Skeletons and Seashells

(This story was written January or February of 2007.)

Gaye is in my passenger seat, smoking pot with the window down. Cold air is filling the car so that I am starting to shiver, but I am not going to say anything.

Gaye should not be smoking. She does every sport our school has to offer and the principal recently announced that random drug testing could start taking place. Gaye shrugged this off, saying she doesn’t even wear make-up, why would anyone think she does drugs? She has these willowy lips that don’t naturally curve into anything. When she just stares, like now, she almost looks like she’s frowning.

“Cheer up, babydoll,” I say with forced joy, looking at her and then her joint. Her marshmallow puff of a mouth twists vaguely up, but she doesn’t say anything. She wraps her lips around it, and I turn away.

Neither Gaye nor I have ever had a boyfriend. For her, it’s because she’s a cute little girl who makes everybody laugh while nobody thinks she’s hot. For me it’s because I’m ugly. I’ve very much accepted my appearance: a forehead that somehow peaks rather than curves and lips that look more like a shriveled flower than anything else. Yet my unfortunate looks haven’t changed the fact that I want a boyfriend, just like Gaye wants a boyfriend.

Sometimes I think I don’t need a boyfriend, but just somebody. That leads to me thinking that I am in love with Gaye and the irony of her name. It’s only when she’s sleeping in my bed and she’s breathing and it’s steady, like nothing I’ve ever heard before. If you counted how long it took for her to breathe in, it’s the same for breathing out. So when she’s lying there, looking perfectly symmetrical in this calm modest way, I think that I want to kiss her. I could and she probably wouldn’t wake up. But these things last only for seconds, and then I remember who she is and I’m not attracted to her. It’s just those seconds.

“Cool. A beach,” Gaye grunts when we reach the final turn. I park the car and Gaye jerks the door open, bounding out and then giggling because her shirt has ridden up. She flashes me her pink stomach, pulls her shirt down, and starts walking towards the water.

“There’s no one here!” she calls out, looking up. “Maybe our lovers are hiding in the water.” Her voice is wrought with sarcasm and a strange accent and I feel like we’re on a treasure hunt.

It’s cold and the wind is sneaking through my clothes and I feel violated and freezing all at once. Gaye walks in front of me. She has this sort of walk where her feet look floppy. She examines the sky and our surroundings. I feel like I am waiting for her diagnosis. I walk towards the water. Gaye walks ahead of me and I stare at her butt, the bagginess of her faded jeans. She sits down in the wet sand, sinking slightly, and starts making sand castles. The wind is slapping me and it hurts and I want to get back in the car, but Gaye is just sitting there in the sand. She’s practically made a commitment to it by now. I’m sure she doesn’t even think about how sand all over her backside is going to affect my car. I want to hurl a sandball at her and giggle and pretend it’s funny but I don’t. I’ve had to deal with Gaye when something becomes fair but not in her favor and she gets hurt and small. It makes me love her sometimes, like the sleep thing.

I walk to the right and kick sand up with the toes of my shoes. It flies in the air and comes apart. Like Gaye said, the beach is empty. Understandable considering winter hasn’t yet ended. I glance back but Gaye is still constructing something. She seems to have forgotten why we are here. She does this sometimes when I need to go to the store to get something for school or dinner and Gaye becomes interested in something else and makes me stay by her side. I have to be there to laugh at her jokes.

The water is almost intimidating. It’s calm and I realize I’ve never really been to the ocean before. I wonder if the water is always this still; just a faint breathing motion ushers the waves in and out. It’s sort of inviting at the same time, like maybe I should slip in and swim, but a timid wave scatters across my sneakers and my feet get cold. It’d probably be better to stay on the surface, I think, like in a boat or something.

“Hey Gaye!” I shout down the beach. Her face looks tiny, scrunched, like it is just a head with knobs and holes and dots all in the middle. “Let’s get a boat someday!” I can tell Gaye is smiling because a smear of white appears. She smashes her sandcastle and then lays back. Now my headrest will be ruined, too. I look back at the ocean and follow the edge of the horizon down to my feet and back up again. I take a couple more steps into the sea until it is up to my knees, and stare into the dimming water. I can’t see my feet when I’m in this deep. It takes several minutes of me staring to realize that a face has floated into view. It’s gray through the water. Its eyes are big and black like a deer’s. A dead boy’s face has floated underneath me and my body holds still. I don’t scream, but my heart pounds and I wonder why this boy is in here. What did he think he could accomplish from swimming in the sea in such dull weather? I want a boat. I want a boat that Gaye and I can use on warm summer days and dive in waters of the right colors and swim underneath and pretend to be mermaids. The face stares at me and I realize it’s frowning.

“What were you trying to do?” I ask as its hands stagger over its stomach like it’s aching. I can’t decide if I should drag it out and call the police or just let it go. My unmoving limbs answer for me.

We’re at the beach because Gaye wanted a soul-mate boyfriend. Gaye said we should see a psychic, a psychic would know where we could find them. I laughed and Gaye pouted so I paid $30 for directions to a beach in the middle of winter. I don’t think I ever want to swim again. Bodies of water are lifeless.

Gaye approaches now. I see this out of the corner of my eye.

“Oh my God. Oh my God.”

She gets her phone out immediately because she knows something is wrong. This isn’t natural. She warbles into the phone and my imagination immerses itself in a world where nothing separates anyone, where this boy would still be alive.

Gaye leads me back to my car, her hand stiff and cold. We wait until police lights light up our peripheral and Gaye gets out to talk. She says I am shaken up.

I want a boat that Gaye and I can own together and we could ride seahorses and go shopping with sea dollars and then Gaye would fall asleep and she would breathe and that would be all we’d ever need.