Message in a Bottle

Chapter Three
“You’re going to the beach like that?” Ben asked, a guitar in his lap and his notebook that he never let me touched in front of him.
“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” I asked, looking down at my jeans, sweater, tennis shoes, and my hair up in a ponytail.
“You look so… bland. It’s the beach, Morgan not the grocery store or something.”
“Shut up, Ben.”
“You aren’t coming, Ben?” Mom asked as she walked into the room with her white gauchos, beige cashmere cardigan, and her dirty blonde hair had a little braid down the side, the rest of it falling around her.
He shook his head. “I’d rather stay home and listen to music,” he laughed.
“All right then,” she sang. “Come on, Morgan.”
We walked down the beach silently, awkwardly. I rarely ever spent time with my mother ever since our family started falling apart and we all grew distant from each other. I kept my arms folded across my chest and I looked down at my feet as we walked along the beach, the waves gently hitting the shore.
“So how’s you and Kyle?” I asked conversationally.
“We’re actually really good. I think he might be the one, Morgan. I think that I can see myself having a life with him and him having a life with you and Ben. He’s really nice.”
“Mom, you’ve only been dating him since last month. And you seem to say that about almost every guy you date only for him to leave you after the night you spend together…. And I’ve never met him so I wouldn’t know.”
“That’s because you and Ben refuse to even talk to him when he comes over!” she said, avoiding the first part of what I just said like she always does when I bring up her other relationships.
“That’s because he isn’t my father, mom. You can’t just replace dad and expect us to take Kyle as our father. Or Damien. Or Bill. Or Frank. Or Martin. How do you even know Kyle is the one when you had two children with dad? I thought he was the one….”
“I thought your father was the one, too but I was wrong when he left after finding out Benjamin had cancer. You don’t just do that…. Leave your family at it’s greatest time of need.” She fumbled with a button on her cardigan.
“Dad was a good man. I don’t know what was going through his head. I really don’t.”
“Well, with the death of his mother he probably couldn’t handle to see Benjamin getting hurt.”
“No one wants to see Ben get hurt,” I mumbled.
“Hey, look. It’s the lighthouse,” she said, pointing up at it.
I took a quick glance up at it and back down at my feet. “Yeah,” I mumbled, confused at the sudden change of subject.
“Do you still go up there?”
“Whenever I’m feeling down I like to stay up at the very top and just look out at the ocean but I go there less frequently nowadays.”
“Would you like to go up?”
“Sure,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.
“I’ll race you to the top!” she said excitedly. This was so like her to cover her true emotions with something else.
“Mom….”
“I’m sorry,” she sighed. “I just feel like I never see you kids smile anymore. I want to make you laugh. Or smile. Or happy. Or something!”
“I am happy, mom… just in my own weird way.”
We got to the lighthouse and walked the spiral steps up to the light.
“Oh, what a workout!” she exclaimed, panting when we got to the very top. “Woo!”
I stood near the iron bars of the lighthouse overlooking the sea and everything else. The spot that caught my attention the most was wear my grandmother’s wooden boat docked and where I released my message into the water. Flashbacks of that day showed in my head. I turned around and squeezed my eyes shut to stop it.
“Are you okay, honey?” Mom asked.
“Oh, I’m fine,” I lied, opening my eyes.
“Remember the first time you went up here? You were so depressed that it really was a lighthouse and not a prince’s castle.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I was a stupid kid. I thought everything was magical.”
“You were not a stupid kid, Morgan. You just had a wild imagination.”
“Hence, the stupidity.”
She ignored my remark. “It’s so peaceful up here,” she whispered, taking a deep breath.
I turned around to face the water once again. “Yeah, I guess.” Then something caught my eye. It was bobbing up and down in the water, slowly moving toward shore by the waves. I squinted my eyes and leaned forward to make sure I was seeing what I was actually seeing.
“What is it, honey?” she asked, scanning the beach and water.
“No… it can’t be,” I whispered in astonishment. I ran to the spiral stairs and flew down them two at a time, crashing into a couple people along the way.
“Morgan! What are you doing?” My mom called from the lighthouse when I got out the door and ran toward the beach, the sand getting into my shoes. I got to the chilly water but still ran forward despite what my grandmother used to say about the Graveyard of the Atlantic and the freezing water.
The golden glass bottle was only a couple feet away from me now and the water was knee high. When I was close enough to the bottle I dived for it, my whole body emerging into the water for this one little golden bottle that I wasn’t even completely sure about.
I stood up from the water, tossing my wet hair back. But in that very second I realized that it wasn’t the right bottle. It wasn’t my bottle. I stood there confused for a moment and shook the bottle, the scrolled paper inside shaking. It wasn’t my bottle but it was someone else’s. This bottle was shaped like any other old fashioned soda bottle. I walked out of the water, my eyes on the bottle the whole way.
“Morgan, you’re going to get sick now. What were you thinking?” Mom asked, putting her cardigan around my shoulders.
“I thought this was my bottle,” I mumbled as she led me back to our house, my teeth chattering.
“The one you and your grandmother made the day she passed away?”
I nodded my head. “But it’s not. There’s a message inside of it though.” I stopped walking, tugging at the cork.
“You can read it once we get home, honey. First we have to get you out of these wet clothes!”
After having a nice hot shower I went up to my room and sat on my bed, my eyes fixed on the bottle. I was debating whether I should open it or not. From the looks of it, the bottle has been out in the water for quite a while. There was marks on it that I was sure it had gone through many things but the message inside was untouched.
“Oh, what the heck,” I mumbled. I took my mom’s wine opener and pulled off the cork, turning the bottle upside down to let the message fall out. The tightly rolled up paper fall onto my bed and I set the bottle on the bedside table.
I unrolled the paper and laid it flat on my bed. The writing was in English. There’s a plus. The words in blue pen were almost legible. Another plus. I began reading the message:

There was something that rekindled the flame in me when I found your message. I tried ignoring you, tried to get on with my life because I didn’t know you. You shouldn’t be so important but with just those couples sentences I felt as if I must know you. Hopefully this message will reach you, Morgan Clarke of Cape Hatteras.

-Carter Richards of Boston

I was in pure shock. No, I was in awe. No, I was baffled. Wait, I was speechless. Yes, that was it. Speechless. Something sparked in me that I haven’t felt in such a long time, something that reminded me of what I used to desire as a child… love.