Sarah and I sat outside the diner, milkshakes in hand— strawberry for her, chocolate for me. I never understood why people my age drank cold beverages when the weather dipped as low as 15 degrees. It made me feel like the sky was going to bend inward, grab me up like a rag doll and give me a good shake.
I thought about this as I sipped from my fudgy cup until my brain froze. I guess I liked milkshakes too much to care. Sarah drank her drinks too slowly and loved to forget that she even got one, instead just holding it in one hand and her phone in the other.
We got bored of sitting, so we started to walk to our spot: the abandoned golf course behind the library and bagel shop. I used to joke that this place would be some historical site someday—how a UFO would crash in the dry, yellowed fields, and we’d discover it and have our very own Clark Kent. I was a very bored kid. I was still bored, still a kid for a few hours, and still searching for some kind of superhero. Maybe I was destined to pull an Aaron Taylor Johnson move like he did in that one movie and just become a superhero myself. I had a feeling I’d look like an idiot in latex. At least I’d be doing something, though. I wanted so desperately to do something more than do whatever it is I do on a daily basis.
We filled our canteens with water before our trek, even though we’d barely drink a quarter of it since it was so freezing. Mine didn’t taste all that refreshing either—there must’ve been something in it because it had never tasted so something like it did that day. It was disappointing. Both water and the golf course were like blank sheets of paper, a liquid and physical abundance of emptiness. I didn’t want hydration and walking to feel different, but the atmosphere deemed otherwise. Sarah said the golf course and the water were all the same to her, so I guess she’s just ignorant (or maybe I’m just weird).
We scrambled through frost-laden grass, finally reaching the old gazebo we used to stargaze at. We stopped stargazing because I found a tick on my leg two summers ago, but we never stopped coming here—I just haven’t worn the shorts I had on that day since.
The next day was my birthday. I would be eighteen. As I sat on the bench in the gazebo, I wondered if my back would press against this bench tomorrow in the same way it did today. So, I asked Sarah. She rolled her eyes and told me that I was melodramatic. I quipped that I’d rather be melodramatic than old. She giggled and pulled out a tiny metal thing—a key. I asked her why she brought it, and she said, For carving, duh, as if that were obvious. She pressed the sharp end against the wood and drew a little heart, then some unfamiliar song lyrics. I never knew her music. I always assumed it was some weird artist, like the one that doesn’t speak a real language and had a thing with Jeff Buckley or, like, Pink Floyd.
She then plopped down next to me and handed me the key, digging it into my palm a little as if to force me to actually write something. So, I took the rusty thing and wrote out a message: This is the last thing I can write and still be considered ahead of my time. Tomorrow, I’m just another rusty nickel in a jar of pennies. No matter how hard I try to stand still, the world keeps on moving. There’s nothing I can do about it.
Sarah laughed at me again. She called me pretentious and noted how she could barely make out the words—my carving was far less elegant than my handwriting. I settled down back on the bench, ignoring her as I shuffled through my tiny satchel for fuel. We split a banana and stared at the clouds through the dirty, cracked glass. We got bored after ten minutes and started to walk back to the diner.
We’d wasted about an hour of the day already, and somehow, Sarah still had a half-full milkshake accompanying her. She looked at her phone, pouted, and looked at me. She told me her dad was on his way to pick her up because she had to be home for supper, and neither of us had our license, and she obviously couldn’t walk home because nothing in this godforsaken town was walkable. I said, Okay, see you tomorrow, and she just smiled.
Her dad pulled up with his truck and took her, and I just sat outside of the diner, hugging my knees to my chest in this weird, half-fetal position. I wanted to waste time again. I wanted another milkshake, this time with a bendy straw so I could chew it up. I didn’t know what that meant.
I finally succumbed to the cold (I called my mom and asked her to come get me). As I climbed into the passenger seat, I asked her if she remembered when she started chasing her youth instead of running from it. She laughed at me, ruffled my hair, and turned on the radio. I sat in silence, thinking of wishes to make. Maybe we’d have those pink-frosted sugar cookies from Walmart at home. Maybe we’d have rocks that fell from the moon in the backyard, all crushed up to look like the sprinkles I garnished my Ben & Jerry’s pints with. Or maybe, my next wish needed to be something real, like some sort of silent pleading between me and whatever else is out there in the intangible. So, I hoped that starting tomorrow, people would stop laughing at me. It made me feel foolish.
