Summer in March

 “We were a bittersweet rainstorm in the middle of July. The kind where the rain is warm, and clothes get drenched, but no one minds because it’s beautiful to see something as simple as rain turn into a reason to smile. Our reasons to smile were the same reasons to sing and we were awful at singing--but that gave us a reason to smile. We let music fill the air wherever we went, and we sang words of heartache like they were gospel. The road was our church and the car was our sanctuary. We prayed to feminist gods and swore like sailors. Our religion was teenage rebellion and our worship was to party every Friday night. We were the friendship of the century until…we weren’t.” I scribbled these words down in my journal and leaned into the headboard of my bed. I picked up my phone and saw the number 2:23 am stare back at me. It’s been a while since I thought of my high school best friends--Kyra and Sarah. It is a truth of life that friends grow up and outgrow each other but just for tonight, I want to relive a friendship that I have long since forgotten about.

I set down my pen and take a break from my nostalgic self-loathing to look around at everything I left behind in my naked bedroom. I packed almost everything I owned and drove it two hours away with me to college at the end of summer two years ago. I only left a desk and a bed to accompany the memories about this town that I have since forgotten. My hand extended to the back-left corner of my closet and I brought down a large box with the words “Just the Three of us” in all caps scribbled on the side. I coined the name for the three of us as “Just the Three of us” due to our lack of additional members making the trio just that--a trio.

We spent the summer of 2017 joined at the hip. Kyra was somewhat of a spiritual leader for the group. She was a year older than me and seemed wise beyond her years. She was always reminding me and Sarah what it meant to live and grow. A smirk appeared across my face when thinking about all the benefits we got to reap due to her pretty privilege. Memories of sneaking into nightclubs flood my mind before I switch my attention to a picture of me and Sarah. She was adventurous, eager, and charismatic. Yet, she always had a driving force in her to look for the next fight. If there were ever anyone to bump into us, she would quickly let out a “watch where you’re going,” or her personal favorite, “bitches really don’t know how to walk these days.” I began to open the box and reached inside for a gallon Ziplock bag with the words “Summer in March” written on it. “Oh… to go back in time,” I say to myself longing for one more night of peace, rebellion, and no consequence. Being friends with those two was like skinny dipping in December--vulnerable, freeing, and cold as hell. Just for tonight, I want to relive everything I tried to forget. I grabbed my keys and made a swift escape to the front door with the Ziplock bag in hand. The cold December air greeted me as I made a break for my car.

“It is so hot today,” Kyra said fanning herself while the July sun turned my house into a personal sauna.

“Yeah I saw on Twitter we have like 20 years to get our act together before global warming causes natural disasters and stuff.”

“People are so selfish,” Sarah exclaimed churning her face into an unfavorable expression. I always told her that her spirit animal ought to be a bull because she was oddly strong and scared the bejesus out of me. Nonetheless, it was too hot to stay in the house and we started to brainstorm places to go.

“McDonald's?” Kyra suggested. This meant that we were going to have to scrape together all the quarters that fell under her driver’s seat to get $1 dipped cones. We always traded big smiles and apologetic words to the person at the first window for having to count our quarters and dimes and would drive away laughing hysterically. McDonald's to us was simply a place of big laughs and soft-serve ice cream.

I pulled into the Mcdonald's drive-thru hoping to remember what it felt like to be a part of a whole. When I met the first window, I paid with a debit card instead of quarters. It feels wrong to accept only one ice cream cone instead of three. The dashboard flickered the time 2:56 am as I pulled out of the drive-thru and turned into the parking lot and found a spot close to a streetlamp. We used to make fun of these people--those who hung out in Kent, Mcdonald's parking lot. My mom would constantly tell me to stay away from these people, they’ll turn me into a “weed addict.” I would laugh and tell her that weed is only a gateway to the pantry--not addiction. The ice cream isn’t as sweet as I remember anyway, and the half-eaten cone won’t be missed. I toss the cone and make my way to Highway 18 towards Auburn--the second stop on my list.

I took the same exit that we always took and headed to the railroad tracks in Auburn. The hum of the car came to a halt when I took my keys out. The cargo that is loaded onto the trains is covered in graffiti. These tracks have been abandoned for a while but there is still a thrill left from walking on them. The rigid marks of spray paint covered almost every part of the trains making the 3 am railroad feel like an art gallery. My eyes traced every drip of paint from start to finish, observing the scribbled letters as if they were the Mona Lisa. Slowly, with one foot in front of the other, I marched down the tracks getting further and further away from the car. I observed the work of artists who tagged these trains and wondered if they made this art because they were at their highest or if they made it because they too were at their lowest. My feet found themselves at a stop when I could no longer see the car. I laid down and admired a different art gallery; the stars. I wonder if God made the stars at his lowest or at his highest.

“Do you ever think about dying?” Kyra said coming off the high of the joke that came before. The question hung in the air for a moment. It was September of 2017 and the spirit of summer slowly began to fade.

“Of course,” Sarah and I agreed unanimously. There was a burst of laughter that came from taking such a serious question so lightly. We were laying side by side on the abandoned tracks, looking at the stars. I wondered about all the nights we spent laughing at such heavy-hearted questions. Days and nights disappeared when we were together, it was only a jump from one joke to the next. We were truly an unstoppable force that would laugh in the face of whatever life thought could take us down. We were so young, there was never good in the world, there was just us than everyone else. We were a constant echo chamber of our bad thoughts that manifested into fun adventures with mental repercussions. We made fun of ourselves and we made fun of the world--how could we do anything different in a world where we only saw hate? We would stay there all night, in the same place. Waiting for a train that was never going to come.

I hardly noticed when the stars started to disappear, and the sky began to brighten. The sun had not yet crossed into the horizon and the morning dew began to dampen everything around me. I was always told that I have an awful sense of time and direction, but I like to think of it as my own built-in device for getting lost and never taking the world too seriously. I picked myself up off the floor, half expecting to see the other two next to me laughing and whispering. Telling me that life goes by too fast to cut our time on the tracks short. Yet, to no surprise, there was no one else there. I made my way back to the car and quickly got the heat going. I hate the cold and I hate being alone. The dashboard now read 5:48 am proving once again I can always find a way to lose track of time. I turned to view the passenger seat and reached for the Ziplock bag I had brought from home and began to unpack it.

I scattered the contents of the bag on my lap and began to examine them one by one. I held up each photo before moving to the next, I read every faded movie ticket. The rest of the box at my house is just filled with sweatshirts of school events and sports tournaments we had attended together. That was the stuff I cared about, I hadn’t really thought of any of these photos or tickets in a long time. This was the stuff I need to let go of. I still had one more memory left to relive. I let the memory play over in my head on the 15-minute drive back to Kent.

“What doing tonight?” I asked half expecting Sarah to reply with the usual ‘a bottle of wine is calling my name’ gig.

“I have idea!” Kyra said putting the car in park.

“What doing?” For some reason, we thought it was hilarious to speak in incomplete sentences.

“Do you want to know what summer feel like?” The grammatically incorrect question darted out of Kyra’s mouth like she had a wild card up her sleeve. It was March of 2018 summer had long since come and passed leaving behind only faded tans and good stories with bad punch lines. Surely, March was no July and the cold weather was no sunny Saturday evening. “A friend taught me this trick,” Sarah and I looked at each other confused. I questioned how any trick could bring back a glimpse of summer. “Okay first, we need good music. Next, we’re going to roll down all the windows and blast the heat.” I could tell that Sarah was hanging onto her every word and honestly, I was too. I longed to feel the happiness I had felt the summer before. The type of happiness that feels like the purest form of peace. I wanted to feel invisible yet seen. Invisible to the world and only existing in the instances I wanted to exist in. The summer before I was able to check in and out of reality as I pleased with no consequence.

My eyelids began to grow heavy and I made my way back home. I swiftly took my exit and began to drive towards the rural part of Kent. I had a friend in elementary school who had a mini landing strip in her neighborhood that was accessible to both planes and cars. I drove into the entrance of the Crest Airpark neighborhood and positioned the car in the middle of the landing strip. The dashboard now read 6:11 am and the sun was beginning to finally rise. In front of me was a long strip of flat grass that seems to go on forever. What was normally used as a safe way for planes in the area to come and go will be my sanctuary for today. I rolled down the windows one by one and began the blast the heat, just as Kyra had suggested years before. I put on the same song we had years ago and took out the Ziplock bag and carefully placed each momentum on the dashboard. My foot met the gas and I propelled myself forward into the strip of nothingness.

There were freedom, peace, and happiness counting on Kyra’s trick to work--and it did. We were mesmerized by these simple steps that brought back a scrap of what we had longed for--the best summer of our lives. The song that we chose was none other than Mercy by Brett Young. This was the song we constantly had on repeat for most of the summer. We stuck our heads out the window like dogs and barked the words handcrafted by Brett at the top of our lungs. “If you’re going to break my heart just break it” Sarah belted out the lyrics. Pretty soon we all joined in a beautiful off-key, tone-deaf symphony. Words fell off the lips of those who knew true heartbreak and dared the world to give them another. We let the universe melt away just for a moment and sunk into the present. There was no past nor future, there was just summer in March.

“and if you’re going to take your shot then take it,” I sang letting the warm air hit my face as all the memories of my hometown flood over me. The photos that were once on my walls flew out the window of the car and joined the wind in a dance of defeat. I became invisible to everyone but myself and only existed in the instances I wanted to. I sped down the landing strip while a dusty pink and faded purple filled the sky. Pieces of paper that once meant so much to me flew past my face and I finally let go of my hometown friends that used to mean so much to me. It was then that I figured it out--God made the stars at his lowest and made the sunrise at his highest. I let the memory of that night in March replay in my head I relived every second of it to the end. I had my very own summer in March, in December. When the song finished, I took a sharp inhale of air and choked back tears as I slowed the car to a stop. I lost myself in a world that I created, one where they and I could exist together. I got a grip on reality and let my hands guide the steering wheel and found myself on a fast track home.

“You haven’t been yourself lately. What’s going on?”

“I think I need to get out of here,” Sarah stopped her sentence to meet my concerned eyes, “this town isn’t doing anything for me.”           

“Of course, it’s not, this town does nothing for anyone. It’s glooming and depressing, and the people here think America is God’s favorite country--”

“When it’s clearly Switzerland--”

“Obviously, God loves neutrality! Anyways that doesn’t mean that this place is awful…it’s sort of beautiful. It’s a haven for the ignorant and we, my fair lady have been crowned arrogant!” My attempts to cheer her up did nothing to change the seriousness of the situation.

“Do you ever get tired of making all the jokes?” Sarah had a way of turning stone-cold mid-conversation. I guess when I made everything a joke, she had to find something to let me know when to knock it off. “I mean seriously what do you want to do with your life?”

“I don’t know but I do know I never want to take life this seriously! I mean come on we mope around and call Kent the devil’s bitch, but I thought it was all in good fun.”

“I mean it when I say that I hate it here. I want to be somewhere warm… No maybe a cabin in the woods. No. I want to be--I don’t know, I just know I don’t want to be here. I mean it when I say that I hate it here.”

I took my keys out of the ignition and wiped the stray tears that soaked my cheek. I walked slowly up the driveway to my house and unlocked the door leaving the December cold that I have grown fond of behind. Tiptoeing I made my way up the stairs and swung a left at the top. Slowly I crept towards my room, careful not to alert the dogs. I then stood in exhaustion in the middle of my gutted bedroom.

I still have the pictures of Sarah and me as babies. Halloween and sleepovers, Sunday school, and graduation. She didn’t take any of them with her when she left. She was serious about exploring the world, I always knew her calling was beyond our freshman dorm room. I often question what happened between Sarah and Kyra, I always assumed she left her the same way she left me; without saying goodbye. I’d like to think she’s somewhere out there swearing like a sailor and praying to the feminist gods for me. Kyra and I now keep our conversations short and light during our occasional visits to each other. We both know our small talk is nothing compared to what we left on the tracks. We were always waiting for the train that would take us out, but I never thought it would come. My hate for this town began shortly after Sarah left, I now see why she hated it here. We created ghosts of ourselves in this hometown. There was no longer an option to create who we were going to be when there was a memory haunting us on every road. I got cozy under the blanket and pulled out my journal once again, my eyelids could barely keep themselves open when I started to scribble down my final thought. “You didn’t have to say goodbye, I now know why you left.”