Reclaiming the Sand

by A. Meredith Walters

  Sure, I could have gone to the art studio. Flynn had asked me to stop by after all. I could have appeased my potentially destructive Flynn Hendrick curiosity and gotten it out of my system by seeing him again.

  But I just couldn’t.

  I was more than embarrassed by my behavior the last time I had seen him. I had been weak. I had been vulnerable. I had been a big, whiny asshole.

  Flynn represented a life I had left behind me. A world I had severed ties to when I had gone to juvie.

  A world I thought I’d never exist in again.

  I had lost everything because of that unusual man and I was beginning to think he had no idea.

  I had held onto my bitterness and anger for so long it had become a part of me. If I let it go I wasn’t sure what I’d be left with.

  My anger had kept me strong. It kept me whole. It was part of the person I had become.

  As I talked with Flynn in his moonlit yard, I felt the snarls of my rage loosen and fade away.

  It had everything to do with the way he spoke to me. The way he had me reminiscing. The way he had reminded me of the girl I had been. One that wasn’t angry. That wasn’t bitter.

  He made me remember a lonely girl who had been drawn to a sad boy and had found comfort in him.

  I had to push him away. It’s what I did. It’s how I ensured my continued survival. It’s how I protected my heart. I had to destroy the renewed connection before it had a chance to destroy me.

  Keeping my distance seemed the only real way to do that. But it also felt like a coward’s way out.

  And if I knew anything, it was that Ellie McCallum was no coward.

  After class, I gathered my things and walked with purposeful strides across the manicured lawns.

  “I see you found your way to class.” I stopped and turned to see the sunburned girl walking in the same direction I was headed.

  Her brown hair was now in matted dreads down her back and her sunburn had faded into a healthy, golden brown.

  “Guess so,” I responded, not in the mood for superficial conversation. The girl was clearly not tuned into subtle cues because she fell into step beside me. I gave her the ubiquitous once over and rolled my eyes. She was obviously of the pseudo hippie persuasion with patched jeans and dirty toes peeping over the edges of her battered Birkenstocks. Just give the girl a second hand guitar and the look would be complete.

  “Is this your first year?” she asked and I thought about ignoring her. I hadn’t come to school to make friends. Hell, I could barely tolerate the ones I had, so I wasn’t looking to acquire any new ones. And small talk would invariably lead to conversation, which would end up in invitations to hang out and expectations to develop a relationship I wasn’t interested in beginning.

  But some strange compulsion had me answering her honestly. “Yeah. It is. You?” Shit, why had I asked her that? Now she would think I was interested in anything she had to say.

  “Nope. I’m a second year. I plan to transfer out of here in the spring. Get my Bachelor’s. Do something with my life, ya know?”

  No I didn’t know. But I didn’t tell her that. No sense in unloading my lack of forward planning with a girl who obviously hadn’t washed her hair in a while.

  I didn’t respond and we fell into silence. Awkward for me, easy and comfortable for her.

  “I’m Kara Baker,” she said, offering her name in the same tone you offer a cigarette. Unbothered. Noncommittal. Whatever.

  I nodded and kept quiet. She laughed after a few minutes. “Am I supposed to guess yours? Because I’m really bad at that shit.” Her rich laugh had me smiling in spite of myself.

  Whether I wanted to or not, I kind of liked this chick.

  “Ellie McCallum,” I answered.

  “Ellie. That’s a cool name. Is it short for something? Eleanor maybe? Elvira? I know it’s Elora!”

  I smirked and shook my head.

  “Nope, just plain ole Ellie.”

  “Plain my ass. You’ve got the whole tortured lone wolf thing going on. There are probably all kinds of crazy shit going on with you.”

  “Not exactly,” I mumbled, the momentary softening I had felt already freezing over. I was officially done playing let’s get to know each other.

  “There’s a story there. I can feel it,” Kara teased but I wasn’t in the mood for teasing.

  “Nope, no story. Look I’ve gotta go,” I said abruptly. Without waiting for her response, I picked up the speed and hurried ahead. I heard her call something after me but this time I went with my first instinct and ignored her.

  I pushed through a door I had only been through one other time and silently moved down the almost empty corridor until I found myself standing outside the large windows looking into the art studio.

  And just like the last time, Flynn was sat at a table, his hands moving deftly through a mound of clay. His fingers molded and shaped without hesitation. I had always enjoyed watching him like this. Creating. He became someone else. Someone confident and almost ballsy. It was awesome.

  I stood in the hallway a little while longer, debating whether I should go inside. I didn’t know if I would be crossing into territory I needed to stay away from.

  But then I acted without thinking. I pressed down on the door handle and faltered only a second before taking the plunge. The door hit the wall as I pushed it open with more force than was necessary. The bang bounced around the quiet room.

  Flynn looked up, his hands still deep in the clay and he appeared startled to see me.

  “Ellie,” he said flatly.

  “Flynn,” I replied just as emotionless.

  I stared at him long after he had dropped his eyes and continued to work on his project. I was already second-guessing my brash impulsivity.

  “I’m glad you came,” Flynn’s words carried across the room and hit me directly in the chest.

  Not able to stand there any longer, I shuffled toward him, my flip-flops slapping against the tiled floor. My bag hung off my shoulder and my terrified reluctance echoed in every step.

  I still hadn’t said a word. I didn’t know what to say. So I watched him and it was easy to fall back into an old pattern. I sat down on the bench beside him, careful to allow a certain amount of space between us. I dropped my bag to the floor and leaned forward, my hair brushing the backs of my arms as they braced the wood in front of me.

  I followed the movements of his hands with eager eyes, wishing, not for the first time, that I contained an ounce of his talent. What I wouldn’t give to be able to express myself like that.

  The clock on the wall ticked its way through the hour. Each second punctuated by a growing sense of familiar ease. His art was therapy. Not just for him but for me as well.

  After almost thirty minutes, Flynn blew a lock of hair out of his eyes and rolled his shoulders. “My fingers are starting to ache,” he explained, pulling his hands out of the clay and flexing them in front of him.

  I leaned my head on my hand and stared down at the tiny structure he had sculpted. It looked like a gingerbread house with a latticed roof and decorative trim. It was tiny and perfect.

  “What is it?” I asked him, as he stretched out his back in exaggerated movements.

  “It’s a house,” Flynn replied blandly.

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I see that, but what’s it for?” I asked.

  “I’m making a model of the Candy Land board game village. This is going to be the Peanut Brittle House. I’ve already made the Gumdrop Mountains and the Lollipop Forest,” he explained, rubbing out the edges of the small roof with his finger.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because someone paid me to,” Flynn replied, already returning to his sculpture.

  “Who would want a replica of Candy Land?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  Flynn shrugged. “It’s for a shop window in New York for Christmas. It’s going to light up and have animatronic stuff around it.”

  I blinked in shock. “New York as in New
York City?” I gaped.

  “Yep,” he responded, seeming a lot less impressed than I was.

  “And is that what you do? You make sculptures and people buy them?” I don’t know why I was asking. I shouldn’t care what he did for a living but I could admit that I was sort of interested. Though I was working hard to convince myself that it didn’t mean anything.

  “Yeah. I make it and people seem to like it. They pay me a lot of money for it too,” he said with zero modesty and absolutely no tact.

  “So you’re loaded then,” I inquired, sounding more than a little bitter.

  “I make more money than a lot of people. Probably more than you,” he said and I tried not to be insulted. Who was I kidding? I was really insulted.

  I had the urge to smash his stupid little house with my fist. But I didn’t. I wouldn’t let him get to me. I wouldn’t be hurt by his thoughtless comments that I knew he didn’t really mean.

  It sucked how he was able to reaffirm every crappy thing I had thought about myself and my life with only a few words.

  Flynn didn’t realize the massive blunder he had made with his insensitive observation. I picked up the tiny detailing knife he had been using and carved a line through the smooshy clay.

  “Don’t touch that,” Flynn said, grabbing the implement from my fingers, though I was aware of how he made sure not to touch me. So many things had changed for him, but some were fundamentally the same.

  “Sorry. That was probably rude huh?” he asked and I blinked up at him in surprise. Was this Flynn being self-aware?

  “Yeah it was,” I agreed.

  “Sorry,” he said again and I found myself smiling again.

  “You said that already.”

  Flynn gave me a shy grin. “I always liked it when you smiled. You have really pretty teeth.”

  I snorted and it came out as a cough.

  “Uh thanks,” I stuttered, finding myself without a witty comeback. What could I say to something like that?

  “They’re really straight and white. They fit your mouth really well,” Flynn went on as he peered at my teeth. I wondered if I should open my mouth and let him have a look inside.

  “I don’t even know what to say to that, Flynn,” I told him honestly. Flynn laughed. It was stilted and strained but it was a laugh. And it made me smile with a rusty stretching of lips.

  “Do you still want to learn how to do this?” Flynn asked and I frowned. What was he talking about? When had I told him I wanted to sculpt?

  Flynn turned back to the table and started rolling the extra clay into a ball and then flattened it with his palm. He repeated the movement over and over again. He was methodical. Every pat, every roll, done in perfectly timed increments.

  “You told me that day in school when you were wearing the blue shirt with the torn collar that you wished you could draw. You said you didn’t think you were talented enough. I offered to teach you,” Flynn said, surprising me with another accurate recollection of a conversation that had occurred almost seven years ago.

  “You did offer. I never took you up on that,” I said, forcing my brain to think back to a time I had worked hard to forget. My mind stretched and strained as it sought to extract the event Flynn was talking about. I had worked hard to suppress so much of my past that trying to remember things I actually wanted to was difficult. One of the many therapists I had been forced to see over the years had told me that it was my defense mechanism. My mind shut down and shoved away the things that hurt.

  It had served me well up until now. Up until I wished to remember specific elements of my past with the same clarity that Flynn did.

  “You never asked me again. But if you want, I can show you now,” he said, his voice slow and unsure.

  I slid across the bench until I was beside him. I still didn’t touch him. I knew he didn’t like that. I didn’t want that either. But I was close enough to smell the soap he had used in the shower and the sharp acridity of sweat drying on his skin from sitting in the warm room.

  Flynn cleared his throat and looked at me from the side of his eyes, never meeting my gaze head on. It was amazing how his nuances and behaviors were familiar to me. Even after all this time and no matter how much my mind blocked out, there were still some things I couldn’t forget.

  One was the awkward twist of his hands when he was nervous. Another was the slight tick in his jaw when he was worked up. He was doing both right now.

  With what seemed to be a conscientious effort, he stopped rubbing his hands together and placed them back in the clay. He took the ball he had made and rolled it across the table until it sat in front of me.

  “Knead it for a few minutes. Make it pliable. It will be easier to mold,” he told me in small, complete sentences.

  I did as he said, enjoying the way it oozed between my fingers.

  “Break off a small piece and roll into a cone, like this.” Flynn’s fingers formed his own piece of clay expertly. I fumbled as I tried to do the same. I held up my finished product with a wry grin.

  “Like this?”

  Flynn’s lips twitched. His smiles were rare things. He gave them sparingly and I found that I resented him for withholding them from me.

  He plucked the clay out of my hand and pressed it together between his palms, flattening it before rolling it back into a ball. He put it down on the table.

  “Try it again,” he instructed. I fought the urge to become oppositional and angry. I had never taken direction well. I balked at authority and had made it a mission while growing up to fight against the system in the only way that I could, with complete and total defiance.

  But with Flynn, I knew he wasn’t trying to be bossy. It was just who he was. And I felt like I was trapped in an endless loop of déjà vu as I fought down my annoyance and attempted to accept this man for who he was.

  It was becoming frighteningly easy to slip back into our old roles. I was slowly stepping back into the shoes of an Ellie McCallum that I had thought long gone. An Ellie that had existed only with Flynn.

  Swallowing thickly. I rolled and spread the clay again. And once more Flynn flattened it and handed it back.

  “You’re not doing it right. It should look like this,” he held out his own flawless example and I thought childishly about squishing it, ruining it the way he had ruined mine.

  But his insistence on perfection resulted in me finally creating a cone he was happy with.

  “That looks good. Now pinch off another ball of clay and roll it between your fingers,” he said and I followed his directions. I watched and mimicked his movements, often not to his standards. And I would get frustrated when he’d insist I do it over again.

  Forty-five minutes later, I was grinning from ear to ear as I put the last touches on a tiny, detailed bouquet of clay flowers that I had made all by myself. With Flynn’s help of course.

  “Wow, that’s beautiful,” I breathed out; hardly able to believe I had made something so delicate. My clumsy, inept fingers seemed incapable of something like this. But here I was, holding something lovely. It filled me with pride.

  And it had been fun.

  I had enjoyed myself.

  Flynn nodded his head. “It is. You did a good job,” he said, his praise making me happier than I’d like to admit.

  “What should I do with it now?” I asked, not wanting to touch it, afraid I’d mess it up. My hands, so unaccustomed to making anything worthwhile, seemed poised ready to destroy it. It’s what I was good at.

  “It needs to go into the kiln,” Flynn said, indicating the clay oven on the other side of the room. I carefully picked up my tiny creation and followed him. He gently took the flowers from my hand and placed them on the rack inside.

  While he situated the pieces I looked at the pottery on the table that Flynn had just removed from the kiln. I picked up a tiny dog that was strangely familiar.

  “This is cute. Did you make it?” I said, rubbing the rough edges with my finger.

  “Yes,” F
lynn muttered, taking the dog from my hand and placing it back on the table.

  I stared closer at the creature he had made and struggled with another memory I had shut away. “You had a dog that looked like. What was his name?” I asked, hazy recollections of a hairy dog danced through my head.

  Flynn’s face paled and he dipped his chin until it hit his chest. His hands clasped together in front of him and he started to rub furiously.

  What had I said?

  “Marty,” Flynn said quietly.

  Marty?

  That’s right! He had a Border Collie named Marty!

  “You would throw balls around your yard and he’d pick them up and put them in a pile by your feet,” I said, smiling. Images of long fur and a wet tongue on my cheek made me feel warm inside.

  Another memory of sitting on Flynn’s living room couch and Marty laying his head in my lap flooded my mind.

  It was a memory of happy days and smiling faces. His mother’s banana bread and Flynn’s hesitant touches followed by breathless laughter and dog fur tickling my skin.

  “Did you bring him with you?” I asked, hoping Flynn would say yes.

  “Marty’s dead,” Flynn barked out with obvious anger. He gripped the clay dog in his hands and then in a flurry of violence, he threw it against the wall. It exploded in a rain of rubble to the floor.

  The room was deathly quiet after Flynn’s outburst.

  I waited a few beats, unable to move.

  “Flynn…” I began but he shook his head.

  “Shut up! Don’t say anything. Just leave me alone for a minute!” He retreated to the other side of the room and I was left standing there, not knowing what in the hell I said to send him spiraling like that.

  I listened to the ticking clock and wondered whether I should leave. It seemed our nice afternoon was at an end.

  But it felt oddly wrong to leave him while he was so upset. So I sat down and fiddled with the small sculptures.

  The minutes ticked by and I chanced a look at Flynn. He seemed composed now if not a bit embarrassed. His face was flushed red and he was chewing on his bottom lip.

  “It was the fire. The fire killed him. He never got out,” he called out, startling me.