Happy Monday! This is a short piece of creative nonfiction I wrote about two years back, and a piece I recently went back to after taking a memoir writing course this past semester. In fact, I loved the course so much, the form of creative nonfiction became one of my favorite styles of writing. This is also a short story I consider featured as apart of The In-Between collection, as it was something I originally wrote during that time period of my life. Hopefully next week I will be sharing more recent writing, but until then, we will stay floating in the past.
Thank you for reading!
It’s late June: the wind is tangled in my hair as I drive 80 miles per hour in the fast lane on the highway. My friends are seated in my car and there’s screaming and laughing and music booming through my speakers. There’s four of us, my solid little beach gang. They don’t truly understand my underlying love for the ocean, but they participate in the trips anyways. My passenger seat picks songs from my phone. I allowed that trust back into my life.
This is the time of year when summer feels the best. We’re headed to the beach and we still have plenty of time before the sun goes down. I feel full, I feel whole. The world could end tomorrow and I would die feeling invincible. This is the time when the gods still reign on my side and I can never die. I never want to die. I repeat this like a broken record. Like I’m not broken.
The beach is still warm even though it’s late in the afternoon. We do this all the time - take late, impromptu beach trips after everyone gets out of work. The sun is still out for a while longer, warming the Earth and everything on it. I have one friend who is always cold. She always yells that she’s not coming in, that she refuses, but she comes in anyway because she wants to be apart of the group. And so together, we ride the choppy Rhode Island waves with boogie boards. We swim, we float, we pick ourselves back up. Sometimes we get washed out by them, but we have no fear of dying right now. We feel like we’re never going to, like we didn’t just lose someone we love by death. We could do this forever, if we really wanted to.
Hours later, hours we hadn’t realized passed so quickly, the sun starts setting. Summer sunsets last forever, and the gods are painting the sky reds and oranges, pinks and yellows, purples, until it fades to black. Everything fades to black, but I am feeling exceptional, and I can’t picture things going badly yet. Ice cream is suggested as we start packing towels up and taking group selfies; and, yeah, ice cream, I could go for that. The drive home is only about forty-five minutes, and it’s getting late so we have to leave now if we’re going to make it. The white lines on the highway only look like dots to me as I speed down it again. I speed, as if I’m never going to make it on time. As if the gods are going to decide to rush out on me sooner than usual. I hold my breath for safe keeping.
The small Dairy Queen shack is filled to the brim with guests like ourselves, the line wrapping around and out the door. We’re all shivering: our half-clothed bodies, the ice cream chilling in the freezer. We’re practicing for death, for what it feels like when you reach Heaven. We go one by one, only having enough money for ourselves. Milkshake, Blizzard, Blizzard, Blizzard. Three upside down flips and a straw later, we find ourselves at the last available table outside. There’s a chair missing, and I feel bad so I offer to stand, but Milkshake says it’s fine and she will stand instead. We talk about nonsensical things, like the boy my cold friend will be in love with for an extra year and how we’re all so, so scared of college and leaving each other. It won’t be like anything we expected to feel.
Later, once the ice cream has melted in our cups and our acidic stomachs, I drive my friends home one by one. I save the farthest for last, for the little bit of extra time we can have together. So we have time to listen to just one more song before I turn into her driveway. The night is officially over once she leaves my car, and it’s only me on the open road again. There is ten minutes between my old life and the new one I just recently started leading. My house is just one straight shot down the road, it won’t take long to get there. Just long enough for the emptiness to settle in a little more. The gods will never rid of that completely.