I’ve always hated the way dried grass feels on my skin. So
prickly and scratchy and hard. Dried grass was ugly too, yellow and brown
instead of cheerful green. But during summer, the field in which my friends and
I hung out was never able to receive hydration. The sweltering rays of the sun
soaked the life out of that field. Yet we still went there, to talk and sit.
This happened nearly every day of summer.
We only
stayed there when it was the four of us. Addie, Kelly, Georgia and myself. We’d
sit, and then either smoke or drink, depending on what Addie could sneak behind
her parent’s backs. The tiny bottles of rum Addie brought us were hardly enough
to get us drunk, but we still would lie back in the yellow, prickly grass,
dazed while we spoke of boys and summer while watching the endless blue sky.
Things
were ending for all of us. It was our senior year, and we’d all gotten accepted
into different colleges. Addie was heading down to South Cali—she would
definitely fit in there, with her glamour and all. Kelly was going east, to
Virginia. She’d received a design major, something she’d always worked hard
for. I was proud of her, I really was. But I didn’t want her to go. None of us
did. I had been accepted into a college up in Seattle. I never had much of an
idea what I wanted to do in life, other than to leave my small town behind.
As for Georgia,
she preferred to stay. She had chosen to attend the local community college to
stay close to her family. She’d always been the odd one out in the group. She
rarely drank, never smoked, and had a chipper, positive attitude that I just
wanted to smack out of her. She was innocent, with no real aspirations other than
to get married and start a family. Nothing was wrong with that, of course, but
that was a bit traditional for my tastes.
We had
a total of eleven days left with each other, probably forever. While we’d been
close high-school friends, it was a sort of silent agreement we’d made that we’d
drift apart. At first, we would forget to call on each other’s birthdays. Then,
the Thanksgiving invitations would get “lost” in the mail. And finally, phone
numbers would be deleted from our cell phones, after months of unanswered
calls. It was bittersweet, really, but we understood that the friendships we’d
spent four years building would only hold us back in the long run. It was a
matter of accepting, now.
As we
sat back and watched jets from the nearby airport fly overhead, we were
probably thinking the same exact thing.
Time
moves so damn fast.
“Look
at em,” Georgia said, her Texan drawl growing more apparent from the rum-spiked
Sprite she’d been drinking. “Those planes are going so fast.” Georgia always
became more giggly whenever she was drinking. It was kinda funny, especially
when any cute boy was around. Little hill-billy Georgia got her flirt on. This
was probably the sole reason she refused to drink unless we were here, in our
special field.
“They’re
cool,” I smiled, looking towards her freckled face and big blue eyes. She
really belonged in Texas. She was the cute little cowgirl with her cowgirl
boots and her worn-out jeans and her pigtail braids. Sometimes it was really
hard to tell she was about to go out into the big bad world of adulthood. She
was just the time of person I wanted to constantly protect, to hold her hand
and pack her lunch and tell her that everything was going to be alright, even
if it wasn’t. She was our little Georgia.
“I
wanna be a pilot.” Georgia said then.
It must
have been the alcohol—because I suddenly burst out in giggles. That triggered
more laughter from Addie and Kelly, of course. “Why?” I asked.
“Imagine,”
Georgia turned on her side, so she was looking at me. I watched her, silently.
Perhaps it was because she sounded serious. Georgia never acted serious. “You
could go where ever you wanted, whenever you wanted. You can see the world. You
can see everything. It’s…it’s like everything is boundless and wonderful and
perfect.”
I
watched another jet streak past. I couldn’t help but agree with her.
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