The Truth About That Summer

seventy-seven

It's a calm night, the waves rushing around the withered legs of Casey's pier slowly and lazily.

The water travels up the shore until my feet are submerged, but stops before hitting the hem of my shorts, my butt seated firmly in the sand.

The waves are warm, the same temperature as the air it feels like, and comforting, even on a night like tonight.

The beach is empty, save the case of beer beside me. It's untouched, all the bottles unopened.

The lights of the boardwalk flicker down a ways, the distant sounds of life far off, nearly drowned out by the sound of the sea swirling around my feet.

I stare ahead, frowning at the line where the dark sky meets the impossibly darker sea. I watch, wondering how, on such an awful day, the world can carry on.

Peacefully even.

It doesn't make sense that everything else can be so... normal, while I feel so torn apart on the inside, still in shambles from that night, that accident.

I dig my toes deeper into the wet sand.

The first year after was ugly.

I wouldn't - no, I couldn't - leave my bed, my chest feeling so hollow and aching so much that I could hardly breathe, let alone stand or get dressed. Functioning anywhere near normally was out of the question, yet knowing this, Mom still tried.

She tried hard, I can give her that much.

"We could drive up to the beach," she offered, a glimmer of real concern in her eyes, "You feel him there, don't you, Dylan?"

I refused.

She offered to visit the cemetery, to go to church, to go to his favorite skate shop. Again and again I refused until it was a battle between us, screaming and sobbing rocking the walls of our house.

Mom nearly tried to drag me from the bed, but when I smacked her hand away from me, she looked at me like I'd betrayed her. Like I'd cut her deeply by denying her help.

I didn't care. I couldn't. I only knew how bad I was hurting.

She finally gave up, throwing her hands in the air and insisting that she and my father would be doing something for their son, whether I wanted to participate or not.

I did not participate. I don't even know where they went or what they did.

But somehow, despite the chaos, Dad managed to say nothing at all.

I did do something for Case, though.

That day, I cried until my eyes were dry and sore. I screamed into my pillow until my throat was raw, and I balled my fists and pounded the mattress. I begged for the pain to end, for the throbbing in my heart to stop.

Headlights behind me illuminate the shore in front of me, my shadow falling before me in the sand. The tires sound familiar and I don't have to turn to know who's joining me in Casey's special place on a night like tonight.

I got what I begged for that day, too, in a way. After the first year, the pain ebbed and I got moments of relief: moments of terrifying numbness that might have been even worse than the pain.

Worse because it hurt to think of Casey. The numbness meant I wasn't thinking about him, wasn't thinking, wasn't feeling, at all. And forgetting Casey would always be worse than the pain of remembering him.

A coward, unable to handle the numbness or the pain, I took to drinking myself into a deep, soundless sleep the next year.

It's been a tradition ever since. The first real night of sleep I get following a month of nightmares, induced by too much alcohol for my body to appropriately handle.