A Long Night

Gabby sat towards the back of the massive lecture hall. She was 20, an Engineering major, and didn’t know a bit of French. Why was she here, waiting for a visiting French professor to read some of his own poetry? She saw a poster advertising the event on her way to her 8pm discussion, and decided to go to it instead. She started to feel some pricks of regret though, as she watched others enter and pause next to the door, before their eyes lit up with the reassurance of seeing someone they knew. Then they would amble to the front of the hall and reunite with their colleagues or classmates or friends and chat, in French, about what happened in their lives since they last interacted just a few short hours ago.

Gabby sat alone, in a wave of empty seats.

That was expected, though, when you decide to go to a lecture for a subject you’ve never taken and for a language you don’t even know. She felt a strange comfort in her anonymity. Recently, everyone she knew, and even some she didn’t, had taken to looking at her with wide pitying eyes. Here, she didn’t know a single soul, and none of them paid attention to the ghostly figure shrouded in shadows, all alone.

The lecture began with an introduction from another professor. In English, he raved about the visiting poet, detailing how he was introduced to his work and how difficult it was to convince him to come and teach. Apparently, the professor poet was from Paris. Gabby couldn’t wrap her head around why he would ever choose to leave Paris to come to their small northeastern college town, even if it was just for a semester. Gabby would give anything to live in Paris. When they were young, she and her sister, Ava, would pretend they were French, printing out pictures of the Eiffel Tower and the French flag and putting them up all over their playroom. While other kids played House, they created a business plan for a French bakery. The only pastry they knew for sure they would include was croissants, so that made up the whole menu. They eventually grew out of their obsession, before they could even make a run at learning the language, but they always promised each other that they would at least visit one day. Now, it was too late for even that.

The poet took the stage. “Thank you for having me, and for the kindness you have all shown me. I have so enjoyed teaching such talented and passionate students.” He spoke quietly, in halting English and a thick accent. “Now, I’ll begin.” With that, he switched to French and the entire atmosphere changed in a single instant. His voice became lifted and lyrical. Gabby had no idea what any of the words he was saying meant, but when she closed her eyes, it was like she could see the images she just knew he was describing, feel the wrenching emotion she could hear in how his voice caught in the back of his throat. Some parts of the human experience must be universal that way. Gabby kept her eyes closed for the rest of the reading, letting the nasally words wash over her and rush through her veins. She was awoken from her trance only when all of the audience members around her burst into applause. The sudden sound broke her meditation, and she jolted up and glanced around before resting a hand on her face. She was surprised that her face was wet. Tears. She couldn’t remember the last time she cried.

She ran out to the hall, feeling ashamed by the sudden display of emotion. Her breath quickened and she looked around frantically, tears still streaming down her face. Out of her control. Finally, she ducked into a bathroom and splashed her face with cold water, a trick she had learned when she was young to minimize her puffy eyes. Gabby stared at herself in the mirror. As long as she could remember, she had avoided looking at herself as much as she could manage, seeing it as a display of vanity. But now, she slowed and examined her features: her sharp cheekbones, clear green eyes, straight black hair. The same features her whole family shared.

Her mother always used to joke that she couldn’t tell her and her sister apart, given how similar they looked. That always made them laugh, since even if they looked like identical twins, their personalities were so different that no one ever mixed them up. Gabby was boisterous and bossy, ordering other kids, and sometimes some grown-ups, for a game she made up. Ava, on the other hand, was content just being by herself. She joined Gabby’s games if pleaded to, but never formed her own. Gabby often ended up having to organize games for her and her sister. Their parents didn’t like partaking in their childish fantasies, much preferring to discuss the latest world news or more often, have each member of the family sit in their own separate areas. Gabby would usually break this isolation, bursting into Ava’s room to insist that they play a game together.

This happened even on their yearly family vacations. They owned a small beach house in Harpswell, Massachusetts and went there every Labor Day weekend to mark the end of summer. It was when Gabby and Ava would soak up their last few free days before they had to go back to school, and their parents would sigh with relief that their children would be largely out of their hands. Harpswell was a quaint beach town, but it was mainly made up of locals, even during its busiest season.

Gabby could remember one particular day, when she was around eight, Ava would have been six or so. It was perfect beach weather: the sun was bright, there was a slight cooling breeze, and the waves weren’t too rough. She spent most of the day begging her parents to join her. Even offering that they could build sand castles, or play mermaids, or dig a hole to reach the center of the Earth, but to no avail. Finally, her mom ended up screaming at her to leave them alone, that they didn’t want to play her childish fantasy games. That she was getting way too old for that and she should do something useful with her time instead. She remembered how humiliated she felt. How quickly she ran back into her room and covered herself with blankets until it was so hot she could barely breathe. She remembered a gentle knock on her door, before Ava slipped in and hugged her blanketed mound and offered to play with her instead. Gabby and Ava, Ava and Gabby.

She felt stuck in the memory, and it still felt like she was under all of those blankets. Each breath took an enormous effort. She opened her eyes but the bathroom felt smaller than they used to be. The walls were closing in on her. She had to get out of here: out of this bathroom, out of this hall, out of this school.

Taking a deep breath out, she already felt better. Everytime she got in her head like that, the only thing that could make it better was driving her car aimlessly through the long rural roads that surrounded her college campus. There were no streetlights around, so driving required focus on the road ahead since the only thing that cut through the darkness was your own headlights. Occasionally, another car would come into view, marked first by the faint glow its own lights created. Gabby would have to pull over, half in a ditch, to wait for them to pass.

She had never driven this far away from school before. Up ahead, there was even the faint whooshing and bright lights that marked a freeway. She decided to continue towards it, at the very least to get her bearings before turning around. Her headlights showed a stop sign ahead that would allow her to turn into a paved street that would lead her to the freeway. Stop, signal, check, turn. She took a few more turns, relying largely on her instincts, before she merged onto the freeway.

She glanced around for a large green sign to figure out where she was headed, and finally spotted it. She gasped, and the car swerved slightly before she corrected it. She was heading South to Massachusetts. Not just that, but apparently she was headed directly to Harpswell, the town her family vacationed. Gabby didn’t believe in coincidences. She pulled over rashly to the side of the freeway, ignoring the honks directed at her. Checking her GPS, she saw that Harpswell was only a two hour drive away. If she headed there now, she’d be able to stay a while before heading back to campus. She had to go.

She pulled into the familiar town and kept driving until she reached her family’s beach house. The last time she was here was with her family, right before they dropped her off for college. She parked her car sloppily in front of the small private path leading up to the beach where she parked her car. It blocked it, but it barely mattered. The beach was so far removed from the main part of the already sleepy town that there was never anyone passing through. There were no other houses within eyesight. She stumbled onto the sand dunes, sat down and grabbed a handful of sand, and felt each individual grain run through her fingers.

Why had she come here?

It was dark and she couldn’t see anything. She sank back into the comfort of the sand dune, feeling the grains adjust to hold her. Her eyes flickered shut while she began remembering memories of years past, with her family–how her and her sister would play hide and seek on this very beach, sometimes worrying their parents if they didn’t come back for dinner soon after being called.

She didn’t know how much time had passed when she woke up, but she shivered slightly as she sat upright. The sun was just starting to snake its tendrils around the sky, but there was still no one else there. Sighing, she started to get up knowing she would have to start the drive back to campus soon if she had any hope of making it back in time for her first class. She pulled out her phone to see if she would need to speed back and was shocked to find that it was already 5:30am. But then, her gaze fell on the first notification at the top of her screen. She hesitated for a moment, then held her breath and tapped the glowing notification lightly. A voicemail from her dad started to play.

“Hey kiddo.” His voice was heavy and each word was saddled with a sense of weariness. “We haven’t heard from you since we last talked, so your mom and I just wanted to check in. Are you on your way home yet? We want to wait to plan Ava’s service until you get back but we need to start…”

Her eyes snapped shut and her ears began ringing and she was simultaneously shivering and burning up. She felt her phone drop from her hand, heard it thump into the sand. She stood up and instantly began to feel dizzy and out of her own body, so she acted instinctually, stripping off her jacket and pants, shirt and socks until she stood just in her underwear.

Then she was running, running straight ahead into the shimmering blue ocean and not stopping even as the waves began lapping at her knees and she could feel the cold of it stinging her ankles. She kept going until the waves were hitting her chest and then ducked down. Instantly, the ringing in her ears stopped, replaced with a cool emptiness. It was as if the ocean acted like cotton balls, blocking out noise from both outside and inside her own head until everything just sounded like distant murmurs. The salt water stung her eyes but not any more than the tears she was struggling to hold back, so she forced herself to keep her eyes open. Her hair, her straight black hair, floated around her gently, and it all began to hit her. Ava was gone and she would never come back. They would never get to visit Paris, or comfort each other when their parents got mean, or even just lean on each other as they got older and formed their own families. They thought they had forever but now it had all been taken away in an instant. Gabby pushed her head above the surf and gasped for air. Dawn was fully breaking overhead. It filled the air with an orange glow that intermixed with the salty ocean air. The rising sun, the pink clouds, the rhythmic waves, it all spoke to her. Let it out. More urgently now: Let it out. She tipped her face towards the sun, still partly submerged in the ocean, and finally let her tears flow.