Goodbye

The dark sheet of liquid rippled beneath our swinging calves. Miles or feet below us there may have been fish, or perhaps just more mud, sludging about. My feet dangled off the edge of the wooden dock, free in the exhilarating juvenescence of barefootedness.

The trees ringed around us, reaching up impossibly high into the atmosphere. In the past, this attribute had given the pond a feeling of safety and enclosure, but now I was suffocated. The pond marked the center of a framed gladiator arena. Our feelings were the warriors and the crowed cheered for them to fight to the death in golden togas. I didn't even know if my feelings would look okay in a toga.

The breeze blew her thick brown hair into her eyes. She didn't bother to brush it away, and enviously I wished I had a hair mask to hide behind. My legs grew a field of goosebumps under my shorts, but I sat in the feeling of coldness, knowing that I had been so accustomed to the cold once that it had seemed like the normal tempertaure, and therefore someday soon I would be acclimated to a lack of warmth again. I welcomed that ignorance of not remembering what the sun felt like.

I reached a few inches across the dock and those inches felt like universes. I let my hand fall on top of her hand, encircling my fingers around her knuckles.

"My parents are almost ready," she said.
"I know."
"The moving truck is packed and shit."
"Yeah."

Neither of us said anything then and we both looked down into the brown and green pond behind her house. The pond was filled with childhood summers and swimming and barbecues and secret telling and slumber parties.  It smelled like a pool of youth that had been wrung from our bodies like a sponge. A bird sang a few random notes in the trees and then gave up, sinking into despondent silence.

"Look, listen," I started.
"No, don't," she said.
"I just... I can't tell you how much I've grown since you moved here. I can barely articulate how special it's been and how much you've helped me. It feels like we were just getting started. It's hard to explain."
"So don't. This isn't goodbye. We're gonna write letters. You're gonna come visit me."

I nodded. My throat tightened and I felt all of my muscles contracting forwards. I swallowed my feelings, but a tiny tear percolated in my eye ball. I hunched inwards. Seeing this, she reached out sympathetically to me. In doing so her balance tilted towards the pond beneath us. One of her legs dangled lower and her protruding toe skimmed the surface of the water.

A small purple tentacle penetrated the sheet of liquid and waved around, as if it had eyes and could see. The tentacle encircled her thin bare ankle, ensnared her leg, and gave a strong tug. She yelped loudly as she was yanked foot first off the dock. Her hands scrambled to gain hold, but the wood was too wet and slippery. I screamed in fear and surprise and grabbed her arm as she was pulled into the water. Her clothes billowed in the slimy algae as her limbs thrashed.

The sea monster poked it's head above water. It was a giant fish head with five bulbous yellow eyes. It stared at me and smiled a toothy grin and then the tentacles ensnared my friend and pulled her underwater. Still holding onto her arm, I was yanked headfirst from the dock and I belly-flopped painfully into the pond.

We were both pulled under the surface so quickly I didn't have time to close my eyes in the mud. The sea monster was swimming faster than a car, if a car had been going at a sort of moderately high speed. I wrapped my arms around my friend and held on tightly. Down we hurtled, far away from her old house, from her backyard, from the moving van out front, from her parents who were maybe looking for us, from adulthood, from responsibility, from hope and growth and emptiness and broken hearts of the future. We passed reefs and cliffs and fish and old ladies in rocking chairs.

After days or minutes of being pulled under we landed with a thud at the bottom of the pond. The sea monster cackled and led us to a little yellow house, just big enough for the two of us to stay. There was a stone walkway leading to the cheerful little sanctuary. Kelp and seaweed grew affluently in the garden. A little plaster gnome greeted us from the mud as we were led inside.

Inside there were bookshelves and a tiny table and piles of stuffed animals and crafting supplies. The sea monster clanged the door behind us, leaving us to explore it ourselves. I yelped and ran round the room excitedly. She rubbed her arms where the tentacles had squeezed her too tight. Perhaps my protective clutch hadn't helped the strangle hold. Her eyes darted around the room, moving quickly underneath a furrowed brow.

"Isn't it the most beautiful little house you've ever seen?" I exclaimed joyfully, throwing a teddy bear at her.
"No..." She let the teddy bear hit her in the chest and fall to the floor. I danced in what I was now going to call the dancing room.
"Isn't this wonderful?" I cooed. "Now you don't have to move. Or, well, we're both moving, but you don't have to go away!"
"I, um, don't know..."
"This house has everything we'll ever need," I said.
"No, it does not."
"Okay, maybe it doesn't. But you're missing the point."
"Hmm."
"You can stay with me forever!"

She tried the handle on the door and looked out the glass window. There were no stars or moon anymore, and hardly any sounds besides my singing and the occasional monster's laugh. Darkened caves ate up all the sound around our precious clearing at the bottom of the pond. Outside our home we could see sea monsters and mermaids playing checkers on a rock, but I think they were both cheating. Eternity rose up above us through the darkened lake, past fish and frog bones to the mottled surface.

Dedicated to Kristen Ginn