skeleton

I'm in the car with my dad and we're driving into the town that I grew up in. As we're driving down the streets, I look around and notice how much it has changed. The school I used to go to is all new and so much bigger than it used to be, the roads have been updated, everything is so much flashier than it used to be. There are new shops and houses all over the place that I've never seen before. We park in the parking lot of the shopping centre my dad and I used to go to every week, and we enter in through the back way that we'd always use. For the most part, it looks the same.
I'm excited to see the people that I grew up with again, considering its been about 3 years since I'd been here. In the grocery store, each aisle is littered with teenagers talking and messing around with each other, but there isn't a single kid I used to play with. I recognise some of the faces, being kids who live in my new town, but none of the ones who went to my old school. None are kids who I'd shared classrooms with. I realise it's been so long that I've forgotten the faces of everyone who made my childhood what it was. I go back to my dad whos in the self checkout and dejectedly tell him none of my old friends are here.
We walk back through the rest of the shopping centre to the car park. I look around, the shopping centre is the same. The neighbourhood and the school and the people might've changed, but this mall is the same as it always was. The $2 store, the fish and chips shop, the spices store, it's all the same. And then I woke up.

Also, tomorrow is my birthday