The Words We Keep
: Chapter 11

Saturday late afternoon. Beach parking lot.

I’m here despite the cacophony of monsters in my head shouting that putting my future into the hands of a boy I hardly know with a questionable past is probably not my hottest idea. Plus, I’m not sure I’m up for whatever Micah has in store, because I got almost zero sleep and am dragging serious butt.

Staci convinced Dad to let Alice go out with friends last night to “get back to normal.” But Alice going out meant Dad was up pacing, and I was checking my watch, checking the blades under my bed, checking, checking, checking to make sure life wasn’t spiraling out of control again. Alice made it by her ten p.m. curfew, but I was too rattled to sleep.

In the slanted sunlight, I close my eyes, bury my toes in the cool sand, and lean back on the rock wall bordering the parking lot. The warm sun and the salty sting of the air transport me back to a summer day more than ten years ago.

Alice and I are burying Mom in the sand. She’s covered up to her chin, her laugh trilling on the breeze. Dad’s videoing like always. Margot is in Mom’s belly, and a sickness is in Mom’s heart, but we don’t know it yet.

We don’t know anything. Except this moment. Our parents and each other and the sun and the sand sifting through our fingers.

When I open my eyes, they’re gone, Mom’s laughter scattered by the ca-caaas of seagulls dodging overhead. Micah waves from the beach parking lot, holding two rakes with long, metal tines.

Rakes? RAKES?

Yeah, this was a mistake.

Abort! Abort!

“You came,” Micah says.

“You sound surprised.”

“A little.” He squints into the sun that hangs just above the horizon line. Then he marches down the beach without another word. My bare feet sink into the warm sand as I trail behind him. He’s sans socks today but still has on his neon sunglasses, a T-shirt that says normal people scare me, and a pair of bright orange swim trunks. When he reaches a clearing just below a craggy rock formation, he jabs the rakes into the sand.

“So, here’s the deal,” he says. “We start with art.”

“What does art have to do with me writing poetry?”

“Nothing.” He smiles easily. “And everything.”

I shake my head. “Art is definitely not my thing.”

He points the handle of a rake toward me. “As I recall, you reached out to me for help.”

“Yes, but—”

“Well, do you want it or not?” He raises a finger into the air like he’s just remembered something. He pulls a paper from his backpack and hands it to me. “And to take this project to Lily Larkin level of anal-retentive, I even made a list. Try not to get too excited.”

Micah’s Mentoring Rules

1. No questioning the process.

2. No quitting until the project is done.

3. No falling in love with me.

Heat rushes to my cheeks. “Falling in love with you?”

“I saw that in a movie once, and I’ve always wanted to say it. I’m also waiting for a chance to use ‘You killed my father; prepare to die,’ but that didn’t really seem to fit here.”

I hold out Micah’s list of rules to him. “I’m sorry. I think this was a mistake. I actually really need to focus on the poem.”

“All in due time.”

“This isn’t a joke. It’s my life. It’s serious.”

“That does sound serious.” He doesn’t take the paper, just offers me a rake. “For this to work, you’re going to have to trust me.”

“I don’t even know you.”

“True. And we are up against a lifetime of coloring-in-the-lines indoctrination. But wasn’t there ever a time, maybe just once, in a moment of sheer, reckless abandon, that you wanted to draw what you wanted to draw?”

He waits for me to open up—divulge my secret wild side. But the truth is, I like drawing inside the lines. I’m good at it. It’s who I am. I wouldn’t even be on this beach with this boy if my family didn’t absolutely need this win.

But we do.

“Or maybe,” he continues. “Is it that if you don’t try, you can’t fail?”

“Fine.” I pluck the rake from his hand. “Teach me how to art.”

The cove stretches out before us in a lazy C, hugging the waves as they peak and break and spill over the beach. Micah sweeps his arms wide toward the ocean.

“Lily, today the world is our canvas.” He drags the tines of his rake through the sand, leaving wet, dark lines behind it. “And the sand, our medium.”

He keeps pulling the rake, making a twirly design in the sand, and then he stands back and gestures like Ta-da!

“You know the tide’s just going to wash that away, right?” I say.

“I’m aware of how the ocean works.”

“Then what’s the point?”

He smiles like my question amuses him. “See, that’s your problem.”

“My problem?”

“You’re so worried about the point of it all.”

My mind tries to come up with a rebuttal. But he’s right. I used to write poetry for fun. I loved making the words sing on paper the way they did in my head. Now writing’s a chore. Even running, the one place where I felt free, is a weight. An item on my growing to-do list.

I sigh. “What do I draw?”

“Whatever you want. Doesn’t have to be perfect.” Micah’s already lost in his work, sweeping his rake effortlessly through the sand, trailing dark lines behind him in unpredictable patterns. “In fact, better if it’s not. Perfect is boring.”

I start pulling my rake through the sand, moving it this way a few feet, then turning and going the other way. I pause and look back at what I’ve done.

What even is that?

You’re embarrassing yourself.

If he can do it, why can’t you?

Are you totally worthless, Lily?

Are you listening?

Lily?

Well, are you?

“So, tell me about your poetry. Still blocked?” Micah says as our lines bring us together. “Sorry, sorry. Still in denial about being blocked?”

“Rude,” I shout to him as we get farther away again. “And it’s not writer’s block.”

“Then what is it?”

Life block.

Alice block.

Brain block.

“I don’t know. It’s like everyone is expecting something. Gifford thinks I have important things to say, and my dad just knows I’m going to win, but I can’t even write anything, so maybe I was wrong. Maybe I’m not a poet after all.” I’ve gone off course while talking and walked straight through my own lines, leaving big ol’ footprints in the design. “Well, crap. I’ve already messed it up.”

Micah just laughs. “Know what Bob Ross would say?”

I try to cover up my mistake by kicking more sand on top.

“Bob Ross, as in TV painter guy with the white-boy Afro from the eighties? Always talking about happy little trees?”

“The very same. Kind of a personal hero of mine.”

I shield my eyes from the harsh angles of the sun to look at him. “That’s…surprising.”

“Why? Bob Ross was an icon. Always upbeat. Giving art to the masses. Spreading joy like syphilis.”

“First of all, ew. Second, I do not get you.” I stand back, studying him, trying yet again to figure out the enigma that is Micah Mendez. “On one side you’re into Winnie-the-Pooh and brightly colored socks, and apparently Bob Ross, and then on the other you’re…”

I pause, thinking about all the things I’ve heard about him. Suicide. Fistfights. Certifiable.

“Handsome? Witty? Pick a word, any word.”

“Well, we can eliminate humble.”

He flicks a rakeful of sand in my direction with a teasing smile that inexplicably makes my stomach flutter. I silently curse Sam for all her sexy artist talk.

“I know what they say about me, you know.” Micah leans on his rake, eyes on the sand. “A Boy on the Verge. Manic Micah.”

My gut tightens. “You know about that?”

Does he know I called him crazy on the day we met?

He must totally hate you.

“Yep. And it’s hilarious because I’d give my left nut for some mania, but alas, my malady of non-choice is depression.”

“That’s just the thing,” I say. “You don’t seem depressed.”

Micah laughs. “I’ll pass your glowing Yelp review along to my therapist.” He’s standing next to me now, shoulder to shoulder, and I don’t know why he’s so close until he looks down, and he’s added his footprints to mine, and now it looks like they were part of the design all along. “Anyway, as I was saying, Bob Ross would say there are no mistakes, just happy accidents.”

With the setting sun on his face and his black curls dipping in front of his eyebrow with the scar, I can’t help thinking Sam’s right: he is kind of adorable.

I turn away before I replace myself wanting to know more about this boy and his scar.

No time for boys.

“Why are you helping me?”

Micah squints in the sun, looking at me like he’s choosing his words carefully. “You had this look. This help, I’m drowning look in your eyes. I mean, your eyes are beautiful—” He clears his throat and his face flushes red, and I’m sure mine does, too, so I look down at the sand. “But also sad, all at once. And I just wanted to help.”

He smiles awkwardly, and the sun is warm and the sand is cool, and I let his answer be enough. I keep drawing my lines, and before long, I’m off on my own path, making circles and curves and lines. Just like running, it has a rhythm to it. Pull and turn and pull again. And like with writing—at least the way writing used to be—the less I think about it, the easier it comes. And soon I’m lost in it, thinking about nothing but the feel of the sand giving way, the sound of the waves.

Across the beach, Micah practically dances as he draws, his body twisting and turning, his rake an extension of his body. I try not to notice the way his arm muscles flex as he grips his rake.

“Time’s up!” Micah declares from across the beach, which is lined with our creation, but from this angle, it looks like nothing more than a bunch of messed-up sand.

“Now what?” I yell to him.

“Now,” he says, chucking his rake into the sand, “we swim!”

And then he’s running toward the ocean, ripping off his shirt as he goes. He high-knees it over the waves and dives in, headfirst. I follow behind, toeing the foamy white, eyeing the huge dangerous riptides signs that dot the coast each spring.

“What are you waiting for?” Micah whips water from his hair, rocking slightly with each wave.

“I just don’t, exactly, love the ocean.”

You mean hate/fear/avoid at all costs?

Sitting with my legs pulled to my chest, I watch from the safety of the shore as the waves tower above him, and he dives beneath the foam. Each time he disappears, I hold my breath until his black hair pops out again.

With my heart in my throat, a memory stirs—one I’ve tucked deep.

I’m six and Mom’s gone and Margot’s here instead, and we’re back at Newport Beach on Dad’s everything-is-still-the-same, I’ll-prove-it trip. He dips Margot in the waves while Alice and I swim out.

Let’s see how far we can go, she says. Follow me.

But we’re too far.

And I’m trying to swim back to the shore. It keeps floating away.

Dad and Margot are little dots.

Dad’s waving his arms.

But I’m tired.

I don’t want to swim anymore. Don’t want to fight.

I flip onto my back. Floating is easy.

The water holds me. Folds me into itself.

The ocean tugs me away.

I’m sorry.

Then Alice’s head is next to me. She’s grabbing me, pulling me back.

It’s okay. Let me go.

It’s too hard to stay.

But she tells me we’re on an adventure. Gets me to follow her to the shore, where Dad holds me so tight, I think he’ll never stop.

“Where do you go?”

Micah’s voice brings me back. He’s sitting next to me, dripping wet, his hair slicked against his head except for one defiant curl falling into his eyes.

“What?”

“When your eyes are open and your body’s here, but you’re somewhere else.”

The water laps against my feet. How do I explain where my mind goes? How I float out of myself?

“The ancient Scottish have a word: sjushamillabakka,” I say. “Where the sea meets the shore. Not quite water, not quite land. An in-between border realm.”

Then I tell him about the time I almost drowned. About how Alice got me to swim out too far.

“You know the scariest part?” I say, and I’m not sure why I keep talking, except part of me feels like this boy with the semicolon tattoo might understand. Maybe he’s the only one who could. “How natural it felt to let the water take me. Like part of me almost wanted it to.” I look at the sand rather than meet his eyes as I tell him this piece of the story I’ve never told anyone else. “Sometimes that feeling comes back to me, of the in-between—the sjushamillabakka.” I scrape my finger through the sand. “Not really dead. Not really alive. Just floating somewhere in the middle.”

I half expect him to tell me I’m off my rocker, because let’s admit it, I am, but instead he smiles, a gust of air whipping his black curls in front of his eyes. And Micah, the artist with the scar on his eyebrow, looks at me, his words half carried away by the wind. “And you say you’re not a poet.” He searches my face. What does he see in it? In me? “You’re different.”

Little jolts of electricity prick my skin. Can he see the monsters in my head? For a split second, I think he can.

“I’m pretty normal.”

He shoves me lightly and I’m keenly aware of how close his body is to mine, half-naked and wet and glistening in the sun. “Relax. It’s a compliment.”

“How is that a compliment?”

“Because normal is overrated. I’m a pretty good reader of people, and you are not like everyone else.”

“I see we’re back to you pretending to know all about me.”

“Actually, just the opposite. I’m enjoying the fact that I may have had you, Lily Larkin, track star, super student, all wrong.” He leans back on his elbows, beads of water sparkling on his chest. “You know, it’s not the worst thing in the world to have someone know who you are.”

Then, suddenly, he looks at the water flowing past us onto the beach and grabs my hand as he jumps up, pulling me with him.

“We’re about to miss it!”

“Miss what?”

He winks. “The whole point.”

Micah picks up the rakes and his shirt as we run up the beach, up the side of a rocky overhang, all the way to the edge, where we stop short of flying into the air. The beach spreads below us, shades of light and dark, wet and dry, creating a swirling, sprawling design. It’s complete chaos, all the lines and curves and circles intersecting at random, but somehow it makes sense.

He learns forward on the rock, his eyes wide like a little kid’s. “This is it!”

A wave flows up the beach, licking our artwork, then another, until the water overtakes it, dragging the sand down the beach and our creation with it.

As the sea devours our art, one wave at a time, we’re silent, like we’re watching something sacred. Our design disintegrates slowly, stubbornly. Wave by wave, piece by piece, the sea swallows it.

“It’s unbelievable,” I whisper.

He meets my eyes. “Yeah,” he says. “It is.”

He turns back to the beach, where our art is almost gone. The sand sinks as the tide reaches higher, like some sort of cosmic balancing act. One thing waning, one growing stronger.

Micah inhales sharply when the water washes over the last piece of it, pulling the sand out to sea.

Our design is undone.

It’s sad.

And beautiful.

All at once.