The Bridge

Here's something I'm working on for my fiction class. It's not finished, and I haven't done a word count, so it probably exceeds our stated limit, but here's part of "The Bridge":

I watched this place change. I remember the rollerskating rink making way for that burger joint making way for the bigtime burger joint making way for the drugstore. Know that graffiti on the train bridge by the park? That was me. I was fifteen, bored, and in love with Meredith. It was '81. None of this was here, all these houses were fields. I love how they call all of them—the subdivisions, I mean—'meadows' or 'glens.' They are not now, they never have been meadows or glens. They're rows and rows of modern tract housing. Not like the couple streets down by the old high school that Firestone built in the sixties, I mean, there's some variety, but even those old tiny things will outlast the big, expensive, and flimsy houses out where the McClintocks used to farm.
That was her, by the way. Meredith McClintock. God, she was gorgeous. Nothing like her ever before or since in this town. I asked her out once, by the way. She said yes once. When I was fifteen, like I said, I totally fell for her. I was a sophomore, I had a composition class with her. Between the way her curls fell across her blue left eye when she smiled, and the way her right eye was more green than blue, Lord… I don't know. I just went all… I was crazy over her.
Anyway, so yeah, I fell hard. One day, a couple of my buddies and I were smoking a couple of joints down in the park after dark like we always did, and I got inspired. I had a can of spraypaint and some rope in my car, and we walked down to the train tracks. We walked until we got over the river, and one of them held one end of the rope while I wrapped the other around my waist. I tied the best knot I could and it took two of my buddies to hold me up when I slipped over the bridge. It was the best feeling ever. at least for me. I loved the way I hung dangling over the water, the way the traffic over the bridge on Connor street sounded, the rapids a few yards on the other side of the bridge.
I started with the paint. I scrawled out as big as I could "I love Meredith." Every two letters, I had to have my friends move down the bridge, as I jumped out and swung over. Every time my feet hit the bridge, I forgot to tell you, it made this huge deep ring, kind of like a gong, but less serene. I was working on the last syllable, "dith," and decided it'd be a nice touch if I dotted the "i" with a heart. I did that, finished, and bounced over and was spraying my initials when I heard my buddies swear and shout, "Train!" I dropped the spraypaint, but that's why my last initial is all screwy. I tried to climb back up, and I knew they were pulling as hard as they could but I only got about halfway back up when they had to let go.