She sat there, listening to the waves crash as the sun slowly set. She loved the feeling of sand nuzzled between her fingers and of her feet sinking where the water met the shore. The amber sky shadowed her body perfectly on a canvas of light brown and beige. She waded into the water and floated there, looking up at the sky. She would go under periodically and look around, seeing nothing around her. There would never be anything, or anyone, around her. She was gone now, after what she did. She was forgotten.
The pier lit up in the distance and it made her start thinking of him. He would be giddy without care, playing with the prizes she won for him and he would be overindulging in cotton candy and fried Oreos. He wouldn’t have any bad thoughts on this night; he would be happy. She began to lose herself in thinking about him. She would be in the back of his mind by now, fading in the growing thoughts of a young child. She tried to picture what he must think of her, if he did at all. A dark figure in the night, hooded and furtive is all she could come up with. Thinking about him brought back bad memories, but he was all she could think about. Perhaps the only thing she wanted to think about. She had tried over and over again to forget it. She tried to put it aside and move forward. But it wasn’t that simple after everything she had done. She would always remember it. Her memories of him held her captive. Whatever she did, he was there. In a restaurant she would see him on the menu, in a book she would read him in the words. She thought about how no one would ever forgive her and how she felt she was doing the right thing and that it was for the best. She fell into a deep pensive state, oblivious to the world around her, and began reliving her worst tribulation.
***
It was a stormy night and she was furious. They were ignoring her, neglecting her, putting her down. She couldn’t take it anymore. She couldn’t wrap her mind around why the people that brought her into this world seemed as if they wished she wasn’t a part of it. She wanted to gather her things and go. She took her knapsack and filled it with a water bottle, her journal, a washed out pair of khaki shorts, a maroon t-shirt and a spare pair of underwear. She figured it would be okay for now and then went to find her little brother. She couldn’t risk leaving him with them, having him go through what she’d had to endure for most of her life. She would feel guilty if she didn’t save him. She packed a bag for him as well, frantically throwing what she could think of into that second bag.


She ran down the stairs, trying to see clearly through her tears. She went to the kitchen, the light flickering, as it had to be changed. The whole apartment was dim and ill lit and the sound of the subway rushing past their window was always imminent. She opened a drawer by its rusty handle and grabbed a loaf of bread. She went over to the sink, avoiding the dirty dishes, and filled up her bottle. After that she couldn’t manage to fit anything else. She went back through the kitchen and down the hallway. She took her brother out of his room and covered his mouth, trying to make sure he didn’t make too much noise. He had dropped one of his toys in the rush and began having a fit. She had to get him out the door before he completely lost it and like that, they were gone.
They weren’t all that bad, in reality. It wasn’t like they were substance abusers or were extremely violent. She just had a twisted perception of the world. She figured everyone was out to get her. A professional might say she saw her life as a vertical tunnel and in that tunnel, every time she began to move upwards, someone would be at the side to pull her down. No matter how hard she tried, she would be stuck going down, not up, struggling to break hold of the her parents’ grip on her legs and waist before they would throw her further down. In reality, they were just struggling to put food on the table and were working extra jobs to pay the rent and provide for their children. They loved them and would do anything for them; they just didn’t have the time to show it. As time went by, it became harder and harder for them to provide for and raise their family at the same time. And their daughter had grown old enough to realize she wasn’t happy with them.
They immediately knew something was wrong when they both came home early that morning and found neither of their children in their beds. They were always in their beds asleep in the wee hours? Where else would they be at two in the morning? Of course they were distraught about their daughter, though they knew she resented them, but they were more worried about their younger son. Their daughter would not be able to take care of both herself and another child, especially if two adults barely could. They began to ask neighbors if they had seen them leave or seen them around the neighborhood. When they received no positive responses, they were left with a final option: going to the police. From there, notices went out about the missing children and local residents launched search parties. The parents quickly lost hope, though, because it seemed to them that their children were long gone.
She had managed to do pretty well in the beginning; she didn’t think it would be that hard to start a new life with her brother. She knew exactly where to go when they left. She had a friend who lived in the next town over and she would understand. They said they were having a sleepover because the girl’s parents were gone too much and she was lonely. Her little brother was a shoo-in. With a place to stay and food to eat, everything went well. That was until they had had one too many sleepovers and people began to get suspicious. She knew she couldn’t get away with it for long so she and her brother picked up and fled. Things were worse by then. She just couldn’t do it. Her anxiety and paranoia ended up being her downfall. She had taken her brother away from people she feared couldn’t take care of him only to realize that she couldn’t take care of him either. That was when it became clear to her that she was turning into her parents, struggling to care for something that she truly and deep down would do anything for. The police who had been searching diligently for them eventually found her and her brother and he was brought back to their parents. Then her parents banished her for good; she could never go back. She was homeless, helpless and hopeless. She had nothing in her life anymore, nothing worth living for. She was a mess.
***
Slowly she shifted her gaze and broke free of her thought before it got too grim. She straggled out of the water and collapsed on a mattress of sand, exhausted from her intense reflection. She started making sand angels as her own form of meditation. This beach was now her home, more or less. She spent most of her time here when she wasn’t out on Battery Street straggling for food and money. She had nowhere else to go now. She had no one else to lean on, either. There was nothing else to live for now. Did she regret it? Her mental instability made her believe she was better off then she would have been with her parents. She could only imagine what her parents and brother were like now, where they were or what they were doing. She would never know.