I repeated that last part because, if Dad is right, saying something twice makes it more likely to come true. Superstitious? Um, yeah. Wouldn’t you be if you were me?
Of course, I know it’s impossible to say with any certainty what comes next. I could die in a few minutes. Hell, so could you. Leaving a whole lot of “if only” in our wakes. The single truth that I can offer you with full confidence concerns what just happened.
So? What just happened?
Well, I texted Dougie O’Shea, for one, and I asked:
Did your dad demolish the school yet?
Him: Few more days.
Me: I need sand. ASAP. What does he charge to haul a load in his truck?
Him: ShamRockz drives a truck, ya know?
Me: OK. What do you charge?
Him: For you, baby girl? Nothin.
That was this morning.
Now it’s the evening, a breezy end to a June day and I’m sitting in a beach chair at the edge of my deck, dipping my toes in a pile of sand that used to sit next to the Covington High pool. Mom and Dad were a bit perplexed when Dougie backed the truck past the house and dumped a small beach in our backyard. To their credit, they didn’t say shit about it, simply stood at the window watching, no doubt thinking about how their only child would be graduating high school tomorrow. Even when Laura Riggs showed up to lend me her hookah, they hardly blinked. I was whole. I was home. For the time being. That’s all they cared about.
I don’t own a kimono, so I had to settle for a paisley terrycloth robe Dad owns. Doesn’t fit me, but that’s a minor detail. It’s the symbolism of the thing that matters.
I do have second robe, Mom’s pink silk one, but I’m saving that for someone else. It’s draped over the empty beach chair that’s sitting next to me. You might think that’s a little pathetic, that I’m in major denial, but hear me out for a second. Because I have one more thing with me.
The burner.
I noticed it this morning, collecting dust on a shelf in my closet above where I store the beach chairs. I had set it there after Carla’s line was disconnected. Figured it was useless. Seeing it again, I suddenly remembered what else I had programmed into the thing. I had the number of the matching burner, the untraceable connection to my bestie. My BFF. My Tess.
You know, just in case.
It’s no surprise that the battery was dead, so I snaked an extension cord to the deck. The burner is now sitting in my lap, straining to fill itself with enough charge to find a signal so it can skip across the earth from cell tower to cell tower and locate a text or, I hope, a voice.
It’s not there yet, so I will puff on this hookah and wait a bit longer.
My beach faces west, toward the farmlands at the edge of Covington. A perfect spot to watch a sunset. Remember when I said I was the same person I’ve always been? Well, that’s not entirely true. I used to think that sunsets were cheesy, that they were images of uninspired sentimentality. But let’s be honest, because we should always be honest. If a person invites you to watch a sunset, you go, don’t you? You don’t say jackshit about what’s cheesy or uninspired. So neither will I. I know now that sunsets are glorious things. And this one—this one!—is absolutely invigorating, a fucking gorgeous splash of red on the horizon that marks an end, one I always knew was coming.