Letting

Letting

The Kid had just climbed out of the pool. The last couple seconds weren’t there, he wasn’t entirely sure how he got out of the pool but he was making his way, conspicuously, past his stand and around the corner. The basketball game stopped. Concerned murmurs rose from the hot and busy water. The Kid was white, an oddity on this side of town, but his blue lifeguard shorts put his whiteness in its place. He rounded the corner into the bathroom, unprepared for the familiar tepid reek he winced. In front of the sink he looked. 

The pool’s wall had done a number on the Kid’s forehead. Warmth trickled from a mangled slit just over his right eye, blood coagulated in his eyebrow, but that was while he was still on the pool deck. By now vivid rivers of red ran down his face onto his chest. The Kid now understood he was quite the sight, and took a minute to appreciate.

 Blood dries slow in the Florida heat, it keeps its sheen. The Kid’s whiteness was covered in vibrant glistening lines, they ran down his torso into his blue lifeguard shorts. He had a thought, “The American flag isn’t meant to be hung this way. Well… I guess this is an emergency.”

The Kid’s eyes rolled over. 

Back in bed. That last day of work was at least a week ago. Transitions make time so strange. Yesterday, he wanted to plan a camping trip. The idea was for his partner, work was over, their relationship was doomed as long-distance was never something he wanted to do. She had already offered to go with the Kid to New. But she always wanted to move to the mountains, and her dream had come true: into App. State, accepted and financed. The Kid refused to take that from her. He never told her that he didn’t want their relationship anymore, he decided the end was inevitable but never told her. 

Nonetheless, he didn’t think they ought not enjoy those last couple weeks before they were scattered. But, until two days ago he had never been fucked up; it was the first time he found a sink instead of a toilet. He put about an inch worth of bile and burger into an impressive sink basin before he started dry heaving. Aware of his blaspheme in house etiquette he tried to spoon out the refuse, but the host just wanted him horizontal. He sauntered back to find his partner, happy to see her on the couch he flopped onto her. She convulsed and the Kid rolled over the arm, onto the floor.

Needless to say he terrified her, and just last night he went to her house for the first time never to return. He cried home, just a short 5-minute drive, what was a solid sob resolved to a silent stream of tears. He had been letting a lot, the blood, the tears, feeling. The catharsis was exhausting, if it was even cathartic yet. That first transition from home, he remembers, demands the shedding of your comforts, routines, stability. 

The Kid stepped out of bed, and made for the bathroom. That morning ritual, the shower, shit n’ shave, the foundation of his existence, even held up at this time. He was halfway through that melancholy when the malaise took hold. He knew that something waited for him next week, but it was like looking towards the crest of a hill, he had to get there to see. He had been to New twice, but he lacked peers, community, he couldn’t have been THERE yet.

He ate… the Kid doesn’t remember. He wanted to see an old friend, they hadn’t seen each other in years. The Kid and her went on something like a date before he got with his fresh Ex-, but he wasn’t expecting anything. 

She cancelled. 

He went to his best friend’s house. They sat on the back porch, those Florida afternoons are unforgiving. They basted in their sweat, like so many years before, talked and listened, neither spoke of what lay in store, but of politics, histories, and games. Finally, they got to the future. They simply didn’t know, it was, like they all are, an uncertain year. 

“Is it a good thing that we graduate as the administrations change?”

“Well they’ll only be changing come January, we have no idea that change is going to be.”

“But God, isn’t the uncertainty palpable? And paralleled between us and the system we inhabit, in some awkward way, are we more of a reflection of the system than others?”

“Yes and No, respectively.  We do get to participate in this one, I hope that that counts for something.”

The Kid spent the whole afternoon there, caked in his own dried brine. They hugged as they parted ways, knowing that this was the last time that those people, or versions of them would never meet again. He went home. He was too unsettled to eat, he bathed. Idling around his house when his old friend texted him. 

They went on a drive, off into the country. Down those old clay roads on the way up to Georgia. It’s hilly land, in the middle of the night there was only the red drag in front of you, and the moon and the stars that peeked over the next crest. Then down again into the dark, to go back up the bumpy, washboarded roads. At the crest of a hill there was a snake stretched comfortably over the road. “Oooo, a snake!” They drove over it, the Kid was sure not to put a tire over him. He couldn’t help himself. He stopped the car, and got out. The moon cast a spirited glow in the cloudless night and they sat on the back of the boxy Vo, sharing a smoke. The cottonmouth watched them and they watched it.

 She didn’t want anymore and the Kid’s friend crept back into the car, swiveling toward the side of the trunk to avoid direct confrontation with the viper, and slipping soundlessly to the ground. She wasn’t fond of snakes. The Kid decided to wait and burnt his smoke to the filter, staring a few minutes longer. He shattered the stillness by jumping off the trunk and the cottonmouth coiled. The Kid was wary, but he knew the snake didn’t want to waste its venom here. He backed up to the car door, and swung it open and dropped himself into the seat.

“I hope we didn’t bother him too bad, how about you?”

“If that snake moved, I’d’ve been bothered blue.”

“Oh, well, I gave him a decent scare for you then.”

The Kid started the car, and they descended into the next trough, now another hill away from home.