And soon enough, I would leave again. That was common with the way my family migrated, but it didn’t make me sad. Everything that had a beginning needed an end. The sadness came when the end arrived sooner than it needed to.

Ewan raised his foot over the bug, the shadow of his shoe covering the caterpillar’s body.

“Stop!” I shouted. “Don’t squish it.” Ewan grunted and lowered his foot to the ground.

“I’m only putting it out of its misery. The eggs are taking all its energy anyway.” He huffed and turned around. I shielded the caterpillar from the sun, clearing a large pebble out of the way. Ewan only walked further along the trail while I crouched in place, his figure getting smaller and smaller and never once looking back.

            I helped my parents make dinner that night. They were starting to trust me with kitchen knives now, allowing me to dice soft vegetables and put trays in the oven.

            At some point, my parents started speaking in the other room. They spoke about their jobs and neighbours, and because of that I knew what was going to happen next. It was always the same – the same time, the same conversation, the same facial expressions, the same slow walk Dad made as he approached me and held my face.

            “Hey,” he said, “we have to move again soon.”

            “Can we stay? Just for a little longer?” I asked. Dad looked upward, reaching into his thoughts.

            “We’re not leaving right now – we’ll stay for a couple more months. But then we have to go. You know how it is.”

            “I know.”

            I didn’t react much beyond that. I was used to it by now, the constant movement from place to place. Nothing could stay, not for too long, and neither could we.

Dad returned outside, discussing with Mom what there was left to do before we had to go. I left them to it, filtering through my belongings and trying to root out what I wanted to keep. When I finished, it felt like something was missing. I looked out the window to Ewan’s house. His parents were visible, but their son was nowhere to be seen. There was a shuttering noise audible; what exactly it was, I couldn’t tell.

━

The hockey stick felt light in my hands, the taped head flashing in the moonlight. It was old, some parts of the paint worn away. I had taken it from Dad’s things. No doubt he would be mad if found out what I was doing.

            It was the night before we were going to leave. My bags were packed, everything I wasn’t ready to leave behind. Ewan had only continued to change, all traces of the friendliness I had once known gone. I was out tonight on a mission.

            I barely needed to see to find my way, my feet finding the trail and crossing it themselves. Crickets sounded through the surrounding brush, filling the night with clicks and scratches. The bear cutout looked back at me as I passed it. 

            The stones across the creek glistened, the water on them bubbling. I got to the other side with my feet still dry and looked up. The hornet nest was there, bigger still. One lump of it protruded outward, as if the head of the baby inside was lifting from its rest. I stood directly under, unafraid. The insects inside didn’t work during the night, leaving the nest silent. I raised the hockey stick behind my head. I had measured it at home, seeing if it was tall enough. Once I made sure my aim would ring true, I swung with all the strength I could muster.

            The head of the hockey stick bashed into the nest and ran through it. The entire branch swung, the nest falling off and hitting the ground split in two. It crumbled, and white and brown filaments exploded into the air, fluttering like moths. I could finally see what was inside. Some far reach of my imagination expected me to find Ewan in there, the real one, pushed into a tiny ball and covered in honey and eggs bursting through his skin and eye sockets. Instead it was layers and layers of brittle material, pocked with divots as if someone had stabbed it with a pencil. I saw larvae in some of the holes, white and round. They were all squirming, some falling out of their homes and onto the ground.

            The bugs started to emerge, flitting out of the hive and zipping through the air. Their buzzing multiplied into itself tenfold until it was one colossal, angry hornet. I sprinted away while the hornets pursued me, trying to suppress the screams of panic welling up inside me. I got to the creek and my shoe slipped on the slickness of the rock. The cold of the water froze my face, drenching my clothes and further heightening my adrenaline. I let go of the hockey stick in the struggle to my feet, allowing it to lay in the creek as I got up.

            A sharp pain injected itself into my shoulder, piercing through my shirt and into my skin. I ran with the hornet still on my shoulder, frantically wiping it off as the cloud of bugs chased me. They didn’t follow me much farther than the creek, but I didn’t stop running, not until I was out of the woods altogether. I waited for the rapid beating of my heart to slow down, satisfied when it no longer felt as if my blood was exploding against my ribcage.

            I opened the door quietly and stepped into the house. My parents were still asleep. Heading into the bathroom, I smiled, satisfied I had managed to dislodge the nest. If they did rebuild, it would take them many months.

            I turned on the lights and removed my shirt, looking at the spot where I had been stung. It was a red lump under my skin, with a black spot right in the middle where the stinger had entered. I poked it and felt a dull throbbing, like something was growing there, moving and breathing. My bed was past my parents’ room, so I had to make sure not to make any noise as I crept across the floorboards. I fell asleep staring at the ceiling of the house.

            Mom woke me up in the early morning. I had barely slept three hours. She wanted me to help her use the little bits of food we had left in the fridge to make breakfast. Dad was packing up, readying himself to load all of our belongings into the car.

            In the bathroom mirror, I looked at my sting again. It was redder and lumpier now, but it didn’t hurt, not even when I pressed on it. You couldn’t see it under my shirt.

            There were five pieces of bread left over. I put them in the toaster two at a time, waiting for them to come up so I could empty the spots and put two more in. When Dad asked me if I had seen his old hockey stick, I shrugged. I don’t know. It was probably gone by now, swept away somewhere else by the river. He would be fine without it.

            We got in the car when the sun was just rising. I sat in the back with the suitcases and bags. I could see Ewan’s house through the rearview window. All the lights were off. I tried to think of something to say if Ewan ran out, but nothing came to mind. I only watched it disappear as we drove away.

━

The lights of the club flare in different colours, sweeping across the people on the dance floor. I down another shot and the liquid drips into my throat, each bitter sting a memory. Some friends brought me here, but I can’t find them anymore. They are lost to me in the faceless crowd.

This is the closest I have come to the trailer park in all those years since I left; it is only a couple kilometres away. I never saw Ewan after that, never heard of him, never found out what was happening or why he was acting so differently. I am unable to elude him in my memory, remembering every detail of the time we spent together at the creek and forest and hornet nest. Stumbling onto the dance floor, I can feel the tiles vibrating under my feet. The blaring music seems to blend together. I try to find whoever brought me here, though I can barely recall who it is.

            Someone is pushed into me by someone else, spilling their drink on my shirt and offering a mumbled sorry, sorry in exchange. The liquid seeps through the fabric, making it translucent and showcasing the skin underneath in splotched bursts. On my shoulder is a scar, a remnant of a long and amber stinger.

I am taller than most of the people there, raising my head and scanning the room to try and find something familiar. The alcoves of the walls retreat from the colourful lights, hiding whatever things that have been attached to them.

            It must be the alcohol talking, but I think I see Ewan’s face, somewhere in the crowd. He should be in his thirties by now. He has cut his hair short, a ring of yellow in the blackness of his clothes. A wide smile has taken up the room below his eyes. The darks of his pupils are flashing. With the droplets of beer jumping in the air and the club lights constantly refracting and changing colours, I can almost see a pair of insect wings behind him, flitting and buzzing. I don’t know if I am moving or if he is. We are dancing, changing, soaring.