The air smelled like wet trees and cow manure. I slowly walked across the school field, dragging my feet across the grass. My classmate’s loud yelling carried me across the entire field.
I could feel my socks becoming damp. There must be some holes in my shoes. They were pink, and they used to have jewels scattered on the sides, but most of them had fallen off. I should put duct tape over the holes when I got home.
I dragged my eyes up from the ground and spotted her immediately. She was standing on the other side of the metal fence that separated the road from the school. She was leaning on it carelessly, her hands lazily nestled under her chin, our navy-blue Honda Fit idling behind. Her red hair was up in a messy bun, and her orange coat stood out against the green and brown landscape. Even from this far away, I could see she was smiling at me. I resisted the smile that threatened to creep up on my face. My classmates milled around me, trying to find their way home too. As I walked closer, she smiled even bigger, her arm now waving at me like I was a sailor coming home. I couldn’t help it. Soon enough, I was grinning big enough to scare the crows away.
I felt a sudden smack on my arm. I knew who it was before even turning around.
“Jas, I told you to stop hitting me,” I said. I turned around and was met with furrowed eyebrows and dark brown eyes burning holes into me. She stood on the balms of her feet like she was about to leap into the sky or at me. Her messy black curls enveloped her small face. Her two front teeth jutted out further than the others, and her typically olive cheeks were blotched red.
“You said you would wait for me Ira.” She said, crossing her arms, huffed, and then opened her mouth wide to continue. “You always do this.”
“Do what?” I asked, crossing my arms too.
“Leave me alone! You know I hate being alone. It’s annoying when you always walk off without saying anything.” She was still glaring at me, her fists clenched at her sides.
“Look, I’m sorry, okay? We were together literally the entire day.” I glanced over my left shoulder at my mom; she was still leaning against the fence, looking at something in the sky. I felt a raindrop hit the top of my head.
“I have to go, Jas-“ I stopped talking because she had started to cry. Her small body shook, and her eyes looked up at me, the anger replaced by hurt.
“It was Melissa; she told me I needed to pluck my eyebrows because I looked like her uncle,” Jas cried out, her voice breaking as she talked.
A flare of anger flashed through me. “Jas, I always tell you to walk away when they say stuff,” I said. “They’re just trying to get you upset. I don’t understand why you let them.”
“We can’t all be like you; you realize that right?” she said with such sadness, tears streaming down her face. “You’re like a statue with no feelings sometimes.” She turned to walk away, but I grabbed her arm.
“You should come over,” I said. It had started to rain more heavily, and I knew she would have to walk 20 minutes if she went home. Her dad never picked her up.
She sniffed and didn’t say anything. Finally, she wiped her nose on her sleeve, and we started walking toward my car.
…
“Hello,” Jas said in passing to my mom, opening and closing the car door quickly behind her.
“Hello, Jas,” My mom responded with a smile. She walked over and hugged me, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. I wrapped my arms around her orange coat, relief flooding through me. She leaned down and kissed the top of my head.
…
When I entered the car, Jas was looking out the window. Her seatbelt was already buckled, and her eyebrows were furrowed.
“How was school, girls?” My mom asked, lifting her eyebrow at me. She started the car and began to pull out into the road. Jas didn’t say anything and continued looking out the window.
“It was fine,” I responded.
It started to drizzle, so she flipped the window wipers to the lowest setting and turned the heat on a higher gear. The music was already turned on to the Italian channel. Foreign words twirled around us in a serenade.
The music started to unravel the tension in the car until I could hear Jas begin to hum along. We turned the corner to my street. Familiar houses whisked past us, and that all-so-familiar feeling of home being near enveloped me.
Our world was just minutes away now. Everything would be all right.
We drove into our driveway. I turned around in my seat and looked at Jas. She looked back; a small smile was creeping over her face. Before the car had barely stopped in my driveway, we jumped out and threw our school stuff in the house before galloping off down the road.
“Bring the dogs, girls!” My mom yelled out after us.
I quickly ran back into the house and, within seconds, had two giant golden dogs leashed and pulling my arm sockets out the door.
…
Jas and I crawled under the steel fence and into the tree farm; I let the dogs off their leashes, and off they bounded.
We looked at each other and, without a word, started racing off into the trees.
We ran and screamed with contentment through the long grass and soon-to-be Christmas trees lined row after row. Feeling our legs tire and lungs heave only invigorated us to run faster and scream louder. It was only us in the entire forest. No, it was only us in the whole world.
…
We stopped. Entirely breathless before a mud pit we called “Betty’s Swamp.”
We took our shoes and socks off and pulled our pants up past our knees. With whelps of disgust but also glee, we walked through the wet mud.
“It’s so squishy!” I cried.
“My dad says mud is good for your skin!” Jas said as she swathed globs of dark mud onto her face.
“I am the swamp master, and you must put the mud on your face, or you are not allowed entry into Esmerelda’s evergreen forest,” suddenly, she had acquired a Gandalf-like voice paired with a stick/cane that towered well above her head.
Laughing hysterically, I followed suit and ran to catch up.
Now finally reaching the end of the swamp, we washed our feet in a stream close by and put our shoes back on
“Esmerelda is too tired to come to see us today, so she told me that she left jelly-filled cookies underneath Sir. Cedar Cedrick.” I said, running ahead with cookies falling out of my pockets.
…
We sat quietly on the edge of Esmerelda’s evergreen forest and ate the cookies, our fingers sticky with jelly.
There was so much noise all the time, with siblings fighting, cars honking, and classmates talking. Just listening to the creak of the giant spruce tree above us, the odd sparrow song or the soft crashing waves against the rocks below us sent a cascade of peace through me.
The weather had turned, and the sun shone through the trees, leaving the rain clouds behind. From our viewpoint, we could see the pale grey ocean below.
We sat there in silence for a while.
“I’m sorry I got so mad at you.” Jas breathed out.
“It’s okay.”
“I just hate them so much.”
I looked over at her and saw tears forming in her eyes.
“You know, they only bug you because you’re special. And I think people get scared of special things,” I said.
Jas sniffed. “But I don’t want to be special. I want to be like them.”
“If you were like them, we wouldn’t be friends. Would you rather be like them or be friends with me?”
Jas looked over at me; snot was dripping from her nose. She pretended to contemplate. I gently shoved her. We both started to laugh.
I sprung to my feet, clapping my hands together. “Well, are you ready or what?”
Jas nodded and stood up slowly, brushing off the cookie crumbs that had fallen into her lap.
“Miss Sandy Shoreline has been expecting us for some time, and I think it rude to make her wait any longer,” Jas explained.
“Agreed,” I responded.
We both peered down at the way down before us. It wasn’t an accessible route. If you stood back a couple of feet, it would have looked like a cliff. We had scoped it out a couple of days ago and had looked at each other when I joked about trying to get down this way. The look meant, ” We’re doing this, aren’t we?” “Yes, we’re doing this.” “Ok.”
“Ok, let’s go together on the count of three,” I said.
Jas smiled wide beside me, the flush of anticipation high on her cheeks.
“ONE…TWO…. THREE!” I screamed three like we were hurling ourselves out of an airplane. And then we were running—or more like falling down the dirt embankment.
The world was flashing by—a blur of green and brown. I felt a sharp sting and something warm run down my leg. All I could hear was Jas’s hysterical laughter and screaming, or was it mine? I couldn’t tell. And then we were almost at the bottom, and I could smell salt in the air, and I knew we were close. As the incline began to level out, we did our best to keep our footing, but our momentum was too much, and we ended up in a pile of limbs at the bottom.
Jas leaped up from the ground. “Um, HOW HAVE WE NEVER DONE THAT BEFORE?” she yelled. She looked crazy. Her hair was a wild, tangled mess; scratches covered her legs like war scars, and dried mud splotches covered her face. I realized I probably looked the same. She ran in circles around me, hollering strange sounds and flailing her arms around in a wild dance. I watched her, still trying to regain my breath and stop laughing.
“Wow, Ira, you got a big one!” She pointed at my leg. I looked down to see a long scratch on my shin that was still dripping blood.
I touched the blood that had dripped down into my socks. “I didn’t even feel it!”
Jas rolled her eyes and turned to walk toward the ocean. I noticed a rash on her back legs.
“Jas! You have a concerning rash on your legs that you should be aware of.”
“Oh, that! No, that’s just stinging nettle. Of course, I got the side with all of it on the way down,” she said with a mischievous smile. “No worries; my dad says salt water can cure anything anyway,” she said, walking towards the ocean.
I then rolled my eyes at her repetitive ‘dad knowledge’ explanations that left her mouth in every possible situation. I followed close behind her to the water.
…
We put our feet in the ocean until our toes went numb, then looked out at the beach. It was deep into September, and the Maple and oak trees along the coast had turned a burnt orange colour. The deep burgundy bark of the Arbutus trees, in contrast with their bright green leaves, looked like a painting right before our eyes. Across the water, we could see some small islands where a few houses sat. The tide was out quite a way, which improved our chances of finding good treasures.
We waded out until we were both up to about our knees. The water no longer felt cold but refreshing. It was full of seaweed. I secretly picked a few from the water and put them on Jas’s head.
It was below the seaweed, though, which we would be focusing our attention at today.
“Jas! I found a rose petal!” I called. A name for one of the small pink shells that were one of our favourites. She rushed over, and we both ogled over the tiny treasure.
We both entered our own worlds as we looked. I was looking for small, shiny shells and rocks with the most dazzling patterns and colours. But I kept getting distracted by the little crabs scuffling along the ocean floor. I would follow one, watching the little guy pick up a pebble or piece of seaweed, discard it, and keep moving. I wondered what he was looking for; if only I knew, then I could get it for him.
Jas kept heaving up giant kelp heads or launching massive rocks covered in barnacles out of the water. We then gathered our most prized findings, laid them out on the sand, and made a story.
“Mr. old man barnacle is trying to marry off his prettiest daughter to Sir. Kelp head,” I started, picking up a barnacle-covered rock and a kelp head and laying them in front of us.
“Not lady rose petal! She is too young and too delicate for him!” Jas declared, laying the pink shell beside the kelp head. I drew a heart in the sand around them.
“But the lady loves someone else,” I said in my most earnest voice. I drew a jagged line in the middle of the heart.
“WHO?” Jas asked with all the apprehension in the world. She always listened to my stories as if I was about to tell her the key to happiness.
“Oh well, of course. It is the heroic knight from across the shore; he has come regions to find her after hearing how many strawberries she can fit in her mouth.” I pulled the shiniest ink black rock I could find from behind me. Jas giggled. I put the black rock in the heart beside the pink shell.
“But this is not their happily ever after. In fact, they end up hating each other after only being together for two days!” I exclaimed. “Apparently, all she did was fill her mouth with strawberries, and all he did was shine his black shoes when they were together. The end.”
“Wait, no, that’s an awful end; how about- “ And now was Jas’s turn to shift the story to her liking; it would likely end with a tragic death or a lot of babies.
We talked about the ending and kept adding detail upon detail. Our story then lay before us, resembling a battlefield of rocks and shells. Finally, our talking lulled to an end. I yawned and sat back on the sand; Jas followed. I looked up at the sky. It was so clear—neither light nor dark, blue or grey. If I looked hard enough, it began to look purplish. This was my favourite time of day. When the sun has set, but the leftover light still sits on everything—making it seem like everything was a dream—or a -oh no. I was bolted out of my thoughts as I realized that the sun had set, and it was now getting dark.
“Jas, we’ve gotta go.” I got up and gave her a hand to help her. She reluctantly shuffled up, clutching my wrist.
“My parents will be wondering where we are,” I said. She nodded. We went to dip our hands in the water to clean off the sand. The dogs had been lying beside us for a while now, a good indicator that they were ready to go home, too.
“Ok, ok, Mika and Leo, we’re going home,” I said with a smile and a pat on their heads. They both sat up at the word ‘home’ and started leading the way.