One Last Thing ✅

twenty-nine things

Despite my repeated questions about our destination, Abbott keeps shaking his head and driving on. We take a highway past the city limits and continue on until we take an exit with a sign that says: AURORA PARK.

We then turn onto a gravel road and follow it for a while until we get to a wooded area and a sign reading SERENITY LAKE and an arrow. Further on we drive, until we break through the trees and stop at a small, weedy parking lot at the edge of a tiny lake. We are the only people here.

I give Abbott a questioning glance.

He doesn't say anything, just cracks open the door and climbs out.

I follow his lead. The sunlight warms my cheeks and shoulders. I stand there for just a moment, enjoying the sensation of being away from everyone but one of my best friends.

This place. It seems... peaceful.

Abbott is already standing by the dock. "Come on," he calls.

I scuffle my way down the gravel until I reach the dock. It's kind of rickety, missing a board here and there, not sturdy like the ones at the Girl Scout camp Riley and I attended when we were young. I always refused to go canoeing with the rest of the girls, saying I had a stomachache or something. Didn't want to tell anyone the real reason.

That I've hated water ever since I found out what my mother did to me.

"Uh..." I say, the anxiety crawling up my throat, threatening to choke me.

"It's fine," Abbott reassures me.

"It's just... I don't like the water."

He gives me a long look. "Okay," he says simply, and he takes a seat in the grass near the lake's edge. He pats the earth beside him.

I kneel down.

We both sit and stare out at the lake. There is no wind. The surface of the water is like glass. The trees are like a shelter above and around us. It's as if we are the only two people on the planet right now.

"My dad used to bring me here to go fishing," Abbott says after a while. There's a certain sadness in his voice, just a hint of melancholy.

"Used to?"

He shrugs. "Back when I was little. You know. Before he got so busy."

I think about what life must be like for Abbott, the son of a principal. I guess I'd never really considered it before. On the outside, Abbott seems to have everything so together. But maybe there are some things in his life that he's struggling with, too.

"You want to talk about it?" I ask quietly.

Abbott runs his fingers through the weeds, pulls a long blade of grass and starts folding it up into little pieces. He doesn't speak for a long time. I'm not sure whether that means he wants me to leave him alone or if I should say something encouraging. In the end, I just sit there.

Finally, he says, "It's just... sometimes I wonder what the point of all this is. Take my dad, for instance. He spent so many years working as a history teacher, and then he went back to school to get his administrative degree. And we never saw him. Now he's a principal, and yeah, he's there for all the kids at school. At their sporting events, the chess competitions, the school musical. But he's never there for me. Does that make any sense?" He crushes the blade of grass in his fist, then lets it drop onto the ground between us.

"Yes," I say.

It does.

It makes perfect sense. The part about wondering what the point of it all is, anyway. I feel that way all the time, every time I make my bed and think about the fact that I'll just be getting into it again that night. Or have to do homework and learn about things I don't really care about, information that I know will never be useful to me. Or whenever I go to the mall and see the girls all wearing basically the same outfit, each one trying to be exactly the same, everyone cut from the same mall cookie cutters. That's why I shop at thrift stores, because the clothes there have histories, connections with other people.

Abbott tips his head thoughtfully and runs his fingers lightly over the grass between us. "I mean, it feels like there should be a point to everything, for the fact that we were put here. You know, a reason we exist. Do you ever wonder what it is?"

I am silent.

The truth is, I've always felt like I wasn't meant to be here. Like I was meant to be somewhere else. Like I never quite fit in. So I never bothered to ponder the question of why I'm here. I've spent most of my minutes just trying to keep my head above water, get through each day, avoid the knives. It's never occurred to me that there might be a reason that I was born, something I'm supposed to do.

I think of Mrs. Edwards, her husband, her daughter.

And start to cry.

If only my grandmother hadn't come home that night so long ago, just in time to save me.

My mother was right to do what she did. Maybe she knew what I was from the start.

It's just a pity she wasn't successful.

"I'm not really sure how to answer that question," I say, biting my lip, swallowing back tears.

Abbott looks over at me.

Silently, he takes my hand.

We sit and look at the lake. A cluster of birds soars over the clearing. The sun dips lower in the sky, just enough so that it's reached the tips of the trees across the lake from us.

All is silent. All is beautiful.

In this moment, I can almost forget what I am. 

A monster.