Small Falls

I remember the laughter that rang throughout the walls of the swimming hole. A little secret place my friends and I went to each summer right up until the leaves started falling down around us, warning us that it was no longer the season to be swimming outdoors. In a little county in Maine called Franklin County, sat a swimming hole known as Small Falls. 

My friends, Billy, Jane, Derek, Lokas, and I spent almost every waking hour of our fifth-grade summer there. It was the summer of 1989 and it was the best summer of my life. Splashing in the shallow area and taking a dare from the others that went against our mother’s wishes and risk our tiny bodies hitting the force of the waterfall as we swam closer and closer into the deeper end; where teenagers jumped off the cliff and were engulfed into the water. Stirring up sand on the bottom end that not even the grown-ups could touch with their feet.

The smell of salty water hitting our nostrils as we panted, running up the rocks until we reached the edge of a cliff ready to jump just like the teenagers did. But we never actually jumped. Too afraid — as little kids were — of the unknown, that was lurking down at the bottom of that swimming hole. 

It’s 2019 now and every one of us has grown apart. Billy has two daughters with his husband Jerwill, Jane is pursuing her career in California as a director, Derek is traveling the world, non-stop like he always wanted to do. And Lokas is happily married to his wife Lucy and is expecting a child in December. As for me, I moved to Massachusettes and became a lawyer. Not the best job but it pays the bills. Alone and depressed and checking up on my old middle school friends on Facebook, I wanted to rekindle those feelings we once had. I planned a group meeting here at the Small Falls and they all agreed. 

It’s a chilly, windy, October day and it looks like I am the first one to arrive. I stay in my warm, familiar, 2018 Nissan Murano and wait. Ten minutes go by and I am tired of listening to the people talking on the radio. I climb out of the warm car and into the chilled air. I wrap my cardigan closer to my chest and walk over to the trail that leads to the water. Looking behind me to see if my friends had arrived yet, I decide to go down the trail and leave it up to them to realize where I had gone. 

The trails a lot more slippery then I remember but maybe that’s because it’s October and it had just rained the night prior. After I climb over the last rock, I am at the brink of the shallow end of the swimming hole. The waters murky and looks almost brown in the pale light. 

“Wasn’t the water a clear blue the last time we were here?” I hear a voice say behind me. I look over my shoulder and it was Jane. I smile up at her and shrug. 

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” I replied looking back at the water. Looking over at the waterfall I notice the water had a green tint to it. 

“Huh. Maybe our old eyes are seeing things differently now.” Jane says to me with a smile lighting up her small framed face. Her once long, blonde hair was now a brown pixie cut. It fit her so much better than the blonde ever did and that makes me smile back at her. “I guess so,” I reply back.

 She rakes her eyes over me and frowns a little. She crosses her arms and then says, “how are you feeling Bella?” She must see the depression etched into my face.

WHOOOOSHHH!

POW!

A spray of water hits my face and as I wipe it away I see a figure come up from the water. Jane starts laughing and I am confused as to why. What was that?

“Damn! Bad idea guys, I don’t recommend doing that.” A voice booms around us. It was Lokas. I smile and wave a hand at him. 

“How stupid can you be? It’s fifty degrees out Lokas!” I yell to him as he gets closer to shore. Lokas as a boy had long, wavy, black hair that came down to his lower back. He now sports a new cut, a fresher one, a short black hair cut that doesn’t hide his chiseled jawline or piercing blue eyes.  

“Hey, I thought since we never did it as kids that I would give it a shot.” He says, then he adds, “but I honestly remember this place being a lot prettier a lot…” He stops to look for the right words to use. 

“Dreamlike? Safe?” I say to him and he nods. 

“Yeah me too.” Both Jane and I say at the same time. 

The rest of the pack trickle in and we all look out at the place we once called our home. The beautiful things we saw as children were now gone. Replaced with what it had actually looked like. Adult eyes finally seeing the safety hazards around us, the creepy feeling that our parents got when we told them we were heading down to the swimming hole was now making a home inside our stomach, and the beauty of it that was once seen through children’s eyes were now gone.

 An innocence that we didn’t know we had, slipped away that day as we all walked back to our separate cars, bidding farewell to one another. Billy in a cute minivan, Jane in a hot red Nissan G-T-R, Derek in a little moveable camper, and Lokas in a Toyota Hylander Hybrid. We drove off in separate directions, leaving Small Falls behind us, a good childhood memory that we could look back on and ask ourselves exactly when did our minds switch into adulthood?