literature

Secret Beach

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I dialed his number for what I knew would be the last time.  There was no answer and no voicemail, only an endless ringing.  I didn’t need him to pick up; between my memories and what-ifs, I was already puttering around his kitchen in the summer of ’09.  

“At one point I’m going to make you a celebratory breakfast,” he declared, his grey eyes devouring the sun that crept cautiously through the kitchen window.  

I sipped at my glass of water for something to do.  “Why?  What for?”

“To celebrate your arrival.  You’ve been here for four days already.  Actually, I expected to see you at the big party last night.  Why didn’t you come?”

I knew what party he was referring to and swirled the ice in my glass until I heard the soothing clink of solid against solid.  The night I first arrived, Lucas had told me excitedly of Bassmentality--the best underground party in the dregs of Toronto.  I desperately wanted to attend, but he neglected to tell me when it was happening.  The last three nights, my sleep had been laced with dreams of my body bending to the beat of the bass.  “I would have loved to be there...but you didn’t invite me.”

“I didn’t?  Oh, I thought I did...”

I shook my head and tugged at my blue pajama top, willing it to look better than it ever could. “No, you didn’t.”  The finality tasted sour on my tongue.

“Well there’s a bonfire at Secret Beach if you’re interested.”

As much as I wanted to party with Lucas, a bonfire seemed like a terrible idea.  My mother had burnt me so many times as she chain smoked her cigarettes throughout the years.  The glowing ash, I knew, was only the muted sting of fire.  “I don’t much like fire,” I confessed.

“Fire is beautiful.”

“I’m scared of fire.”

“Well I promise we won’t throw flaming tennis balls,” Lucas said, sweeping his hands through his golden hair.  

I smiled at his remark and wondered if, on other occasions, there were in fact flaming tennis balls being thrown across the beach.  I imagined they looked like shooting stars, arching majestically across the world and landing, extinguished, in Lake Ontario.  “Okay,” I found myself saying. “ What time?”

“I have to go run some errands today, so I probably won’t be coming back here.  Meet me at my friend Jeff’s house around eight. He lives on Joseph-Dugan Street.  Just walk down Woodbine and turn left on Queen. House number is 39.  You’ll come across it eventually.”

Before I could respond, Lucas was gone, whisked away by his need to buy alcohol.  I stumbled happily into the living room and scrambled to write the directions down before they leaked through the cracks of my mind.  Everything was coming together and it felt better than sleeping tangled in blankets or watching flowers bud in the spring.  I wrote with care, treating the directions as my map to happily ever after.

The clock hollered at me with urgency when 7:30 p.m. arrived.  I shoved my feet into a pair of worn down flats and stepped breathlessly onto Woodbine.  As eight o’clock approached, I worried I wouldn’t find Jeff’s street in time and that my night of adventure would sail into the lightless reaches of dashed dreams.  I felt like I was chained to a cinderblock and thrown into the sea.  I was sinking, and every step was a futile attempt to break the surface and drink the air.  

There it was, staring me down; the old, blue street sign I’d been longing for.  39 Joseph-Dugan was a large, modern house in the heart of the beaches.   I could finally breathe.  I knocked on the oak door, all of my nerves sick with the need to capture the essence of the events to come.  Lucas appeared in the doorway and ushered me inside the hungry house.  Its marble organs sparkled with flecks of granite beneath a Victorian chandelier.  “Glad you found your way here.”

“No trouble at all,” I said, my lungs still burning from rushing along Queen Street.  

We walked down the esophagus and fell into the house’s belly.  It was filled with a dozen faces who didn’t know me.  “You can sit anywhere you find comfortable,” Lucas told me.  I did.

The discussion only reached my ignorant ears in waves.  I listened half-invested, to the prattle, the slurred wisdom, and the idle gossip.  It was of little importance to me until the subject of  Lucas’ escapades bobbed enticingly on the waters of conversation.  “I can’t believe you macked Saddle Bags!” Charles exclaimed, adjusting his suspenders and pulling his girlfriend into his arms.  “Saddle Bags!” He emphasized.

Charles was Lucas’ best friend and enjoyed poking fun at him.  Charles was a handsome guy.  His eyes were a soft blue and at six feet and two inches, he stood almost as tall as Lucas.  “Molly doesn’t have ‘saddle bags,’ Lucas said defensively.  “She has a fantastic ass.”

“She does have saddle bags,” Anna chimed in, her body molded to fit Charles.’  “What do you see in her?”

“I’ve had a crush on Molly since grade twelve,” Lucas admitted.

The room drew a shocked breath at the news.  It bit at my ears, trying to burrow through my head and into my chest.  I swatted it away like June mosquitoes and waited impatiently for the night to continue hobbling by on slow toes.  When the monstrous house regurgitated us into cars and onto bikes, I was grateful.

The smell of car freshener was nauseating.  I suffered, zipping through unlit streets in the company of two girls whose faces I knew well from Lucas’ photo albums.  Robyn, the driver was a fair skinned girl with slender limbs exposed to the summer.  She turned up the radio and sang loudly.  As she bounced in her seat, her blonde curls did a dance of their own.  Renee, the girl sitting with her hands folded in her lap beside me, was much more reserved.  She quietly mouthed the lyrics that blared through the speakers.  

We sped through the streets so quickly that I couldn’t hope to read the signs we passed.  I felt as though we were going warp speed through a sedated city.  My father once told me that I ought to always be aware of my surroundings, but this was different.  This was a night drunk with impulse.  I closed my eyes, afraid to break down and say ‘I am a bit afraid to be here.’

Robyn parked her Jetta in front of a dying breed of convenient store.  The lights of the 711 flicked in Morse code to tell us we were leaving civilization behind.  The three of us clamored up a grassy hill until we were staring into the stone face of a large, brown building.  “Welcome to the water treatment plant,” Robyn squealed delightedly.  She pulled out a pack of cancer sticks, lit one, and held it to her yearning lips.

We walked past the gothic building to find Lucas, Jeff, Charles, and Anna sitting stoically in the earthy field.  Lucas’ cigarette hung loosely from his thin lips.  The toxic smoke twisted in the air around him, reluctant to let him go.  Leaning back against the purple sky, he looked worn down, foolish, and wise all at once.  I sat beside him and stared up at the cosmos, hoping to blend into the burnt out scene.  

When the last cancer stick was choked out in the blades of grass, Lucas stood up and led the way to a chain linked gate whose spires pierced the sky. Lucas and Jeff forced it open violently.  The gate clattered in protest as Lucas disappeared into the obscure lot beyond.  Charles followed him in, signaling for the rest of us to follow suit.  “Gather what you can,” Lucas instructed as I entered the graveyard of abandoned wood.

Not wanting to disappoint, and hoping to be of some use, I began collecting as much of the neglected wood as I could carry.  I felt the unexpected relief of pressure as blood ran down my forearm.  My eyes followed the stream of blood to the spot where a defiant nail tore my skin.   I welcomed the tear; it would be my only proof that my dream had come true when I woke up to Tomorrow’s sun.  I adjusted the wood beneath my arms and followed Lucas back through the defeated gates.

We were heading towards a large cliff.  “You don’t have to carry that much, Ava!” Lucas said as he looked back at me.  

I was happy for his concern as we plodded towards our destination, but I shook my head.  It was a conversation I refused to have; I wanted to be strong.  I needed to be.  “I’m fine, Lucas,”

“Okay then...we’re throwing these off the cliff,” he told me.

I was alight with curiosity, but refrained from asking any questions.  I figured I’d get my answers before the hours withered into morning.  I threw my wood over the cliff and waited for further directions.  None came.  Instead, everyone threw themselves into the uncertain darkness of the forest that grew out of the cliff face.  I was left to my own devices, looking out, amazed, over a motionless crevice of Toronto.

My palms coated themselves in a light sweat as my feet acknowledged their lack of familiarity with the steep terrain.  Everyone else had the rocky edges of the cliff tattooed on their soles.  Lucas was already half way down to the beach when he called up to me.  ‘Just slide,’ the world whispered.  The trees grabbed at my face with their gnarled hands.  The rocks chomped at my canvas shoes in their best attempts to trip me. The soil was polluted with spores of hopelessness that I disturbed with every step I took.  They invaded my senses and depressed me.   I could hear deep voices below me, but in the slanted forest I felt disconnected and alone.

My knees were clumsy, but my feet were determined and steady.  Upon exiting the forest, the breeze sweeping over the beach serenaded me, depositing sand in my shoes as it passed. The water was a cold black colour, save for the vain moon hanging low to admire its reflection in its aquatic mirror.  “Red moon rising,” I mused, distracting Lucas from the fire he had just put together with the pilfered wood.

“Gorgeous,” he replied as he and a dozen other faces watched its ascension.  

‘As surreal as the rest of the night,’ I thought to myself.  I paced the beach, scrambled up a maple tree, then back down in ill-contained excitement.  I eventually settled down on a relatively flat rock and watched Lucas keep building the fire until it became something beyond my expectations.

On the way to the beach, I imagined a fire that bowed at my feet.  The fire before me rose to great heights, crackling my name as it grew.  It kept chanting ‘Ava’ until my eyes darted back and forth in uneasy paranoia.  The flame showed no mercy in its taunts.  It climbed up from its bed of sleeping wood, reaching out to steal my deepest secrets with its hot arms.  I redirected my attention to Robyn and Anna who were whispering in their secluded niche—anything to keep from staring at the elemental beast before me.  

Lucas shuffled along the beach, his sandals long since left behind, and sat beside me.  My heart rate spiked and the goblin fire knew it.  It burned through my eyes and scanned the topography of my thoughts for the secret that weighed most heavily on my mind.  “No!” I heard myself scream.  No one else noticed; the fight was going on inside me.  The fire was going to put my desires on a glorious display in its vile embers.

I bit my tongue as I watched two figures embrace in the blaze.  I wanted to stand—run—but my body was plastered to the rock, forced to watch the sardonic flames.  “You look like you’re in a trance, Ava.  Relax.  Do you want a sip of my beer?”

“Yes please,” I answered, happy for the spell to be broken.  The can of Molson was still ice cold--the only protection I had from the intrusive flame.

I didn’t realize how thirsty I was until the beer ran down my throat.  I was reluctant to return it to Lucas.  I wanted it to numb my heart as it had numbed my hands.  When I attempted a second sip, Lucas confiscated it.  “You can’t get drunk, Ava.  My mom expects you home at midnight, remember?”

My entire body revolted at the reminder.  I didn’t belong on Secret Beach.  I belonged in a cage—where I spent every night.  I had a curfew and he did not; we were from two different worlds and there was nothing I could do to change that.  “I remember.”

The party raged on as I brooded.  Jokes were being tossed around lightly, and I wanted to find my way into the laughter.  “How about some blonde jokes?” I suggested.  In the light of the flame, I realized I was the only brunette.  I blushed until my cheeks were hotter than the bonfire, and hid like a child behind Lucas’ frame.  He smiled sympathetically at me.  

I sat for a long time in my self-pity, feeling hollow and inadequate.  I was determined to speak again in an attempt to muffle the thoughts that impede on a static mind.  I tapped Lucas on his right shoulder to get his attention.  “I have a joke,” I said meekly.  “But I can’t say it because it needs to be said by a guy...”

“What is it?”

“What’s strong enough for a man but made for a woman?”

“Secret deodorant?” he answered. I smiled.  That was my answer when I had first heard the joke from my friend Jared.  

“No, the back of my hand.”

Lucas laughed.  His genuine, unguarded happiness was beautiful.  I silently thanked Jared and watched as Lucas retold the joke.  Everyone else joined in on his laughter and I felt slightly redeemed.  Perhaps the night was indeed magical.  “Hey, it’s eleven, Ava.  You should probably head home,” Lucas warned.  Perhaps not.

“Goodnight, Lucas,” I said, heading for the sideways forest with sand between my toes.  

“Do you need me to walk you out of here?”

“No,” I said solemnly.  “I’ll be okay.”  As much as I wanted his company, I didn’t want to break him away from the gaiety.  

The next morning the sun was up and we were in his kitchen once more.  I was unsure if the night before had ever happened at all.  Did it?  Yes.  The nail.  My wrist.  The cut was still there, a brilliant red mark on my olive skin.  “So my mom said she heard us both come inside at midnight.  I told her it was impossible because I stayed out...but she swears she heard us both,” Lucas told me as he cooked scrambled eggs.

“Oh, I brought a guy home last night,” I said nonchalantly.  

“WHAT!  WHO?”  He was shocked, curious, and his intense reaction caught me off guard.

“I’m kidding!  I came home alone.”  

His facial muscles relaxed.  “Oh,” he muttered to himself.  “I was worried you didn’t know your way back...”

“I didn’t know my way back,” I confessed.  “A streetcar driver thought I was drunk...I guess because I looked lost.  He offered to take me as close to your home as possible and he didn’t even ask me to pay.  It was the 501, so it went right by Queen and Woodbine.  I got off there and walked.”

“Well it’s a good thing you got here, otherwise you wouldn’t be around for your celebration breakfast.”

The phone was still ringing when I pulled myself out of my reverie.  We were supposed to grab a beer.  I told him it was important that I see him—more important than Batman.  I suppose he didn’t hold Batman in very high regards.  

I hung up the phone and tucked myself into my makeshift bed.  I heard a series of heavy thuds and waited, expectantly, to see who had wandered into the basement.  “What are you doing?” my cousin asked me.  “It’s too early to sleep.”

“I’m just thinking.”

“About what?” she interrogated.

“A place…Secret Beach,” I said, revealing only half the truth.

“I’ve been there!” she exclaimed.  When I looked at her, I saw myself.  We looked so similar, but we were fundamentally different.  She made the features we shared look like they belonged on Secret Beach.  She was fifteen and a trouble maker, so I knew it was true; she had found her own way and her own adventures at the beach.  “That place serves up magic!”

“No, Rachael, it doesn’t.  It serves reality; it only tastes like magic…”

I turned away from Rachael and waited for her to leave before I dared think.  I had loved Lucas for five years…and it didn’t matter.  I was never going to hear him speak or laugh again.  I was never going to see him again—not in a coffee shop, not for a beer, not on Secret Beach; not even in the summer of ’09 if I could keep myself from thinking about it.  It was the end of an era.
Just a memory. Probably a boring one. Any critique or suggestions are welcome.
© 2012 - 2024 Hey-Ocean
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Mintamite's avatar
I love your descriptions. Beautiful.