Lighthouse Nights

18

saturday. the sunless afternoon and stone-grey sky couldn’t keep tourists from clogging the pier’s concrete arteries.

that morning, jules discovered a whitehead above her lip and popped it. now, in her usual spot in the lighthouse shade, she examined the red splotch in the tackle-box compact. two years of slathered makeup and weekly showers, she thought, and NOW i get a pimple.

she snapped the hookless fishing line, eased into her chair, and scanned the motley faces of the hoard; mostly white, a few black, laughing or grinning or playfully sneering. some had freckles. some had moles. several were pink and peeling with white raccoon eyes from forgotten glasses. many looked like jules; pigtails, bangs, button noses and torn acne. but in the vast and varied sea of faces, no one looked like HIM.

jules ignored the pole wedged between her knees. she closed her eyes, slackened her neck and listened to the distant gulls and the calming bustle of a midsummer day.

she awoke minutes later to a peculiar gleam in the water at her feet. her blurry eyes flared the reflected light, so she rubbed them and winced at the crumpled paper ball dancing with the waves.

she used her net to snag the curio, then unfolded the sopping page. wet marker melted down her hand, but the drawing was still discernible. it was a crude sketch of a car overlooking a river.

the marker, the style, the anger; the discarded art was unmistakably HIS.

her heart was already playing a morbid game of red-rover with her ribs as she looked to her left and saw—through twenty feet of skipping families and tight fishing rods—the boy—HER boy—alone and sketching and sitting cross-legged in jeans and a torn tee and dyed-black hair at the water-lapped edge of their pier.

jules wanted to move but her limbs refused to take orders from an indecisive brain that churned and thumped like the colored visualizer on the boy’s bedroom wall. (maybe her legs knew better than her brain that there wasn’t a plan. or, if there was a plan, she had already forgotten it.)

if the boy discovered that “sarah” was alive, the pieces would fall into place. he would know what she did. but when the puzzle was complete, would he love JULES? or kill her?

before her senses could untangle themselves, another crumpled page bobbed by. again, she used the net to pluck it from the waves, then unfurled the soggy clump.

the sketch depicted a girl sitting straight up in an open casket. her eyes were open. her knobby hand clutched the lid. it was emma.

“interested in my drawings?”

jules couldn’t answer or turn. she watched the lake and felt gabe’s presence like a cold wet blanket draped across her shoulders.

his hand reached down and snatched the picture. 

she finally turned and bore herself into blue-grey eyes. she apologized in the split second of their connection; she apologized, reassured him, held him, loved him, took his hand and ran away with him... but they were only thoughts, and gabe looked away.

he didn’t recognize her.

jules stood. “i like the picture of the car better,” she said and cleared her throat. “very different subject matter.”

gabe crumpled the drawing, shoved it in his pocket and walked away.

jules scooped up her equipment—everything but the chair—and balanced the tottering gear while jogging to catch up. “how do you go from a car overlooking a river to a creepy girl in a casket?”

“it’s a coffin.”

jules had to double her pace to keep up. “is there a difference?”

“a ‘casket’ is just a glorified jewelry box, but the word ‘coffin’ has morbid connotations with vampires and graveyards so funeral directors re-appropriated the happier word.”