You were near the plaza on Ashland and Paulina that used to have a blockbuster. My mom took me and my siblings to it about once a month to rent a video game for our xbox or the wii. It was the only alternative to my mom’s gamefly subscription, which she would eventually lose when they notice she’s been creating new emails to get free trials. But Blockbuster didn’t care about my mom’s sleazy yet understandable activities; they were going under and just by having me and my sibling coming in was barely enough to keep the place running.

To be honest, I didn’t even really notice Blockbuster was mainly for movies. Most of the movies from my youth came from bootleg DVDs and the theater. To think someone would pay so much money for a physical copy of a movie was becoming an outdated concept. By the time I got my first phone at age 11, I was already pirating music, so the movies I watched with my family only a few years prior were no different, I just wasn’t the one doing the pirating. The DVDs stopped being played when our apartment was broken into and robbed. The robber probably noticed there were kids in the place because the only thing they ended up taking was the DVD player, which no one really cared about as no one was watching the scratched up DVDs anymore. Me and my siblings just weren’t able to play the games on the Lion King DVD anymore, which, again, none of us cared for as gaming consoles were becoming a more permanent part of our lives.

Just as the DVDs faded out our lives, so did the blockbuster. It didn’t take long for my mom to buy us games to keep on holidays, none of which came from a blockbuster. They came from better stores that were thriving as they realized the world was evolving and they needed to adapt. Gamestop became our new home, specifically the clearance area along with the pre-owned games. 

The blockbuster closed down shortly after gamestop became the go-to for games. The place was rented by a few other places that held it for so little no one remembers the store, but now a vitamin store holds the building. I’ve never been in there and never plan to. I can only wonder what type of people are keeping the place running. But this can be said about all the buildings in that plaza. Jewels and Lowes keep the plaza running. The Jewels has been there for years, leaving me with childhood memories of walking around that store, but Lowe’s is fairly new. It had replaced a beloved Kmart that also been a source of childhood memories. I never feel right walking in that Lowes. The building itself is familiar to me but I feel anxious when I look around and there is a lack of colors, toys, Icee machines, and red. It’s all blue now. Blue vest, blue logo, blue everything. I shop at Home Depot instead. 

The parking lot of the plaza is dominated by people visiting these 2 stores. You’d either see families loading bags of groceries into the trunk of a van or a couple trying to figure out how to take wood planks home in their too small car. Every now and then, they would decide to move their car down the lot to get lunch from Subway or a coffee from Dunkin, but rarely do they drive there for the Sephora or the Vitamin’s store. Those places are visited by people who walk or take the bus, a trip too small and unimportant of a visit to waste gas on and attempt to park in a busy location. It was best to make it a friends trip or a small stop on a larger trip.

But this isn’t about the plaza, is it? No, this is about You. If it wasn’t

I had been making a similar trip when I saw You. I was walking to my summer job, a k-8 camp that was being hosted at a public school, when I stopped in the plaza to pick up my food. During this summer, I had grown addicted to the steak, egg, and cheese burrito at Subway. People thought I was gross for liking it, but there is something about Subway that tastes good early in the morning.Perhaps it's the way unhygienic food prepares my body to work in the unhygienic job that is child care. I had pre-ordered 2 of them, one for breakfast and the other for lunch. I was eating one of them when I saw you. You were right next to that unremarkable vitamin shop, dead before the sun had fully raised. My look at you was quick. I didn’t want to draw attention to you. Not because I would lose my appetite, I rarely do, but because children were nearby.How would that boy and his little sister react to seeing You, big, fat, and dead on the ground, nose brushing against the boy’s scooter wheel? Would he have freaked out? Called his scooter dirty because you touched it? Would his sister scream? Cling onto their mother and refuse to move until their mom confirms that you are, indeed, very dead?

It was much too early for that. Too early yet to hear the chattering of children. Too early for the screams and diffusion. I would have to deal with it first-hand 30 minutes from that moment. I had no reason to rush such an experience into my morning.

So my glance at you was quick. Quicker than Blockbuster leaving us.