The paint pallet that was spilt across the sky was a splash of warm, complementing colours: red, yellow, and orange. It looked like a fire, which was slowly dying out – slowly fading away to nothing.
Equally as slow, the rippling water that danced between my toes and then retreated was steady and cooling, in comparison to the raging hot sun.
I felt Sinead's dainty hand on my shoulder and turned my head, smiling up at her as she wiggled her toes into the water as I was. Liliana silently perched at the other side of me.
"How do you feel?" Liliana asked. All three of us were admiring the end of the day, neither of us turning to see each other's expressions even though the questions waited for genuine answers.
"It was hard at first, but I feel better now – about the whole thing. It's weird. I never thought I'd be able to let go, to forgive myself, but I guess Jay has opened my eyes to that." In my peripheral vision, I caught the two girls nodding in agreement. "Where are the guys?"
"Gathering everything together." At the end of the adventure camp, Jay had told me, they had a tradition of holding a sort of ceremony. Each leader had a lantern that the group members have signed, and then they all make a lot of noise as they are let out into the freedom of the night sky. Jay thought it'd be another way to say goodbye to dad. At first I was hesitant, I didn't want to interrupt an adventure camp tradition, but Scott agreed that one more lantern wouldn't make any difference.
I heard a sniffle from beside me: I looked over to Sinead, "Oh, this is so stupid! I'll see you guys again, won't I?" Mitchell and Sinead were leaving the following day, along with all the other adventure camp participants. Jay and Scott lived on the island, and Liliana and I had another three days left.
"Of course you'll see us, you idiot!" Liliana exclaimed, quickly hopping up and sitting the other side of Sinead, hugging her.
I took the Irish girl's hand and squeezed it. "You won't be able to keep us away." I added. Her hand left mine and wiped away the remaining rivers from her cheeks. Mitchell came up to us from behind, giving Sinead another hug and leading us to where the ceremony was being held.
It was a little further down the beach, where the sand began to turn into pebbles. We spotted the huddle of teenagers and young adults only when we were close, due to the dim light. Scott called for us to hurry, so we jogged over to them. Sinead, if nothing else, had definitely improved her running fitness from her time on the island, as she kept up with the rest of our group easily.
The five leaders, including Scott and Jay, were stood in a circle; everyone else was stood in a bigger circle around them. Jay had two lanterns: one balanced on the pebbles of the beach, the other was being lit in his hand. I wiggled through the group into the center and took my dad's lantern: tracing over the pencil lines with my thumb, I read the messages that i'd written across the ball of light for the last time, words that I'd wanted to say to my dad for years. Jay leaned over, the lantern groaned and sizzled as he lit it.
All the leaders and myself stood in the darkness of night, the sun had now set and the only light was coming from the paper that we held in our hands. Scott got a count down going, everyone shouting from 5-1. On one, we slowly lifted our arms up and set the lanterns free. As everyone around us screamed and shouted, some people started up an a cappella version of Afire Love by Ed Sheeran, I just looked up at the lantern and whispered after it, "I love you, dad."
Jay's arms looped around my shoulder and he kissed the top of my head lightly. "He loves you too."
YOU ARE READING
No Problem
Teen Fiction"This was the secret that I had never told anyone. I had kept it so dear to me, that I had never written it down nor uttered the dreaded words under my breath." Kadie Meadows has regrets: these problems that are constantly at the back of her mind, b...
