We were pirates, treasure seekers, vine swingers—in the woods between our white houses and manicured lawns. Freddy, Matt, Becca, and I, emerging from the trees empty-handed but with dirt-encrusted nails, sticky and sweet scents, dog-tired limbs, and pinkie promises to try again tomorrow. Sometimes at night, jaw wide open, I dreamt of finding the treasure map, certain it had to be there somewhere, hidden in the thick of trees and possibility. But the day we all climbed onto that vine together and it snapped, sending us crashing down onto hard-packed mud, elbows and bums bruised, a shard of glass from a dumped bottle slicing a thin line between Becca’s knee and ankle, we stopped pretending the woods had once been an ocean.

After high school, Matt married his college sweetheart and grew a family. I heard he owns a bagel shop near where I live, but I haven’t gone in. Becca spent years in consulting and now works two days a week for her husband’s mortgage company, texting me when she watches a good TV show. No one knows what happened to Freddy. And as for me, when I write, on the good days I’m still searching for a torn and tattered piece of paper with Xs and dotted lines, and on the really good days, I’m swimming through the trees.

Rachel Weinhaus

is a screenwriter, memoirist, and flash fiction writer. She earned an MFA in screenwriting from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television. Her work has been published in Best Microfiction 2026; The Brevity Blog; BULL; Does It Have Pockets; Emerge Literary Journal; Five Minutes; Flash Fiction Magazine; Frigg: A Magazine of Fiction and Poetry; HuffPost; Kveller; Microfiction Monday Magazine; Moon City Review; Moonpark Review; Necessary Fiction; The New York Times; Newsweek; The Today Show; and Trampset, among others.

For more biographical details, and links to the author’s works, please visit her website: https://rachelweinhaus.com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Looking for a Writing Partner? You May Already Have One, personal essay by Rachel Weinhaus in The Brevity Blog (13 July 2026)

⚡ Something Only a Best Friend Could Say by Weinhaus in The New York Times: Tiny Love Stories (January 2026)

⚡ The First Girl, microfiction in Trampset (28 February 2025)

⚡ What Can Happen When You Share Your Writing With a Therapist, personal essay in The Brevity Blog (6 July 2023)