I found one short enough to post (most of my "short" stories are 4000+ words). It's not final yet...a couple revisions still to go. As a side note, I've also been involved in starting up a new online literary magazine with a couple friends from high school
some of us ran a blog back then where we posted poetry.
Anyway, here's the story, currently called "Anchor"
Some mornings she would look out her window and wonder where the sky had gone. But it was only because the clouds had covered it so completely with their massive grey bodies that she felt so disconnected. She had never been a fan of winter. Summer was in her dreams and someday she would move to an island of constant sunshine, somewhere like Jamaica. She had been there once when she was fourteen. It felt much more like home than Maine. There she could float on the bright blue water until it carried her back to shore. There she could stretch out like a lizard in the sun and never feel cold again.
“Gracie! Wake up!” Her eyes were pulled from the darkness outside to the peeling paint on the edges of her locked bedroom door. She watched a flake fall as her brother shook the handle.
“I’m up, I’m up, hold your horses!” She was taking him to see the sunrise on the beach again. He was obsessed with how it changed day to day based on the state of the sky. She pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt, one of the many she owned that were imprinted with her high school’s crest. A phoenix rose from the center, flanked by a scroll, sword, paintbrush, and atom. Maybe someday a university crest would take its place.
She pulled her door open and found Kyle leaning against it from his position on the floor. He was peeling at his fingernails.
“Kyle, cut that out. Your pinky hasn’t even healed yet.” He had peeled the nail too close to the quick and it had continued to bleed in a slow, seeping way for hours. “Is Mom up already?”
“Nuh uh. I made myself breakfast. Didn’t even burn the toast!”
“Good job, bud. You ready?”
“I’ve been ready for an hour!”
“Well let’s go then. Get my keys for me, will ya?”
She ducked into the bathroom to brush her teeth and put her thick, chestnut hair in a ponytail. But on second thought she decided to leave it down. Having it up drew attention to her face, too pale and freckled without her usual makeup.
Kyle returned with her keys and an apple.
“You gotta eat something Gracie. You can’t be grumpy today.”
She stuck her tongue out at him but took the apple. It was kind of sweet, him thinking about her like that.
The door to their mother’s bedroom was shut but not locked. Gracie opened it slowly, keeping downward pressure on the handle so the top of the door wouldn’t stick to the frame. She could see some of her mom’s hair curling up from under the covers. She deserved to sleep in, though she rarely allowed herself that luxury. Work and the parenting of a wild ten-year-old and a high school dropout had finally begun to wear on her. Gracie left the note she had scribbled on the dresser next to the locket that had been her Mother’s Day gift. Inside there was a small photo of eight-year-old Gracie, holding her infant brother in her arms.
She snuck out of the room, pulled the door closed behind her, and collected Kyle from the other side of the house. He already had his coat and boots on.
#
The beach was a natural echo chamber. The gulls had awoken with the coming dawn and were calling to each other, though whether it was a morning greeting or the bickering of too many close family members, Gracie couldn’t tell. It all sounded like screaming.
To the east the clouds stretched their heavy blanket over the horizon, blurring the fiery ball of the sun that had just begun to show its face. There the grey was shot through with shades of bright pink and burnt orange, streaks that reached like spidery fingers across the sky. Gracie folded her arms around herself as the wind picked up, but she heard Kyle unzip his jacket behind her.
“What are you doing?”
“The polar bear plunge!” He had worn his swimming trunks and a rash guard under his clothes. Gracie wondered where and how the excitement for jumping in the ocean in the middle of January had formed in his elementary school brain. She silently cursed whoever had planted the idea in his head.
“Kyle, it’s way too cold to get in the water.”
“That’s the point dummy. I’ll be like a polar bear.”
“Polar bears have thick skin and lots of fat to keep them warm.”
“It’ll only be for a minute.” He ran off towards the water before she could really put her foot down on the issue. She chased him, but he was quicker on the rocks and they were too close to the water for her to catch up before he ran in. Gracie kicked off her shoes and toed a few inches of icy ocean before jumping back. He was still going, swimming through the waves now. She had felt the current’s pull even with the water only covering half her foot.
“Kyle! Come back, the current’s too strong!”
He either didn’t hear her or chose to ignore her. Either way he did not answer. They were both strong swimmers, had spent their lives five minutes from the ocean. She had been a lifeguard one summer before she was fired for dozing off, even though her section of the beach had been deserted.
Gracie watched his head dip under as each wave came over him, her heart pounding against her lungs. He was turning around to come back when three waves hit in quick succession, keeping him under for too long. It felt like hours, a full day as she stripped off her coat and ran towards the place where she had last seen his curl-covered head.
She thought she heard a choked scream but it could have been the gulls. Now that she was in the water, she couldn’t see whether Kyle had come up yet. She couldn’t see anything but water, freezing water that forced a chill straight through her skin and into her bones.
Her throat was torn by the saltwater she swallowed while she screamed his name. Now the current had her and she couldn’t tell whether it was bringing her closer to him or further away. The numbness in her fingers and toes was spreading to her wrists and ankles.
She felt she had been struggling against the waves for days. Her body was sluggish, only kept afloat by the ice in her veins. She imagined letting go of the chain that anchored her to existence. The feeling of her lungs filling with water, the burning inside making her forget the cold all around. The warped sound of her voice, trapped in the last bubbles of air that floated from her throat. She felt her muscles cramp and give out, her body no longer under her control. And finally something like sweet relief, as she gave in to the ocean’s insistent pull and floated out to sea.
