Abruptly

Walking on the beach at night, the lights of ships on the water, the hissing of the surf. I had done this with my father and my mother on vacations since childhood, but now, this. There was a scary strangeness to it, a promise of unknown events and emotions. It was easy to be awkward with a girl in the half-light, half-hidden, the rolling waves obscuring tremble that now resided  in my voice.  "Abby," I said, pointing to the rising sliver of a moon.

We walked in silence away from the hotel for awhile, then found a place to sit and listen and think. I asked her what she would do now that we had graduated. She said that she had already moved out of her house and had gotten an apartment with a friend in a small town thirty miles north. She was going to work and sort things out. She hadn't gotten along with her step-father, she said. I told her about my father's accident and how I'd been living alone the last few months. I didn't tell her I didn't know what I would do now, that I had not thought about it at all. And it was with a sudden shock that I realized I hadn't any plan for the future. Others had talked about going away to college or about starting work in the summer, and I had listened to them but had never thought. Now, on the beach with a girl who was already a woman, I was a befuddled boy full of nothing but fanciful dreams and impossible fantasies. "I'm going to become a diving instructor," I told her.

We talked for a long time until the dampness became uncomfortable, and so we rose and made our way back to the hotel. It was late, but it didn't seem that anyone was going to bed.  All about, kids were laughing and shouting, drinking and smoking pot.  I saw a few of the new hippies with whom I hung out a bit at school.  They had just dropped acid, they said with a dubious excitement.  John had taken it before and had brought it for the group, but there seemed a liquid fear in the dancing eyes of the others.  They would be up all night, peaking with the sunrise.  That is how they would greet the new day, their first out of high school, mystic seekers of a vision, of guidance for their new life.  John reached into his pocket then held out his hand to me.  

"No, thanks," I told him.  "You guys have fun."  

I looked at Abby who said she was tired.  I told her I'd walk her to her room.  

"Where are you staying," she asked me.

"I don't know. I was going to stay with Allen, but everybody is drunk now and throwing up. I may drive home."

"You can stay in my room," she said.   I have two beds. You can sleep in there."

My stomach clinched with fear and doubt. I had never stayed overnight with a girl before, let alone one I barely knew. I was unsure of everything. Falling, falling, a plunge with no end, gripped with involuntary spasms I hoped she would not see.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Of course."