Page 95 - In Five Years

Chapter Fifteen

When Bella and I were in high school, we used to play a game we called Stop.
We’d see how far we could get in describing the grossest, nastiest thing before
the other would be so revolted they’d have to yell out stop. It started with an

unfortunate piece of forgotten freezer meat and carried on from there. There
were ant hills, poison ivy welts, the intestines of a cow, and the
microenvironment at the bottom of the community swimming pool.

This game comes to mind the next morning when I come upon a dead seagull
on my run. Its head is bent at an impossible angle and its wings are shredded, the
meaty portion, or what’s left of it, being feasted on by flies. A piece of its red

spine sits disconnected from its body.
I remember reading once that when a seagull dies it falls out of sky on the
spot. You could be just sitting on the beach, enjoying an orange ice pop, and

wham, seagull to the head.
The fog is thick—a hazy mist that hangs over sand like a blanket. If I could

see for a mile, which I can’t, I might spot a fellow morning jogger, out training
for the fall marathon. But as far as my eye can see, it’s just me here now.
I bend down closer to the seagull. I don’t think it has been dead a long time.
but here, out in nature, things evolve quickly.

I snap a picture to show Bella.
No one was awake when I got up. David was snoring next to me, and the

upstairs was still, but then it was barely six. Sometimes Ariel gets up to do work.
I tried last summer to get her to jog with me, but there were so many excuses and
it took so long that this year I vowed to invite no one.
I’ve never been a late sleeper, but these days anything past seven feels like

noon. I need the morning. There’s something about being the first one awake