Laura

a short story

I spent the summers of my childhood vacationing at the same lakeside town. Each year I’d go back to the same houses lined up in a row, unevenly distanced like someone was using a pencil to track growth on the side of a doorframe. Are you taller yet? Have you adjusted to the madness that comes with outgrowing your own skin?

I remember the air always being musty and thick with mosquitoes. I remember the peeling fencepost that you couldn’t touch without getting splinters. Mostly though, I remember Laura.

On Sundays, my family would go into town for breakfast. I remember so vividly the heaping piles of hotcakes, mountains of bacon, biscuits with butter and honey and jam, stacks of donuts reaching for God…it was heaven on earth for a growing kid. I’d gorge myself on sugared fruit, cinnamon oatmeal, and mini muffins like I’d never been fed before in my life. All of it was magical to me in early childhood. Even with its tacky taxidermized fish and peeling paint, that breakfast spot was holy to me. It was there that I met an angel.

Her name was Laura, and she was probably the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. My whole body went cold when I saw her, truly, properly, cold. She had a magical essence, a doll-like quality that normally adults praise and dote on, but no one seemed to pay much attention to her. I first saw her in town, but I’d catch glimpses of her in other places too. The docks, the beach, the stretch of wood across the road. It took me a while to approach her. I was a shy kid.

She had a distinctive otherness about her. If you stared at her long enough, you could see the outline of her bones pushing up against her skin. Wherever she was, she was luminous. Sometimes she’d be waiting for me down at the water. Sometimes she’d disappear for days on end.

I was obsessed with her, but I never said a word about it to anybody. The way she blurred at the edges reminded me of a dandelion. I had a sneaking suspicion that if I told my parents about her, she’d be blown out of my reach.

The sun and lack of things to do created an element of unreality, a dreamlike quality, that kept me in a sleepy haze throughout the summers. I’d walk the shoreline skipping rocks and thinking about absolutely nothing for hours on end, except for Laura and Treasure Island. This is a time I think back on blissfully: wading out into the water, trying to catch small fish in my plastic bucket, reading by the open window, scratching bug bites until I bled. Laura and I would wander around town, eating popsicles and betting snail shells on which of us would win arcade games. She was my secret, and I cherished her. My first kiss tasted like cherries and food coloring and her Vaseline.

I wouldn’t say we grew up together, because growing up was put on pause in June and restarted in August. She never aged out of her translucence. She never aged out of being scared to jump from the top of the cliff down into the churning water. She never aged out of running up behind me and jumping on my shoulders.

One of my most vivid memories is of us lying side by side on a wooden dock, bare feet held up to block the sun. She asked if I was scared of dying. I told her I guessed so, but isn’t everybody? She said she wasn’t anymore. I never understood what she meant.

That was the summer that felt like Narnia. I could sense that I was getting too old for Laura and the way things were. Change was in the wind, bringing broadening shoulders and blackened eyes. I was becoming aware, I think. Aware that I couldn’t take her with me.

“I could come see you,” she said once. Her gaze stayed focused on the scrabble game we were playing, but it felt as if she was watching me like a hawk.

I couldn’t imagine Laura being back at home with me. It was like she’d get caught on one of the highway crosses on the way down and be skewered, trapped forever in limbo. I couldn’t envision her making the trip.

“It wouldn’t be the same,” I said.

She didn’t argue with me. We just went back to playing the game. I remember she played the word exquisite, which was her favorite to put down. It often helped her win.

That was my last summer at the lake house. Afterwards there were sports camps and science camps and church camps and every other possible distraction to keep me occupied. No matter how busy I was, I always thought I saw Laura out of the corner of my eye.

She’d asked me to come back, and I hadn’t. I couldn’t. I was drawn to her like a magnet. The light made halos out of her hair, and I could see right through her to the sailboats in the distance. She was the stripes of her swimsuit; she was the stain of peach tea on the corner of my library book. She was Laura, and that made her everything. She couldn’t be my secret forever, and if she couldn’t be mine, I wouldn’t have her at all. I couldn’t go back.

Two turtles in shells, we coaxed each other out, only for me to return to my homegrown cave every August. Growing up makes it hard to remember how a summer can feel like a year. Growing up makes it hard to remember how much was real and how much was wanting.

I left her, and I’m sorry about it. Sometimes I see her glowing in the dark.

I still haven’t found another kiss that tastes like food coloring. I still haven’t found another Laura.

I wish she was better at haunting me.

Cover Image - New England Headlands by Frederick Chile Hassam