The Big Ocean and the Big World

There is a fleeting moment that exists between a dreaming state and consciousness where all thoughts and problems have not yet entered the brain. Evelyn lives in this moment for a few seconds before the sunlight shining from behind the curtain forces her to open her eyes. As the beams envelop her irises the anxieties of her current life rush into Evelyn’s head and her heartrate increases a bit. 

            “Ev!” she hears from the kitchen. Her mom’s shrill voice sends a wave of nausea over her body. Or it might be from the four bottles of champagne her and her roommates drank last night. Evelyn rolls over and checks her phone. It’s only 10 in the morning, her mom wasn’t supposed to be there until noon. 

            Evelyn slowly makes her way out to the kitchen where she finds her mom loading the first of many moving boxes with Evelyn’s current life. 

            “I started putting kitchen supplies in here, if you want to take this and start on your bedroom,” her mom says while holding out a large cardboard box. Evelyn can only look at her and nod. She takes the box and heads towards her room. It hasn’t even been 48 hours since she graduated college and she’s already being ripped away from this apartment, this town, this life. 

            As she’s packing up everything from her desk, Evelyn must stop her stomach from emptying the contents of last night’s celebration when she finds a framed picture of her with her roommates. Girls who three and half year’s prior were strangers but have now weaved themselves to be not only a part of Evelyn’s life, but a part of her. She doesn’t know how she’s going to leave them. 

            After hours of packing and many tearful goodbyes, Evelyn and her mom start their drive back to her childhood home in Boston, leaving behind the apartment that she will never call home again. She watches the same trees out the passenger window pass by for hours and thinks about the life she is leaving behind. She also thinks about what awaits. Becoming part of the so called “real world” was never a top priority for Evelyn. She had followed society’s preferred path for young people through high school and college, but now what?  Even if she could get a job, which was not looking likely after her countless job applications had gone unanswered, Evelyn wasn’t ready. 

            Evelyn heads straight to her childhood bedroom upon arrival and curls up into a ball on the bed that her and her cousins would jump on during their annual New Year’s Eve sleepovers. She would spend this New Year’s Eve without them as all her cousins are grown up and spread around the world. 

            To pass time, Evelyn swipes through every app on her phone so long she nearly goes cross eyed. Behind her blurry vision, she sees a boy’s contact. A golden retriever like boy that she has known since preschool. They spent their high school years together, studying for their calculus tests and tasting their first sips of alcohol after stealing her mom’s white wine from the fridge. He might as well be a stranger now. This thought saddens Evelyn, and she decides to text the boy named Elliot.  “Ev! Dinner!” she hears from the kitchen before he replies, and she makes her way downstairs. 

            “So now that you’re home, what’s your plan?” her dad asks in between bites of her mom’s famous chicken parmesan. Evelyn slowly chews and swallows hoping her silence would go unnoticed, but she feels her parents’ eyes staring at her. 

            “I think I’m going to wait for the new year to start interviewing,” she says, already sensing the follow up questions brewing. Before either of her parents get a chance to sneak in another word, Evelyn asks to be excused. She retreats up to her room and checks her phone where she finds a message from Elliot. 

            “Hey Ev, long time no see! What’s up?” he says. 

            “Nothing much, just got back from school,” Evelyn responds. She puts her phone face down on her bed and stares at the ceiling for a minute or two before she hears the ding of a new notification.

            “Back for Christmas break?” says Elliot. 

            “No, actually, I just graduated,” Evelyn responds almost instantly. She doesn’t even have time to put her phone down before he responds. 

            “Oh congrats! I graduated from BU in May and decided to stay in Boston,” says Elliot. 

            “Oh wow, you stayed here?”

            “Ya, it’s not so bad here, Ev. Are you gonna stay?”

            “I don’t really know what I’m gonna do.”

            “That’s okay.” Elliot’s response lets Evelyn breathe a sigh of relief. Being excited and being terrified feel so similar that it is sometimes hard to decipher which emotion you are experiencing. But Evelyn is sure that for the first time today she is not terrified, but excited. The electrified butterflies that her stomach grew throughout this conversation encourage her to go out on a limb. 

            “So, what are you doing tomorrow?” says Evelyn. 

            “Nothing, why do you have something in mind?” Elliot responds. Evelyn thinks back to the times her, and Elliot would run around this city and suggests something she knows will make her feel young again. 

            “What if we go to the aquarium?” asks Evelyn.

            “You know all too well that I’m always down for that!” says Elliot. 

            Evelyn wakes up to her blaring alarm, unable to appreciate those few peaceful seconds she cherishes so much. But she’s okay with that today, because the little girl that lives inside of her can hardly wait to see the seals and penguins at the aquarium. 

            She doesn’t know exactly why, because her and Elliot were always close friends, but she feels the need to put extra attention into her appearance. Evelyn burns her ring finger curling her hair into big, bouncy waves. She draws her lipstick on slightly over her cupid’s bow and sprays herself with her favorite cherry scented perfume. She pulls on her knee high, black boots that she splurged on this fall and throws on an old coat on and heads downstairs. Before exiting, Evelyn peaks around the corner to make sure her parents aren’t around to interrogate her anymore. 

            Climbing into the passenger seat of Elliot’s Volkswagen, Evelyn is hit with a wave of nostalgia. They say that smell is the sense most associated with memory, and the aroma of Elliot’s car certainly takes her back to all the time they spent together. It’s not a car freshener or a cologne, it’s just him. 

            “You ready for this Ev?” asks Elliot. 

            “Absolutely!”

            As if they were still 13, Elliot teases Evelyn that they will never make it inside the aquarium if she wastes all her energy on the seals outside the entrance. Evelyn playfully shoves him and heads towards the entrance. 

            They spend time running their fingers over starfish, shells, and sting rays all the while catching up on the past four and a half years. Evelyn is astonished over how much she missed. They make their way up the spiral ramp that encircles a giant cylinder tank consisting of hundreds of different sea creatures. They pause for a second to observe all the different sizes and colors when Evelyn hears a familiar laugh. 

            “Look, he’s staring at you!” says Elliot in between giggles. 

            Evelyn directs her attention to the mid-sized fish right in front of her. It’s looking directly at her, as if it can read her thoughts. She tilts her head and thinks for a split second that she is jealous of this fish. How simple the fish has it. It lives in this enclosed tank; nobody ever expects it to leave and survive in the wild. The fish knows when it’s being fed, how to survive, and exactly what’s expected of it. For just that split second, Evelyn imagines how nice that would be. 

Elliot nudges her and snaps her out of the trance the fish was holding her in. Elliot and Evelyn continue walking up the ramp and the fish swims in the opposite direction. On the walk up the tank Elliot and Evelyn share more stories with each other and laugh so hard that Evelyn falls to her knees. When they reach the top of the tank, Elliot looks at Evelyn with a subtle sorrow in his eyes. 

“Let’s not let it go this long again,” he says. Evelyn must blink back the tears that have threatened to make an appearance. 

“Of course not, Eli.”

            Two more weeks pass, and Evelyn falls into the same routine of hanging out with Elliot and avoiding her parents’ questions. She can’t blame them for being concerned about her future, she sure is too. But the thought of moving on makes her so scared she feels sick, so the best thing she can think to do now is avoid the conversation altogether. However, tonight is New Year’s Eve and Evelyn’s parents are throwing a party with friends and family who she suspects are going to be lining up like paparazzi, trying to get an answer about Evelyn’s future. An answer that she just doesn’t have.

            Evelyn waits upstairs in her sparkly dress and black tights until she hears enough voices downstairs that she knows she must leave the comfort of her bedroom and join the party. Immediately she is greeted by guests who congratulate her on graduating college. She smiles and takes in the room. All around her are friends and family, some of which she hasn’t seen in years. Evelyn begins making her rounds. The presence of her family is not enough to soothe the dull ache in her stomach that reminds her everyday how behind she is in life. She sees her mom’s coworker approaching. “Hey, I heard you graduated, do you have a job lined up?” says the coworker.

            “Um, no I don’t,” Evelyn says while turning away. She then bumps into her uncle.

            “Welcome to the real-world kid, what are you gonna do now?” says her uncle. Evelyn’s heart starts to race while other guest’s approach. 

            “Ya, what’s the plan Ev?” her next-door neighbor asks. Evelyn’s hands are sweaty, and her breathing becomes shallow. She turns and bolts to the front door, grabs her car keys, jumps into the car, and drives off. Evelyn pulls over after a minute or two. What is happening to her? Tears roll down her cheeks as she continues to panic. She forces herself to take deep breaths. In, one, two, three…out, one, two, three. Finally, she has calmed down, but she can’t go back home just yet. There’s 2 more hours until midnight, she has time. Evelyn decides to head to Nantasket beach, a place where she would spend blazing hot summer days dancing in the waves and building sandcastles on shore. 

            Despite the cold weather, Evelyn takes her shoes off when she arrives and digs her toes into the sand. She walks down to the edge of the water, looks at the starry sky, and just breaths. Evelyn hears a tiny splash and shifts her attention down to the water. The moonlight illuminates the silver scales of a mid-sized fish just below the surface. It looks up at her for a bit and she is reminded of the fish at the aquarium that she envied. They looked so similar that Evelyn thought they might be the same fish. She wondered how the aquarium fish would feel to be in the ocean. Evelyn watches the fish swim back and forth many times before it dives off into the dark sea. The ocean may be dangerous, huge, mysterious, and unforgiving, but it’s so much better for swimming. A soft smile spread across Evelyn’s lips when she finally realizes she’s going to be okay out of her tank. 

            She makes it home just before midnight and is greeted with a loud roar that sort of sounds like “Ev!” She makes her way to the front of the crowd that is gathered around the TV watching New Years Rocking Eve. She joins her parents’ sides and sees Elliot and his family across the living room. She shoots him a smile and he winks back at her.  

            As the crowd in her living room counts down from 10 in between laughter and cheers, Evelyn wonders how she ever thought that college was all she had. She thinks about her future and for once she is filled with hope. A happy tear rolls down her cheek as the ball drops, and she is smiling.