Tide Pools - a coming of age short story

[clownlesbian]

hiii. i recently attempting to getting back into writing regularly. this is a short thing i have finished recently. it is semi autobiographical but also not at all lol  . definitely reminiscent of my young adulthood though where i was incredibly isolated and weird.

anyway i hope u enjoy, i would appreciate any feedback. 



Everyday of school was the same. I would step into that cursed place, headphones firmly pressed into my ears, and come out hours later exhausted, angry and humiliated. It had been this way since my freshman year and though I could see the end in sight, the months until graduation made up a huge crater that only infinitesimally got smaller each day. Often I would leave school early. My schedule was set up so my painting class and theater were at the end of the day, so I would often ask my mom for permission before slipping out the front doors during passing periods and hailing a bus across town to reach the ocean.
This only worked because my mother was particularly unobservant when it came to things concerning school. She worked late nights, returning home far past the end of my school day. I really only told her of ditching class to avoid school phone calls that would embarrass her into bombarding me with angry texts.
Even though the ocean was a twenty minute bus ride away, it always felt present in the room with me, no matter where I was. When I was younger, my mother would pick me up from school in her truck. She barreled down the freeway sometimes sneaking up to 90 miles an hour. I would stick my head out the window the second I spotted the expanse of sand like the flesh of an arm sprawled out besides me. I huffed the salted air. Nowadays Mom hates driving and we fight if I ask her to drive more than a couple miles out from the apartment. I collected a reserve of images from these trips and replayed them in my mind whenever I pleased, keeping me satisfied until I found myself able to return.
School has been a tremendous failure for me since middle school and I can’t imagine that ever changing. At this point I merely held on for the sake of graduation. The vast expanse of my life after high school both terrifying and alluring. I excelled in nothing. In the past, I used to love reading and writing but at a certain point I lost motivation even with this interest. I spent my afternoons after school at the beach or on the carpeted floor of my bedroom, CD player by my head, listening to the same albums on repeat.
I talk to no one. I can’t understand what prevents me from doing so, only that even when I have things to say words lock up in my throat and refuse to come out. When I do speak, afterwards I feel a sting in my throat like swallowing sea water. I would have been shocked to know that anyone in my classes knew my name.
I used to speak to Jess. She’s in the year below me. We often met at the tide pools after school during my freshman year. She was smaller than me, but we were both pimply and ugly. We both had braces but she got hers off a year earlier than I did. She kept her hair in tight blond braids slicked back with gel and hairspray so not a single hair would budge even with the brutal sea winds.
Jess didn't much care for the tide pools like me, but she came anyway, making jokes and picking on me the whole time. It didn’t bother me much. Maybe I convinced myself it was out of affection. Looking back I think it was simply a manifestation of her anger that I was her only friend. Despite our similar disposition and unpopularity, she saw herself as superior to me and made it her mission to drill me with insults, while also using my presence besides her as a way to contradict any perceived loneliness. It was a symbiotic relationship though at the time I often made attempts to convince myself it was more significant.
Jess and I would stay at the tide pools until the sun dipped below the horizon. She would spend the entire time chatting my ear off about movies and TV shows she enjoyed. Sometimes she would mention boys she had a crush on and I would be filled with an incredible anger, stronger than any anger from her endless teasing. She would blather on and I would imagine that in her distraction she slipped on the mossy rocks, cracking her skull open. I imagined the inside of her brain would be cool and gelatinous like the head of a jellyfish.
Boys had always been cruel to me. They were cruel to Jess too and yet she clung to them in a way I saw as pathetic and desperate.
One day, in 8th grade, a year before Jess and I were friends, one of the boys in my class pulled a nasty prank on her. He went up to her, a crooked grin on his face, his friends barely concealing themselves a few feet away. He asked if she wanted to go out with him to the frozen yogurt place all the middle schoolers frequented. She wasn’t stupid, none of us were. When you were a girl like us you knew not to trust anything anyone told you. Even so she was humiliated. I stopped paying attention at this point but I heard from others that she could be heard crying in the bathroom for hours after. From that moment on, she started eating lunch in the library like the rest of us losers.
Jess always made it clear that I was a freak miles beyond herself. Everything I did made her face crinkle up like she was smelling dog shit. In particular she hated how I interacted with the creatures in the tide pools. During our visits I would be laying on my stomach, on the rocks, peering into the pools, waiting for something new to emerge. As she prattled on, I would reach my hand in, fingertips brushing the sea anemones. Slowly I would let my fingers become absorbed up to the knuckle in their grip. The sting that drove the fish away only felt like a small tug on my own flesh. I welcomed the pleasurable tingle of the anemone and continued fondling it even when it made Jess’ face screw up, mouth pursed like she ate something sour.
The last day of our tentative friendship was like the rest. It ended not in some extreme scene like I always expected it would. I thought one day she would say something so irritating that I would lash out in some intense way. Instead she watched me fondle moss of the tide pool, pet the top of a crab, graze my fingers over the arms of the anemone and she stomped away, never to be seen again until the new school year. I became a sophomore, she became a freshman, and she avoided me at all costs.
At that moment, I did not know that it would be our last day together. I continued as usual, gaze locked on the water. That’s when I saw it. Its oblong head moved, puffing like a fist tightening. It had shifted in color to match the deep silt of the bottom of the tide pool. Its tentacles reached out, feeling for something, grasping blindly. It moved in a way unlike all other creatures. It was unpredictable. It slinked around like something prehistoric, unconcerned with anything but experience. Its head dragged behind it as it swam. It volleyed around the pool, exploring or perhaps seeking an exit.
I was in shock, never expecting such an encounter. I reached out tentatively. I have touched countless sea creatures, even beyond the ones that resided in the tide pools. I had felt the back of stingrays and sharks, I had run a palm over the smooth flesh of dolphins. The octopus was unique. Its head reacted only slightly to my touch, flinching. I reached my hand in further, submerging it in the cool water. It was a few months out from summer at this time, and the waters had yet to heat up. The creature shifted closer to me, its eyes blinked slowly like a cat. Open and shut. One tentacle reached out, clenching and unclenching, moving closer to one of my fingers. Slowly it reached out, circling around my index finger. Its grip reminded me of when I was a child sucking on my thumb. I was so viscerally connected to this sensation that I had completely forgotten about, now years away from this self-soothing habit.
It seemed from some creature not from this universe, created on some other distant planet and only accidentally dropped here, for this sole encounter, to communicate with me something profound. I stayed watching it as the tide rose. I knew one push of a particularly big and strong wave would take the creature away from me. It would return back to the dark ocean, moving its sinuous body more wildly, free from the limitations of the small tide pool. Suddenly it happened, and in one blink the octopus was gone. The ocean water had soaked through my jeans and socks but I hardly noticed. I could only think of that graceful creature. Any sadness from its absence was easily replaced by a sense of being deeply changed. It was like the moments after seeing a movie, stepping out of the theater and into real life, every thought and action suddenly imbued with significance.
After I stood up, I floated around as if in a dream. The world seemed more vivid and I found myself not in the usual state of despair I left the beach in, heartbroken to return to my bedroom. Instead I felt lit up, like someone had taken me by the shoulders and shook. My whole life felt dislodged. All the petty annoyances and despairs suddenly appear so juvenile when faced with a creature so primal and ancient.
I drifted through my days from this moment on with a sense of peace I had never known before. I constantly sought out the octopus, always scanning tide pools for its winding tentacles, its plump head. It felt inevitable, but also distant. I hunted the pools out of obligation, as if it were watching and testing my dedication. I imagined our future inevitable meeting like spotting an old friend at the grocery store, pleasantly shocked and suddenly transported.