My Favorite Memory

We lounged on the boat as it swayed with the tide. We let the sun beat down on our upturned faces. We smiled as we read and listened to music mixed with silence. We named the ladybug that nearly drowned, we commented on all the dragonflies landing on the water together for some love. We made up fantasies, stories. We told secrets and jokes.

It was cool, in a warm way. We had to take off our sweaters only to put them back on again. We stared out on the water, we looked out onto the other bank where a half-sunken paddle boat was barely hanging onto the ledge. We marveled at the houses that were two, three storeys and must have cost over two million. A little community of rich people in this small, fishy-smelling place so close to home.

Our upturned faces. The smile on my lips, the heat on my cheeks. The music blaring from earphones because we had no real speakers.

The smiling. The laughing. The carefree way we felt. We'd survived the first week of school, and we were spending the weekend as if it was summer all over again.

Before the storms and the winter came. Before icy nails clawed their way through us. Before we were trapped together, then broken apart, with weak, tangled strings connecting us, but no longer tying us together.

And if someone asked me what I missed the most, it wouldn't be the parties, the sleepovers, the crazy stunts. It wouldn't be the talk of dreams and futures and hopes.

It would be like the giraffe to me- the animal that I hardly think to answer favorite, but never is less.

It would be that day on the boat.

Where everything was new, where everything was almost perfect.

Where there was only one small vein of ice, one small spidery piece of web that was no match for the warmth of the sun.