Ignore this. I needed a place to put this so I could copy and paste it quickly
Of Dusk and Summer
Katie Hewko
And so it smelled that way.
The air was just a messenger of the seasons ahead. It carried the last breaths of summer and the chilling gasps of winter. It smelled like earth. Like rotting leaves. Like fertile soil. Like great smoky fires. It smelled like fall.
We sat on your bed, silently gazing out the open window and breathing in the foreign crisp scent. Wrapped in a large, soft blanket, we sat bare-backed, peeling the freckles from our shoulders and then began to pack them away with the quiet recognition that soon our baked skin would grow smooth and new. Our once sun stained complexion would turn creamy and white. What crept through your curtains and up our noses was a short kiss goodbye and an even longer hug hello. And we were not ready.
I can remember when I was a child at the Jersey Shore. My feet would slap against the sidewalk as I ran home from the beach, my chest heaving from the weight of my beating heart. My hair was woven with sand and my skin was sticky with salt. I could stand on the clay of the earth. It was bleached and dried. The green blades of beach grass that poked through the cracks of the hard dirt had turned to stringy wisps of hay during late spring. Everything was parched and I would climb trees. I would swing from branches and be a child. I would take for granted the fact that I was running and swimming and playing and it would never grow old and I would never having to worry. But we hadn't had a summer like that in a long time.
And then I met you.
It was two summers ago. The sun was heating the surf on the 25th Street beach. There was a warm breeze blowing through my wavy blond hair as I sat on my blanket, inhaling the salty air,
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drinking in the beautiful heat and digging my toes into the cool sand buried beneath the warm loose grains that lay on top. I was 18 with the body of 12 year old. I had small breasts and a tiny figure with bright brown eyes I kept hidden behind a large pair of sunglasses. My vanity was far from my mind that day. For the first time in a very long while, I was content with the world and everything in it. I was reading a terribly written novel about a secret college society and finally remembering what it was like to actually enjoy summer. This was my first time at the Jersey shore in years. I had a job each June prior to that one. Although my uncle's Brigantine condo was always open to my family and I, I always found myself passing on the invitation for weekly summer stays. I told my family my jobs were too important when really I never saw what the beach had to offer me. But this summer was different. I was going to college in the mountains that coming fall and if I didn't start taking chances, I figured I never would. So there I sat under the full, blazing July sun.
"You look thirsty."
"Excuse me?" I peered up from behind my book and saw you squinting down at me.
"Thirsty. You look thirsty." you repeated.
"I suppose so." I shaded my eyes to better see your face. You were a welcoming, young man with a round belly and a beard. Your eyes were the brightest pools of brown, like maple syrup, and your smile quite boyish.
"I'm John."
"Rose." I shyly extended my hand and you pulled me up.
You informed me that it was time for a drink. That you had been watching me bathe in the sun and read for so long that we both had to have worked up a terrible thirst. You told me that the sun was even more brutal during days of a drought and it would be foolish not to stay hydrated. And with that, we began to walk towards the pier. It was my first summer in Brigantine for 5 years, but you had been
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coming there every June with your family to your house on the south side of the island. You explained that you came from a family of teachers in the fall and winter, but once summer arrived and the wind grew warmer, they became fisherman. Later that night we drove to Atlantic City and you showed me which seashells were the best for skipping into the ocean. The flat ones with the smooth tops went the furthest and bounced the fastest. And as your hand inched onto mine as we sat with out legs entwined in the lifeguard stand, I knew that we were inseparable. I could hear it in the surf.
We were entranced and enamored. The summer continued with my hand always in your's. I learned to fish and crab and bait a hook. For hours we floated on your father's small row boat in the bay, casting and reeling in a content silence, each of us ignoring the cry of autumn. If it wasn't tomorrow, then it wasn't something we needed to worry about.
But before I knew it, tomorrow had come.
"What's wrong, brown eyes?" I asked, smoothing your hair away from your unfamiliar gaze.
"It's August now, Rose." You looked lost.
We sat in silence for a while. I knew what August meant. August meant John was heading back to the city to work and I would be going to school in the mountains.
I inched closer to you, threw my legs on your lap, and tried to hold onto you tightly, but something about you was already escaping. You were blowing away in the summer wind. No amount of bike rides and ice cream, boat trips and beach days, piers walks and ferris wheel rides could keep us from knowing that we were only made for summer.
I'll be damned if I didn't fight it.
"But you could come visit. I could take trains down and you could drive up." I would plead.
And you would simply smile and say "I would love that."
It seemed no matter how much we thought it would work, our car rides and bus trips, we knew our time was fleeting. We knew that distance meant more than road signs.
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And then you stopped being there all together.
I rode my bike to your house and knocked softly on the door. No answer.
I curiously walked towards your window and knocked. No answer
I knocked louder now and whispered your name.
"John! John!?" No answer.
I peered through the window on my tiptoes. All I saw was your bed made neatly and an empty dresser.
In a panic, I pounded on the door, calling your name and panting heavily.
Your mother appeared from the backyard.
"John went back this morning, Rose. Didn't he come to say goodbye?"
I didn't respond. I silently excused myself, left my bike, and walked away. I wasn't sure where I was going, but what did it matter? John wouldn't be there. My feet slapped against the sidewalk and I felt the clay-like earth beneath my heels, but nothing felt more profound than the realization of you being gone. For that one moment, I wished I was a child again, playing, swimming, running. I wouldn't have met you, I wouldn't have had to see what this summer did to me. I took a chance on summer and all I could do was regret it.
I didn't wait for you to come back. Even if you were to realize the mistake you had made, I wasn't going to let you apologize. Instead, I left Brigantine the next day and prepared for college, doing my best to forget you. That winter was the coldest I had ever felt and every day without you became easier to deal with. I made friends and went on dates. I grew breasts and started using eyeliner. I was growing up and making realizations I could have never made that summer we spent together. Winter was showing me what it meant to be an adult and soon spring would rub away the rough edges and I would be a newer and smarter me.
Then summer came again. I moved home and got another job and didn't return to Brigantine. I
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went right back to believing the shore had nothing to offer me. That is until the last week of summer, right before I was supposed to head back to school. My family pleaded with me and I finally gave in. We went down to my uncle's condo for the week before Labor Day.
Being there put me right back into the summer before that. And on the first night, when dusk rolled in and the seagulls softly cackled, I got in my father's car and drove to Atlantic City. I walked barefoot onto the beach and found the best stones for skipping, the flat smooth ones, and climbed into the empty lifeguard stand. I watched the sun sink behind the waves and right before I got up to leave, there you were.
I stared at you for the longest time, barely blinking and silently breathing. Your eyes watched my feet, never raising to meet mine, and your hands fidgeted in your pockets.
"I'm sorry." you said, finally matching my gaze.
I lowered my shoulders and climbed back into the lifeguard stand, patting the empty seat next to me. We sat there for hours while you tried to find a good enough reason for leaving without saying goodbye. And by the end of the night, I was in your arms again. This time it was different for us both. We both knew summer was all but over, and instead of running from our problems, we knew they were already solved. I was going back to school and you were going back to work at the end of the week. Silently, we agreed that all we had was a summer romance, and that was alright. We knew that late in each June, Brigantine would give us hot pavement to run on, hot days to fish in, and cool nights from skipping seashells. Fall, winter, and spring were not ours but we would always have summer. Even in the years to come, long after I stopped coming to the shore and you moved away, that summer was our time to be young together. This time we were ready.
Word Count: 1,758
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Katie - Your story brought tears to my eyes. Really. The music of your prose, the elegiac tone that carries throughout this piece is simply lovely. And moving. You capture the feel of summer and the beach and the timeless yearning they evoke. When Rosa bikes to John’s house only to discover that he has already left, the reader is as shocked and bereft as she is.
This is no small feat!
On occasion, the narrator moves from addressing John as "you" and reverts to referring to him in 3rd person, which confuses reader. And I wondered why the narrator never felt the shore offered her much (seems like such an unusual attitude for a teen) - can you clarify? I’d also like a little more specifics about the nature of the narrator’s changes when she begins college. Is part of the distance between Rose and John the fact that she is headed to college and he is, presumably, a blue-collar worker? What are the things that keep them apart, that prevent them from being year-round lovers? Address this subtly - a little info goes a long way.
Bravo, Katie!
Grade: 98