Warning:
“The following story contains strong language and scenes of physical abuse that some readers may find disturbing. Reader discretion is advised. Please take into consideration your own sensitivity or comfort levels before proceeding.”
It’s August, and I’m still lost, still trying to get away from it all and figure things out, and the night is only hanging on slightly as I sit down on the beach, kick off my sandals, and dig my toes into the sand near the end of the ocean. The waves are finishing their roll, slightly washing in and fumbling across my feet. Even at this hour, the water is warm and summer is still here—a fact that I needed to remind myself of, like it matters.
My body becomes a canvas as the soft incoming breeze finds its way beneath my shirt. It draws unfamiliar lines with the beads of sweat across my skin, making these foreign crisscross patterns on my chest and stomach feel like I just walked into a damp spider web, trapping me. And suddenly, I feel cold.
I look out to the horizon, and the sun is emerging as the tide makes the top of it an imperfect sphere, wavy and moving in the heat of the distance. A flock of gulls call out, almost in unison, somewhere in the faded sky above. Wrapping my hands around my knees, I pull them closer to me for warmth. As I take in the landscape, I think about the last year and where it went, how upside down everything is, how she hasn’t called in six months, and how I’m pretty sure I don’t think I can make it through another winter, not if things don’t change.
Mist is forming little droplets on the hairs of my legs when I feel something tangle around my toes—it’s thin and dull and stays there as the water slides off my feet and back along the sand. I reach down towards the object, and I hear tires roll across the gravel on the road behind as music plays muffled against the glass of the closed windows. The beat sounds familiar, like a song she used to always play. As the car stops and idles, I pull the necklace free from my feet and place it on the sand. I’m shaping it and spreading it out in different forms, and when a locket appears from between the gold knots, the scent of lavender mixed with perfume quickly floods over me. The engine rattles, and the car turns off.
***
The music is blaring as we’re walking up the steps of this insane mansion, and I’m paranoid that I smell like the air freshener Grace has in her BMW, which I guess is supposed to mask the smell of the joint we smoked on the way here, so I quickly spray some Dior under my neck and shove the bottle back in my purse as we walk through the door and into the party.
It was late when Grace came into my room and saw me crying, writing one word repeatedly with lipstick in my journal, half naked and hungover—nothing new. Once the couple of pills that I took kicked in, she convinced me to go to this big party Bret told her about and that he was going to be there, and he was scoring some great cocaine from some guy, and we should go because he’ll hook us up and he owes Grace—whatever that means.
