Monday

Monday, on the eve of a standard skip day. This night is full of standards. Same people drinking the same standard beer. Same guitar playing the same very standard songs. Finger rock, a very standard teen hang out on a tucked away beach in Nor-cal, aptly named finger rock because of the infamous, bench shaped ,smooth rock, in a dark corner of the beach perfect for sliding into third with anxious fingers. I’m here staring into my masterfully built bonfire uninterested in drinking and contemplating a quick escape, but I have no ride.
“Alex!” I yell in a whisper. “Is that N?”
“Yeah bro.” he replies with squinty eyes and a devious smirk. “I told something to you about here being fer her. Shhh, I’m making stars.” He lies back onto the sand and points into heaven giggling. Acid is a terrible thing for such a fragile mind. N and I knew each other well though we’ve never spoken. We shared friends but never hung out before. All our conversations existed only within the brief moments of eye contact followed by the break neck head turn of shyness. This is the first time I’ve seen her here and I’m surprised.
“What did you say?” I shake Alex’s shoulder all the time fixated on her. But Alex has since gone catatonic and is useless now. We meet eyes and she mouths “hey” then begins the awkward walk given to all by the uneven sand. She looks down at Alex and smiles and sits next to me. She’s wearing her polka dot leggings and a lime green corset, which matched her hair, over a black tank top. This outfit certainly hung on the more understated side of her closet. But her attire was always for her aesthetic pleasure, never for shock value or to shake up the imaginary establishment built with the concrete wisdom of mid-pubescent teens.
“I didn’t know you hung out down here.” She states after a minute of admiration of my roaring fire.
“And I though you were too good to hang out with us.” I say it with a smile and she laughs.
“I’ve been working on a painting for most of the semester and I’ve been obsessed, I just had to go home and spend time on it, but I’ve been feeling like a shut in so I gave myself the ni8ght off.” A good explanation for her guest appearance I guess. I look back and Alex is gone so I lye back onto the sand and she follows suit. A good sign I think to myself. There isn’t a word spoken and I get nervous, I have to sustain her interest so in the hopes of striking up more conversation I say the first thing that comes to mind.
“So, our friends think we should get together for some reason.” You asshole! What the hell does that mean? For some reason? I try to recover.
“I mean they thought we’d have a lot in common.’’ My attempt was too late, I look over and she has robot face. That look of embarrassment that is trying to be overwritten by a smile but just freezes.
“What’s your painting of?”
Her face reboots and she looks relieved.
“Well” she says “I can’t really tell you what it is, you would have to look at it and tell me.’’
“Is that because you don’t know what it is?”
“Just the opposite. I know exactly what I created and what it means to me. But I painted it for art, so now it’s everyone’s.”
I admired her even more just from that simple answer.
“That’s exactly how I feel about music.”
Our conversations build and transition smoothly from topic to topic. A moment of silence and I notice the guitar sounds and idle conversations have disappeared. We were now the only two people on the beach. I begin to get melancholy knowing that this would soon end our night. I try to make our last few minutes together count.
“So when do you think I could see my painting?”
She looks puzzled. “Your painting?”
“Yeah, the one you painted for everyone.”
She smiles and turns to me with those huge eyes of hers visible even under the midnight sky. She says nothing, though it looks like she wants to.
“We should probably head up.” She suggests with a disappointed look on her face. We begin the trek up the sandy hill where our rides are parked, never saying a word but contemplating what had happened. We reach the lot and our friends are waiting with ridiculous smiles expecting to hear something juicy. I turn and say goodnight and we give each other a stiff hug and walk in opposite directions. She turns back and yells
“You can see your painting tomorrow.”
“But there’s no school” I say
“I know”.