path: root/light.txt

There was nothing in our lungs then. Nothing in our noses. We had never touched our viens with anything other than our fingers, feeling at the blood that pulse when we ran. It was night, there were clouds. No stars, only the lights of the oil derricks offshore. We sat on the wooden box where the hotel stored the chaise cushions in the winter. We watched the flashlights bobbing on the shorelines as tourists dug for clams, the soft sand running through their hand like we sugar that never dissolved.

Caroline would never get up with Pete and Jessica and I. It was not because she was too short as she said, laughing, backing up against the edge of the white box, propping her arms back behind her and trying to lift her body up. It was not because she was too short, she was nearly as tall as me. It was because we were young and she knew no other way to flirt. He long legs were still ungainly, though Pete and I both had some inkling that they represented something of great value, something we would want more than anything later, in high school.

But that night we still did not quite know it yet, it hung on the edge of my consciousness like a gnat you can never quite see, let alone swat. We three huddled close, Pete put his arm around Jessica, playing at a notion of romance we had only seen in the films of Hollywood.

Caroline kept to her self below. She chewed gum, her mouth moved in darkness. The waves rolled up, a roar and thud on the sand, then a hiss and then another. I sat cross legged, looking down at Caroline. I wanted her to jump up. I wanted her to sit next to me, but she just smiled and traced half circles in the sand. I had my first sense of what it meant to be alone. The air, the stars, the wood beneath me, the sand around me. None of it cared whether she got up or stayed down.

She never did. Not that night, nor several dozen more that summer when we would get off work at the hotel where Pete and I cleaned the pool, painted the railings, hosed the sidewalks and tried to look busy so Pete's aunt would give us our envelopes of cash, provided we found her before she  passed out in the afternoon sun beside the pool.

Caroline's parents owned a house up the beach. We were only invited over once, we watched Fast Times at Richmond High and then Caroline's mother, in a proper british accent rarely heard within the state lines of California wished us a good night and quickly ushered us out the massive arched entrance way.

Pete and I, chagrinned, could think of nothing else to do but dive in the ocean, the warm salt water, the waves, the silence of floating. The stars. Later, walking up the beach we watched the tourists on their balconies, some sat talking, one couple had sex, the woman, her arms tight on the railing looked as if she were in pain.

Caroling ended up working for my mother, a teachers aide in her classroom. I had long since lost interest, her long legs, her awkward flirting only dim memories by then. I had other friends. Other lovers. I smoked, I had no need for anyone to jump up anywhere any more. I bumped into her once, coming out the bathroom in crowded club, white powder still on my wrist. She frowned and I laughed. I laughed hysterically because I could think of nothing else to do. You never got up I said. What she said. I laughed some more and lurched forward, brushing her shoulder roughly, finding my way back into the darkness of the crowd.