CL Young

C H A P T E R 6 CL Young

As I was trying to understand what she meant, Olivia’s sentence kicked me into a memory I’d never remembered before. It also kicked me back into my trip. You’re so vain. You probably think this song is about you. You’re soooooo vain. I bet you think this song is about you. Don’t you. Don’t you. I was back at Graceway, looking up at the night sky. The shooting star had just shot. Caitlyn, I’d just thought. The equation of Caitlyn and the star l ipped a switch in my brain and there in the

raft I had a lash of clarity: the water. Be of the water, I thought. I didn’t want anyone to worry, so instead of standing straight up and diving into the lake, I rolled as slowly and soundlessly as I could off the side of the raft. I barely made a splash and my camp friends didn’t seem rufled. They must have been deep in their own trips, and soon enough I was breast-stroking my way toward the center of the lake. As I swam, the water took on a life of its own. The texture of it transformed–the sensation of the waves against my skin didn’t register as touch any longer, but as a sort of song. At the dance earlier that night, Carly Simon’s voice had rung out across the mess hall and it was echoing into me through the water now. And all the girls dreamed that they’d be your partner, they’d be your partner. I’d always felt a little implicated by the song. That second-person “you” slamming into the listener for most of the whole four minutes and 18 seconds. Long before I knew I wanted to be a writer, I began to develop a sensitivity to word use and as the song continued to soak into my skin, I realized for the irst time that it really wasn’t about me. None of it. The world, existence. I was nothing. A body ambulating through a gathering of water in the middle of a state at the edge of a country that made itself up.

My arms, insigniicant as they were, managed to send a signal of fatigue to my tripping adolescent brain and I turned onto my back to rest. The water continued its singing as my gaze returned to the show the stars were putting on. But you gave away the things you loved and one of them was me. I had some dreams. They were clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffee. The Milky Way was not just visible, it had a pulse. It took up the responsibility of drumming under the melody of the lake. Another star shot across the sky and everything that was to come played in my head at once: losing Caitlyn, marrying Olivia, the envelope, Rayne, Sammy.