Dawn came early. The sun cast long pink shadows on the trees, on the gardens of dying grass. Tamsin slipped her headphones into her ears, mounted her bicycle in the middle of the road, and started peddling toward town. The pocket-watch, looped into a makeshift necklace, bounced beneath her shirt as she rode over the railroad tracks. She began to count the number of times the precious metal met her skin.
Six…eight…thirteen…
The town of Purchase was painfully quiet underneath Tamsin’s screeching music. The cobblestone downtown was dark except for the streetlamps, which cast a sickly glow on the long-abandoned coffee shop. Tamsin rolled her eyes as she passed the empty cowboy bar, the front steps littered with shattered beer bottles and red Solo cups. Downtown felt old, older than it was, and so far behind.
She kept riding until the cobblestone gave way to pale asphalt, until the pale asphalt narrowed into dirt paths looping through the forest that lined the south side of the university. She didn’t stop until she reached a sharp ravine that divided an overgrown meadow. Tamsin discarded the bicycle and collapsed into a patch of dry dandelions.
This can’t be real, she thought, removing her headphones and extracting the pocket-watch. No way in hell.
Tamsin held the pocket-watch above her head, reaching for the light. The raven engraving was rough and uneven, weathered from years of oil and heat, but not ill-keeping. Despite being nearly 150 years old, all of the mechanisms in the time-piece appeared to work perfectly.
Could this really be…She couldn’t even finish the thought. The sound of ticking seconds flooded her ears as she popped the cover open, examined the face and hands, and eventually slipped the pocket-watch again under her shirt. The minutes pulsed against her, fighting with the beat of her heart.
Tamsin lazed in the field, pushing every potential thought back into the dark, until she heard the bells of the Catholic Church strike six.
“Another day,” she whispered. The ground was wet between her fingers, and the back of her cotton shirt was slick with dew. “Just another day.”
She rode home as she always did, weaving through the woods and back to the bit of civilization her town could manifest. Tamsin waved at Harold Lerning as he approached the local grocery, keys in hand. The yawning sun made Harold’s bald spot shimmer, and his wrinkled khakis dragged across the parking lot. A nearby apartment complex was beginning to stir awake, summer school students stretching out on their balconies with a cup of coffee and pack of Marlboro Reds. The university lay dormant, waiting for the sun to wrestle it from sleep like a teenager on the first day of school.
It could have been any other summer, if not for the restless hunk of gold and time hanging from Tamsin’s neck.
“So Dad is coming over tonight?” Tamsin asked as she reached into her dresser for a dry shirt, simultaneously hiding the pocket-watch in the far right corner.
“Just in time for dinner,” Mama Lune crooned from the living room. There was that look again: soft eyes fixated on the past, conjuring a future that would never come to be. Tamsin cringed.
“Are you sure, Mom?” Tamsin pulled the clean shirt on. Mama Lune and Doyle sat patiently on the couch. “He said he was coming?”
“Do you want to read the text message yourself?”
The fact that he texted you at all tells me plenty.
“That’s not necessary.” Tamsin pulled her car keys and phone from a cheap wooden bowl on the coffee table. “Ready to go?”
YOU ARE READING
Perchance to Be
Ficção AdolescenteSummers in Purchase, TX bring two things to the Lune family: long mornings in Eclair de Lune and the ballad of Gentleman Ben. August can't come quickly enough for seventeen-year-old Tamsin Lune. When she isn't working in her mother's doughnut shop o...
