Two Masked Hearts - ✓ #WattysShorts

Two

I had left pretty early in the morning, so I got to the beach house around one in the afternoon. I made one stop at a gas station halfway through my trip. I was worried about the virus, but almost everyone was wearing a mask, so I quickly went in and out to use the bathroom and then filled up my tank. I still didn't want to stop again.

As I pulled into the driveway, my breath caught in my throat. The house was just as beautiful and perfect as I remembered. It was cutesy, probably on my mom's accord, and I wondered if my dad put up a fight at all when they built it.

Our beach house was in a small town called Scuppernong Tides, named after what was apparently the North Carolina state fruit. I had to look it up. It's a type of grape. Scuppernong was a quiet place, really almost a secret, sandwiched between two much more popular beaches. No, it wasn't the most beautiful of places, but my parents liked it because the town reminded them of where they stayed on their honeymoon in France.

Shopping in the town was limited to three blocks on the closest thing to a main road: Scuppernong Drive. They really liked their grapes here. They had the basics—a few clothing stores, a coffee shop, a bookstore where I frequented much of my time exploring the spines and sparkling book jackets, and at the end of the stretch a lighthouse, which overlooked the Atlantic Ocean.

Scuppernong was where I spent part of my summer each year, for as long as I could remember. This house was a second home to me. I got my first concussion when I raced my cousin up the stairs and slammed headfirst into the bright pink door, distracted by the beautiful sky blue of the walls. One time, my mom caught me dancing on the white railings, swinging around one of the tall posts as if I were doing a musical number from a cheesy old movie. I got my first splinter when I was running down the private boardwalk to the sand. I remembered it hurt like hell, and there was so much blood when my dad wrenched it out of my big toe.

I smiled, thinking fondly of the experiences I shared here with family. Now, I was there alone, but that was exactly the way I wanted it. A whole house to myself to gain some independence and remember who I was before the pandemic. To have goals again, to find a passion, to rekindle the fire that I once felt ferociously fighting its way through my veins.

I parked the jeep under the house. There was no garage. It was more of a car port beneath the first floor in case of flooding during a hurricane. I was always fascinated by this, wondering why we didn't do that back in Virginia. But then my parents made me carry up our suitcases, and I realized I didn't want to climb eighteen stairs every day when I got home from school.

School.

The word sent shivers down my spine. I had such a strong affinity for learning, despite hating doing assignments forced onto us by underpaid teachers with the added pressure of my slightly overbearing mom. Still, I appreciated gaining new information about a world I just did not understand. I still didn't understand it, especially not with a vicious virus rampaging through the world, killing off more than a thousand people per day in the U.S. alone. But I wanted to, and each day I understood a little more.

I stepped out of my jeep, stretched my legs from the long drive, and went to go get my suitcase from the trunk. I didn't bring too many things. I had my clothes, my necessities, and my mom insisted on packing food for me. She put together a cooler of snacks and drinks for the road, and I ended up being very grateful to have them.

I brought up my belongings, climbing the stairs two times, then again to make sure I got everything and locked the car. I shut the front door behind me, not even bothering to lock it, and breathed in the beautiful smell of beach house.

"This is it," I whispered to myself with a smile.

For a reason still unclear to me, our bedrooms were on the bottom floor and the kitchen and living room were on the top floor. It meant that I didn't have to carry my overstuffed suitcase up another flight of stairs, thankfully. I just left it in the foyer and carried the food up to the kitchen.