Isabella Zhu | Prose

We lie across your bed, resting our short legs up against the wall so that we are sideways, facing the open window. In drifts the early morning breeze, all saltwater tinged, brushing against our matching red cheeks. The Italian air hugs me like rocks against your coastline; it hugs me like this is my home. I’ve only stayed here for three days, but I could almost believe it. We stick our heads outside, and Vernazza’s colors come to life before my eyes. The bickering merchants wave at us as they make their way down the cobblestone with carts of fruit, so we wave back and signal for them to ring their bells. You laugh when they do, all giggles and snorts like usual, but they fall short instead of fading. I am not laughing with you. I am losing against the thought that this is the last time we’ll ever be able to do this. The gleaming ships of dawn depart from the age-old docks into the stretch of blue-green sea, and I wonder if you are thinking the same thing as me: In three hours, I’ll be the one leaving.

I push away the image of my parents retrieving me on one of those boats—back from their cruise tour around Italy—and stare back at you. Your golden curls frame your pinkish skin like a crown, though your eyes wear the sadness of a wounded bird. You are right here, nestled in this gingham blanket we’ve shared since Aunt Betty agreed to drop me off two days ago, but I already miss you. You should be a stranger to me, but now you’re my best friend, and I already miss you. I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. Trembling, I hold out my pinky finger, and you do the same.

“Let’s promise to never forget each other,” you say, grinning with two uneven dimples.

“I promise,” we whisper in unison, our two distinct accents—mine choppy and brash, yours slurred and gentle—blending into one. Between the lulled tongue of the sky and swollen gums of the shore, the sun bursts out from under the sea with the pop of a tangerine. Bathed in soft rays of pink and gold, we intertwine our fingers and swear wholeheartedly to remember each other for the rest of our lives—because we are children, or at least we are girls, and we have found in each other something as special as a four leaf clover in the middle of winter.

We have not known each other for more than seventy two hours, but the scent of your family’s laundry soap—lemon, mixed with some strange spice, not abundantly sweet, yet pleasant—has melted into the blues of my denim jacket and even the bronze of my skin. You had not looked at me strangely (like others would) when I remarked that I could almost taste the tangy yellows of it in the air of your room. You just laughed and told me about how your father was obsessed with it, how every Sunday morning he dumps cups of the liquid into the washer so that your whole house would smell like lemons. It is a tradition, and your family has loads of them—like how every week, ever since you learned to walk, you go with him to the rustic, red-roofed marketplace. I picture the hours you two have spent perching at leafy greens, and you as a toddler, sitting on his shoulders and pointing at heirloom tomatoes. I find it fascinating, the way your life has been grounded in this village of sunshine, grounded in cliffside beach walks and decade-old dinner tables.

Your parents, they do not mind my presence one bit, though I can’t imagine why. I know my shuffling, awkward limbs and choppy patterns of speech are far from charming. But ever since that day you found me alone on the sandless beach and dragged me home, all I have felt was acceptance and care, as if I was four years old and spoon fed warm soup. I’d begged and begged and begged my Aunt Betty and you’d pleaded and pleaded with your parents for me to stay with you, just for two nights. Now on my third and last day here, life with you is already routine. We lunch on Caprese sandwiches, and for dinner, it’s hand-stretched spaghetti with various sauces—my favorite being marketplace pesto, yours butternut squash. Between bites, your mother coos at the texture of my waist-length black hair, the familiarity of my gaze, and your father asks me about all the places my family has lived and moved away from: India, Hong Kong, Australia, Texas. I talk about the future, clouded by uncertainty of where my father’s job will take us next. I never miss the way your eyes gleam with curiosity and hunger to follow where adventure leads. I wish you could come with me.

Having wandered back to the beach for the last time, I tear my eyes away from the advancing shoreline, ultramarine. The sun has bounced from the horizon, and its chariot seems to race across the sky faster than the thumping of my heart. We turn our heads to watch the sparse crowds drift through the stacks of richly colored houses lined up our coastal town. My parents will be here soon, whisking me off on one of those large white boats that make their way to the airport. Beneath our faces, scuffed soles trace the reddish rocks that we sit on, their fossilized stripes. I catch your lashes in my periphery, almost invisible against the blinding sun rays. You’ve been dreaming of leaving with me and I’ve been dreaming of staying with you. It hurts knowing that neither of us will get what we want. I’m tempted to count the sparse minutes on my fingers, but I don’t, hiding them under my legs to rid myself of this strange panic that is filling my lungs. Instead I look at you, now dressed in your favorite green striped shirt. I knock my sneakers against your wooden sandals.

“I need to tell you something,” I say, trying not to swallow my words. I’ve done it all my life, collecting secrets and confessions at the bottom ridge of my heart as if they were dust. 

“What is it?”

“I know we’ve only been friends for like, three days, but you remind me of home.”

You smile at me, your freckled face a little sunburnt like strawberries, my favorite fruit. They’re not the most sugary of the bunch, but I like the way the taste surprises me each time, a serendipitous mix of sweet and sour and something else. You know that home is something rare to me, something I’m forced to find on the road, something that I doubt, yet choose to seek.  

“You remind me of home too.” I’m familiar with packing boxes, seeing rooms filled with memories stripped bare until they are just empty spaces. But that doesn’t mean tears don’t spill out of my eyes everytime I catch the last glimpse of a place I used to fall asleep at. 

By the shoreline, your bouncing frame is a tunnel, and I am speeding away from you and your exuberant goodbyes. The sky opens, larger than ever, and foamy waves crash into my eyes, staining my face with salt. Through stinging vision, I see you wave wildly at me, growing smaller by the second as my boat picks up speed. I can barely notice your beaming parents and my perpetually mad looking Aunt Betty. All I see are the green stripes of your shirt like a flag, shrinking and shrinking against the rainbow colored island. My parents are next to me drinking sparkling water from the bottle and filling me in about all of the historical monuments and fascinating architecture that they saw—there were even remnants of our ancestry! I tune it out, the words that surround me. The air hangs flat, devoid of wind, as you become nothing but a dark green dot pinned in a map of the all encompassing ocean. My nose grows sniffy. Don’t cry, I tell myself, it was only three days, two nights. 

It was only three days yet I had never had a friend quite like you. I’d never had anyone to juggle Pink Lady apples with on the balcony, anyone to race against the breaking dawn, barefoot and bleeding yet ever so gleeful. In truth, I see a mirror held in the faces of people I meet, and I oftentimes the reflection is something distorted and despicable. Something that attracts laughter too difficult to pinpoint. But your green eyes reflect in me a grinning girl with glowing skin and beautiful hair, someone who is loved for all her idiosyncrasy and knows it. A girl who is able to be understood. I hold that feeling with me as if it's a sip of hot chocolate on a winter day, warm and comforting. I can barely see your silhouette now, and my arm hangs limp and exhausted after all the waving. I can feel warm tears caressing my cheeks and I let them fall. 

Perhaps this boat will sink and the news will reach you tomorrow morning (tears would stream down your cheeks and you’d yell incomprehensibly at your parents, crying into your dad’s chest as he strokes your shoulder). But I’d much rather live, and have you hold onto the hope that I’m out there somewhere, a kite mingled amongst the clouds, but you are still holding onto my heartstrings. As for me, I think that for the rest of my life, I’ll look at the sea and know that you are out there.