In The Cold of August

On my fourteenth birthday we sat around the firepit and roasted marshmallows. We watched the sun set as we promised that we would be friends for many more beautiful summers, but like my thirteenth year our time together was rapidly coming to a close. She would leave and I would stay friends with him for a time. August brought with it weather warm enough for us to sneak out at night and lie on the shore of the lake and watch the stars, but even in summer Canada's cold seeps into your bones. I was small and the moisture on the grass would soak through my hoodie and leave me shivering. We would go home at 1 AM and he would hug me before we parted ways despite the fact that he lived just down the street. He was always warm and I would accept his embrace for that reason, which was different than his own, but that isn't what this is about.

At fourteen I was lanky and ugly and quiet. Anxiety about kids whose names I've long since forgotten kept me up at night and I would sleep through my classes. Teachers would call on me and I would always know the answer, but the words would die on my tongue and I'd feel the iron grip of panic around my throat, cutting off my sentences before they had begun. I later came to know this as selective mutism, but that isn't what this is about. My music teacher took pity on me and let me skip my French classes to sleep in the back of the music room, which smelled woody and sweet. In the evenings I would stay after school and play his piano, and he and I would talk about whatever was on my mind at the time. At the end of that year his heart condition brought his career to a temporary standstill, and I graduated from middle school without thanking him or saying goodbye.

The cold stopped bothering me during our nightly escapades. On a number of occasions my mother caught me sneaking back into the house on tiptoe, though she never did bring it up at breakfast the next day. My friends envied my freedom to do as I pleased and in turn I envied their family board games and curfews. At the lake we would talk about our families, though our conversations always seemed to take a more philosophical turn. Usually we would come to some sort of nihilistic conclusion before watching the stars in silence. He would eventually comment something about it growing late and we would head back, the water lapping gently at the rocks behind us.  A week later he tried to kill himself, and a week after that I found him alone at our usual spot by the shore. We laid on the grass for a long time in silence. I heard him crying next to me, and I didn't say anything because I knew that my words were too clumsy to fix things that had broken. He told me that the world was a cruel and bitter place and I believed him. We fell asleep in the grass and woke to the sound of birds long before sunrise. It was the last time either of us went to the lake.

In my first year of high school I hung out with the stoner crowd because they always had money to spare and poor enough judgement to spend it entirely on food. We spent frigid afternoons wandering the streets and getting kicked out of various establishments. We were polite and not unruly, but we were a sorry sight and rarely were we welcome in the nicer parts of town. We would spend the remainder of the afternoon getting stoned and avoiding the cops. I was more addicted to the sound of our laughter than to anything I put in my body, but the air was cold and the smoke warmed me from the inside out. In time I would come to find myself standing on a rooftop with a girl whose eyes seemed to have seen many more years than her age would suggest.  As she lit a cigarette I asked her if she had ever wanted to quit. She told me that she was looking for a faster way out, but the haze in my mind kept me from understanding just what she meant, so I did what I had grown accustomed to doing and said nothing. Her smile was always warm and something about her made me feel safe. A few weeks later she disappeared from town and didn't come back, but that isn't what this is about.

The following summer found me in an abandoned house in Nebraska, lying on the bed of a man who had long since died and left the house to rot. Sunlight filtered in through the curtains as I laid in the arms of a boy who did too many drugs and came from a home that he said he wanted to leave but never did. I watched the dust swirl in the air and eventually he had to leave for supper. I wasn't welcome as his grandmother didn't want him bringing a boy around and he told me to wait for him. He promised he would be back soon and I believed him. With sunset came darkness and cold and it wasn't until midnight that he came back in tears. He didn't bother to listen when I told him that I wasn't comfortable with what followed, but that isn't what this is about.

I woke up on a cold Saturday morning and for the first time the frigid air didn't cling to my skin like damp clothes on summer nights, and the sunlight dancing on the sheets simply reminded me that things would turn out just fine, and that is what this is about.