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No Place Like Home
No one had visited Sunset Beach for several years; they deemed it as an unclean waste of land and oftentimes used it as a dumping area. Nobody cared that someone might have considered the place her home.
Every morning at the crack of dawn, a young girl that none of the citizens from town knew took it upon herself to clean up the tainted sand. No human being likes a dirty home, after all.
Michelle had been orphaned at ten and only attended school a few days a week, on the days that her beach didn’t need any cleaning. The people she lived with, distant relatives from her mother’s side, were rarely ever home, and she wasn’t missed on the days she camped out on the sand. As a result of barely ever going to school, and living by herself most of the time, Michelle had very little human contact and was lacking in the friends department.
But every once in a while, another person showed up at the beach. He always silently stood in the way of the tide and gazed out across the blue. Michelle never saw him arrive, or leave. He just…appeared. Several times she attempted to speak to him, but she could never build up enough courage.
She was almost afraid of him.
He was different; seemed like an entity of the beach and not a part of the human world.
Evidently, he was from the town because one day she spotted a small gathering of people akin in age near him. Even so, he didn’t appear to be a part of the crowd. In fact, it was almost as if they didn’t even notice him there at all.
A few days following that, Michelle happened to run into him as she was picking up trash in the area.
“So you’re the one who keeps this beach clean.”
Michelle jumped and hid the bag of wrappers and molded food behind her back. She nodded shyly. The boy’s voice was quiet and melancholy, almost like the lonely sea on a windless day.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
“To…me?” She was surprised at how small and faint her rarely used voice sounded. She didn’t think he could notice her, considering all the times she’d been in plain view and he never acknowledged her before. “W-why?”
“You’re different than the others,” was his simple reply.
“My name is Jake.”
“Michelle.” She was delighted. It was the first time she had actually been able to have a decent conversation with anybody. Maybe he would be her friend.
Days passed, and the two spent the hours sitting on the sand chatting amiably, playing among the waves, and admiring the sunset that Sunset Beach used to be known for. Every morning when Michelle woke up, she hurried to the water to meet Jake. Being greeted by his sandy blonde hair and soft smile was always enough to brighten her worst days.
The beach belonged to them; it was their very own spot. A sacred getaway. And sometimes, Michelle even felt like they belonged to each other. It was almost as if nothing else existed when she was around him. But Jake still seemed somewhat detached. When she felt that he was becoming discontent, she would do something unlikely, like steal the hat from his head and run out of reach. He always insisted that the hat looked ridiculous on her as it always slipped over her eyes and covered half of her face.
Nevertheless, she loved his oversized hat.
Of course, there were the days that Jake didn’t show up. And Michelle would take his place in the tide waiting for his return. She would wait forever if it came to that. She would do anything for her friend.
She loved her friend.
One day, when twilight was painting its way across the sky, and the waves were lapping at their bare feet, Jake turned to Michelle. “Have you ever fallen in love with somebody?”
Michelle looked into Jake’s liquid-sky eyes and denied. “No. Why…have you?” she barely noticed how her voice faded away with the last words.
He thoughtfully glanced back at the ocean before returning his gaze to Michelle. “Maybe.” She wore her heart on her sleeve; her feelings towards his reply were evident. Without breaking eye contact, he dropped his hat onto her head and ran a few feet away.
“Hey,” It took her a moment to stand because of the hat obstructing her vision. “Where did you go?” She stretched her arms out and tentatively walked forward. Cold, empty air greeted her fingers. She grasped for words in her mind before producing, “…So, what’s she like?”
Jake watched Michelle turn circles, several feet from his actual location. “She’s…unique. Interesting. Pretty enough to get any guy if she wanted to. She likes a clean environment, the beach… And she’s fun to talk to.”
“…She sounds like a good person.” Michelle replied softly. Each word pierced her heart.
After a few more seconds of blind groping, she lifted up the hat. Jake was gone. The hat fell out of her grasp and landed on the sand below as she continued searching the beach for Jake. Her search becoming futile, she collapsed onto the sand. He was just…gone.
Why would he leave? She wondered with a hurt expression. Being alone was so much lonelier than it had been before she met someone she could share her time with.
Jake said he loved someone. He probably went to see her, Michelle sighed inwardly. He doesn’t need me anymore if that is the case. She stood up and placed the hat over her eyes once again.
“Suppose…there’s a girl who likes you. She’s liked you for a really long time. But, you have your eyes on someone else. Anyways, this girl really likes you, but has no clue how to say it…” She recited quietly as she spun around in circles slowly. She stopped abruptly and took the hat off. The sea stretched before her. “It’s like the sky and the sea. They go on forever, one beside the other, but can never touch. They can never be together. No matter how much they wish, or pray, or strive… it’s sort of how I feel, Jake.” She watched the twilit sky’s reflection shimmer on the water, smiling. “That doesn’t count.”
The next day, Michelle went to school. One reason she hated her high school was because of the uniforms. Plaid skirts and loafers at the beach just didn’t mix. Textbooks that got wet sand stuck to the pages were a hassle, too.
To her surprise, Jake was waiting for her. She dropped her books, kicked off her shoes and sat next to him. “Jake, do you not go to school? You got here awfully quickly today.” She observed, maybe a little too eagerly.
“I haven’t been to a school in a long time.”
“Home-school?” She inquired. Jake merely nodded. “I’m surprised. You seem like a schoolboy.” Michelle giggled slightly. Jake realized that his hat was resting haphazardly on her head, and pulled it down to cover her eyes while smirking. “Hey!”
“You should just keep that hat. It…suits you.” Jake decided.
“A-are you serious?”
Jake confirmed.
Michelle was suddenly glad that the hat was covering most of her face because she was sure it was beet-red. “It looks so much better on you… It’s yours, after all.”
“Don’t worry. Like I said, it suits you.”
“Thank you.” Michelle said softly. It took a lot of effort to get the next sentence out. “Have you told…your…girl that you like her yet?” Jake shook his head. She continued in a steady voice, “I’m sure she would be very happy to hear it.”
“Would it make you happy?” Jake asked, his tone barely above a whisper. Michelle pulled the hat over her face more to hide her vibrant blush. “You’re so strange.” He laughed. “But, would you be happy if I told you that I liked you?” He leaned closer as he spoke. Michelle could smell the distinctive scent that always alerted her of Jake’s presence; he himself smelled even sweeter than the real ocean did.
“H-hypothetically speaking, as in, if it’s me that you like, then the answer would be…yes.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?” Michelle countered.
“I don’t want a hypothetical answer. What would you say if I told you I like you?” He gently pried her hands off of the hat and removed it from her head so he could see her face clearly. As expected, her face was flushed.
Michelle’s heart was beating wildly in her chest, so much that she feared it would eject itself from her body. She was faintly aware that his hands were still on hers. “Well in that case I would—I would have to s-say…that…that I—that I would be the h-happiest girl in the world!” She pulled her hands up to hide her glowing face, so her final words were muffled.
“Hm? Could you repeat that?”
“I-I uh…” Michelle leapt to her feet and apologized, “I just remembered I have to…baby-sit my cousin tonight! Sorry! Bye.” Before Jake could respond, she took off towards the town.
Michelle spent over a week “baby-sitting her cousin.” Not once did the thought of returning to the beach ever cross her mind. She’d embarrassed herself beyond repair in front of Jake and never intended to see him again. Who was she kidding; he loved another girl anyways! That thought alone was enough to instigate tears.
Also, the homework load from school gave her other things to worry about.
But one night as she was brooding silently in her room, the pollution on the beach came to mind. Two week’s worth of garbage covering up the beauty of the sand…how could I be so careless? She thought, crestfallen.
As she figured, the beach was covered with stray litter. Michelle hoped Jake didn’t see it in its current disorder. By what little moonlight there was, she began clearing the sand. Old take-out food containers were the worst to pick up, in her opinion. People wasted so much food…when people in other countries were suffering from having barely any food at all.
Something dark and blue caught her eye.
It was Jake’s hat.
Michelle let the damp paper lunch bag fall from her hands and her expression softened. “I can’t believe I forgot it.” She rescued the hat from the garbage it was being suffocated by and brushed it off. The day was breaking, and the sun’s orange fingers began to reach out from the horizon. Michelle had been cleaning since midnight.
She sat down on a barren, upturned crate and turned the hat over in her hands. It must have been lonely for so long, maybe feeling forgotten. The material was soft against her tired face, and didn’t smell at all like trash. It smelled like the ocean; like Jake. That thought brought back the memories of the last time she saw him. Her eyes fell to the sand. “I’m sorry. I think it’s better if we forget about each other. Because I can’t…”
“Can’t what?” Michelle stood up quickly and dropped Jake’s hat.
“Jake!”
“Long time, no see. You’ve been missed.” He wouldn’t say that he felt incomplete while she was gone; like a puzzle missing its final piece, or a Romeo without his Juliet. “What were you talking about?”
“I need some time away from the beach, that’s all. School finals are coming up, so I’ll be away, studying for a while.”
“School? But you never go to school… Why now?” Jake wondered, his previously cheerful expression turning baffled. “Did I do something?”
“No, of course not. I just have to…deal with a few things.” Michelle smiled. An empty smile with no effort put into its being. She gently pressed the blue hat into Jake’s hands and walked away. The simple gesture brought his whole world crashing down. It was the equivalent of having his heart handed right back to him. His mouth became as dry as the sand beneath his feet, and salty tears stung his eyes. Only one other thing had ever hurt him that badly.
Michelle suddenly stopped and looked up at the sky. Without turning around, she asked one last question: “By the way, what happened between you and the girl you like?”
He surreptitiously wiped his tears away and fought to keep his voice steady before answering. “Oh, she…didn’t feel the same way after all.”
The morning wasn’t as bright as it should have been.
Michelle kept putting off returning to the beach even after school finals ended and summer began. Days passed, weeks passed, months passed, and finally, it had been an entire year since the last time she’d seen Jake or their beach. It had once again become the town’s favorite dump site, the seagulls strayed away from it, and it no longer held that elegance it used to have when a girl who loved it as her home kept it beautiful. In that new year, Michelle and her relatives moved away.
One more year turned to two, and two turned to five.
The sea cried in the daytime.
The sky dulled at night.
The land was put to rest.
Sunset Beach was forsaken.
Five more years went by, Sunset Beach was cleaned by the city and reestablished as the new summer hot spot, and had become overgrown with youths and adults as it had been so many years ago, even before Michelle’s time spent there. It was thriving, and almost happy.
Almost, because no one ever could have loved it as much as they did.
At the age of thirty, unmarried, a single mother to a four-year-old daughter, Michelle returned to her forgotten home to raise the child where she had grown up.
Sunset Beach—or so it had been called in her time—was nearly as beautiful as ever. But the one aspect that had made it the most amazing beach on earth was missing. Nevertheless, she had gone there for her daughter, not to revisit old memories of things that she’d never be part of again.
Maria loved the beach like her mother used to, and in no time at all ran off to splash in the waves with her bright orange floaties secured on her tiny arms, along with the other children she’d made friends with the previous times. Michelle watched carefully from a short distance away, settling herself under the large umbrella and beach towel they brought. Her daughter looked happy. She was happy. Happier than her mother could ever be again, not even when she was back home. Because something was still missing. It was always going to be missing.
The people who came to that beach didn’t care about it’s cleanness, Michelle noted with ire, gazing at the loose ice cream bar wrappers and ugly litter that dotted the sand. She gathered the trash around her area, more out of habit than anything, and stood to look for a trash bin. On her way to the nearest one, she collected whatever other rubbish that stood in her path, and then some. Even that little contribution wasn’t enough to make the beach a better place again.
Dumping the junk she collected into the useless wire trashcan that trash still managed to leap out of, she let out a low sigh. The people at the beach were so different; it was almost alien. A group of women in bikinis were sunbathing a few feet away, people were throwing Frisbees and playing beach volleyball farther away, and colorful parasols and people dotted the sand for miles. It could never be home again, she knew.
“You like a clean environment, don’t you?” Came a calm, quiet voice that had a slightly teasing lilt to it.
Michelle looked at the stranger, a tall male around her age, with jagged, dirty blonde hair that looked carelessly windswept. He seemed to have a calm enough exterior, but his presence intimidated her. He was one of the good-looking kinds of guys who never thought to look twice her way, since, for one, she had a daughter, and for two, she was much too quiet and seemingly melancholy. Her eyes drifted from his face to the sunbathing females nearby, where he should have been headed towards, instead of wasting time on her. She wasn’t even wearing a swimsuit like the majority of the population there. Any guy in his right mind would have overlooked her, even if he had been looking for her.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you.” There seemed to be something meaningful in those words, but she couldn’t tell what exactly.
“Why?” She asked suddenly, suspicious. “Why not one of them,” she vaguely gestured towards the sunbathers, “why me?”
A slightly nervous chuckle escaped the man’s lips. Michelle realized he was twisting something in his hands distractedly, and figured it was a towel or something. “You’re different than them.” His eyes darted back towards the wad of material in his hands. His nervousness made him seem a lot younger than he looked. Almost like a lovesick teenager. Apparently coming to a decision, he held the material out to Michelle. “I think this belongs to you.”
“To me?” Michelle repeated in confusion, tentatively taking the object from the stranger. It felt familiar. Like something from a long time ago, returning to its rightful place. She unfurled it and smoothed out the creases before it dawned on her what it was.
Jake’s hat.
“Where did you get—” Her reply was cut off by the yells of “mommy” from nearby. She whirled around, expecting to see Maria romping towards her, but the little blonde passed right by and went to the man instead. “Maria?” She uttered in confusion, furrowing her eyebrows.
Maria had a hold on the man’s pant leg, smiling widely. “Mommy, mommy, this is my friend Jake!”
Michelle’s eyebrows shot up into her hairline. “Jake?” She repeated dubiously. The blonde man—Jake—grinned before snatching the blue hat out of her grasp and pulling it down over her head. It still fell past half her face. She wildly moved to remove it from her eyesight, suddenly flustered, but was enveloped in a hug. The scent of the sea filled her senses, comfort of all comforts. A small smile, the first true smile after so many years, crept onto her lips.
She was home again.
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