Breathe Me || Completed

1.0 - Small Town

I take off my shoes once I'm far enough from school that the teachers can't see me. The hot gravel under my feet reminds me that three months of sunshine and freedom lay ahead: summer! What a dream. I hold my sneakers hooked on my two fingers and laugh to myself. Summer. Good. I deserve it.

"Bye-a, Sally," says Victor, ducking into his house with a wave. "Bye!" Calls Nya, grinning at me. "See you, Sally!" Devon yells from behind. "Child, put on those shoes. There could be glass on these sidewalks!" Mrs. Harkins scolds me from her porch.

"Bye!" I yell. "Bye Nya! See you Later, Dev! Sorry, Mrs. Harkins." I don't put the shoes back on. I look down and shake my head. The sun grins down on Stone Harbor with a twinkle in her eye.

Stone Harbor is a small town. About one thousand people live here, which is strange because I feel like I know everyone, yet I can't quite believe that I know one thousand people.

But we have all the small town things. We have a video store and a diner and park where everyone takes their kids. We have a small bridge over a small pond. We have small geese that swim in our small pond and take to our small skies in the winter and fly far far away from us.

I like it here, in a way. At night, it's so quiet you can hear your heartbeat. When I walk to school, everyone I pass knows my name. "Hey, Sally!", and "Morning, Sal!", and "How's your father, Sally, dear?". People love New York for the rudeness, the roughness, the You're on Your Own attitude. Not me. I love that I can knock on anyone's door here and they would let me in and talk to me. I love knowing them and I love that they know me.

My parents love it here, too, with a passion. "It's so safe here," I hear my mother telling my friends' moms when they come to pick up their daughters after sleepovers. "She can just be free here. In Brooklyn, I been afraid for that child . . . There was some bad people."

When she says that, I sort of blink to myself and try not to feel anything.

It's true. I'm free, here. I spend hours walking around town, finding things to paint when I get back home. I can sit at the diner for as long as I want with my sketchbook, looking out the window. Not like Brownsville. In Brooklyn, I felt like I could never stay anywhere too long. The city seemed to change under my feet. Nothing changes in Stone Harbor. Like my mother says: It's so safe.

That's not to say Stone Harbor doesn't have its downfalls. People are bored here. Gossip is currency. One night, my friend Danny and I went the diner for some fries after drama practice, then we decided to take a walk down to the bridge. And wouldn't you know it, the next morning my parents were lecturing me about how I can't be out with boys after dark, how they all want to murder you and rape you and how did I know he wasn't going to shove my dead, raped body in the lake and let me sink to the bottom?

But of course, even they knew that wouldn't happen. Everyone in town knows, from the fiery gossip that spread like flames through a dry forest, that Danny is gay. Everyone also knows that he volunteers at the hospital on his weekends, bringing his dog to visit sick people. Everyone knows that his mother died when he was six and that he likes to sit in the garden in his backyard when he misses her.

Everyone knows that.

Why does everyone know everything about everybody?

It makes me wonder what they have on me.

Do they all know that spend my weekends at the piano, following my father's fingers across the keys, living for the way he smiles at me when I get it right? Do they all know that I think the new waitress at Cassie's diner is cute? Do they know that when I look out my window and up at the stars at night, I sigh for my friends back in Brooklyn who have never seen the stars and have never heard silence?