Lizzie had a dream one day, long time ago, back when she was young and immortal and not so grey, before the bills began piling in and hangover cures were just for fun.
She dreamed she was walking with the crowd - she didn’t know anyone in the crowd - along a little-known path, and off to the side the willows wept in the warm wind, and the tall grass shone glorious in the sparkling sunshine, and crickets chirped, but the world felt quiet, and the crowd followed the old priest, who led them further and baptized them, few by few, in the nearby river Lizzie couldn’t see, but knew, for certain, to be there.
And when Lizzie woke up, she felt calmed, and comfortable, and utterly at peace.
Then she rolled out of bed, dragged herself through the shower, and hauled off to school, for yet another ordinary day.
They say life comes at you fast. They tell us to dream big when we're young. Lizzie… well… we never really consider what life might look like if none of our hopes come true.
Life was not as kind to Lizzie as anyone had hoped. She graduated, but just couldn’t get her foot in the door for the job of her dreams. Had hoped to get married, but the right guy just never came around, and over the years Miss Lizzie resigned herself to spending time with anyone who cared to spend the night. After awhile, everyone stopped hoping Miss Lizzie would find The One and start a family, and started whispering prayers instead.
And Miss Lizzie, with the greys creeping in, the stack of bills piling up on the table, the dead-end job, unanswered text messages in the ether and little to look forward to, blocked out the disappointment and found some satisfaction in looking forward to Friday night.
It happens.
Ms. Liz lived like this for years, until her Father died, which brought her home to her parents’ house for a few days, for the funeral, and to stay with her mother for a little while.
And in the stress of the ordeal, Ms. Liz and her mother started sniping at each other, and couldn’t stay in the same room for too long without fighting, and that’s how Ms. Liz found herself lying in bed in her childhood bedroom, waiting for the time to pass. But it wasn’t her bedroom anymore, it was her mother’s crafting room, her old furniture replaced with mountains of plastic shelves full of cardstock and coloured vinyl, her old desk now the home to a cricut machine and her Mom's half-crafted dreams.
So Ms. Liz got up and went for a walk into town, hoping a tour of the old stomping grounds might bring her back to herself again.
A half hour later, Ms. Elizabeth couldn’t tell if the hometown felt smaller, or larger.
So many old businesses had moved on or been replaced - some several times over, main street teeming with franchise stores and restaurants.
Construction dust swirled in the air where some of the older buildings had been torn down to make way for the new ones.
The people Ms. Elizabeth passed along the street all seemed so… old. There weren’t many kids from the high school hiding in overgrown corners of town anymore.
Ms. Elizabeth didn’t recognize any of the faces she met. There was no trace of what had once been the cherished playground of Miss Lizzie and her childhood friends - no concert hall, no diners, no punky music shops, and even the little grocer, where Miss Lizzie and her friends had begged strangers to buy them cigarettes once upon a time, was gone.
This was not Lizzie’s town anymore, and Ms. Elizabeth - she didn’t quite belong here either.
Her mind wandered as she walked, and she wondered whether she belonged anywhere anymore at all.
Back in the day, Lizzie had an invitation to all of the right parties and knew all of the right people.
The boys couldn’t get enough of her, the girls got, perhaps, more than enough.
The music was loud and sexy and exciting.
The future was big and bright and full of potential: Miss Lizzie would move to the big, flashy city, and travel. Miss Lizzie was going to marry the prettiest boy, and have the prettiest children, and send them to the best schools.
Miss Lizzie had once wanted to be a big-ticket lawyer, clicking her stilettos across the courtroom floors and showing up in all the newspapers.
Or maybe a hotshot shrink, her name on all the neon-spined self-help books at the store.
Maybe she’d be a journalist, or a traveller, a designer or a celebrity chef.
It was a hot, depressing walk back to the edge of town, beneath the beating August sun, and Ms. Elizabeth felt her makeup melting off into what felt like moist, sticky putty.
It felt gross.
Ms. Elizabeth stopped to pull a tissue from her purse, to clean herself up, and as she did so, she noticed that the strip mall she’d found herself standing in looked nothing like it had back in the day.
The air was dusty. The pavement was cracked, and none of the shops looked at all attractive or enticing. Most of the area was abandoned, and this all the more striking for it’s size - the parking lot was massive. And empty.
Had it not always looked so beaten up, so bad? Or had she only ever seen it in the dark?
She walked around the buildings, examining the plaza as if she were seeing it for the first time, or the last time, until out behind the old shops she came upon a trail leading out towards… well, Ms. Liz didn’t know where it led, but it looked like the type of spot teenagers would smuggle off to with a four-pack of vodka coolers and a hard-begged pack of cigarettes once upon a time.
Ms. Liz didn’t know what made her follow the path. She was pretty sure she’d never been here before, but felt, all the same, like she knew it, and knew it well.
And in the August heat, the willows off to the side wept in the warm wind, and the tall grass shone glorious in the sparkling sunshine, and Ms. Liz walked further and further up the path, until she found the river she’d been certain would be there.
She waded in off the riverbank, shoes and all, and let herself fall to her knees on the mossy rocks in the water, and she looked down, and there, reflected in the glittering water, the face of the old priest smiled at her and said nothing, and Ms. Liz took a breath, braced herself, and let her face fall into the water.
The water was cool, and Ms. Liz could’ve sworn she felt all the sweat, the construction dust, what was left of her makeup, and all the weight of the years lift in the running water. And when she rose, the heat of the day had fallen from her skin, and when she looked again into the water, all she saw was Lizzie, baptized off the path, as the tall grass shone glorious in the sparkling sunshine.
And when she stepped out of the river, she felt calmed, comfortable, and utterly at peace.