The Ocean

She took the ocean with her, and left me behind.

We used to sit on the dock on look out at the ocean at night. She was three years older than me, twenty and finishing up her two years at our local community college. In just less than a month she’d be done, and then she’d be leaving me, leaving this little town. Off to bigger and better things.

                “You’ll miss the ocean,” I said, kicking my feet towards the water, even though it was still far below.

                “I’ll take it with me,” she said, and I laughed.

                “You can’t do that Harper, it’s too big.” She smiled, a spark of white in the faded light.

                “Just you watch,” she said, spanning her arms out as if she was going to hug every inch of salty water beyond our sight. “Nothing is too big.”

                I just shook my head. She’d always been crazy, but that was one thing I loved about her. She was fearless, imaginative; she was something I’d never be. She was free.

                When we were getting up to leave, Harper was still looking back at the ocean. I wanted to tell her it was getting late and I had to get home, but something about her kept me from speaking. She looked at me after a moment and just smiled, her long hair blowing around her face in the cool sea breeze.

                “I’m taking it with me.”

                Then she was running off towards the road, jumping into the sand before I could stop her. I watched as she ran like a child to the edge of the water, bending down and splashing through the shallow waves for something. When she returned, she held out her open hand. A chipped shell was in her hand, and I could only raise an eyebrow. It wasn’t even a pretty shell, it was boring and plain.

                “That’s just a shell,” I finally said as she pocketed it and we stepped onto the road.

                “To you,” she said, grinning at me. “But to it, it’s the whole ocean.”

                “I don’t get you,” I said, grinning at her, and she threw her arm around my shoulders and pulled me to her as we walked.

                Nights like that became impossible soon after though, Harper left only a month after graduating for a summer course at her new college. She took the ocean with her. I would sit on the dock at night and stare at once concealed sand, at the fish dying without the cool water to keep them breathing. I felt just like them, suffocating.

                She called every night for a week, then twice a week, then maybe once a month. Before I knew it school had started again, and she was completely gone. I felt listless without her around, I drifted to and from places, not knowing where I was going, and never remembering what I was doing. Two weeks into the dream phase, I sat on the dock again, staring at the sand. My bag sat next to me, and, depressed by the empty sight in front of me, I stood up and reached for it, knocking it over. I watched as a slender package fell onto the wooden dock.

                I reached down and picked it up. I had forgotten I’d gotten it, found it sitting on the kitchen table at home. Shrugging, I ripped it open and shook it. Something small and cold fell into my palm, hard and ridged against my skin.

                I held it up and stared. Just a plain, boring shell. Chipped, worn out like it had been carried around religiously, and yet, I knew the thing without even thinking. Harper’s shell. I looked back into the package and saw a piece of folded paper and snatched it, throwing the package onto the dock and unfolding the note with shaking hands.

                ‘I’ve kept the ocean long enough; it’s time for you to take it back. We’ll enough it together again soon. Promise.

                 Love Always, Harper’

                I looked up from the paper, and saw finally the soft waves I’d missed over the past few months. I stared out at the ocean, at the foam on the waves as the cut clean across the horizon and melted back into the mass of water.

                Smiling, I folded the paper and put it in my pocket, then took the shell and threw it with all my might into the water. Taking the ocean just wasn’t right, if I did just as Harper had, what would we have to come back to?