“No burritos? It’s okay, I’ll forgive you this once.” Cassie trails behind me as I climb onto the rocks. They’re slick with spray, but I’ve spent so much of my childhood leaping across them that I barely notice.
“More like nada,” I say to the ocean. I should have just texted her. Despite the thundering of the waves and that familiar clamminess from the salt air, there’s no drowning out the way it feels like shit to voice the words.
She scampers next to me and extends to her full height, nearly six feet and slender as the single birch tree in her yard. “No.”
“Yes.” Failure to use proper judgment. I glower at the blue-green waves. They’re just as riled as I am, crashing against the rocks and spraying with a hiss.
Her arm loops around me. We look ridiculous side by side, something people at every party this summer made sure to point out to us. Without fail, someone would toss Cassie a beer and then spot me. “Cass, is this your little sister?”
I reached five feet when I was twelve–with a victorious shout in the nurse’s office when she read off the number to me–and haven’t grown since.
Cassie squeezes me close. She’s not laughing at me, although she probably wants to. Heck, I would if it were anyone besides me. “The DMV sucks,” she says. “They know nothing.”
“Yep.”
“You don’t need your license. I’ll drive you.”
“Forever?” I raise a doubtful eyebrow.
“Who needs art school when I can be a professional chauffeur?” she says, and although I roll my eyes, I can’t help but laugh.
“I’m going to move where I can use mass transit for the rest of my life.”
Cassie’s smile slips as her eyes widen, like I’ve said something truly profound. “That. Is. Brilliant.”
“It’s for the common good, I think.”
Her words sprint now, almost as fast as she waves her hands. “Think about it, Savs. You, me, New York City. Roommates.”
“I wasn’t planning on applying to any schools in the city.” In fact, I still don’t have a clear plan on where I’m applying besides where I’m not going: Ocean State.
“NYU. Columbia.” She ticks them off on her fingers. “You know you’ll get in.”
“How about the gazillion dollars in tuition?”
She doesn’t bat an eye. “We’ll get jobs, obviously.”
That’s the thing with Cassie. She says something totally unreasonable–that she’ll drive me around for the rest of my life. That she and I can just move to the city and get jobs–and she says it with such confidence that it actually sounds possible. For the first time all day–in months–hope blooms in my chest. I might have a future that isn’t a failure.
A tiny part of me still asks, What about gymnastics? After all, there are no NYC colleges with teams.
Well, what about gymnastics? I haven’t stepped foot in the gym since I blew out my knee right in front of the Ocean State coach. There’s no point. My body has given up on me one too many times.
When I don’t counter with another question, she squeezes me closer. Despite the salt air, she smells like lavender and cinnamon as always. “It’ll be so awesome that they’ll send a reality TV crew to record our shenanigans.”
I focus on that blossoming hope. Living together in an apartment the size of a closet, surviving off Ramen noodles–with Cassie, it’ll be an adventure, shimmering with possibility. I’ll walk briskly over cement sidewalks instead of on four-inch-wide balance beams.
“Gymnastics is the boyfriend you need to get over,” Cassie says firmly, as though she knows exactly where my mind has wandered. “You would have had to quit eventually.”
I’d wanted to finish at the final meet of my senior year of college, teammates surrounding me. Not like this.
I need to channel the same spirit that took Dad’s car and turned left out of the school parking lot. To make a bold plunge that doesn’t involve hurtling over the vault or swinging from bar to bar. If I have a definitive future plan, then my father will have to accept it when I tell him I’m moving on to bigger and better things outside of the gym.
I take a deep breath. “I’m in. Let’s do it.”
Cassie lifts me in the air and stumbles on the rock. We both scream and then burst out laughing.
“We almost died!” I yell.
“Sorry!” she yells back. “I’m just so glad you’re not ditching me next year.”
The guys stop playing Frisbee and watch us curiously. On the outskirts of their circle, Marcos passes the disc from hand to hand like he’s contemplating his next move.
“I was never going to ditch you.” The spray catches my ankles, and I step back.
She shrugs, popping off the camera lens cap. “Rhode Island, same thing. Strike a pose. We need to capture this moment.”
“Rhode Island, same thing” prickles at me. So does the cool water seeping through the bottom of my jeans.
“Something cool,” she says. “Do a handstand.”
I can’t count how many handstand photos I have, taken by Cassie, now stowed away in a folder on my computer. It’s as natural a position as walking on my feet.
She already has the camera raised to her eye. I press my palms to the cool rock and kick up. As soon as I’m up, I know it’s going to be a good one. I split my legs, my fingers twitching as they shift their weight to keep me steady.
Click. “Point those toes, Savannah Banana.”
“What are we, seven?” I mutter to my hands, which slowly turn red from the cold and the strain.
When we were seven years old and glued next to each other on the bus, Cassie had said, “I wish I had a normal name like Kaitlyn. Cascade is so weird.”
I hadn’t known what Cascade meant. “My middle name’s Savannah.”
“Savannah.” Her eyes had lit up. “I love that. I’m calling you Savannah from now on.”
Ten years later, everyone’s adopted Savannah as my name. Besides the DMV. And my dad.
The shutter snaps again. “Here marks the day that Savannah and Cassie decided to get out of this shit town forever, amen.”
“It’s not that bad.” The familiar head rush hits me, blood steadily flowing to my forehead.