Edward walked along the boardwalk and the ancient wooden planks, weathered by decades of ocean spray, sounded hollowly beneath his sneakers. The gibbous moon was too large by half, and it regretfully cast its sickly light upon the sand and broken shell of the beach. It made the castaway seaweed appear black and greasy while the rolling tide appeared black as ink. He walked with his back to the bright lights and gaiety of the festival, but the sounds of joy and frivolity assaulted his ears just the same. He took a tasteless bite of the huge pretzel he carried limply in his left hand; the acrid salt made him wonder why he had wanted one in the first place.
As a coping mechanism, of course, he thought. Because you can't make friends and have fun at a festival like a normal kid, so you gave yourself an easy goal that you couldn't possibly fail and now as a reward for your great success you are going to hide from everyone again. He turned suddenly away from the black expanse of the ocean and walked between two shuttered beach shops. Once he had gained the alley, Edward took another right. He was headed back toward the festival lights and the sounds of joyous children, but this time he was ensconced in the perfect anonymity of tall weeds and shadow, for the enormous moon was too low on the horizon to banish the darkness here.
As he picked his way forward through the detritus of the alley Edward was consumed with equal parts self-analysis and self-pity. He didn't feel like a weirdo, except by comparison with all the other kids he knew. They called him names meant to either injure him or comfort the egos of the name-callers. Weirdo. Nerd. Loner, loser, fatty. No matter, they didn't injure him. Sure, they made him feel resentment and they isolated him from his peers, but screw them. Was it better to have hundred dollar jeans, bleached tips, cool nicknames, and barely enough brain cells to keep breathing without a reminder? He only even tried to fit in because it was less effort than constantly throwing off the expectations that everyone kept thrusting upon him.
The ferris wheel loomed large to Edward's front, and he came to a halt; the alleyway terminated in a fork. Directly ahead was the grandstand encircling the arena where the circus had performed earlier in the evening, but it was deserted now. To the right was the boardwalk, and to the left was the shadow of the stands.
Where the hell am I going? he thought. Suddenly a knot of kids appeared on the boardwalk, laughing and talking too-loudly. They wouldn't have noticed him standing there, not if he had been thirty feet tall and dripping with blood, but Edward instinctively veered off to his left. To his left, and deeper into the shadows.
He followed the path behind the stands until it ended in a kind of cul-de-sac. Here were three benches on the three sides of the sac, and not a soul around to disturb him. Edward sat down heavily, as he would do for the rest of his life anytime he was unobserved and didn't feel the nagging, omnipresent need to pretend that everything was okay. He transferred the unconsumed remainder of his great, salt-ridden pretzel to his right hand and carelessly deposited it on the filthy, peeling bench next to him. He sat there for uncounted minutes, staring at the sandy, weedy ground between his feet, not seeing.
At some point a flourish of movement in the corner of his eye drew him back to the present and his head jerked upward. A girl was approaching him, weaving carefully between the crossmembers of the grandstands. She was wearing a long dress which was colorless in the moonlight, a denim jacket, and shoulder-length straight blonde hair. She was looking at him as she approached, not moving at all furtively yet still silently.
"Hey," Edward said automatically, as his brain accelerated furiously, trying to re-adjust to its newfound setting.
"Hi," the girl said, smiling, as she carefully stepped over the last rusty impediment between herself and the seated boy. "Mind if I join you?"
Edward glanced quickly at the forgotten pretzel to his right and the few feet of bench to his left. He brushed the pretzel in its paper to the extremity of the bench and slid awkwardly toward it, yielding a couple more feet of bench to his left. "No," he said, still trying to adjust to her unexpected appearance. She strode toward him, but then angled to the next bench over and silently sat down, smoothing her dress on her thighs. She looked at Edward again, smiling. "Whatcha doing?" she asked.
"Nothing," he said, too quickly. "Thinking," he corrected. She was beautiful, disorienting. She had freckles, he knew, though he couldn't tell in the moonlight. Her teeth were, well, imperfect but perfect. Her nose turned up slightly at its end, and her eyes seemed to pierce all the way through his impenetrable, unassailable facade and down to his most private, real self. In an instant he knew that she could see him, not as others saw him, and not even as he saw himself, but as he was.
"What about?" she asked, leaning forward slightly. Edward's mind reeled again, desperately seeking some scattered thread of thought he could relate to the girl. He dared not lie to her, but didn't know what to say.
"Uh," he glanced at his wristwatch, playing for time. "Just about life. I don't know, really. I wasn't expecting to have to explain it to anyone."
"Oh," the girl said, leaning back and looking at her palms. "I didn't mean to intrude..."
Edward panicked again. One thing he could be certain of was that he didn't want her to leave. "No, I don't mind the company. I was just kind of lost in thought." The girl visibly relaxed again, looking up from her hands in her lap and back into Edward's face. The two sat silently for what felt to Edward entirely too long.
"Look at that moon," the girl said at last. It was higher in the sky now, and its bulk dominated the night. Edward followed her gaze skyward and felt positively oppressed by the great, luminous satellite.
"Yeah," Edward commented. It will be full soon. Another few days and..." he paused, confused. He looked at his watch again, and the reality (or more appropriately, the unreality) forced itself upon him, despite his most heartfelt desire to remain in denial. Edward sighed heavily, and slumped forward.
"What's the matter?" the girl asked innocently. Edward turned his head and looked at her again. She appeared worried, and her beauty and expression of genuine concern elevated the tragedy of his realization to an even higher level.
Edward chuckled drily. "Look," he said, "we've never met, have we?"
"I think I'd remember if we had," the girl replied sweetly. "But I don't think so. So if you say no, then I guess not."
"No. I wouldn't forget you in a lifetime," Edward said, his realization endowing him with a confidence he was utterly unfamiliar with, "angel that you are." The girl seemed confused by this. He looked at his wristwatch a third time, this time studying it carefully. "And yet," he stood with the resignation of a crushed man, "I suppose I could guess your name. Or at least I couldn't fail to guess it."
The girl looked at him, the darkness of mild hostility creeping into her face for the first time. She said nothing.
"I'll show you." Edward crossed the cul-de-sac and retrieved a stick from the shadow of the moonlit grandstand. He walked back to the girl and offered it to her. She didn't take it, and held his gaze with the same expression of muted aggression. After a moment Edward gently placed it on the sand by her feet. "I'll turn my back, and you write your name in the sand. I'll speak your name aloud, then turn and see what you've written."
Without delay Edward took a few steps away from the girl and stood with his back to her. He looked up at the strange stars in the sky. They were too bright, too numerous. An alien sky.
After some moments, Edward took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "Kelsey," he said quietly. He abruptly turned around. The girl was gone without a trace, her name perfectly inscribed in the sand and underlined with a flourish. Of course it said Kelsey, Edward knew that he could have uttered any name and found it there in the sand. What he hadn't expected was to find the stick, twisted and woven impossibly upon itself into a hopelessly compact knot, with a small white flower sprouting from the center, growing out of the wood itself. It was laying on the bench where she had been seated. Edward picked it up and clutched it to his breast before sadly walking back toward the boardwalk, the beach, the sea.
The huge moon shone down on the empty cul-de-sac, and as Edward looked back one more time he saw his discarded pretzel abandoned on the bench where he had left it. No matter, he thought, dreams always seem to clean up after themselves.
