Summer In Bellingham

         I am glad that it’s a nice, warm, and clear evening tonight because it’s Friday and school is out for the summer; I am going out with some friends to relax and blow off steam from the long week of work and finals. It’s not especially weird that a mid-June night this nice, but when living in Bellingham, Washington it’s generally about a fifty-fifty chance during the summer. The other half of the time it’s either raining or about to start.

         While I wait for my friends, Jeanette and Lucille, to come by I think I will sit out on my porch and enjoy the sunset tonight. I grab a light jacket and a banana and head out to the front porch and take a seat.

         My name is Erin and I just finished my Junior year at Western Washington University. I’ve spent the last three years trying to juggle work and school while still trying to have some what of a social life, it’s really not as hard as one would think. I’m a little bit smaller than average but only barely. Having red hair, light skin, and freckles have conjured many “ginger” jokes from friends and enemies alike, but they don’t bother me; not much bothers me, actually, I tend to be very easy going and have a knack for taking  life as it comes at me and it’s worked out so far, I guess.

         After about twenty minutes, just as the sunset was at it’s most gorgeous point of the evening with the whole orb still visible as a brilliant red while it turned the sky to orange accented by a purplish tinge on the few clouds, my two friends were seen walking down the street.

         “Erin! It’s so good to see you! How is your new job going?” Jeanette said with out-stretched arms as she got within hearing range. Jeanette was of average height and was pretty slender. Her straight brown hair fell about three inches below her shoulders and her skin was a naturally tanned. She wasn’t wearing a lot of make-up but had on cover up and eye make up like most everyone else. Jeanette liked to work out and had a stunning, so naturally she tended to get a lot of attention from the guys. I ran up to give her a large hug replying.

         “It’s been great! I’m having a lot of fun and everyone there is so nice. How about you? You’re working full time at the grocery store right?”

         “Oh yeah, you know, just the same ol’ thing just more of it I guess.”

         Always being more of the quiet type Lucille came up with a large smile and hugged me hello as well. It seems that Lucille’s philosophy on talking has always been that it should be used for dispersing “need to know information” and nothing else, but she is always the nicest and most cheerful girl in the room even if she isn’t the biggest on small talk. The best way to describe Lucille was “absolutely adorable” and that is how most people saw her. Standing about five and a half feet tall she was just a little bit shorter than average. She was slender like Jeannette but lacked her grace, not to say that this was a detriment. Just rather than flowing beautifully into a room and into a concentration she tended to tip toe in hoping no one would notice. Lucille would sometimes complain about being too small and I always had to remind her that she was perfect. Her hair was wavy, blonde, and gorgeous hanging down her back about one inch below her shoulders. Seeing as it was a bit too early to go out to the bars they went inside and decided to have a few drinks and catch up with each other.

         “By the way Lucille, those shorts are so cute where did you get them from?” Jeanette said to Lucille.

         “American Eagle of course! They were on sale and I got these dark ones and a pair of light blue jeans as well.” Lucille said, trying to not to show her happiness from the compliment too much.

         “Have any of you heard of the movie, The Lives of Others? It’s a German film and it’s supposed to be really good, we should watch it sometime,” I said, remembering the recommendation another friend had made at work.

         “No never heard of it,” Lucille said.

         “Movie night next Thursday?” Jeanette suggested.

         “YES!” Lucille and I said enthusiastically in unison.

         “So, you all feel good about finals? I’m pretty sure I kicked ass straight across the board,” Jeanette proclaimed assuredly with her nose slightly in the air.

         “Ugh, don’t make me think about that any more,” moaned Lucille.

         “I don’t know, I think I did fine,” I said, realizing that I hadn’t really thought about it much. “I’m just excited for summer, Reggae Night, beaches, reading, and beautiful sunsets like tonight!”

         “Not to mention good friends and good beer,” Jeanette piped up enthusiastically.

         After our third shot of Smirnoff vodka and second vodka tonic we were feeling quite happy and warm, not to mention very restless as well.

         “Do you guys wanna head out soon?” I said.

         “Yeah for sure, where should we go first?” was Jeanette’s reply.

         “I don’t know, we could hit up The Copper Hog and see how that is. You know the usual.”

         “Could we maybe check out Uisces at some point later,” Lucille piped up, meekly adding, “I like the jukebox there.”

         It was with this that we agreed it was time to begin our arduous journey out to the bars of downtown Bellingham. Leaving the house in the highest of spirits we began walking, laughing, and joking our way down the streets towards our destination. Jeanette and Lucille were some of my oldest friends and lately these nights were very rare due to the busy schedules that seemed never to line up perfectly for the three of us. Therefore we were all in exceptionally good moods and happy to be out with some of our oldest and best friends.

         “Oh my god, have you heard from Dan Tucker lately?” Jeanette asked me with a little smirk.

         “NO! EW! No nothing ever happened with him what a weird-o!” I replied with disgust at the thought of Dirty Dan Tucker as I called him now.

         “Surrre, you know you thought he was sexy,” Jeanette retorted with a childish smirk and a quick glance over to Lucille who was smiling right back at Jeannette.

         “At least I didn’t make out with Greasy Tom!” I said to Jeanette, bringing up a part of her less pleasant past.

         “Psh! Whatever! He wasn’t greasy back then anyways, I made him greasy!” She said defending her honor.

         “Haha! We can call you the Grease Meister!” I replied as we all burst into laughter.

         About four or five blocks down the street I saw a group of four guys also heading out for the night, and they had obviously been doing quite a bit of drinking already. We could tell by the loud “whoops” and yells they were making at unseen objects, and the zig-zagged nature of their walking pattern. They were coming towards the corner which we were nearing from the cross street; arriving at the corner moments before us they continued walking down the street they were on and soon passed out of sight, and then eventually out of earshot as well. However, when they were directly in front of us they momentarily came within earshot where we could hear some of their conversation and not just the shouts of the drunkest ones in the bunch.

         One guy was saying to the other, “Fuck you, ya fuckin’ asshole. And where the hell are we going anyways? Huh? I feel like this is the blind leading the blind here.”

         The fellow who was speaking was wearing a dark grey band t-shirts that read, “The Pogues” in black writing and shorts, he had shaggy hair, wasn’t very tall, had an average build, and had dark heavy eyelids. The listener was also wearing just a t-shirt and shorts but his t-shirt was a little bit nicer – it had a name brand printed on it and had obviously been hung up in a closer rather than picked up off the floor – he was taller than the band t-shirt guy and had a bigger build, however he was just a bigger guy and in now way “over-weight.”

         The most curious part about this wasn’t so much that the friend he was saying this to didn’t seem at all put off by the angry nature of his buddy nor upset at the names he was being called, but that his friend that was saying it didn’t look nearly angry enough to be saying these things, and atually had a half grin on his face. I didn’t say anything of it to Jeanette or Lucille because they didn’t seem to notice, having picked up a conversation about some cute boy Jeannette had recently met, and I didn’t want to sully the mood with my curious eavesdropping.

         Another fifteen minute walk brought us to the Up and Up, our first destination of the night. It was a pretty popular bar for college students in the area and was the one place where we almost always ran into some of our other friends that happened to be going out that night. For this reason I start most of my nights here, but tonight it wasn’t quite as hoppin’ as usual. Well it was pretty busy but none of us recognized anyone there and, moreover, the people there didn’t look like the usual type of people that could be found here.

         “Where is everybody?” asked Lucille.

         “I don’t know but since we came all this way we might as well get something to drink,” said Jeanette.

         “And relax a bit!” I added enthusiastically.

         This quick pow-wow brought us to the conclusion that we should get a pitcher and stay here for awhile since it was still happy hour there and they have great prices for pitchers. Luckily we were able to find a table to sit at and enjoy the scenery while we drank our beers. However the vibe of the place simply wasn’t suiting me or the other girls; the jukebox was playing a constant stream of Top 40s music and all the people there just seemed too fake with their brand name clothes. It was as though they walked through any mall and just grabbed an article of clothing form each shop that had pictures of people about their age in the front. I couldn’t finish that pitcher fast enough, after a little while Jeannette mentioned how she thought it might be a magical bottomless pitcher of which point Lucille heartily agreed.

         Next we went to Uisces, Lucille’s favorite place: it was on the smaller side and while there was usually a steady amount of people there it seemed to never be packed, a very calm and relaxing environment. Not to mention the fact that they served both liquor and beer which was nice since I very much preferred mix drinks over beer. Jeanette and I made our way up to the bar while Lucille took a dollar to the jukebox. One of her favorite parts about this bar was that plays on the jukebox were only 10 cents and they had a very large selection of some of her favorite music such as Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Black Joe Lewis and the Honey Bears, Kings of Leon, and Great Big Sea. The bar was very crowded at the time and the bartenders were working like crazy. We ended up standing right behind the kid in the band t-shirt that I had noticed earlier in the evening. Once he got his order he turned carefully since he had two Black and Tans in each hand. Noticing us waiting for a spot at the bar he says, “Holy shit, quick take my spot before some other jack ass grabs it. Come on hurry it up wouldja, Jesus Christ!”

         Dumbfounded by this remark Jeanette and I just looked at each other in disbelief and in that split second somebody else stepped forward to the bar before us.

         At this point he said half to us half to no one at all, “Way to fucking go, you blew your chance. For fuck’s sake.” And he carefully slid out of the little crowd around the bar. As he got closer to his group of friends, which had grown substantially since I had seen him earlier, I could hear him shout, “FUCK boys! I found some black and tans!”

         Shortly after that another spot at the bar opened up and we were able to order our drinks. I ordered three Vodka crans for us. While we were waiting for our drinks to be made Jeanette mentioned to me, “That guy was a real dick, but he was weird as hell too, almost like he was being an asshole for the sake of being an asshole or somethin’. Maybe he’s just stressed out or has bad vocabulary. Oh well forget about him.”

         “Yeah, do you remember we saw him on our way out tonight? I heard him swearin at one of his friends, but his friend didn’t seem too put off by it.” I replied.

         Receiving our drinks I paid the barkeep and we went out to find Lucille sitting at a booth waiting for us, she had run into a guy from one of her classes spring quarter and they were making friendly chit chat… Well he was, but poor Lucille didn’t have a whole lot to say, as per usual, so she was mostly just smiling and agreeing. She saw us approaching and we could see her happiness grow. It seemed as though she was thinking, “Finally now I can blend back into the shadows,” And the thought of that made me chuckle to myself. We arrived at the table and gave Lucille her drink while Jeanette and I continued to enjoy ours. He introduced himself as Peter and shook our hands quite gentlemanly. After sitting down and getting to know one another for a little bit his friend came running up, “Hey man! Jackson just got here! He says there’s a party down at Mark and John’s place because John just got back from his trip! Let’s GO!”

         Peter got up to go to the party as he was obviously very excited, but not before inviting Lucille, and the rest of us, along. Apparently John was another guy that Lucille had had several classes with and was a mutual friend of the two of them. We said we would stop by in a little bit, however we had every intention of staying at this bar a little bit longer to enjoy our drinks with the company of the other patrons. After staying for about an hour we decided to go see what this party was all about. I also figured that free beer would be nice rather than having to pay for drinks, and we set off into the dark night.

         John’s house was out a little ways from the bars, but luckily over in the direction of my house so our walk home would be shorter than the walk from the bars. Once we got out into the residential area the streets became much narrower, street lights: almost non-existent. Every so often a group of party goers would cross our paths going one way or the other but all in all it was a pretty quiet night. At this point we were all pretty tipsy and were dancing and jumping around often times taking up the entire street and other times staying on the sidewalk. Lucille was finally coming out of her quiet shell and was dancing around with more energy than the other two of us combined.

         We were all dancing around in the middle of the street when Jeanette tripped over her own shoe – even though she wasn’t wearing heels – and almost fell face first in the middle of the street but at the last minute she caught herself on a car parked on the side of the road. Jeanette and I immediately broke out into hilarious laughter over on the side of the street. Both of us holding ourselves up with one hand on the car and holding our sides with the other. After a minute Lucille stopped dancing and looked at us cracking up and began laughing herself. Which was humorous in and of itself because she did not see Jeannette trip and was merely chuckling at how funny we looked.

         The night was feeling wonderfully swell and I felt amazingly carefree and light of heart as I imagine my two buddies felt as well. Just then I looked up to see two headlights coming towards us from about three or four blocks up the street. I glanced away for only a second and when I looked back up those same headlights were no more than several yards out. I tried to choke out a warning to Lucille who was still in the middle of the street but I was hardly able to make even a noise.

         Just then I heard from the darkness on the opposite side of the street, “fuckin’ shit!” as a figure came flying out of the darkness from between two cars on the other side of the street and grabbing Lucille by the arm spun her around and flung her at us. She slammed into the hood of the car that we had been leaning against and rolled over onto the curb on the other side. I didn’t know what to do or think. I didn’t even know what was happening. All I do know is that as that a maroon Acura Integra came racing past us I heard a loud crash and the sounds of glass breaking, bones cracking, and bodies falling. That car came within six inches of hitting Jeanette and I, when I looked up the only thing left in the street where Lucille had been dancing was a crumpled body which looked like a ragdoll. We all stood there for moments unable to move or speak or think, and slowly the body in the road began to move and rise to its feet. It looked like a newborn deer trying to stand for the first time: shaking all over, its legs not obeying orders and unable to hold the weight of the body; but slowly and surely it raised to its feet. At this time it all came together and I noticed that it was the asshole we had seen earlier in the Pogues t-shirt. His moment of triumph from standing was very short-lived because he immediately crumpled back to the street and a very small trickle of blood could be seen running down the street. I heard people on the other side of the road yelling, “OH NO!” and “What the hell just happened!”

         My body began moving without my knowledge or control, running to the side of the poor boy in the street. When I got there he looked worse than I could imagine and I yelled out, “someone call an ambulance hurry!” as I realized this was nothing like the movies. He looked up at me with a dull stare and when I looked back at him I thought about how much of an asshole I had thought he was and I couldn’t help but ask, “Why? Why did you do that? Why did you risk your life for someone you don’t even know?”

         With a slight smile he said to me, “I just thought maybe her life was worth a bit more, you know…”