Shorts

First College Fiction Assignment

I'm in a fiction writing introduction class, and our first assignment was to write about a memory, starting with the phrase: "I don't know why I remember..."

Anyway, I wrote two, the first before class, and the second because I realized I wasn't being honest with my memories. When you have the opportunity to craft an experience with words, you have to make sure it matters. So the second one is so much more honest. It also corresponds as a reflection to an earlier part in this series. Pretty damn interesting that way.

Memory 1:

I don't know why I remember sitting on the high dive. My feet were dangling beneath me, carefully avoiding the cobwebs that had accumulated after half a year without use. It was the first weekend of the summer, and I had woken up early with no hope of sleeping again. Walking out of our lake house, the morning air was fresh and dewy, the lake totally still as fog clung to its surface. The ladder of the high dive was damp, waiting for the sun to peak out and dry its wooden rungs. I pressed silently upward, the balls of my feet padding up the ladder, my fingertips scaling its sides. I had only jumped off the diving board once before, several summers ago. Sitting on the board's edge, looking through my bare feet at the green lake below, it seemed unjust to ever disturb the peace that manifested in its gentle ripples. I remember the momentary changes in the water, a fish or a turtle peaking out, but ducking back under quickly enough that all I saw was a small splash in response. All around our little cove of the lake were hills, covered in trees. Every once and a while, a house could be seen, maybe stairs leading down to a wooden dock, similar to the one I was sitting on, a boat or two bobbing on their lifts. I was surrounded by people in that moment, but totally alone in the early morning. Soon enough, the gently bobbing boats would be racing up and down the cove, pulling skiers or finding a good fishing spot. Kids would be swimming close to shore, teenagers lying out in the sun, parents monitoring a busy lake scene. There would be people shouting, and music playing, and food cooking, and the lake would come alive with memories waiting to be made. It always did. But, for just a moment, the lake was still, the lake was mine.

Memory 2: 

I don't know why I remember the first time I snuck him into the house. It started out as a joke. "Do you want a cookie?" Yes. A trade. When he got there, I was just taking the macaroni and cheese off the stove, and the cookies he handed me were still warm from McDonald's. Each contraband bite was good, better than it should have been. They were almost too fresh, the chocolate chips still gooey. Why was McDonald's baking cookies in the middle of the night? We kept our voices down. He wasn't in a good mood. He said all he wanted was some whiskey. I offered to find him some, even though I didn't know where we kept that kind of thing, even though I knew neither of us were 21, even though I knew he would be driving home before too long. Still, I was eager to show that I was mature. That alcohol didn't scare me. Relief washed over me when he said that he wouldn't ask me for something like that. What would I have done if he had asked? How easily would I have given in? How far would I have gone to find him that whiskey? How would I have covered my tracks so the parents didn't find out about this already risky maneuver? We talked, he yawned, we ate, we talked, he yawned. The lights were off in the kitchen, but my dad could come home at any minute. I walked him to the door. 12 minutes later, a text. "I listened to Fun. on the way home and now I'm wide awake again." Just one of the many problems I couldn't wait to help him solve.