Head Above Water

I had closed at work that night, which meant that I had clocked out at 11:30. Before I got into my car, I looked around at the barren parking lot and reached up towards the sky above me, stretching out my back, trying to alleviate the tiny ache at in my spine that had developed from my bad posture.

My mother always commented on my slouching, which shrunk my above average height. I wasn’t ever really sure why I started slouching, but I had a feeling it was because I hated always being one of the taller girls in school. I envied girls who were petite, and often wished I was, too. I was trying to get better with my posture though, reminding myself to straighten up whenever I remembered, but the ache in my back always returned when I spent time standing behind a cash register.

I got into my car and looked up in the rearview mirror, making sure there was no one behind me as I backed out. I could only see one of my hazel eyes and half of my curly brown hair, and I immediately looked away. Nothing special, I thought. And I wasn’t. I was an eighteen-year-old girl who worked at Yogurtland in Almond Beach, where my family and I went on vacation every summer. I had just graduated high school, and I refused to look back. High school wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t amazing, either. I was looking forward to college, even if I was just going to a private university a few miles away from my house.

I drove without even having to think about where I was going. I went down this road almost every day, and even when I didn’t plan on going to the beach, I always ended up there by the time the moon found its place in the sky. Almond Beach was a small town, mostly only occupied between June and August by the same families every year. It was known as a summer beach city. Here, most major fast food restaurants were difficult to find and malls were nonexistent. Every store and restaurant was owned by people who had lived here all their lives.

Every year, I came to Almond Beach, exhausted from the school year that had passed. This year was no different, and I still remembered the chill that ran down my spine that had came while waiting for college acceptance letters. I also knew all too well the pressure that I had felt on my shoulders – sometimes it felt like there were literally weights resting on my shoulders – when I had to pick a school to go to. All the stress came crashing down with the end of my senior year, when I graduated and began my first summer of “adulthood.”

To be frank, I was terrified. I had no idea how college was going to go. I didn’t know what I was going to major in, how I was going to afford books and tuition, and juggle schoolwork with a social life and a job. While I had a job in Almond Beach, I was yet to find a steady job back home. But, as I constantly had to remind myself, it was only June. September was a long way away, and I had time to figure things out. For now, I set my mind on enjoying this summer.

This summer, the season that drew the line between an end and a beginning. I left twelve years of all I knew behind me: organized classes that were picked for you, rides to school and walks home when I was younger, a set lunch time, bells that dismissed you, and most of all, free textbooks. A small part of me hoped that high school and college had more similarities than differences. While I liked the idea of setting my own schedule and picking my own classes and professors, I was a little afraid to have so much responsibility thrown in my hands. I wasn’t used to it, and until now, I had just sort of let life pass me by. I watched it run its course, and while I took some part in it, I mostly let the universe do its work.

My father used to tell me that the years a person spent on Earth were like water. People would have swelling moments, some bigger than others, growing into breathtaking, soul-sucking waves that would eventually crash down and spread out, turning into foam and fading into the sand. And sometimes, moments would be still, like streams and ponds – quiet and small, but nonetheless important and full of life.

He never failed to guide me down the correct stream. He was undoubtedly my biggest fan and I his. My father taught me some of the most important things that I know. I learned from the water. He always found a way to compare our lives to water and it was eventually water that took his life.

The moment that I lost him felt like white water rapids gushing pain into my heart, my head, my eyes, and every other part of my body. It was inescapable. I felt as if I was drowning in a sorrow that I couldn’t escape. It was the most unimaginable feeling, but somehow, it was happening. He had been cliff diving with friends from college, and on the way down, he had hit his head on a rock in a way that he couldn’t recover from. The doctors tried to reassure me that death came instantly. I wasn’t sure how that could help me. After all, he was still gone.

It was always painfully ironic; the concept of the thing that he loved most taking him away from me. From my mother, who now lived her own life away from his memory, and even from me. From my brother, who was all I had but was never to be found, always running away. Lost in the current.

Sometimes, I felt that once my dad had gone, our entire family just sprung a leak until eventually, we ran out of water; out of life. If families were a plumbing system, we had lost a pipe and our entire network just turned into absolute nothingness. Nothing could replace the piece we had lost.

The piece that I had lost.

I never questioned why the presence of the moon pulled me to the water so irresistibly. To me, it was just a fact of life. It had been that way every summer that I was in Almond Beach, but ever since my father passed, it was different. Nonetheless, it was there.

I parked in the same spot as always – a space right by the walkway leading up to the shore. When I got out of the car, I popped open the trunk and grabbed a long sleeve t-shirt, a hoodie, and a denim jacket. This hoodie was brand new. It displayed the insignia of my new school, and I abandoned the old hoodie that represented my high school. Though I had just bought it, I knew it would soon be christened with the unmistakable smell of salt and sea, a smell that I would never be able to get out no matter how many times I washed it.

I looked around before changing out of my uniform. Usually, there were no cars around, but this was a force of habit. But tonight, there was another car parked a few spots down from me. In an effort to see if there was anyone in the car, I squinted, but I knew this was a futile effort as it was almost midnight and there was no light save the moon in the sky. And as much as I loved it, the grey old thing never really provided much light.

I spent a few seconds arguing with myself. If I changed here, out in the open, whoever was in that car would see and I would be exposed. The other part of me reasoned that there probably wasn’t anyone in the car at all, because no one but me was ever allowed in the parking lot at night. And finally, I decided to go for it, because everyone in this town had known me since birth anyway, and life was short (the reason I always came back to, the reasons for which need no explanation) so what the hell?

My new outfit was a step up (or a hundred steps up) from my thin, lime green Yogurtland polo. I was grateful for the extra warmth. It still wasn’t enough to brave the beachfront waves, so I went on to grab two blankets out of my trunk as well. As soon as the trunk was closed, I stepped away from the asphalt of the parking lot onto the slightly smoother cement of the walkway that sat in the sand. Though it curved and bent, “like a caterpillar,” as I used to say when I was younger, I knew the way by heart and I barely had to look down at my feet as I walked.

It was a long walk, but I enjoyed it. Every single minute. I hummed a song that had played at work, something that I had heard for the first time in years. The walkway rose up a little as I walked up a small hill in the sand, and then came back down. I had both blankets wrapped around me, but I was still shivering, and I shook my shoulders back and forth in an effort to create warmth for myself. My breath was coming out cold, and I could feel my nose going cold as well. Just as I felt like I was going to pass out from the tremors going through my body, the walkway ended and the lifeguard towers came into my field of vision.

I went to the same one every time: lifeguard tower number seven, for the nickname my father had given me. “Lucky number seven,” he would call me. It made me feel special even on the bleakest of days. It was this moment, coming up to the tower, that I would most miss his voice telling me, “You’re my lucky charm, Kennedy.” Sometimes he would say it before he had a big meeting at work. Or he would remind me of my so called natural luck before I took a stressful exam at school. He would even bring me to my brother’s soccer games when we were younger because he claimed that Lincoln would only win when I was there (although I had witnessed his losses many a time).

But that was just my dad. He had a way of making everybody feel special, no matter who they were. The mailman, the guy bagging groceries at the store, the woman walking her dog outside as he grabbed the paper, and most of all, me.

I came up to the bottom of the tower and unwrapped my cocoon of blankets, tossing them over my shoulder. But as soon as I turned my head up and started to climb the ladder up to the landing, I jumped. And, though I hate to admit it, the sharpest of yelps escaped my mouth. My foot slipped off the first rung and I fell back into the sand below.

All I could see was the person sitting on the landing spring to their feet, and all I could hear was a deep voice hiss, “Oh shit.” It was decidedly British, and surprisingly familiar.

I wasn’t sure who I was expecting to be sitting at lifeguard tower number 7, and I half expected it to be a serial killer if we’re being quite honest. Who else was I to expect, when the rest of the town was sleeping? Or taking baths? Or sitting on the couch watching television? Almond Beach was not a lively town at night, and most nights I found myself driving alone on the streets, and every night, I was alone on this beach.

So when the curly haired customer from earlier jumped down the lower half of the ladder and into the sand in front of me, all I could say was, “Four Strawberries On Plain Tart?”

Embarrassment filled my veins as blood rushed up to my cheeks and ears, turning them instantly red. I looked up to the sky at the stars, silently asking them how they could let me say something so stupid.

Pushing my mortification aside, I squinted up to get a closer look at his face. I could see his eyebrows knitted into concern, and his mouth was set in a straight line. It was almost as straight as my mother’s was on a daily basis, except hers wasn’t usually firm with concern. It was more like disdain for me, for (the lack of) my brother, and life in general. I had found out early on that it couldn’t be helped, and it was now a part of her.

As Four Strawberries extended his hand towards me in an effort to help me up, he started to speak. “Four strawberries on plain tart? What the blimming hell?” His voice was not only heavy with an accent, as I remembered, but it was laced with confusion. And, if I really thought about it, it was also saturated with unease. I mean, I would be just as uneasy as he was if someone were to call me by my Yogurtland order. But when a stranger pops up and happens to be sitting in your favorite lifeguard tower in the absolute dead of night on an otherwise empty beach, you can’t really think straight, can you?

I took his hand with as firm a grip as I could and he pulled me up so I could stand straight. I shook the sand off my bottom and back and bent down to collect the blankets that had fallen down with me. Four Strawberries just stood still, one hand in his hair and one eyebrow lifted, giving him a look that hinted at mixture of confusion and fear. I just looked at him, wide eyed, and I began to open my mouth to speak.

Before I could, he spit out, “Are you okay?”

My mouth froze, my lungs taking in a sharp breath, sucking the words right back into my throat and into my stomach where they turned into clumps of fear. But then I remembered that he was in my spot. The spot I occupied almost every night. My lifeguard tower number seven, for me, the girl called lucky number seven.

So instead of answering his question, I let out, “What are you doing here?”

Now it was his turn to have wide eyes, and his mouth almost mirrored the same position mine had taken on mere seconds ago. “I – what do you mean? Did you hit your head or something? Are you mad?”

“Mad? Yeah, I’m a little mad. You’re in my spot.”

“I meant mad as in – never mind. Your spot? Isn’t this a public beach or something?”

“This beach is closed to the public after 10 PM,” I informed him, emphasizing it with a little hmph.

His expression changed from dumbfounded to doubting. “If the beach closes at 10 PM, then what are you doing here, Kennedy?”

He put emphasis on my name, like he was using it against me. And I guess it was an advantage, because he knew who I was but I had no idea who he was. I rolled my eyes. He wasn’t as charming as he was when I rung him up, and if this was how he was outside of friendly exchanges with strangers, then I had no desire to get to know him or see him as a regular at work. He was a tower stealing British hog.

“That is none of your business. It’s my business, however, because I’m allowed to be here but you aren’t. So take your little British butt away from my tower and leave, please.” The please was a formality that differed greatly in tone from the annoyance bubbling up in my ears, turning them red with anger.

At least my ears were warm.

“Can you just – I’m sorry. I really am. I didn’t mean to scare you, and you caught me off guard as well.” His expression softened and with his words, mine did as well. My shoulders, which were hunched up and ready for a fight, relaxed. I felt my ears losing warmth as I calmed down and I let out a sigh. He put up his hands as a way of apologizing and said, “Let’s start over.” He lowered his hands and then stuck one out with his palm open and sideways. “I’m Harry. Lesser known as Four Strawberries On Plain Tart,” he added with a small chuckle.

Blushing, I took his hand gingerly and shook it up and down. “Kennedy. As you know.”

He chuckled again, this time a little louder, and with a shake of his head. He just looked at me for a moment, so quickly that I thought I was imagining it. I, on the other hand, allowed myself to stare as I had previously stopped myself from doing at work earlier that night. He was tall, taller than me, and had brown curly hair that blew around in the wind uncontrollably. It covered part of his face, so I couldn’t see very much. I blamed the moon for that, unhelpful friend it was. His lips, at least, weren’t set in a straight line anymore, but rather turned slightly upwards into a small smile. He was looking at me, amused, and then looked down at our hands, still attached in a handshake. My eyes widened, and I dropped his hand almost instantly.

“I guess I’ll go, since this is your tower and all,” he said, his voice almost getting lost in the wind.

Before I could respond, he started to walk away, back down towards the cement pathway that led back to the parking lot where both our cars sat. I should have put two and two together. Of course there was someone else on this beach, but why on Earth did they have to be sitting in this tower of all twelve on the beach? It was ridiculous. But then I thought about the waves that dad used to talk about, some swelling so big that they towered over you. Others were small and fleeting, finding their height and crashing quickly to turn into ripples that lapped at the toes that I had dug into the sand.

My toes did that now, and as my hair flew in all the directions that the wind took it, I let the wind carry my voice into Harry’s ears. “Harry! Come back.”

This moment – the second that it took for my voice to escape my mouth and the words to jump off my tongue – felt like sea foam. It felt insignificant and soft in my heart, nothing big enough to crash against my ribcage and make waves. It felt like a tide pool, not a coral reef. Like a minnow and not a trout. The moment was small, and though the size of it didn’t compare to the amount of courage it took to say the words, I didn’t have enough courage to see the moment through. I didn’t wait for him to turn around. I figured that the wind was too tumultuous to properly carry my voice over to him. I uselessly ran a hand through my hair, trying to get all of it behind my ears. I turned back to the ladder, ready to climb again, and I set one foot on the first rung.

Once I was finally sitting on the landing, I looked down and my heart jumped in response to Harry standing at the bottom of the tower. I set a hand down to steady myself and one on my chest, almost falling forward in surprise and feeling my heart race once more. The surprise was good, though, and the happiness that resulted felt the same way the waves in front of me sounded. Roaring and natural. Like the back of my heart knew he would come back, quieting the whole of my head that said he wouldn’t.

I decided then that this moment wasn’t any form of sea foam. This wasn’t a ripple. This was a wave. A wave strong enough to knock me off my feet, big enough to shake my equilibrium – or what was left of it. Harry was a transverse wave, running perpendicular to the course I had planned out, and crashing into me with a kind of force I had yet to figure out.

As he climbed the ladder, he smiled. “Couldn’t resist me, could you Kennedy?”

I rolled my eyes, but my breath came out shaky. I hoped with all my heart that Harry was the kind of wave that settled onto the shore with ease, that didn’t disturb anyone. My heart cried out in fear of a tsunami, one that I couldn’t handle, as I had already braved one earlier in my life. I didn’t want to be flooded with the dangers of a sharp turn in my already mapped out life, and Harry was a storm that I didn’t see coming at all.

As he sat down next to me, I offered him one of my blankets, and I couldn’t tell if the chill running down my spine was a result of a loss of warmth or from the view of him next to me.