Time transforms our dreams into dust. When I think back to that summer and what it meant and who we were then, I’m resigned to knowing that everything that has happened since is a derivative of those last few months together. I don’t even need to close my eyes and I can be back there in an instant. I can recall every single detail. I can be transported to that place.
Years have gone by since. How many? I couldn’t say for sure. Our capacity to remember is deceptive. We filter out the stuff we want to forget, and cling to the good times. Except it doesn’t always work like that. Does it?
The sun appeared, spring rolled into summer, and with it came hope and infinite possibility. There was something about the place at that time of year. If you knew the landscape well enough, there were no limits to what was waiting to be discovered out there. We grew up in that little town by the sea, all four of us, it was our home. But it was a town to be raised in, a town to retire in. It was not a town where one might fulfil their dreams. Each of us knew that it was coming to an end. We had discussed it, planned it, spoke about it with feverish excitement and melancholic sentiment.
Do you remember diving off the rocks behind the pool? Drunk on the promise of what was to come. Or maybe it was the booze. I don’t know. But it became a daily ritual. Like breakfast, or brushing our teeth, or going for a crap.
Then there were the girls. Backpackers in search of an adventure themselves. How lucky it was that fate led them to us that evening. We spent two weeks showing them our home. I think we all fell in love. There was something in the air. The water. Their eyes.
We fought a lot too. Rarely with each other, but we could find a fight with almost anyone else. Usually it was just a case of sending Mickey in there to hit on somebody’s girl. I’ve never been the violent type, but there was something glorious about what happened next; the crunch of knuckles on flesh, the blood, the bruises. The process was unifying. It was us against them, us against the world. We were a big fat cliché and we didn’t care less.
You had spoke about the city, I had booked my ticket out, Tommy was keen on pursuing a romance and Mickey was always going to stay. He belonged to that town, it was part of his DNA. His dad had promised him the business and that was enough for him. The rest of us had families too, but they merely served as a caution, a reminder as to why we wanted out. I asked you what you planned to do in the city, you just shrugged your shoulders and smiled. I plan to live, you said. No further explanation was needed.
There were parties galore. We’d go for days without sleeping. Sometimes owed to the influence of enhancers, sometimes it was just the buzz of life itself. I can still hear the sound of teeth grinding, of bass-lines thumping, and screams of ecstasy and euphoria. I can still hear it now. Ringing in my ears.
Can you still taste it? Smell it? The salty air, like nothing else. It filled up our lungs. Intoxicated us all. I guess that’s why we grew so attached. Why everyone grows so attached. And as the years slip away, as we become older, not necessarily wiser, but more stubborn, it becomes even harder to let go. I wish I could let go now though. Things will never be that way again. And I’m sick of holding on. I’m sick.
We cycled bare-chested along the coast, no hands, arms stretched out like the wings of a bird. It’s the closest we’ll ever come to flying, you said, forgetting that day we ate mushrooms in the woods. We built bonfires and lit fireworks and smoked and laughed and drank to our heart’s content. We chased girls, hunted animals, lay in the surf.
There was a campsite nearby. No tents, just expensive caravans. We’d wait until it got dark, pull balaclavas over our heads and terrorise the tourists. Remember the one time you almost got caught by the owner? We had a head-start on you, so once we’d reached the wall and knew we were safe, we sat there and watched you and tried not to laugh. The terror on your face as he closed in on you. The baseball bat he held in his hand spinning above his head like the propeller blades of a helicopter.
Looking up at the clouds one afternoon, I asked you what you could see. Whatever I want, you replied with a smirk, a thin grey fog escaping your lips as you spoke.
The car belonged to your father. It was a beat up old Vauxhall Astra. Once dark, but by then faded blue. We agreed it was was important that we saw the woods one last time, even though this feeling in the pit of my stomach suggested otherwise. Then the rain started to fall. Buckets of rain, your favourite Dylan song.
I’m not sure what I hope to achieve by returning. I know Mickey will be there, he never did leave. I heard all sorts of rumours about what happened to Tommy, but I never bothered to investigate which of them were true. I didn’t want to know. I am scared of the reality.
It poured and it poured. A barrage of tiny silver bullets, spat down from the heavens above.
And I remember that awful screeching sound, like nails down a blackboard. And then nothing.

