It's 72 degrees outside, a few hours after twilight. You'd like to hear the waves crashing on the shore of Illinois, but you can't. Some fifty yards away and you can barely discern any noise at all besides the buzz of wasteful incandescent light bulbs floating from metal poles somewhere above your head and the equally annoying but more natural buzz of insects. You could name them all, if you had to. You remember, primordially, that one day in girl scouts years back when you had been an entomologist for a day. Wait a few seconds and you might remember.
Any minute now, a car will drive along the road a few blocks behind you. It will be traveling at one of two set speeds: teenage crazed, full of raging adrenaline fast or moving through the motions sleepily slow. Indeed, you don't really know why you're still awake, looking into lake Michigan. It's past two. You should go but you can't.
Is it a severe boredom? Or is there a reason behind this impotent madness? You walk back through the thoughts that led you to get into your own car and drive away from home to here--over a highway, past an emptied mall, cross blocks and blocks of suburban sameness, then your mind wandered as you listened to van hunt on the radio, and then you were here.
It must've been boredom. Nothing at home that hasn't been done thousands of times before. Not that being around this body of water early in the morning is something you haven't done frequently in the past. But alone? That's new. Usually there's people around who've coaxed you to stay awake... just... a... little... longer, and decided the lake was the only excitement in the duldrums of those in-between years.
Why? Couldn't tell you. Some young adults turn to alcohol. Some throw crazy parties in the city. Some play video games until they present carpal tunnel. We couldn't do any of those things with much success. The lake, however, represented just enough illegalness, excitement, and physical activity to be permissible. We should have been cool kids. Maybe in a different time.
Why was I now here alone? I couldn't tell you. Did I miss it? Did I miss those years? No. Never. They were awful. Like walking around in a darkened room trying to find a red marker I missed the mark, so many times. What did I want to achieve as a teenager? Those things I never got around to. I turned 20. It was over. And I was just the same.
It was a mistake to come back. To travel out of the city, back to the 847. I had a life where the roads were all beat up. I had a job. I saved lives. Now I had mysteriously travelled back to the place where I had lost mine. Just as quiet as it ever was. Frustratingly so.
The headlights of a cop car fall upon me. My heart beat races for five seconds before I catch up to it and hold it down. I'm an adult now. I toss my keys up into the air, catch them with one hand, then walk over to my car. No parking after midnight? Alright. I'll go.
There's nothing here anyway. People pay millions of dollars to live here. But there's nothing here. Not anymore.
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