Limbo    

 

    Sunny afternoons turned into rainy nights that weekend, the island burning by day and soaking up the torrential downpours when the sun sank into the bay.  Though we were far too old for such nonsense, we spent the mornings building sandcastles, which were never as grand as planned, but still enjoyable to build, and strapping the inflatable raft to the kayak to form a boat-train past the breaking ocean waves.  We never got lost—the island was too small for that.  Rather, we walked in circles until we found where we wanted to be, and then we sat there talking about anything and everything under the sun, and watched the sky turn from a bright gray in the morning, to a crystal clear blue, and finally to a red and purple blaze, setting the entire island on fire as the storm clouds rolled in.  

    There was a fog thick as blood surrounding us as the ferry docked in the bay on our first day there, giving the island a dreamlike quality that was perfectly welcome—we needed a dream.  The boardwalk over the dunes to the beach were so shrouded in the mist that it seemed to melt into it, giving the impression that if you walked too far, you would fall off the face of the Earth.  We were completely isolated from the rest of the world, and none of us complained.

    Our exploits were numerous, even just in the first few hours of our first day.  The boat train found itself in the bay, an inner tube lashed between the inflatable raft and the cheap, worn down kayak.  The sight was reminiscent of Washington crossing the Delaware, though much less elegant and heroic.  When the train returned carrying three boys, soaked through, they found the wagon and their clothes gone, stolen by three girls who got bored of watching their friends behave like idiots and decided to walk the length of the island instead.  We took turns sitting in the wagon, being pulled by one another across the empty roads—the laws of the island prohibited cars, as it was only a mile or two long.  The fastest way to get anywhere was on a bicycle.  

    “Turn here” I shouted, backseat driving from the wagon while Bethany pulled it along.  We knew the boys had seen us leave the bay, and wanted to see how long it would take them to find us as we zig-zagged across the island.  

    “Why?” asked Catherine, “We’ve already lost them”.  

    “Yeah, but this is a cute alcove” I maintained, “we can take pictures and just kinda chill…wait for them to catch up, ya know?”  Bethany nodded, and though she rolled her eyes, Catherine begrudgingly agreed to sit on the rocks in the alcove, overlooking the sound.  

    “I mean, they’ll find us eventually” Catherine reasoned, regarding the fact that her own opinions were being overlooked with extreme distaste; she was very much used to having her way, and didn’t appreciate the moments in which she didn’t get what she wanted.

    “Take your bets as to how long it takes ‘em” Bethany chuckled, glancing back over her shoulder as we rounded the bend, hoping to diffuse the tension.  

    “What, to find us?  Who knows.” I shook my head wistfully, not surprised at the boys absurdity, yet wishing I was.  

    We sat and talked of summer and all the promise it held; we talked of college, and our inevitable, bittersweet goodbye.  “You guys are getting ahead of yourselves”, I said as Bethany described how she wanted her dorm room to look.  “I haven’t even bought a graduation dress yet.  Can’t we just live in the moment?”

    “What good is living in the moment if it isn’t right?” asked Catherine.  “I mean, I love our boys, and I’m glad they’re here with us, but do you really think they would have gotten to come on this trip if I hadn’t pressed them to get their shit together?  Jack wasn’t even packed when I went to pick him up this morning!”

    “Well there’s a difference between living in the moment and lack of adequate planning”, I said.  “We’re here now, let’s just be here now.  We have all summer to plan”.

    Catherine shook her hair and basked in the afternoon glow.  “Advanced planning is the reason this weekend is going to be perfect”, she announced.  “So much could have gone wrong if I hadn’t taken the reins.  I mean, can you imagine if Sara was here?”  She sniggered and sneered and I suddenly wished Sara had been with us, if only to defend herself.  I couldn’t help thinking that Catherine saw Sara not as a person, but as a wrench in her otherwise perfect plans.

    “Well, she is Chunk’s girlfriend”, Bethany reasoned.  “I get that she’s only a sophomore, but underclassmen go to after prom all the time, if it’s an actual relationship”.

    “Whatever, it’s not like it’s gonna last.  They’re breaking up before he leaves for school”.  Catherine spoke with such conviction that, as uncomfortable as I was, I didn’t dare to question her.  It was a gift of hers, to make you believe her every word.  It was how she had made sure we all knew just how important and special our friendship was; it was how she had kept Sara at arm’s length from the rest of our group; it was how she had introduced us all to the idea of our own replaceability. 

    “They’re gonna be lugging that raft with them, it might slow ‘em down”, Bethany said in an effort to diffuse the tension.  She was right, of course. It took the boys nearly half an hour to catch up to us, and they passed the alcove twice before realizing that we were sitting there, waiting patiently for them.  When they did finally find us, they tried to make us carry the raft back to the house on the other end of the island.  It didn’t work, and we pulled each other along in the wagon once again down the sand covered, empty streets.

    Those same empty roads became our map to adventure that night.  We braved the thunderstorm to walk to town for ice cream, bits of cardboard held over our heads instead of umbrellas.  Paul wrapped himself in a box, Bethany and I piled more and more scraps on top of our cardboard umbrella which kept soaking through.  Catherine snagged a thin,  plastic poncho and, met with little resistance, had convinced Chunk to squeeze into it with her, each of them taking custody of one sleeve.  I hadn’t seen them so close in months, and I found myself tense at the sight of it; the rumors about them back in January had spread like wildfire, and it had taken more than a bit of cold water on my part to convince Sara that he wasn’t seeing Catherine on the side.  I wondered if the rumors had anything to do with her absence from our getaway, apparently at Catherine’s hand.  Sara had never deserved the pettiness thrown her way, but I knew that what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her -- and what I didn’t say wouldn’t hurt me.

    The cardboard and poncho did not keep us dry, but the togetherness kept us warm.  We were a part of something special, a friendship that ran deeper than romance, deeper than outsiders; at least that’s how it felt under the golden honey moon that rose over the Atlantic.  The clouds parted as we reached the pier to bask in its soft glow.  It lit the way ahead of us as we strolled back to the small beach house, our weekend home.

    “You know what Paul?” A slight chuckle caused Chunk’s voice to waver as he observed, on the first night on which we crammed five to a bed, “I bet we’re the only guys who can honestly say we spent our first night of after-prom in bed with three girls”.  Though Jack had refused to join us cuddling in the king bed we had taken over—he was “too mature” for our childish antics—the rest of us had decided that a late night cuddle session at the end of a long three hours of playing sardines was in all our best interests.  

    Of course, the bed wasn’t quite big enough for all of us.  We crammed ourselves into a spooning line, and we all laughed so hard at the Chunk’s comment that we nearly toppled off the bed.  

    “Better not tell your girlfriend”, Paul chortled.  My face grew hot and I was glad of the darkness in the room -- no one would see me blushing in embarrassment.  I hadn’t mentioned Sara earlier and felt ashamed.  Despite Sara’s trust of Chunk, her distrust of the rest of our crew had led her to implore that I keep an eye on him.  

    “I know what happens at after prom” she had said the night before as we made our way across the decked out gymnasium—courtesy of the most fervent prom committee to ever exist—to the drink table for refills of spiked punch.  “You drink, and you smoke and you…do…whatever you’re gonna do, and you lose your inhibitions—”

    “And your morals?” I asked, cutting her off.  I could see tears welling in her eyes, horribly out of place among the lights and thumping bass.  It was fair that she was anxious about him spending a weekend on a secluded Island with Catherine, but I wanted to assure her just the same.  

    “I don’t think you have to worry too much about that.  Even if there was any truth to those rumors—which there wasn’t—she’s locked on a new target”.  I jutted my chin toward the middle of the gym, calling Sara’s attention to the dance floor where Catherine had draped her arms across Jack’s shoulders; she didn’t seem to mind the crowd pressing the two of them closer together.  I didn’t tell her my reasons for not believing the rumors, knowing that it wouldn’t be a comfort for her to hear -- that Chunk was easily molded, more puppet to Catherine than friend, but he wasn’t a man of action.  Even if he had wanted to cheat on Sara, he was too lazy to do it.

    It was no secret that Sara was an outsider from our group.  She was accepted as being important to Chunk, and having been friends with her for years I found it nice to have an ally every once in a while.  Still, she had her friends and Chunk and I had ours; we had our something special that we had to hold on to; we had our family of friends that we couldn’t leave.  Sometimes it made me crazy, how brainwashed Chunk seemed to be by our friends, to let them treat his girlfriend with such open disdain; but I never said a word, because I knew I was just as bad.

    As fun as it was to laugh with my friends, five to a bed in what Bethany had taken to calling a “cuddle puddle”, I had promised Sara I would keep any eye out for any fishy behavior.  I felt strange, guilty—almost trapped—with her boyfriend’s arms wrapped around me.  

    “D’you think they’re doing it?” Bethany asked only an hour later, when we had decided it was far too hot to have five people in one bed, and we had all made our way back to our respective rooms—save for Catherine and Jack, that is.  Catherine and Jack had found their way to the beach alone.  It wasn’t unlike Catherine to formulate an adventure for just the two of them, and it wasn’t unlike Jack to go along with it.  It never seemed to occur to them that they might be hurting someone.

    I tried to be diplomatic in my response.  Catherine’s relationship with Jack was a mystery to me; I was entirely unclear on what their relationship consisted of in its fullest extent.  “I don’t know” I said, and heard her roll over in the bed beside me.  

    “Well yeah, I know you don’t know, but…do you think they might be?”  She was facing me now, and I kept my eyes fixed on the ceiling hoping to avoid her gaze.  I could have asked her why it mattered anyway, but of course the question itself didn’t surprise me in the least.  She had every right to be concerned.  After all, the first love burns hotter and brighter than any other; even after they’re gone, you still keep the embers of first love in your heart.  And generally, you don’t expect your friends to fuck your first love.

    “I don’t think they like each other that way” I said, but even as the words left my mouth I said them as only a half truth.  Catherine and Jack would never love each other the way Bethany loved him, but I also knew that virginity was a bigger deal to Catherine than she would ever admit; she wouldn’t give hers up to just anyone; it would have to be someone she trusted, a confidant.  At least to my knowledge, Jack fit the bill.  It had made protecting Bethany from further heartbreak at Jack’s hand more difficult than I had been prepared for.

    “I mean” Bethany argued, “they like each other enough to go to prom together”.  

“And I like Ben enough to go to prom with him” I countered, trying to ease her nerves without being curt, “that doesn’t mean I want to be with him.”

    Even in the darkness, I could see Bethany’s face fall.  “But you do want to be with Paul”, she murmured.  “You like like him.  And he has no idea…”  I huffed stung by her words and my own foolishness.  “I had no idea he was going to ask me, you know”, she continued.  “I’m sorry if it hurt you to see us together, but you were already going with Ben when he asked me, so -- “

    “It’s okay”, I whispered.  “It’s not like I’m that into him anyway”.  It was a lie, but the less guilty Bethany felt on account of me, the better.  Besides, I had had plenty of time to get used to the idea of seeing her and Paul together; when I had told Catherine in the fall that I thought I might want to go to the prom with Paul, he had been abundantly clear with me.

    “Bethany is just getting over Jack, and Paul is a big part of that.  You need to back off, okay?”  Selflessly -- stupidly -- I had agreed, and convinced myself that any affection Paul showed me was just him being too nice for his own good.  I hadn’t made any waves, had kept my head down, and had held fast to my seat at the table.

    Hoping to shift the conversation away from my own non-existent love life, I reassured Bethany -- and myself -- that Paul and I were just good friends.  It was better that way.  Bethany got to move on, and I knew that being friends with Paul was better than not being a part of his life at all.

    “Well I’m still sorry”, said Bethany, and I couldn’t tell if she was trying to make me feel better or herself.  “I did to you exactly what Catherine and Jack did to me.  It’s on a smaller scale, but still…”  She trailed off and I laughed in spite of myself.

    “Trust me, it’s not the same”, I told her.  “You may have gone to prom together, but you’re not like...actively pursuing him.  And he and I never dated, and I have basically the same relationship with Ben as I do with Paul.  And I mean…did you really want to go to prom with your ex, anyway?”  

    She rolled back over, facing the ceiling again.  “I guess not” she mumbled sleepily.  “And she was kind of pushy about them going together.  I mean, ‘you have to ask me to prom’? Really?”  I chuckled with her, a half laugh, as we both began to fall asleep.  Catherine had indeed been aggressive in her insistence that Jack invite her to the prom.  Afraid of not having an iconic “promposal” to look back on and a magical night, she had turned to the only boy she knew wasn’t already committed to someone else—despite the fact that less than a year ago, it was expected that Jack would go with Bethany.  She had celebrated, weeks before, that everyone was to attend the prom with the dates they were “supposed to go with”, but no one had taken into account the fact that you weren’t “supposed to” go with your friend’s ex.  

    I thought back on my crush on Paul, and how Catherine’s words had given me time to get over it.  At the time, I had been grateful for the warning; I wondered if Bethany had received the same courtesy.  “Did they talk to you about it first?” I asked after a few minutes, “About the two of them going to prom together?”  But Bethany was already breathing heavily. 

    The next morning greeted us with sunny skies and fresh pancakes, the thick fog having vanished overnight.  “This place is enchanting”, Catherine announced as we walked to the beach, and who among us could disagree?  Reaching the edge of the shore, I closed my eyes and let the ocean wash over me like a wave of amnesia; I wanted to forget the bad and leave only what was good about us shimmering like magic; because only magic could pull me away from the sense of guilt at my friends’ heartache, and my own still-healing heart.  I focused on the water lapping at my legs, pulling the sand across my feet until I was buried ankle deep.  I wondered how long I would have to stand there for my whole body to be sucked into the shoreline.  

    “You did the right thing, you know”.  Catherine’s voice startled me, and I inhaled sharply  as I opened my eyes.  I turned to look at her, wondering what she meant.  “Bethany told me about your chat last night”, she clarified.  “You did the right thing, letting her think you and Paul are just friends.  She’s totally over Jack”.

    “Is she?” I asked, wondering if Bethany had shared all the details of our heart to heart with Catherine, or only the ones that involved Paul and myself.  

    “Just look at her”, Bethany instructed me, nodding towards the open ocean.  The boat-train had re-appeared on the water and Paul and Bethany were laughing as they tried, unsuccessfully, to clamor aboard.  “Does that look like someone who’s still in love with her ex?”

    I though Bethany looked as though she was trying to make Jack jealous; she kept glancing back over her shoulder at the shore, where Jack and Chunk had begun to build a sand castle.  “Sometimes I wonder”, I said, and Catherine looked at me quizzically.  “I wonder if backing off really was the right thing.”

    “Of course it was”, she said, then gave me a smirk.  “You’re the compassionate one.  You always do the right thing”.  I somehow doubted that she and I had the same definition of “doing the right thing”.

    “Well, every action has its equal, opposite reaction right?” I said, irked by the backhanded compliment.  “Did my “right” decision lead to someone else doing the wrong thing?”

    Catherine’s eyes grew cold and her face hardened.  “We all have our own powers, honey”, she said, “and we all have our own place.  It’s good you know yours”.  She turned and marched back up the beach to the half-completed sand castle and her boys.  If compassion was my power, I wondered, what was hers?  

    As soon as I had asked myself the question, the answer revealed itself to me; Catherine made you believe her when she said she loved you; she made you the perfect piece to complete her puzzle.  She had hand picked each of us, it seemed, for our powers and given us all a unique privilege, like knights at our own round table; and like Camelot, our weekend island home held us in a magical time loop, consisting only of the beach, the boat-train, and a sense of infinite friendship that washed away all memory of Sara, the love triangle, and everything else that didn’t belong within the sphere of happiness that had been cultivated in us.  I did not question it again.  

Instead, I let the shimmering magic of fake smiles and pretty lies seep in to me.  It was easier that way, to let myself walk through the dream and pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist.  I got drunk on salty breeze and high on the ocean, the feeling of floating, high because there was only sky above and a whole world of life below me.

    Being hit by the salt water spray on the ferry back from the island the next morning was like being awoken from a dream, that shining idealism fading away, but not completely.  It was as though the dream felt real enough, and reality felt dreamlike enough, that the two were nearly in the same state, both hazy with salty air and the shadow of laughter.  In the moments between sleeping and waking, the mind questions whether the last few days were real.  I try to hold on to the memory of the dream, the way the dream felt, but I remember so many specific details, remember the feeling of consciousness so well that the dream must have been real, and I’m only now waking into a new reality.  It’s like being in limbo, floating between two different planes of existence that collide momentarily, so briefly that no one would believe it without experiencing it, and the only thing that ever separates them is the salty mist coating my face and hair.

This new reality has no cardboard umbrellas or buttered pop tarts, trains on the water or boats on the tracks.  There are no honey moons here, although there are blood moons and blue moons.              There are new dreams within this reality, but the past few days, these seven people, are no more.  This reality has been put to sleep.