Written by Kiley
The coast is exactly how he remembers it. It’s nostalgic, to Roy, to feel the freezing sea breeze on his cheeks, soak in the smell of rotting fish and behemoth guts. Roy knows better than anyone else how terrible nostalgia feels.
He’s sitting on the edge of the dock and watching the tide draw in and out. The smell of sulfur keeps him from falling asleep and falling in (as that would be the only reason why they'd find Roy’s body washed up on the shore, of course). Roy can’t quite remember how he got there. He can, actually, Roy merely doesn’t want to think about it--think about the terrible boredom of a life where he no longer has a reason to pretend to be dead. It is incredibly frightful, to realize after everything, that you have been alive this whole time, and are not going to die anytime soon.
“Hey.”
Roy should face her. Roy should turn around--no, he should stand first, if he just turns around he’ll send himself catapulting over the edge--Roy should swing his legs back over the dock, stand up, then turn to face her and--
Myrtle takes her place at her brother’s side, shuffling to the end of the wood. Roy hums, and looks back out into the water.
“Do you remember when Dad used to take us here?” Myrtle says, finally, waiting in uncomfortable silence for the furthest wave to reach the shore. As if that could possibly be a fair marker to start this conversation.
Roy waits for the furthest wave after the furthest wave this time to reply. He wonders how his mother and father are doing. He went over for dinner a few months ago. Was forced to, really, his mother’s frantic notes wedging shame too deep into his heart to ignore any longer. (Roy thought Daniel and Lavender had drained all the shame out of him. Mother knows him best, Roy supposes). He had left dinner before dessert to smoke a cigarette and ended up hailing a bus home. It was a six hour bus ride that cost him half his rent. When Roy got home at one in the morning he locked the door to his bedroom and cried.
“Yeah,” Roy decides to say. That is enough.
Myrtle doesn’t reply after that, and it isn’t until the seventh largest wave that Roy realizes that she’s waiting for him to speak. That she isn’t going to needle him.
“I’ve been good.”
Myrtle laughs. Roy slouches.
“I don’t think I can help you anymore,” she adds, finally, as the two watch a crab attempt to scale the pier. Roy and Myrtle used to throw bits of fish goo into the bay, and watch the crabs fight over it in the shallows.
Roy knows she can’t help him, and the thought makes him very sad. He has not been able to look his sister in the eyes for a long time. Roy grips the wood at the pier’s edge, waiting for it to snap into splinters as the siblings sit in silence. And the wood does not. The wood merely leaves rotten indents into his palms.
“I’m sorry,” Roy says, and Myrtle gets up and leaves.