I'll Be Here

so I say “yes.” 
    I suppose that Taylor’s right.  I should listen to her.  She has tons of experience with guys so she knows what she’s talking about.
    “Good.  Good.  Really, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter.”
    After we hang up, I decide to take a walk.
    The sky is wide and blue and it swallows me up.  The clouds are so low and thick—almost like I could lift my arm and pluck one from the sky and it would feel like warmed marshmallows, melted and sticky between my fingers. 
    I’ve brought my all-time favorite book with me and I open the pages at random and start reading a passage in the bright sunlight.  Good.  I love this part.
    My family has always laughed at me for this.  They like to narrow their eyes and comment that I can’t make it up a spiral staircase without tripping over my feet, but I can read and walk at the same time.   Apparently, the laws of physics state that the two should be mutually exclusive.
    Before I finish the chapter, I’ve walked down my street, made two right turns and am standing across from the beach.  Tucking the book under my arm, I cross the single lane road and step past a few cars parked along a crooked wooden fence.  In front of me the palms and scraggly Australian Pines lean out towards the open water with their claw-like branches framed against the sky.  If I lower my eyelids a bit so that my lashes blur my vision, the trees look almost like people searching for something. 
    Beneath my feet the ground changes from dirt to rock to coarse sand and I remove my shoes and carry them under the same arm as the book.  Letting my toes sink deep into the sand, I walk a trail through the folding dunes.  On the surface, the sun-warmed sand is too hot, but turns cool where my toes make deep indentations.
    Moving well past a group that’s blaring music and tossing a brightly colored ball back and forth, I settle into a vacant spot where the sand turns hard and crunchy.  I stare out at the water as it plays with the sunlight.  Moments like this my fingers itch for a pencil and some paper.  I squeeze them tight and then bury them under a layer of sand. 
    My brain is crowded with too many thoughts and most of them are bad.  I hate being this person—this weak, on-the-verge-of-tears person.  I take a deep breath and try to think of things that make me happy.  Things like the water and the sand and sky above me.  And the sound that the wind makes in my ears when I close my eyes.  I love that.  I love this place that I live.  I love the way that the beach curls around the water like a comma and sometimes you can imagine that it’s just you and that you’re at the edge of the world. 
    I love the smell of saltwater and the way the skin across my nose and cheeks feels tight and raw when I’ve gotten a little too much sun.  I love that there are January days when I can get by in a tank top. 
    People at school are always saying how they can’t wait to leave after graduation.  They say that they want winter and peacoats and snow and hot chocolate in front of a fireplace like some sort of Dickens inspired fantasy.  Jake laughs and says that people only think like that until they’ve had to de-ice their windshield at six in the morning to get to work on time.  He’s probably right.  People are just preprogrammed to want what they don’t have.  It’s like it’s a universal law.
    A seagull cries out, snapping me out of my trance.
    Dusting the sand from the back of my thighs and picking up my discarded book and shoes, I stand and look out at the blue expanse in front of me a bit longer.  With my right hand I push my hair away from my face as the wind rolling in off the water picks up speed around me.
    Before Dustin, I used to come to this spot all the time to sketch. 
    Before Dustin.
    I half grimace, half laugh at the term and wonder how self-destructive it is to start labeling my life that way.  I already know what came before.  But what comes after ?
     
     
     
     

 
     
    Life isn’t fair.  It’s just fairer than death.  That’s all.
    ~William Goldman

 
    CHAPTER FIVE
     
    The darkness and soft silence of sleep is shattered by the electronic shriek of my alarm.  And I was actually having a decent dream.  Then I remember that the dream involved Dustin and the familiar dread of the past few days settles upon me.
    I turn over and face my nightstand.  The picture of Dustin and me made it through the rearrangement of