The lake is a long way from here. And yet, already familiar landmarks stir at buried memories. The curves of roads, the dilapidated buildings with caved-in roofs, the fallen signs. Homecoming is a strange thing; that sense of returning to a place you once knew so well, to find that even though it or you or both have changed in subtle ways it still tugs at your heart. It’s stranger still when the memories aren’t yours.

There aren’t any working boats left, but I know how to make a canoe. It’s slow, but I have all the time in the world. From my spot on the shore, I can see the island as I work. My destination. It’s been a long time since I came here. I shake my head. The memories of this place are unusually tenacious. Perhaps coming here is a mistake – I’m mostly waterproof, but if my canoe fails and I fall in the lake I’ll sink like a rock. And yet, I want to keep going. I want to return to this place I’ve never been, this place I have such fond memories of.

Long summer days that slipped unnoticed into warm nights where we counted the stars and invented our own constellations. A semi-truck, a spoon that wasn’t the big dipper, and a five-pointed star.

One evening, Alex and I decided to pour maple syrup over microwave popcorn, thinking it would taste like caramel popcorn. It didn’t. It was a terrible, sticky disappointment, a crime against popcorn, and we ate every piece, sitting upside down on the couch watching a B-movie we found while channel-surfing on the ancient TV. Two days later I poured orange juice into my cereal on a dare.

We were content to while away our days dangling our bare feet in the lake until Grace appeared, a high-speed torpedo of rock music and spraying water riding an old motor boat too small to possibly contain her, shouting to us about wasted days and waiting adventures.

We caught the biggest fish any of us had ever seen, but at the last moment Grace tripped and fell into me and it dropped back into the lake, never to be seen again. “Be free!” she shouted after it. We never did know if it was an accident or not, but for years after we caught glimpses of it, or told each other we did.

The nose of the canoe bumps against the shore of the island, and I jump out and pull it onto land. The trees can’t quite hide the house. It still stands proudly here, in spite of cracked windows and a hole in the roof.

As I stand in the empty doorway, I don’t want to remember the fight that ended those perfect days. The words that were flung like stones, hard enough to draw blood. The wounds aren’t mine, but I can still feel the sting of them. And the dull ache of everything that was lost, for something so petty.

I’d always meant to go back. The three of us had made a pact there, in the part of the lake that was always still as glass no matter how choppy the rest was. You don’t abandon things like that. But sometimes it’s better to walk away for a while. To return when tempers have calmed and wounds have healed. When you’re young, it feels like you have all the time in the world. I always meant to come back here…

The empty house, once full of light and laughter, is now home to rotting leaves and regrets. As I walk through its few rooms, I reflect on the nature of missed chances, and hindsight. Perhaps, if I had not spent so many years trapped in my own mind… if I could have saved Brigner and Garcon, saved anyone…

But I can’t unwrite the past. And so I simply pace through the house, looking at faded photos of smiling, long-gone faces bathed in sunlight.