Washed Up

Beach Break

Riley

Beach break. Noun. [beech breyk]. A wave that breaks over a sandy seabed.

I ease myself from underneath the cool seashell sheet draped over me and wince as my bare feet hit the cold floor and it creaks beneath my weight. I glance up at the bunk above me and hear Lucy moan in her sleep, rolling over.

"Ernie," she groans. "Let's have a wittle baby soon. Pwease?"

She flips over again, one leg hanging over the edge of the bunkbed, but her pillow muffles the rest of the sleeptalk. I grin wickedly up at her. I should have been recording. Lucy talks more in her sleep than anyone I know, and it's always hilarious. Yesterday, she kept asking her mom why she was on a double date in Cracker Barrel. I don't know if she ever got an answer, but I was craving biscuits and gravy for the rest of the day.

I kneel in front of the bed and reach beneath the dark stained board for a square shoe box that I take with me everywhere I go. I made it in fourth grade in Miss Gornicky's class when we were studying world geography. We taped a world map to the lid and then decorated the sides of the shoe box with fun travel stickers--binoculars, globes, hiking boots. I probably should have thrown the box out years ago, but instead it has become a repository for all of my postcards and trinkets from my travel.

And now I need to find something to show Ross. I pick the box up and scamper out of Lucy's and my bedroom into the empty hallway. I can hear Ronald's snores from the Covingtons' bedroom and I smile to myself, grateful for this little moment of peace before everyone else wakes up. I sit cross-legged on the floor and lean against the wall with the box on my lap.

As I pull off the lid and sift through the box, I'm hit with a wave of nostalgia. There's a picture of Mom pretending to hold up the leaning tower of Pisa. A postcard from Mount Rushmore. A piece of rock I found near Stonehenge. A magnet that says, "I got kissed by a sea lion at the San Diego Zoo!" Just a note: Being kissed by a sea lion is not as fun as it sounds. Stinky slobber galore. I grin as I sort through the contents of the shoe boxes.

So maybe my life hasn't been all bad. I mean, compared to Ross, I've seen so much of the world. I've traveled to other countries, lived in other cultures, and met hundreds of people I never would have known if I'd grown up in small town USA like I always dreamed. Granted, my dad worked during most of our trips and I grew up in army barracks all across the U.S., but still. I pick up a picture of the three of us, Mom, Dad and me, standing in front of Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park. We're dysfunctional, but we're still a family, more or less.

"Is everything alright, honey?"

I drop the picture back into the box and whirl my head around to see Merry Gene peaking out of her bedroom in matching seagull pajamas and a pair of hot pink slippers. I drop the picture back into the box and try to cover it with my arms. Subtle, Riley. Real subtle.

"Uh, yeah, I'm great. Just dandy."

Merry Gene shuffles out the door, closing it shut behind her, and sits on the floor across from me, curlers in her honey blonde hair. "Whatcha got there?"
"It's just some, uh, souvenirs and stuff," I say, reluctantly removing my arms so she can peer into the box.

"Oh, isn't this just precious!"

She picks up the picture of the three of us at Yellowstone, taken when I was in first or second grade with two pigtails poking out of the sides of my heads.

"Gene and Bri look so young and happy here," she says, pointing to my parents' smiling faces.

"You'd be surprised what time can do."