【by Emeline Avignon】

On my left index finger the silver band was still there, a class ring. My thumb nestled up to feel its edges, to feel the bump it added to my knuckle.

The river, its thin ripples, wrinkles in the corners of the eyes of a sparkling smile. The midsummer expanse of July was in the blue of the sky and the cotton-ball clouds. My bare feet waited on the edge of sandy granite, high above the river. Sophia stood beside me, hands on her yellow ruched bikini bottom hips. R sat behind me, his elbows folding around his knees, next to an empty pothole, a large ashtray for cigarette butts and beer-bottle screw-top lids. My heart fluttered twice, and then I jumped in. The warm water, a thousand limbs gently wrapping around my arms and legs. I basked in the thick, juicy water melting onto my skin, surrendering to the current pulling me downstream. I dove my hands in one at a time, taking turns, swinging them to the shore. Climbing back up the erosion, the bumps and points of the granite protruded into the still thin soles of my young, callusing summer feet.

At the top of the cliff, I took a deep breath, and devastation clenched on the tip of my tongue as the realization hit: the ring was gone. It had slipped into the depths of the bandit green water.

I made this ring, wrapped the metal to hug my finger, and hammered words on its inside and outside. I thought about the two words to imprint onto it for weeks, and spent delicate hours bending it to fit. Now, it was gone. I had looked forward to keeping this little thing forever. I clung on to a thick branch of frustration, its twigs jabbing into my chest. I looked up at the blue sky. The humbling river left invisible ink in the soft white skin of the ring’s ghost.

Sophia’s blue Subaru continued driving down the pine tree fenced interstate, the green shuttering sunlight fading to white flashes as we entered the fields of strip malls. In the passenger seat, my window was open. The wind beat in heavy breaths against my face in eighth notes. R sat in the backseat, his legs sprawling the rear of the console, sprawling friend and crush.

“Should we stop and pick strawberries?” suggested Sophia, aimlessly and with conviction.

The ring was haunting me. I was trying to memorialize the coming-of-age romantics it represented.

My mom had called me to get back to the hospice, subtle urgency masked with a smile in her voice. She asked me to pick up take out while I was on my way. When we pulled into the parking lot of a Mexican restaurant, I went alone into the restaurant. There was a pit of dread in my stomach I was trying to conceal. My bare feet on the hot asphalt, I crossed the white and
yellow gridding of the parking lot onto the turquoise-tiled floor. I reached for the crinkling brown paper, thin but with a sturdy stand in its rectangular shape. I think the host had glasses. I could only pay attention to the brightness of the sun through the window, with the whole restaurant reflected across the tiled floor. The smell of fish tacos and chipotle mayo stained the folded top of the brown bag pinched between my fingers as I grabbed it. The shadow of the ring on my finger softened.

The blue Subaru turned into the cul-de-sac of the ivory one floor building which my family had been frequenting for a warped time now. My arms wrapped around the shoulders of Sophia and R, the cushion of their sun kissed muscles against my cheek and in my palms. My mom stretched her arms thanking my friends for bringing me. I saw in her eyes comfort and surrender—this was
the last time.

Two days earlier I sat in her room, a movie set bedroom in a wood floor cemetery. My mom and uncle were busy with the doctor, so I sat beside her bed to keep her company.

“Let’s pretend we are at the Red Sox,” she said, her eyes widening, lips pressed together in anticipation and mischief. “And—can you sneak me a milkshake? Everything’s better with a milkshake—make it mocha.”

“Doctor’s order: only clear liquids,” I replied, torn between memories of thick, cold coffee cream in between my grandmother and my lips, replacing our dinner.

“Yes, but you can keep me a milkshake, just between you and me.”

Those were the last words we shared.

Her eyes darted around the foreign, blank room of hospice, then fell. Her breath hummed into an ebb and flow, waves on a sleepy, uncertain shore.

Now, two days later, her breath was her only voice. So I told her the score of the Red Sox game. The brown paper bag, still full of tacos, was abandoned in the corner. The window allowed the 4 p.m. light on her face. I held her purple and blue veiny, freckled hands, her twisted nails painted mauve. My uncle and mom on the other side of the bed, I whispered to her hands that we were all there, that she could let go. Her breath fluttered twice then came to a crescendo.

And when I was ready again, I bought myself a mocha milkshake.