We’ve been in Key Largo for three days when I reach the unlikely conclusion that for all its allure in the eyes of tourists and retirees, it is in fact a smaller, slower place than Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Perhaps that’s because in the three years we lived there I had friends, cousins, an aunt, an uncle, and a tough if not frightening 80-something-year-old Grammy from whose house I could walk to school each weekday morning. My life there had been small but never quiet or lonesome, a welcome change after my initial years spent moving city to city, the only child of a young single mother who fancied herself an American gypsy. Two days in an overstuffed Honda Accord, one night in a Louisiana hotel, and countless hours of1 cassette tapes later, I found myself sitting alone on the concrete wall above the deserted canal behind my grandparents “vacation home”. It was really just a renovated double wide trailer set on foundation two dozen yards from the ocean but I was made well aware of how impolite it was to point out this technicality. Legs swinging a few feet over the water line, earbuds in and iPod turned up, I tried to find solace in the terrible music I listened to as a preteen, convinced that at eleven years old I knew exactly what my favorite twenty-something pop stars were singing about.
If I were in Oklahoma, I wouldn’t be using my iPod at all; I’d be blasting my boom box and she’d be with me, dancing and singing up a storm at top decibel. But I’m not in Oklahoma, and Parul is, so instead I continue dangling my legs and basking full force in my tween angst. Never mind I’m sitting in the sun under palm trees, wearing a swimsuit under my clothes, or that I’m getting to spend a summer living in a destination spot. Never mind that all in all, I’m a pretty lucky kid. None of that occurs to me; all I know is that after three years of finally living somewhere long enough to have a Best Friend, I’m back at square one, a new city, a new living arrangement, and zero friends, just like it was before Oklahoma and Parul happened to me. Who knew a place you’d never even been and a name you’d never even heard of before could come mean so much to you in only three years‘ time.
Now, my days are already molasses slow and I have little to look forward to this afternoon, except the latest summer series, Everwood, and its two hour premiere following my already favorite show of all time, Gilmore Girls. Three hours of gloriously distracting and dramatic television total to fill my lonely Tuesday night. I try not to think about how I’d be watching them both with Parul if I could, and focus instead on consuming as many prepackaged snacks as possible while I watch filler shows until primetime rolls around. I’m lounging on a stuffed armchair perpendicular to the direction most civilized humans would sit, legs slung over one armrest, neck on the other, my clothes still damp from getting in and out of the salty water earlier. As I inhale cup after cup of Mott’s chunky applesauce and Jell-O chocolate pudding, I ponder whether or not Rory will choose Jess or Dean. I sigh to myself because I still hate that one of the guy characters is named Jess.