Beach Film

The film was silky between my fingers, the sand cool between my toes. I set my head on my knees and looked carefully at each tiny picture, replaying each moment in my head. Seven years used to seem not that long ago, but now that everything had changed, it seemed like forever.

We skipped along the beach, like everything was perfect. Because, when you are ten, not many things upset you. I’ve always heard life is like a flower. It blooms, it looks beautiful, and then it wilts, and dies. When I was little, life was always in the beautiful stage. And this roll of film captured these perfect moments. Before everything fell apart.

Before the car accident. Before the surgery’s. Before the pain. Before they died. When Annabelle, Craig and I were inseparable. Before a drunk driver took my best friends from me. Before they were gone…

Winding the film around two fingers, I sigh heavily and trace the scar on my arm. The thing I had escaped the crash with. I was lucky. A head-on collision doesn’t harm the backseat riders too badly. A large piece of glass had slashed open my arm about a fives inches. After a single ankle surgery, I was able to walk again.

But Annabelle and Craig…Craig was driving. He died after twenty minutes in the operation room. Annabelle was in an induced coma for exactly a year before I convinced her family to let her go. She was never coming back, we needed to let her rest in peace and not hold on any longer, prolonging the obvious.

Seven years ago, on this very beach, we built sandcastles to our waist. We ran through them like tornados. We danced in the warm water.

Six years later, Craig was dead.

One more year, Annabelle is gone too.

And here I am. Holding on to this film like it’s going to bring them back. Like it is the last piece of them in my memories. This ink between my fingers. A memory in ink held together by wood in the form of paper. Much like carving initials into a tree.

I looked one last time at the film and sighed. “I’ll see you soon.” I held the images to my heart for a moment, before letting them spiral onto the ground. I knelt in front of the film, and began to build a sandcastle of my own.