Onward, Upward, Back Over

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This room is temporary. Every part of it. The single window that opens to the slant of the roof. The bed beneath, clouded with pillows. The sealed brick fireplace, hearth strewn with fabric flower petals. The mirror I’m looking into while not-so-artfully applying eye shadow. And every part is mine for the summer.

But nothing worth remembering has happened here. Outside of this space, I’ve had months of new people, live music, walking bridges, writing in coffee shops, and relaxing on rooftops along the South Carolina coast.

I’ve formed an easy friendship with the three girls who sleep behind the other white doors of this apartment, and the sun is setting on our summer and on our college lives. So we try to live a little. I put down my makeup brush and open my door to join them in the living room for Friday night festivities. We collect our respective bags, phones and keys, and lock the house behind us.

We stroll the city’s cobbled streets and uneven sidewalks awash with light from lampposts and restaurants. We bar-hop and mingle and dance and sing and sweat until we ache for fresh air. Then we walk away from the sleepless bustle of downtown, down side streets tunneled by moon-kissed trees, up the stairs to our second-floor home in the house with the grey peeling paint.

We throw down our bags and phones and keys. We make plans to wake up in three hours to see the sun rise on the beach. I laugh and doubt it will happen. I shut myself in my room, close my curtain on the night, and sink into sleep under the whir of the ceiling fan.

At 5:30am I sit up to the scrape of a door opening and the tap of footsteps. The voices of my housemates muffle through my wall and I lie back and consider feigning unconsciousness so I can actually feel alive later. I reason that every day presents the chance to see the sunrise. But I’ve never taken that chance. What if this is the last time I can take it here?

At this point, it’s not the room that matters, what’s in it or that it’s mine. What matters is that I decide to leave it.

I half-fall out of bed, yank open my door, and see Clare rummaging around the kitchen for her car keys. She looks at me and asks, “You coming?”

I raise my arms over my head in the affirmative and drag myself into the bathroom. I poke my contacts in my eyes, throw on a swimsuit, snatch my still-sandy beach towel and stumble down the stairs to catch up with the other girls.

Sarah Jean is already planted shotgun in Clare’s little silver car, somehow bubbling with conversation and energy.