Three hours and twenty-four minutes, with a seventeen-minute break at a McDonald’s for lunch. I have to keep reminding myself that the drive never feels as long as it looks on the map, as I buckle my seatbelt. I flinch as the seatbelt hook touched my leg, and basically scolds my skin off. What a classic Florida move. I push my hair behind my ears. It takes everything in me not to scream at Uncle Daniel to turn the car on to get the air conditioner circulating, so instead, I lean forward and turn the key in the ignition. I sit back in the backseat, while my mom and Nanny are basically being dragged out of the house by Uncle Daniel, all the while he murmurs curse words about how we’ll all die before we even make it to the beach.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” my mom mumbled, climbing into the backseat next to me, and giving me a playful smile as she shrugs and buckles her seatbelt. I pull at the frayed pieces of string on my distressed shorts, wondering how long it would take Nanny to make a comment about “young people’s clothes”, which would prompt Uncle Daniel to make a comment about how if I really wanted all of my clothes to have holes in them, he could help me out.

“Are the knuckleheads behind us?” Uncle Daniel asked a few minutes later, after we left Nanny’s neighborhood and merged onto the highway. We were headed west for an entire summer spent at Uncle Daniel’s beach house. I turn around in my seat and see my cousin Noah and his best friend Ethan driving behind us in Ethan’s car.

“They are.”

 “I can’t believe soon enough you guys will be too cool for this trip,” mom said, letting an ounce of nostalgia sneak out.

“Too cool for a free vacation at a beach house? I don’t think so,” Uncle Daniel said through his booming laughter.

I smile.

“So much has changed since the first year we started going,” Nanny said quietly from the front seat, putting her book down in her lap and lightly saying she was starting to feel a bit motion sick.

“We’ve been on the road for ten minutes, mom!” Uncle Daniel said, leaning over to open the glove compartment, and pointing at a stash of anti-nausea medicine he kept on hand. She smiled.

“This summer will be different,” Uncle Daniel started. Way to state the obvious.

Of course it would be different. All of the years before, Bailey, Allie, and I would drive over with mom, while Ethan, Ryder, and Noah would drive over with Uncle Daniel. As of two years ago, though, when Ethan got his driver’s license, then I would be sitting in the backseat of his car squeezed next to Bailey and Allie, with Ryder playing DJ, and Noah complaining to all of us from the backseat of Uncle Daniel’s SUV via group text about how it wasn’t fair that he didn’t get to ride with us.

Now, instead of listening to Ethan and Ryder rap along to what they referred to as “old school rap”, I was listening to Uncle Daniel and Nanny sing along to “Africa” by Toto. Instead of taking pictures with Bailey and Allie in the backseat, I looked over and saw my mom asleep, mouth open and everything. So yeah, it was definitely going to be different.

I raised my eyebrows and nodded, realizing that Uncle Daniel had asked me a question that I had completely missed. I was planning on agreeing with what anyone said this trip, in hopes that it would lead them all to leave the questions about Bailey alone.

Oh, Bailey.

I had met Bailey in second grade, my first day at my new elementary school. Though I had grown up in Cocoa Beach, when mom and I moved the summer before second grade and I was forced to move to a new school due to new district zoning laws. I remember walking into the classroom, still too young to be too scared about not knowing anyone, and finding my name at a desk next to Bailey’s. I stood next to the desk and stared down at the girl sitting next to me. She had one single braid, a really round face, and was wearing a blue shirt with a British flag on it and a plaid skirt. She turned and looked at me, and smiled at my t-shirt.

“I’ve never been to Disney World,” she said, an obvious comment on the Minnie Mouse I had on my white short-sleeved shirt.

“Never??? But we live like five minutes away from there!” I had said, which we would laugh about later when we realized how little of a concept seven year olds had with time.

“Not enough rollercoasters. I’m Bailey.”

And that was the start of it all.

***

            Me, 10:05 AM: I can’t believe you aren’t here.

            Me, 10:07 AM: Update: mom keeps singing that Maroon 5 song you hate so much. Be glad you aren’t here.

            Me, 10:09 AM: You know the one.

            Me, 10:11 AM: I wish you were here Bailey.

            The Highview looks the same. The same beautifully landscaped yard, lined with seashells plucked straight from the beach across the street. The same gravel walkway, leading to two large staircases. At the end of each staircase was a wooden deck that was decorated with lounge chairs and small, orange round tables. The house was a two-story house, separated into two different apartments. The blue doors into each separate apartment living space had the lockboxes on, with the same code to open it, (B-E-A-C-H). Just looking up at the house, I could close my eyes and know that inside the tropical decorations and wicker furniture would be laid out, and my favorite part of the house, an orange spiral staircase that led to a deck that was on the top story of the house, would be waiting us that night at sunset. I look up at the staircase, and remember the first time the entire family had squeezed onto the deck that first night to watch the sunset over the ocean. Of course, in my memory, I’m cautiously asking if there was a weight limit, and Bailey pushed me onto the deck and told me to live a little. We were eleven.

I walk to the back of Uncle Daniel’s SUV, and pull some of the bags out until I get to my suitcase. I left the others on the ground, the back of the trunk open to signal to everyone else that they could come get their bags, and even though it was only Hour Four of vacation, I had to remind myself that not everyone wanted to get settled right away and hang up their wardrobe. This summer was different than the ones before. We’re here for the entire summer, they should take a little more urgency in unpacking.  I walked along the stone walkway, lined with a wooden picket fence and shrubbery, thankful that the décor of The Highview never left any room for imagination as to where we were. Everything about it screamed “BEACH HOUSE!!!!”, especially the sign that hung on the small gate to enter the common space that read “Beach House”, decorated with small flip flops and seashells. The climb up the single flight of stairs, while pulling my suitcase, was exhausting to my legs after having been squished in the back seat the entire drive over. I fumbled with the lock box, thankful that I still remembered the code, and it popped open, dropping out two sets of single keys. I unlock the door and stand in the still air of the room, taking it all in. The last time I had been here, one year ago, almost to the day, Bailey had been standing behind me urging me to hurry up, because she really had to pee, and Allie had been laughing as I deliberately took my time. Now, I was standing alone, waiting for the sight of the blue cushioned couch, and the wicker tables covered in a sheet of glass so food and liquid wouldn’t damage them. We learned a few years ago that the glass was easily broken, especially during a heated game of Monopoly, when Noah slammed the table and shattered the glass. The sliding glass door that led you to a balcony, furnished in Adirondack chairs that faced towards to the water, had its curtains closed. I walk over and tug at the cord, opening them up and letting the natural light in. Facing out, you can’t see the ocean, just the houses in front of it that had a true ocean view, but if you looked close enough, you could catch a glimpse of sand through the side yards of the other houses. Uncle Daniel told us that it was marketed as a ‘panoramic view’. You didn’t have to listen closely to hear the sound of a crashing wave, though. That was the natural sound soother that brought me back to the truth of The Highview: you could escape reality here.

“It’s time,” I said to myself, hearing my voice echo in the emptiness of the apartment, and automatically felt a pang of sadness hit as I turned the corner into the hallways and into one of the bedrooms.  The Highview was two stories, and built so that each story served as its own unit. We always took the unit on the very top, and every year, Bailey, Allie, and I squeezed into this room, with the bunk bed and twin sized bed, and every year we fought over who would get to sleep on the twin sized bed. I always pulled the “What if the bunk bed falls and crashes down and kills me in my sleep??” card, fueled by my anxiety. Allie always said, “Oh, so you’d rather it kill me?”, and I always said, “Yes.” So many summer nights had been spent in this room, listening to Noah and Ethan across the hall playing video games or trying to sneak some of Uncle Daniel’s beer. Mom, Nanny, and Uncle Daniel all shared the unit below us, occasionally reminding us with a broomstick smack to their ceiling that they were there and that we were being too loud. The rooms never mattered though. Yes, the house is gorgeous- but The Highview was never about the lack of walk-in closets or the flat mattresses that sat on top of the slats in the bunk beds. The Highview was about the fact that in two minutes we could be at the beach. The Highview was about the fact that the world outside kept going, but we were trapped in our own world that smelled like coconut sunscreen and felt like cold water splashing on a sunburnt face.

            In the previous summers, we had only ever spent just ten days here, but because Uncle Daniel was starting to feel a little nostalgic about his only son, Noah, getting older and potentially moving away for college, he let us all know that he wouldn’t rent out the house at all that summer.  In exchange for the entire summer, he would be making some renovations on the house- damages from a bad storm the year before, bringing us all back to the memory of Florida in 2004 when three hurricanes in a row tore through the East Coast, the eye of the storm always landing on our hometown- and we would all be helping.

            Uncle Daniel bought The Highview as an investment four years ago, after moving down to Florida from Maine with Noah after he got a divorce. His wife had wanted a divorce, saying that while she loved Daniel and Noah, she felt left out by their love of fishing, boating, and outdoor adventures. She told Noah to choose who he wanted to live with, and to my excitement, Uncle Daniel called my mom and asked if they could crash with us for a few weeks until he found them an apartment. They stayed with us for exactly two weeks until they moved into a two-bedroom apartment on the beach. Uncle Daniel bought The Highview, which was three hours west from where we all lived, from an old friend six months later, and began renting it out to vacationers.

            We’d spent at least one week every summer for the last four years there, our friends always being invited, and our small family grew by four more kids and lost the extra Tupperware full of leftovers. When Daniel told us the plans for this summer, I couldn’t help but feel a little cheated by it all. Noah would bring Ethan, sure, but here I stood in the middle of the living room with just my suitcase. I was painfully aware of how alone I was, but a summer painting shutters sounded better than my alternative plans: desperately wait for Bailey to come home.

            I walked out of the room, realizing I had left my backpack in the car, and jogged down the stairs to grab it. I stood in the driveway, looking up at the top deck of the house. It was funny how it seemed so close from the ground, but once you went up the spiral staircase and sat on one of those orange Adirondack chairs, you felt like you were untouchable. I had shared these thoughts with Bailey and Allie one year, until Bailey pointed out that Icarus once thought he was untouchable, and look what happened to him.

            With a second glance, I could see the slight traces of damages from the storm earlier in the year. One shutter was worn down by the weather, the paint having faded. A shingle here or there had taken a nose dive. But besides that, the big damages had already been taken care of at the beginning of spring- drainage pipes that had fallen off the house, major yard work, and a complete remodel of the backyard barbecue pit. After the storm, Uncle Daniel came over and did the big things, and said we’d take care of the rest in the summer. At this point, he had already decided not to rent it out for the summer. I vividly remember the storm, because it was months before hurricane season was supposed to start, yet it rained non-stop for four days, causing some of the same damages as a hurricane would.

            I walked slowly back into the room that I had claimed years ago. The same bunk bed pushed against the wall. The small twin bed jetting out from the opposite wall. A flat screen television sitting on top of a dresser. A bedside table with a lamp that never had a working lightbulb in it. The two small windows, that, if opened, you could hear and smell the ocean. It was like a bedroom away from home to me, and even though it didn’t have the personal touches of a navy-blue throw pillow or a cork board calendar framed with pictures, it brought the same comfort and familiarity as my bedroom at home did.

            “Knock, knock.”

            I turned around to see Noah and Ethan standing in the doorway with their duffle bags swung over their shoulders.

            “Dad is putting us all in one room because he said Nanny snores too loud and your mom keeps complaining about having to share a room with her, so your mom is going to be across the hall from us,” Noah said, swinging his duffle bag onto the twin bed.

            “Plus, there’s room now since…”

            He let his sentence end.

            “Since I have no friends?” I said.

            “Oh, come on, we’re your friends,” Ethan said, taking off his baseball cap and throwing it to the top bunk.

            “Not the same,” I said.

            “Want to paint my nails and talk about how your hair is so soft from the ocean water?” Ethan said, laughing at his own joke.

            I sighed heavily, and just stared at Noah, hoping that he’d make Ethan stop.

            “We’ll have fun, Morg, don’t worry,” he said.

            Five years ago, when Noah and Uncle Daniel moved to Florida, Bailey had been Noah’s first friend, which had always made me hope that Noah would be on my side in hoping that Bailey would come back. Instead, he just fell deeper in with Ethan, and barely muttered Bailey’s name. The way he stared at the vacant bunk bed only proved my personal theory that Noah just didn’t know how to handle it. I picked up my phone to distract me, and opened my text message thread with Bailey.

            Me, 1:07 PM: UGH Noah and Ethan are sharing the room with me.

            Me, 1:09 PM: If you would have just come, this wouldn’t have been a problem.

            “Morgan? Did you hear me?” Noah asked, and I looked up from my phone.

            “Sure. It will be fun. You know I get this bed, though,” I said, dropping my bag onto the twin sized bed, and waiting for him to move his bag to the bottom bunk.

            “Is that Allie?” Noah asked, nodding his head towards my phone as I slipped it into my back pocket.

            “No,” I say.

            “Have you heard from Allie?” Noah asked, sitting on the bottom bunk as Ethan unzips his suitcase and pulls out neatly folded shirts.

            “Did your mom pack your bag again?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

            “Ha. Ha. Ha,” Ethan said, before giving me a nod and a shrug.

            “To answer your question, no I haven’t heard from Allie. And I haven’t heard from Bailey either,” I said.

            “Oh,” Ethan said.

            “They got in a stupid fight like six months ago, and then Bailey moved and Allie basically dropped all forms of communication,” I said.

            “I miss you, Morgan. I feel like I haven’t seen you since last summer,” Noah said quickly. I shrug.

            “It’s been an interesting few months,” Ethan added, and they both stare at me.

            “What?” I asked.

            “Nothing, you just break up with Ryder out of nowhere, basically drop out of school…There was a lot going on,” Noah said.

            “Yeah, well,” I said.

            I didn’t want to admit that I’d been texting Bailey every day in since I last saw her in February. I didn’t want to tell them that my best friend left without a trace- out of anger, or embarrassment.

            “I’m sure you’ll hear from them,” Noah offered up, like he was reading my mind.

            I shrugged, “Maybe.”

Hopefully.

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