Waving Not Drowning

I wanna rock with you, alllll niiiiiiight....dance you into the day- sunliiiiight. Wanna rock with you, allllll niiiight, dance the night awaaaaaaaaaay. Hank's eyes are closed, his head dwarfed by massive earmuff style headphones, cocooned inside the mellifluous sweet strains of early Michael Jackson. He does an awkward sort of jive, shrugging his shoulders towards his ears, up and down in time to the music. His face is split ear to ear with a lopsided, full toothed grin, brow furrowed as he reaches for the high notes. Occasionally he punches the air with an extended index finger as if he were dotting the i's in night and sunlight. Hank listens to this record over and over. He has it on his ipod too, but there's nothing like the warmth generated by vinyl. He's an analogue man. The record sleeve is ragged and dog   eared, torn near the center no matter how careful he is with it. The album cover is smudged with fingerprints- Hank gave up trying to keep his lp's in pri...

I swear, if you do that, that's it, I'm walking away. It's over. We're done. You hear me? I said that's it, no more. Ever. We're through. Shaina waited. A long pause, at least five minutes, maybe more. To Shaina it felt like an eternity, the end of time. Lloyd stood motionless, his feet slightly toed in, kicking at an overturned bottle cap sticking out of the wet turf. He jammed his fists into his pockets, feeling the balled up bits of lint and dryer-worn Kleenex permanently embedded in the seams. Sweat was forming behind his ears- it was a weird thing that happened when he got anxious or upset. His palms stayed dry, no beading on his forehead or upper lip- just behind his ears. Lloyd could feel the trickling starting to run down the sides of his neck, staining his collar a darker shade of orange as his t shirt got wet. Dating was hard. For twelve year old boys and thirteen year old high strung, demanding, overly emotional girls, it was outrageous. All Lloyd wan...