The Ship We Built

by Lexie Bean

  It was Dylan Beaman and the shadow of his body. He cleared his throat and said, “What are you doing?” He didn’t even say it like it was a question. After all this time of not talking, you would think he could have come up with something nicer to say. Obviously Dylan hasn’t been paying much attention in class if he didn’t know that rocks are like bones, and they survive so much. I promise you that I did my very best to ignore him. I just tried to keep focus on getting the frozen dirt off my hands, digging into the long line closest to the top of my palm. I wasn’t so sure why he was breaking the rules to talk to me anyways.

  His shadow got even bigger and he said, “You move weird.” I scratched into my skin a little bit deeper, trying to get every bad thing out of me. The pressure made every line in my hands turn red. Dylan Beaman really had a way of making me feel dirtier than the rocks.

  Then he checked behind his shoulder, and said, “And your haircut looks like a big accident.” I touched my hair, it’s still way too short to hide into a ponytail. There was absolutely nothing that I could do to make myself better for him. It was just like that time on Boy Meets World when Cory messed up his hair and everyone laughed at him nonstop because he was so bad at middle school. Dylan wouldn’t cut it out, and we aren’t even in middle school yet. I couldn’t believe it.

  Then he repeated what he said about my haircut, as if I didn’t hear him the first time. Don’t you know, I’ve worked too hard to be called an accident. I bet the Trampoline Kappa Whatever Club told him to walk over to say all of those mean things to me. I spotted them all watching from the top of the wooden structure on the other side of the playground. I was too far away to read their lips, but Dylan came one step closer like he was going to crush me. It’s no wonder I thought that he was inches taller than me for so long.

  I tell you what, the first week of school now seems like forever ago. I remember back when Dylan shared his potato chips with me, back when he said I could be a part of something with all the other boys. People in class think he is so cool because he has light-up shoes, he knows a lot of fart jokes, and lately, he has been gelling his hair to look like a crashing wave. It turns out, he’s not like me at all.

  I didn’t want to give him any more attention, but then he stomped his foot and the ice cracked. I could have been under that foot. I hate to admit this, but I could feel tears warming my cheeks. I was doing my best not to feel in front of him. I couldn’t help it, though, and Dylan noticed. He called me a crybaby. It was time for me to be tough in a new way.

  My short hair gave me nothing to hide behind. I stood up and looked at Dylan right in the eyes. It’s something I have never done with a crush. I felt his size in that moment.

  Our eyes might be the same color, but mine were full of tears and Dylan’s looked empty. I didn’t take mine off of his for a second. I no longer wondered if he was afraid of the big snake in the science room. I no longer wondered what his favorite songs were for dancing silly, and what he thought of his uncles and aunts. I no longer wondered about what he does when he’s alone. He has probably never wondered anything about me.

  I balled my left fist and used my right to point him in the other direction.

  Surprisingly, Dylan actually turned around to leave when I did that. He walked across the white field, back toward the structure. It wasn’t until then I saw he also had a dirt stain on the back of his light blue jeans. I don’t really understand Dylan Beaman at all. I have decided that I’m done with crushes and people who make me want to hide my dirty hands and knees. I would rather dig for someone who will really remember me. In fact, I found six more good rocks at recess today that are all worthy of being valentines. Dylan Beaman won’t get any of them, not one. They are for Sofie.

  I am sick of people telling me I am bad when I feel good and telling me I am good when I feel bad. I am sick of people with their own dirt stains telling me about mine. I’m so mad, and that’s fine. I have a lot more rocks to dig for, eighty-four to be exact. I would say that you can come and help, but I want to do this on my own. Thanks for listening.

  Sincerely,

  Rowan, that’s my name don’t wear it out

  Saturday, March 14, 1998

  To Whoever Is Reading This,

  Instead of getting a balloon last week, I used my allowance money to make four wishes into the Pilgrim River. All of my quarters sank straight to the bottom and I could see my wishes shine between the rocks below. Maybe that means something good will happen soon.

  I was feeling so strong the last time I wrote balloon mail, but I have been feeling confused about what to write down since then. I don’t want to get into trouble. I’m afraid whoever reads this is going to think I’m bad or tell on me. I’m afraid that you’ll see my life and decide that I’m just a crazy person that needs to get fixed or go away forever. I’m afraid you’ll be like everybody else, but I’d like to try sharing anyways if that’s okay with you.

  Just so you know, I gave Sofie her valentine. Believe it or not, the ninety-four rocks I dug up were so heavy that I had to walk to her house almost every day this week to get the whole entire present to her. Like usual, it was so quiet at Sofie’s house without Richard there singing or walking in with a plate of coffee cake. Whenever I opened my backpack to empty out the rocks, they were the loudest thing in the house. They knocked on her wood floor like they were excited to finally be home.

  My favorite rock I found for Sofie was an almost green color, like the ones you can mine copper from. I think it was even more beautiful than fool’s gold. I scooped it up from the bottom of the river after I made my wishes. I dried it off with my fuzzy sweater and made another wish on it. I kept it safe in my secret backpack pocket, so I could give her the special rock at the very end. Sofie’s eyes twinkled when I put it in her hands. She balled up her fist with the rock safe inside, and she hugged me just as tight. She told me thank you a million times and said, “I promise I’ll find a perfect place to put all these little treasures.” She called them treasures, and I think she really meant it.

  It felt good to share, but I was feeling really weird after our long hug. I’m not sure how to describe it. I crossed my arms and practically whispered, “Promise not to tell anyone I called the rocks a valentine?” I didn’t want her or anyone else to get the wrong idea. I don’t know. She agreed with me anyways. She said a little louder than me, “Sure, it’s not a valentine. I don’t even want it to be one.” I know I’m the one who said it first, but I had to go into the hallway to cry. I lied to her and said “I have to go to the bathroom now.”

  I didn’t do anything wrong giving her a valentine, right? It’s not like anything really happened. Either way, I was kind of afraid to go to the Friday Fish Fry with my family after all of that because they all still think Sofie is a bad influence. My shoulders slouched over my steamy plate. Dad tried to be nice by getting me a Mackinac fudge sundae, but it didn’t help. My backbones felt heavy with all the weight of those rocks, with the weight of a lot of things I’m not even sure how to say. Do you ever feel like you’re still carrying something even if it was from a while ago? I don’t know.

  I used to be so good at imagining the places I wanted to explore and the parts of myself I really wanted to be, but lately it has felt hard to do that. When I look at the tree, I decide it is just a tree. When I look at the birds, I don’t care about their wings. I even turned in an empty test at school this week. I’m not usually like that. Even something simple, like looking at myself in the hallway mirror this morning, made me feel so far away.

  Last Friday, Courtney made fun of the way that I held Sofie when we went down the slide together. I thought we were being brave letting everybody see, but Courtney said, “You can’t hold Sofie like that if you’re not a boy.” She squinted her eyes at me hard as if she couldn’t see me there. I haven’t been able to hear anything else since, not even birds or the swish-swish of my own windbreaker.

  My par
ents took me on another long car ride this weekend too. For the hundredth time, Dad passed that empty mine where that girl Ruth died. He shook his head and said again, “That girl didn’t know what she was doing. Someone could have kept her from getting hurt.” I know we have been doing this thing every Sunday for a while now, but I didn’t want one more person calling me a confused girl. That’s not how you think of me, right? If anything, I’m a confused boy, or just a really tired one. So many of the trees we passed on the highway still looked dead to me.

  Dad turned up the radio and we had to listen to that “I’ll be your crying shoulder” song. I caught him looking at me through the rear-view mirror and felt like everything that God let go of and dropped on the ground. Is there something I’m supposed to learn in all of this, other than how to be a girl that my family can love? I’m just not so sure what everyone wants from me. Girls aren’t the only people who get hurt, right?

  When we eventually pulled up to the doctor’s office, I pressed the red buckle only halfway and pretended my seat belt was stuck on. I wanted to be left behind, but they wouldn’t let me. My mom pulled me out by saying “I love you” over and over again. Maybe she does love me, but I don’t know. What if I think about God in a different way than everyone else? Do you ever feel like you don’t have any choices? Have you ever messed up while giving someone a valentine?

  I don’t know what else to say. I used my very last quarter to wish for school to be better, but I guess wishes are like prayers and they can take a while to come true. I don’t know. I’m just not so sure how long I can wait.

  Anyways, I’m going to go now. Sorry.

  Sincerely,

  I don’t know, sorry

  Sunday, March 15, 1998

  Hi.

  Today I just wanted it to be spring, but Michigan lives under a cloud most of the time. I was tricked into thinking that it would be warm outside because the ground smelled like earthworms and the sun was peeking out. I threw on my windbreaker and told my parents I was going to the lake all by myself.

  The truth is that I stopped at Sofie’s house first, and the weather changed completely by the time I got to her driveway. I had to zip up one of the million zippers all the way to my chin, but there really was no place to hide from the extra cold wind. I hugged myself a little tighter, and squeezed my eyes shut wishing that my windbreaker had a hood. If any other Yooper this far north saw me like that, they would have called me a “buck, buck, buck, chicken” for not taking the cold with a straight face. I couldn’t help it, though. The sky was howling and it almost felt like the Earth was trying to erase me, and I was disappearing fast.

  I don’t know how long I waited for Sofie, but she was wearing the biggest frown ever when she finally came outside. You should have seen it. She just stood in the doorway and stared at the dusty driveway for a whole minute. She later told me that she was just imagining Richard pulling up in the carriage car. Sometimes I wish I could do more. Sofie covered her eyes with her blue hood and put her feet just a few inches from mine.

  I asked, “Can we go walk for the longest time?” Sofie nodded, but it took a while for her to finally uncover her watery eyes. Sofie and I might as well have been in two separate worlds walking all those minutes in silence. Even the sun took a break as we stepped heavy on the cracks because we didn’t care about our luck at all. The good news is that the farther we walked away from our neighborhood, the fewer cracks there were to step on. The cement sidewalks went away completely and there were only paths of the tiniest rocks into the woods.

  After we passed the NO TRESPASSING signs, empty-looking houses, and yellow quilt store, Sofie’s face started to come alive. Her eyes were full of questions and specks of amber again. We were now far enough from home to finally see the lake horizon through the skinny tree trunks. The wind blew at its fullest, pushing us closer to the water. The birds made shadows flying above the surrounding tall grass. Maybe they were all telling us to keep going too. I bet they were. The sound was like an invisible orchestra, the sound that clouds make when I let go of a bunch of balloons.

  We walked and walked until we reached a tiny patch of sand with left behind canoes. Somehow sand got into Sofie’s Skechers. We paused to shake them out, the wind carried away the golden dust before any of it could fall onto the ground. She held my shoulder to put her shoes back on and I wiggled and waved to keep balance. Our silence turned into laughs that couldn’t help but just fall out because there was nobody but the birds to watch us.

  We traced each other’s shoe prints below the seagulls singing with their whole voices. They soared so high I never thought that they could come down. Then out of the blue, one of them landed right in front of us with a small plop. He fluffed his gray feathers and turned his little head to the side. We didn’t have fries or anything like that to offer, but he still hopped a little closer, like he remembered us from somewhere. I do wish that seagull stayed longer, but it seemed like he had another place to be. Sofie and I waved goodbye as we watched him go off with all the other excited birds. He didn’t seem to think twice about where his friends were, and they all flew away toward Dollar Bay together. I kept on waving goodbye even when they were gone.

  Sofie laughed again. I said, “What’s so funny?” She told me, “Your arms make the same swish-swish sound as the seagulls.”

  Today, I really don’t care if you reading this are God or the universe, or a nice person, a tree branch, or a bird reading this letter. I’m realizing that it’s all kind of the same to me. Whenever Sofie and I are just walking together, I can imagine again. Is there anything in this world that helps you imagine again? Even when everything else makes it feel just impossible?

  I love you,

  Rowan

  PS, I’m actually sending this balloon to you on Tuesday, March 17. Nothing so big has happened these past few days other than finding a Twix bar on the cafeteria floor, and also Mom buying me a new smiley-face headband. My half-birthday happened too, but that doesn’t mean much. To be honest, I wasn’t so sure about how I ended my letter to you, especially because I don’t even check under the WELCOME TO HOUGHTON sign anymore. I didn’t even mean to say “I love you.” It just kind of slipped out and I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.

  I’m not even totally sure what love means anyways. So, I can take it back if you want me to or if it made you feel weird. I’m really sorry about that.

  Sincerely,

  Rowan

  Sunday, March 22, 1998

  Hi,

  I’m not sure if you’ve been watching Boy Meets World these days, but either way, you should know that Cory and Topanga officially broke up. Cory really isn’t taking it well. Everybody tells him he’s too depressing to be around, and he doesn’t want to be around himself either. He and his best friend went to a party and got as sloppy as my dad, and then they even got detention. I think I understand how Cory feels. This weekend was so good and so bad at the same time, but I don’t want to be depressing to be around either. I don’t know. I think that I only want to tell the good parts, if that’s okay with you.

  The good part of my weekend all started yesterday when I went to Sofie’s for a slumber party, even though I told my parents I was at Courtney’s house. Don’t worry too much about that, though.

  Anyways, the first thing Sofie and I did was tuck in her baby sister. It was kind of like a chore, but it was fun too. We turned on Viivi’s lullaby tape with my old Rapunzel Barbie by her side, and she magically stayed sound asleep the whole night. Sofie and I tiptoed out of her room, and then gave each other the world’s quietest high five.

  After that, we hopped down the stairs to the basement, where the real slumber party started. We could make as much noise as we wanted down there. Sofie played an awesome drum solo on the already wobbly railing. It almost sounded like that “we will, we will rock you” song that the paper football players sing during the biggest games. I tried to add an
other cool beat to Sofie’s song with my feet, and threw all of my things down the stairs for the grand finale.

  I love basements. It’s so cool to have an entire floor that even the smartest people can’t see from the outside. Some say that basements were invented to protect families and cans of food from getting hurt in big storms. When a tornado comes, the weatherman always calls basements “shelter.” Have you ever seen a tornado in real life before? I haven’t, but I know a little bit about them and what happens to the dirt, rocks, and broken houses that all get lost in the middle part.

  All I can say is that I sure did feel safe in Sofie’s basement. She actually made it as safe as possible by making a fort ahead of time with two chairs and five blankets. It even had its own living room, kitchen, and bedroom. I never thought my dream house would be so small, but life can be surprising like that.

  Sofie actually hasn’t been over to my house since that one night we made our maps to the moon. It’s okay, though. Her house is better than mine. Plus, Mrs. Gavia left out a real-meat meatloaf, plus red pop, three bowls of snacks, and a whole bunch of craft supplies. I have gotten so used to playing house with invisible spaghetti and donuts, so it was like a miracle to see real, good-smelling food sitting in our fort’s kitchen. I know it sounds silly, but I almost didn’t want to touch it, like everything would somehow disappear if I got too close. Sofie didn’t think twice and took the first handful of pretzel sticks. Then she took a second handful, and I took the third.

  After that, Sofie and I did some confident walk practice, but then we did something completely different and cut out lots of construction paper. The pieces of paper got smaller and smaller, the size of little square ants. Her cat Dusty loved watching that part, and pawed at our growing piles until she fell asleep. Sofie and I must have made a million pieces, and we sang with the Spice Girls, “I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want” louder than anything. Dusty’s ears perked up and she bolted upstairs, and it was so funny. We were probably ten times louder than any winter concert solo. I actually can’t remember the last time I let myself be that noisy, let alone shout about what I really, really want.