Dead To You

38. it had to be you

It was further away than I thought. Seventy-two minutes away on foot, according to the Google Maps I pulled up on my phone after walking alongside the shoulder of the road for at least fifteen minutes and making significantly less progress than I expected to, and I was pretty sure that my heeled sandals were doubling that time, already feeling the raw blisters on my heels rubbing against the backs of my shoes and the tight, dull ache at the corner of one of my toenails threatening an ingrowth.

At this point, I didn't know what was causing more serious injury, the mosquitos swarming around my bare arms and down by the hem of my dress, or my hands accidentally smacking myself in an attempt to defend myself from developing another itching welt on my skin.

The light from the screen of my phone attracted even more of them as my thumb hovered over my mom's contact, considering if the probable grounding was worth a ride home or if I would be better off trying to get a hold of a cab—although I didn't exactly like the idea of some unknown person picking me up from my desolate roadside location, even if I technically did ask them to—and eventually decided that the responsible thing would be to call my mom and admit that I lied about having a ride home and seriously regretted that decision now.

I tried to brace myself for her inevitable anger, quietly giving my phone a small pat because she was definitely going to take it away again, and took in a deep breath. That was when I first noticed it, the mustiness lingering in the air, the scent of wet earth and drifting algae mingled with shedding pine needles, and for a moment, I could've sworn that I still detected the smoke from the dwindling bonfire that night, the beer drenched into my hair.

I slipped my phone back into my pocket and shuffled across the street to where the steel guardrails sloped into the ground and the trees shrouded the dimming horizon, speckled with clouds just a shade darker than the sky, untouched by the golden glare of the streetlights. I hadn't realized it was this close, just a few miles from the home they tried to bring her back to, the one currently still celebrating her life into the night with cured meats and cocktails.

The bluffs.

The deeper I slipped in between the chipping bark of red pine trees, the distant sound of car tires rolling over asphalt turned to the echo of water softly greeting the shoreline, nudging against the cliffside beneath the sun-scorched grass I treaded through as if I were being beckoned by some lake stranded siren. Perhaps it was Bridgette, covered in scales and seaweeds, lurking underneath the algae-stained water, ready to remind me that I never could just let anything go.

My footsteps became more hesitant, pine needles dangerously close to poking at my ankles, when I caught my first glimpse of the lake as the trees thinned out. It was smooth, like a mirror with barely a ripple to distort the reflection of the moon's faded crescent sliver dangling in the periwinkle skyline, and I wondered if that night, it looked just as deceptively tranquil. Like, in its depths, there wasn't littered trash, fallen pine trees, sunken and rusted shipwrecks, and tangled somewhere in it all, Bridgette.

I wondered if that night, she stared out to where the sky blended in with the lake like watercolors and stepped closer, like I did, heard her footsteps falling quietly on the ground keeping time with the whitecaps crashing against the rocks below, ducked beneath low hanging tree branches and further out of sight, like I did.

Tire treads crisscrossed over the cracked earth in the clearing where the party had been that night, something I had a feeling hadn't been there then. The silence trapped there beneath the overlooking pines was almost eerie as I took in the picnic tables, realizing just how warped the wood was and the partially removed staples without the pizza boxes and chip bags crowding them, the firewood charred black still in the makeshift firepit enclosed in an assortment of rocks in varying sizes, the fire that I remembered Steve busying himself with.