The cobblestone street mentioned in the story was my favorite street when I was little. And I loved walking along it. Once the cobblestones were removed and the asphalt covered the street instead, I got so sad and dismayed that I stopped walking along it. Therefore, this is partly an autobiographical story.

Ana Vidosavljevic from Serbia currently living in Indonesia. She has her work published or forthcoming in *Down in the Dirt (Scar Publications), Literary Yard, RYL (Refresh Your Life), The Caterpillar, The Curlew, Eskimo Pie, **Coldnoon*, *Perspectives, Indiana Voice Journal, The Raven Chronicles, Setu Bilingual Journal, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, Madcap Review, The Bookends Review, Gimmick Press, (mac)ro(mic), Scarlet Leaf Review, Adelaide Literary Magazine, A New Ulster. *Her very first collection of short stories *Mermaids *will be published by *Adelaide Books.*

Mina loved Sinisa
Janic Street. Her
house was at the very beginning of it. And her school had stood still for
decades at the end of the same street. Her hometown Vlasotince was proud of
this cobblestone street. There were not many left and that fact complemented
its preciousness. When Mina was a
child, her journey to school often started, continued and ended by counting
cobblestones. She knew the street so well that she didn’t even have to look
up and be careful where she was going. The direction was embedded in her cells
and her senses were sharp enough to warn her if a car, motor bike or any other
vehicle was approaching her. Other children
never joined her counting game. Some of them tried once in a while to disturb
her cobblestone counting, to confuse her and interrupt her unusual playing, but
she was so focused on what she was doing and she mastered it so well that no
distraction spoiled her game. What bothered Mina
every day, after she had finished her cobblestone counting and entered the
school yard was the fact that the number of cobblestones was different every
day. She was disappointed that maybe she sometimes missed some of them, and
other times, she thought she over-counted them. It seemed to her as if the
cobblestones played hide-and- seek with her. Some of them ran away and hid,
every time they saw her coming. Or other days, they invited their friends and
cousins from other cobblestone streets to join them, increase their number and
confuse little Mina who was stubborn in her pursuit of this game. She
promised herself she would not stop playing this game until she ended up her
counting with the same number of cobblestones three days in a row. During one
summer break, Mina’s parents took Mina to the seaside. It was a long-awaited
holiday and the whole family looked forward to it. Mina had to abandon, for a
while, her cobblestone counting and she hoped when she came back the
cobblestones would be her friends and instead of running away and hiding or
inviting other cobblestones to increase their number in Sinisa Janic Street
and confuse her on purpose, they would remain calm and motionless while she
was counting them. Three weeks at the
seaside went by fast and when Mina returned home, she was flabbergasted.
Moreover, she was
shocked to find out that her Sinisa Janic Street was
gone. Well, something that resembled it was still there, but the cobblestones
were gone. Instead of them, a layer of asphalt extended and its dark-colored
bituminous body distorted the whole area. Mina couldn’t stop
her tears. She couldn’t hide them. They ran down her
cheeks and flooded her chest. The rest of her
school break she spent avoiding her own street. If she needed to leave the
house, she used the back door which led to the other street and she refused
to walk along the terrible asphalt that had chased away her cobblestones and
had brought the ominous ugliness to her favorite street. That asphalt had
destroyed not only her street but her game as well. The first day of
school was sad. She had to push herself to step on the asphalt and walk along
it. And the feeling was unpleasant and revolting. More than a month passed and
she still couldn’t get used to the newness of the asphalt and couldn’t make
herself like it. She knew she never
would. Her father saw her sorrow and tried to cheer her up with new board
games, new toys and excursions to the villages around their hometown
Vlasotince where
some cobblestone street still existed, but all in vain. She wanted her
cobblestone street which she would see every single day and whose
cobblestones she would count until she had the same number of them three
times in a row. One Saturday
morning Mina’s mother took Mina to the village to visit their cousins. Mina’s
father who loved weekend escapes, for some reason, decided to stay at home
with an excuse that he had some important errands. Mina and her mother
had a great time in the village. Fresh air, nature, animals and smiling happy
people soothed Mina’s soul. She
felt much better. Therefore, the
thought of returning home was painful. She knew she would
have to face again the ugly asphalt. And when the time
to go back home arrived, she sighed deeply and accepted her recurring sorrow.
Approaching her own
house, from the distance, Mina noticed that something was different. It was not
the house itself but the area around it. The concrete pavement had
disappeared and instead of it cobblestones were soaking up the sun and
smiling at Mina. Mina couldn’t
believe it! Was it her own hallucination, mirage or optical illusion that
played with her eyesight? When she came just in front of the place where the
concrete pavement had been just two days ago, she bent down and touched the
cobblestones and she realized they were real. They sparkled in the sun and
invited her to sit down and caress them. Mina couldn’t help but smiling
joyously as she watched her father approaching. She knew
he was the one who had done this. He was the reason why she smiled again. She
ran toward him and hugged him. She couldn’t have been happier. The very next
day, Mina returned to
her cobblestone counting. And even though there were less cobblestones and it
was not that difficult to count them, she enjoyed her game. Often she managed
three times in a row to come up with the same number of the cobblestones,
but sometimes, they still played hide-and- seek with her. And she didn’t
mind. She was happy to
have them back.