They laughed, truly laughed, the giggles rolling out shamelessly, echoing across the bathroom stalls, or what at the moment seemed to be a shelter for imaginary characters from Mrs.Dora's fairy tales. Rosy cheeks and fly-away hairs, I hungrily attempted to absorb their innocence. Their eyes casually widening at every fresh scent, at the way the sunlight reflected off the slide that was temporarily a fortress. Grins stretched excessively at the uncovering of new sensory nerve endings as the water dribbled awkwardly between the wrinkles of Julia's fingers, palms, arms, elbows as she recklessly opened the tap. Every burst of breath as they lapped the fenced playground, every accidental outbreak of fairly logical reasoning: a blissful discovery. I envied the youth before my eyes. The 26 souls that had barely indented the path of time with their 6-inch sandals. They still kept possession of the secret they would never learn to keep, let alone acknowledge. The ability to see the mountain for what it merely is, a mountain, without the help of pills and manufactured nirvana, with a name as deceiving as the short bursts of ignorance that wisdom, quite simply, would never allow. "Ms. Katya," Ben called, "try and catch me!" and with that, took off, without so much as a glance in my direction. And to think, I am still but a child. Why then, can I not sprint towards ecstacy and sweat without a constant fear of being seen breathless, red and sloppy? Why, when my heart aches for it so?