I don’t remember exactly how that night started, which makes the story even more difficult to tell, yet I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. It was late summer in Northern Michigan. The vacationers in the upscale, semi-utopian community were packing away their T-shirts and Tevas and preparing to lock up their summer homes for the season. I was getting myself ready to return to Chicago, tanned, but otherwise not much different from when I left. I had hoped to change, of course. I wished I could have returned to my mother the tall skinny girl she had always wanted. If anything, I had become more lazy after days on the beach, and more carefree as well. Maybe it was due to the fact that she wasn’t with me. I was granted freedom from her insistence of perfection.

I didn’t think about her that night. I didn’t hear her negative whispers that so often I find haunting me. Instead I was the perfect one. "Wow, a 4.0! That’s amazing!" he told me, appreciating my brains. He later noted, "You’ve got hair just like a girl at my school, which is a good thing," appreciating the "beauty" I didn’t know I had. He may not have known at the time what those little things meant, but then again, maybe he did. Perhaps he felt the same way when I admired his sailing skills or when I let him vent his sadness over his grandfather’s recent death. He too must have valued the bond we shared, the short time it lasted.

We had met on the Fourth of July. His family had come up for the weekend, and they were friends of the family I lived with. He, his brother, his cousin, and I all hung around, laughing and listening to music. I was just getting used to my job as the summer nanny of the three children I stayed with, and I found that my peers provided a welcome break from the stress the children induced. When the weekend of celebration ended, he had to return home to Ohio for soccer camp, but promised to come visit me when he returned later in the summer.

Before I knew it, he was back. I heard the screen door slam its familiar welcome, and there he was. We spent many evenings together, as well as any other time I had free. We had innocent fun walking the dog, swinging on the swings on the playground, and sailing in his family’s small boat. It was as though he were my brother and we were at summer camp. One night, it was to be our last together, though I didn’t know it at the time, I found a true friend. We somehow ended up at the beach, sitting under the tall deciduous trees, full from the dinner we had just eaten, growing slightly chilled in the evening shadows created by the lush foliage and the immense empathetic clouds that always rolled in at dusk to reflect the brilliance of the rainbow sunset back upon the bay. We rolled in the grass and threw tufts of it in each other’s hair.

As we sat there side by side, on a bluff overlooking that tiny inlet, we had conversations of people twice our age. Issues that I had never dared to discuss with others seemed so easy to relate to him. We were so disconnected, yet so in synch. Our histories had little in common, but we understood each other. Our lifestyles were in few ways related, but we could still talk for hours. When I mentioned a name, he knew not the person I spoke of, yet it was all the same to him. He was willing to listen, and I was willing to speak. So I opened up. We lay there, cuddling up with one of his trademark polo shirts in the cool night air, and watched the sun set. Hidden from the view of the cars on the highway behind us and blocked from the gaze of late night beach walkers, we looked out across the bay and watched the lights of the neighboring town grow brighter as the world around us grew dark.

We didn’t say much after the sun went down. Then, all of the sudden, one of us noticed that an amazing phenomenon was occurring before our eyes. Once the sun set, the color of the water to the west matched that of the sky, and the horizon dissolved into nonexistence. We looked at the inky blackness, and when we blocked out the lights of civilization and peered over the steep decline in front of us, it was as though we were standing on the brink of nothingness. I remember thinking to myself, "If you were standing on the edge of the world, would you jump?" This has stuck with me ever since. It made sense to me instantly, as though it were inherent. I realized later how much that question means to me. It is so ambiguous. Sometimes its meaning is one of bravery and self confidence. At others curiosity, faith, or even death. At that instant however, with its hopes and aspirations, I felt free, as though maybe if I jumped, I would be able to fly.

The rest of the time we spent together that night is blurry in my mind. As we parted that evening, he asked in his casual manner for a goodnight kiss, and I obliged. I remember as we parted I looked back over my shoulder, and he had disappeared from sight. It was then I realized that I would never relive that moment or that night. And I couldn’t. He left shortly thereafter, and I didn’t see him again before he departed. Soon afterwards, the summer drew to a close. I got my last paycheck and packed my bags. I bought my souvenirs and boarded the plane to return home. When my mother met me in the terminal, the first thing I recall is some remark she made about how bad my complexion was. She didn’t mention how my hair was a shade lighter from the sun or that I was wearing a new outfit. No, she brought me down off the high cloud I was still resting on from that night not so long before. That’s the way it had always been and the way it would continue to be.

A year passed, and, when I saw him again the next summer, his hair was darker than I recalled. He had grown several inches and now towered over me. The familiar coy smile adorned his face, and he carried himself in the laid-back manner that was so confident, yet comforting. He still dressed the same: khaki shorts, Tevas, and a polo shirt. I think he changed in other ways too, though I couldn’t put my finger on how, other than to say he had aged. I knew I had changed as well. Times of happiness did not come as easily. Nor was I as innocent as I had been. I had hoped all summer that I would see him again, but when I did, I was disappointed. I tried to recreate the same summer friendship we had shared the year before, but just as I had thought, it couldn’t be. It was too hard to say hello when we had never said goodbye.