by Jen Carter
I could call Hunter and tell him I couldn’t make it. Blame it on some drama with my roommate. There’s always some drama with Anna, and he wouldn’t know the difference.
She dropped her head to the steering wheel and groaned. The waves roared around her, and a salty breeze danced across the nape of her neck. Why did she stop at the beach? That ugly beach. No real parking, gravelly sand, seagulls with attitudes, icy water. No one ever went there to sunbathe. It was nothing but a mile-long swath of shoreline, hugged by jutting rocks on either side. In high school, she had worked it into her morning run route, but that was all it was really good for. Running.
This is silly. Sitting here at this crummy beach—this is silly.
Livy lifted her head from the steering wheel and pushed wisps of brown hair back toward her ponytail. She weighed her options one more time: drive the final two miles home or drive the two hundred miles back to Los Angeles. Her hometown was so close, but after being away for so long, it actually seemed so much farther away.
Let’s just get this over with.
She sighed. Then she grabbed her cell phone from the passenger’s seat and scrolled through her recent calls.
“Hey Mom,” she said when her mother’s voicemail prompted her to leave a message. “Surprise! I’m heading home right now. I’m almost there, in fact. My crazy roommate is driving me nuts, and I need a quiet place to study. You’re probably still at the shop, but I just wanted to tell you that I’ll see you soon. Love ya.”
Knowing there wasn’t a single lie in that message—yet there were gaping holes in the truth—she started her car and backed off the gravelly sand until she could point it toward Stratford.
***
Just minutes after leaving the beach, a thick, stone archway inspired by the gates of Medieval and Renaissance London came into view. From it hung a weathered, wooden sign.
Welcome to Stratford
Home of California’s biggest Shakespeare festival!
“Here we go again,” she breathed.
Slowing, she drove under the archway and followed High Street toward what she once called Shakespeare on steroids. On her left was the park, an open expanse of green with a smattering of benches and trees. On her right were buildings—traditionally Elizabethan in design with white exteriors punctuated by black vertical and diagonal timbers. The further she drove, the taller, thinner, and pointier the buildings seemed to get. Tourists lined the sidewalks, loaded with shopping bags from Millie Anderson’s gift shop, desserts from Hunter’s ice cream shop, and silly-looking hats from Mrs. Feldman’s daily seminars on Elizabethan dress. Stratford didn’t have a single stoplight, but most intersections were equipped with stop signs to slow the pace of cars—and to keep those cars from slamming into overzealous tourists running across the street. Livy obeyed each stop sign, lest she find herself cited with a traffic violation from Deputy Sheriff Lawson, who also doubled as her Uncle Joe.
Nearing the town’s center, she spotted a cluster of townspeople in front of Stratford’s playhouse, the Globe Theater. They were building something—a float, probably, for the Summer Solstice Festival that was set to take place in three weeks. Deep in concentration, no one in the group noticed her driving by.
“Oh boy,” she mumbled, gawking at an elephant-sized papier-mâché donkey head sitting next to the group.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream was Stratford’s signature Shakespeare play. While the town invited acting troupes from neighboring cities to perform Shakespeare’s tragedies and history plays, the people of Stratford always put on a summertime performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Certainly the giant donkey head represented Midsummer’s character Bottom, a man with ass-like qualities who transforms into an ass with person-like qualities.
Bottom gets bigger and better every year, she thought.
She smiled.
Jokes about rear ends were still funny—even if those jokes were four hundred years old.
Just as the buildings seemed to grow as she neared the town center, they seemed to shrink once she passed it. Her foot pressed harder against the gas pedal as she approached the residential area and the crowds of tourists thinned out. Involuntarily, she exhaled, relieved to have made it through town without being flagged down by townspeople. Upon pulling into the driveway of her parents’ home, however, she took a deep breath and felt the relief dissolve.
Home.
Her cell phone buzzed as a new message from her roommate flash across its screen. She picked up the phone and read the text.
Where are you? I NEED to talk to you! David hasn’t called me back, and I don’t know what to do. What should I do??? It’s been a whole day. AHHH! He doesn’t like me anymore!!
Livy bit her lip and shook her head, just barely. She imagined Anna sprawled across the threadbare couch in their Los Angeles apartment, tears streaming down her face as she wallowed in the self-pity of unrequited love. And then she smiled—just barely. If Anna had texted her ten minutes earlier with boy-drama, she might have used it as an excuse to run away from Stratford. She might have backed her car off the beach’s gravelly sand and pointed it toward Southern California rather than her hometown.
“Too late for that,” she said under her breath.
She dashed off a reply to Anna.
I had to go home unexpectedly. Did you get the note I left you on the kitchen table? Call David. If you want to talk to him, just call him. It’s not a big deal. Let’s talk tomorrow.
Then she reached into the backseat and grabbed her backpack. From it she pulled a small, purple journal she had packed specially for the trip. She stepped out of the car and stared down the line of homes with faux thatched roofs and front windows glittering with the fairies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Home.
She looked at the purple journal in her hand and resisted the itch to open it. Not once during the last two years had she flipped through its pages, but now it seemed like the only thing to do. And still, she refrained from cracking it open.
Her eyes drifted back to the row of Elizabethan-style cottages.
“It’s going to be okay,” she muttered.
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About the Author
Jen is a teacher and writer who loves writing for both children and adults, including the Sarafina Series for school-aged children and the new Otto Viti Mystery Series for adults. She lives with her beautiful family in the San Diego area. In her free time, she enjoys running, practicing yoga, and reading.
www.jencarterwrites.com