The Big Fish

her mom told her to replace last summer. Using her left hand to steer, Meredith had her right thumb in her mouth, tearing off the nail as she sorted her thoughts. Her family didn’t freak about the news that Roelle ever so awkwardly forced Meredith to tell. They were accepting of it which freaked Meredith out. She expected at least a few expletives and bibles thrown at her before them ushering her out of their lives. Instead she got tearful smiles and lengthy exhales. She had already had her flight booked back to school, but departed from her family without the usual goodbye. Now she was headed to the most hated place on the left coast to clear her head. Arriving a little after noon Meredith strapped her backpack on both of her shoulders and carried her surfboard over her head as she walked down the steps of T-Street beach. It was a long walk and while her surfboard was light, her arms began to burn with the distance. She preferred the south of the beach because everyone was too lazy to walk it, so it was always really mellow there. It was fifty degrees, but the waves and lack of sun made it feel closer to forty. Meredith rested her stomach on her board and dipped her head underneath the nippy waves, as if the salt water would cleanse her thoughts rather than her wounds. She had lost the energy to surf, not that she initially planned to. The waves were shit and she was a little bit jet lagged anyway. She came here because the ocean was the only place that made her sane again. The water filled her ears each time the tide brought her a little underway and Meredith closed her eyes to enjoy the sound. In these moments, she forgot who she was and had adopted the life of some species that rested in the bottom of the sea. She was mildly aware that a shark could mistake her for a turtle at any given moment, or a large wave would sneak up on her and press her underwater for longer than she could hold her breath, but despite those deathly and very likely scenarios, she felt at peace. There were no thoughts of school, soccer, Gabrielle, sexuality, life. It was just her and the vast Pacific.

***

The sun finally came out just a few minutes before it was supposed to set. Meredith rolled off her surfboard and swam back to shore. She was surprised to see a few stragglers taking pictures and laying in the sand when she got out of the water. She unzipped out of her wetsuit just before a soft wind picked up. Tying her hair in a poor excuse for a bun after pulling a grey and gold crewneck over her head, she bent down and slid on her some sweatpants and carried her board through the sand to the parking lot. Strapping her board to the rack on her hardtop, she made sure it was secure before jumping down and getting into her car. Her flip flops had picked up several thousand beads of sand that rested underneath the accelerator so Meredith threw them in the backseat and drove barefoot. She tore up the road for about five hours before stopping in the small town of Murphys. There was a fast food restaurant that was joined with a gas station right off the exit and Meredith stopped to grab some dinner. She had fruit and peanut butter packed along with her favorite grain bars but she was craving something that clogged her arteries. Her lukewarm hamburger and fries sat in the white paper bag as she walked through the narrow aisles of the convenient store. She had been eyeing the large snickers bar for some time now but it was the thought of all the calories she burned earlier surfing that finally convinced her it was okay to eat it. It wasn’t until she got to the freezer aisle that she was then reminded she didn’t exactly go surfing, but rather lay on her board and do absolutely nothing for six hours accumulating no calories burned whatsoever. She threw the snickers bar on top of some packs of mint gum before grabbing a beer instead. Fewer calories.

The good thing about these small towns were that they didn’t check for ID when buying beer or cigarettes. Meredith was four months’ shy of being twenty but her eyes told stories of an older woman so the sales clerk never bothered. She bought a large bottle of Purple Haze and immediately winced as the raspberry and banana aftertaste bulged down her throat. She had gotten so use to Sweden’s Dugges Idjit that the taste of cheap fruity beer didn’t please her taste buds anymore. She kept the bottle wrapped in its brown paper bag as she switched from sips to her bites in her hamburger as she drove the remaining two hours back to campus.

She made it a couple of minutes after midnight. There were fireworks lighting over campus, hues of red and blue scanning her face as she watched from the windshield of her car. She dug in the bottom of her bag for fries that had fallen out of its cup before drinking the remaining of her beer in one lazy gulp. Meredith smiled. This year would be different.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

 “Oh! Jesu—Jeez!”

Meredith adverted her gaze to dry erase board and grimaced trying to rid herself from the repulsive view she had just witnessed.

“Meredith!”

 Georgia yelled, knocking over the tea Keliah had pushed to the corner of her desk so she would have more leg room. She immediately pulled her arm away from Keliah’s strong grip and walked towards Meredith.

 “You’re uh…”

Georgia wiped her fingers against her slacks before tucking a strand