𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 | 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐫𝐚𝐝 𝐟𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐫

XI

I wake up to a particularly bright sunbeam glaring through my window. My eyes are slightly puffy from the night before. I don't even want to think about it, and to be honest I can't even remember most of the night.

Three knocks on my door disrupt me from thinking too hard.
"Happy birthday Adriana!" Laurel greets me in a singsong voice. My head pounds and I wince. "hungover?" Laurel asks.
"What?" I counter, confused.
"Well you did drink pretty heavily yesterday" Laurel adds disapprovingly.
As the words leave her mouth, I recollect me, the crisp outdoor air, and a bottle of whiskey.
I groan at the thought of Laurel finding me blackout drunk. I guess that's how I got home.
"Was i bad?" I ask her, face in hands.
"Oh absolutely" she laughs, lightening up the mood. "You were sprawled out on the concrete. Your puke was next to you"
"Ew" I laugh, my face going red.
"Yep" she laughs along "Conrad had to carry you to the car, I'm pretty sure you got puke on him too" she continues her laughter.
Conrad was there? "Conrad? He went with the boys though?" I half ask Laurel and half ask myself.
"He came back. Pretty drunk too actually" she ponders the thought and glances at me suspiciously. "Said something about coming back to talk to you or something similar, I can't really remember" she recalls.
"Anyway, this is no way to start your sweet sixteenth. Come on, birthday breakfast awaits"

"Happy birthday Adriana" everyone announces as I make my way into the kitchen.
"Thank you!" I smile and take a seat next to belly. "Happy birthday" I tell her. She smiles at me with a mouth full of birthday pancakes. I feel Conrad's eyes gazing into my back, but Susannah's breakfast is so good I forget to care about it, or about last night.

-

Laurel gifts me and belly a first edition E.E. Cummings poetry book, in which i am grateful. It was the book laurel used to read to me when i was young and still settling in to the home she provided me. It holds a poem that susannah used to share with us like a mantra; maggie and milly and molly and may:

maggie and milly and molly and may

went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang

so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star

whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing

which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone

as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)

it's always ourselves we find in the sea

i remeber replacing the children in the poem and instead applying it to the summers we had here in cousins. i was maggie, conrad; milly, molly; belly and may was jeremiah. i guess thinking about it now im older, it fits pretty well. i was always looking for ways to ease my troubles, jeremiah was content and self assured, belly blossoming into her adulthood and finding out the scary ways of the world, and conrad, well perhaps lonely and distant, yet affectionate to a creature, even if it feels its beyond help already. A broken boy trying to fix other broken things.

before i can be distraught by my new founded insight, i recieve gifts from steven, susannah and jeremiah; a princeton hoodie, a pearl bracelet belonging to susannah, which renders me speechless, and a charm from jeremiah to go on mine and bellys matching charm bracelets. belly recieves a key as a good luck charm for her driving lessons, and i a small koi fish.