Old Orchard

Carla

My day goes by in a blur, just like all the other days have been since the last time Logan and I spoke to one another.

It is hard walking into my last class of the day. I have to stop my eyes from sweeping the classroom while I walk in. I have beaten him to class today, thankfully. Some days I can tell Logan is watching me. Today is no different, as I can feel his eyes lock onto me as soon as he enters the room. I struggle to keep my head down and act like I am reading my AP Biology textbook.

Now he is staring at me? Why... Because I had been gone for three days?

When he had been gone for a day last week, it drove me crazy not knowing why he was gone. Was he skipping? Was he sick? A million questions ran through my mind, which killed me not knowing. It killed me, knowing I could not ask him and that we were too far past me asking him anything anymore.

Justin, a classmate of ours, slides into his seat next to me. "Hey, where have you been? I had some questions on the last chapter, it was brutal, and I had no one who to ask." He says to me while pushing his glasses back up his nose. Justin had been my biggest competition at becoming valedictorian, but we had always been civil with one another, even asking each other for help when we needed it. He had also been the only one to ask where I had been. Even though I am sure, he had heard why I was gone from everyone else. It was a small school, and my sister was the most popular girl.

Using my finger as a temporary bookmark, I speak, "my Grandmother passed away; we went to Maine for the funeral."

First, I think I will hear what I had the three days we had been in Maine, but of course, my high school classmates always surprise me. "Oh, man. Wait you mean the one you visited every summer? That one?" he asks louder than I wanted him to and hoping no one heard him.

"Yes, that grandmother," I say and do not sound as harsh as I want to.

"Man, that sucks. I am sorry."

With how loud Justin was, I am sure that Logan, two rows back, heard him, and I did not want him to know that she had died because now it would be worse when he did not come and comfort me. Because if you looked at us, you would think we are strangers. At one point, I thought I knew him, but in the end, I was wrong about everything. I was dead wrong about who he was and what I was to him. Life sucks more than it ever has.

Climbing into bed after school and loading the newest Sherlock Holmes season from the BBC, I hear my mom asking my dad why her mother would do this to her and how immature it was to leave a cottage to two 18-year-old girls. I laugh to myself, knowing my Grams would be rolling her eyes at my mom and telling her to quit with the drama. They were close enough, but my mother only went out to Old Orchard rarely since my grandma would fly in for the holidays and stay for the whole month.

"Why would you want to come to Iowa during the winter?" When I was younger, I had asked, not realizing that Maine got as much snow as us, if not more.

"No weather is going to stop me from seeing my grand-babies on Christmas," was her response. Even though she was supposed to be flying in multiple times, she was delayed due to a blizzard or snowstorm that Iowa is famous for having.

At that time, I always wondered who would ever leave the beach if they had to.