Somethings can’t be described. Like the second you realize you’re living in the moment or the times where you feel this utter contentedness that is just too beautiful to put into actual spoken words. You can’t describe the way your heart pounds against your ribcage like a bassoonist hits his snare or how your breath changes as often as the seasons in the North. No, you can’t even describe the desire to feel free or even just a simple desire. Humans are of the few animals that can show how they feel, yet we are so unable to express these thoughts. The description is left out; simmered into a comprehensible sentence. Boiled down so much that they all sound the same. Every description has been heard before, every person can be typical, every story can be told the same way and every mind is taught how to perceive the words. Until something doesn’t sound the same; doesn’t project the same effect. Until someone is perceived not as another human, but as their own being of complexity. You don’t just have to understand their mind, you have to understand their perception of every mind. Because in order to understand them, you must be able to describe their own very thoughts, when they are truly themselves in these content moments in life.
A name doesn’t give a person justice. Mine didn’t give me justice. My parents decided to give me a simple name. One that looks how it is spelled and no one could ever mispronounce it. Vera is the name I was destined with, four short letters of such great simplicity. The latin origin means true, which is something I struggle to wrap my mind around. True by definition is an accordance of fact or reality. Something so absurd to be my title because it has no depiction of who I am. Ironically, my name speaks nothing true to me. My mother and father didn’t even bless me with a middle one, as they were pointless and irrelevant in their eyes. So there I stood, a mere few letters to my existence. The world in a buzz with their ingenious titles and me being perceived as nothing special.
Now, maybe it wasn’t simply my name that dawned me with a below par status of nothing special. I knew the first day I was enrolled into elementary school that I wasn’t like the other kids and my journey through the grades didn’t prove anything more. Not different in a way you would notice, I was five foot three had long straggling blonde hair and brown eyes. I was different in the way I thought. I wasn’t one who enjoyed watching long movies or even surfing the internet. I would much rather think about the depths of our universe and why things were the way they were. I didn’t tell many people that though, it was easier to act normal than attract attention to my offbeat ways. Even my best friends didn’t know the complexity of my thoughts. I could try to tell them, but they would never understand things the way I understood them. So I went through the days with two separate minds. One transparent for the people who couldn't understand my thoughts and the other saved for that one person who could.
      ????????????
The days in Fairfield county Connecticut were painfully long. As my dreams were to take a one way flight to just about anywhere else, I felt trapped in this inescapable town. It was north enough to be part of New England, but not south enough to enjoy the wonders of real metropolitan life. Summer was the only silver lining to my usual boredom. My parents trusted me enough to stake out alone for a week or two at the little wooden shack they called a beach house. It consisted of one large bedroom and a miniature refrigerator. At seventeen I was getting a little too old to be sharing a twin cot with both of my parents for an entire week and I didn’t have any siblings to bring along. Even with all of my wishes as a child, I never once wished for a sibling. No, it was not because I wanted undivided attention from my parents or my own big bedroom, I just liked being on my own. The idea of figuring things out for myself was one that seemed to intrigue me from a very young age. I didn’t like the idea of having to look up to someone, or worse, having someone look up to me. So I stayed at the shack alone.
This summer was no different from the rest. The drive to the coast was still about fifty minutes and change and the weather remained at a warm eighty degrees. I slowed to a stop after getting off of exit twelve. The Shell gas station stood to my left and I slowly wheeled in. I didn’t really need gas, but I did really need food. I walked into the gas station that I had remembered walking in since I was seven years old. It was a ritual to stop here. It still smelled like a mixture of freshly ground coffee beans and new paint like it always did. The memories started to flood in and I stared at the store aisles I once couldn’t see over. I liked to reminisce, but the familiar pain of hunger was flooding my stomach and reminded me why I was here in the first place. I needed some supplies. I picked out the items that were necessary to survive a week on my own, a loaf of bread, a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and countless other foods of minimal substance. I didn’t bring a lot of money, but I did bring enough to get an adequate amount of junk food. As the cashier bagged my necessities, I wondered if I could even hold them all in my tiny honda civic which was already full to the roof with luggage. I somehow managed to fit all of the plastic bags wrapped around one of my wrists. Walking to the door I felt accomplished on completing this simple task with such grace on my own. Before I could reach my hand for the door handle, a pack of rich high school snobs who had always infected this town cut me off and barged into the Shell. I didn’t really know them, I knew of them and what I knew of them were not the greatest of things. They were the type of people you either were, or hated, no inbetween. Hate is not a term I liked to throw around loosely, but ---- I hated those kids. There was something new about this group though, or what I thought was a new member, but then realized he was just holding the door. He didn’t look like he belonged with them and he didn’t. He politely held the door for me too, which was surprising for an inhabitant of our generation.
“Thank you”
He looked at me like I was born with three eyes, “One thank you,” he said. “Out of the twelve people I just held the door open for, I got one thank you.”
“Don’t take it personally those kids,”
“Suck?”
“Don’t appreciate the simple things,” I laughed in agreement. I didn’t like to talk negatively about other people, thinking it was different.
“Well, thank you for being the one. Can I show my admiration by carrying one of those bags to your car?” I nodded, my hand felt as though it was slowly being drained of all of its feeling.  His gesture surprised me. He didn’t look much older than me, but he acted with such grace and confidence it was infectious. His name was Raliegh, I wonder what it meant, or rather what it meant to him. I wanted to know things, like what he thought about during the day and why he hated those kids as much as me. As I drove the rest of the distance to the shack, I despised myself for not getting his number, or at least his full name. And I would like to say that we never crossed paths again, and he was just some mystery that could fill the void of my mind on days that were plain, but I can’t.
He worked at Bob’s Firework Shop on the east edge of town. It was the only one within a twenty mile radius and I had been there multiple times throughout my childhood. As a tradition, I liked to light sparklers every night on the beach front. It was my way of marking the beginning of the short summer. As I walked in and the door made that chiming sound it always did, I instantly saw a familiar face. No, not Bob’s. Raleigh was working the front desk of the store helping a couple pick out the perfect show for their backyard barbeque. His uniform was outrageous, with three dimensional fireworks popping out of shirt in every which way, but there was no doubt it was him who stood under that insane costume. His blue eyes were piercing and as soon as they met mine he immediately turned the couple to another younger looking employee.
“Vera,” he said almost interrogatively. “What kind of explosives can I provide you with this fine evening.”
“Just a pack of sparklers,” I laughed in humiliation at my childish purchase.
“We only have the white ones in stock, I hope that’s okay. The same stupid kids from the gas station wiped out half of our inventory. Apparently one of them is throwing a party at their daddy's mansion and got hold of his credit card.” I proceeded to tell him that white was fine, I actually liked it better anyways, it felt more professional than the juvenile colored sparklers. “Hey Vera, would you want to grab an ice cream or something after my shift? It ends in fifteen minutes.”
“An ice cream sounds amazing right now,” I replied trying to hide the apparent butterflies that had seemed to engulf my stomach like some sort of zoo attraction. I waited exactly twelve minutes before Raliegh came hopping out of the firework store now, thankfully, in more appropriate attire. He didn’t seem the least bit of embarrassed of who he was, nor should he, but I admired his confidence yet again. We walked towards the beach and the sun was a hazy lilac color, that was offset by a small orange glow, slowly traveling down and across the sky. The ice cream stand was small and the italian man working the counter was small as well. I ordered buttercrunch, my favorite type of ice cream and Raleigh ordered the same, though I think it was just to have a common ground because his face puckered when he took the first bite.
“So tell me really, why do you hate those kids so much? I mean other than the fact that they’re all stuck up snobs.” I asked a little hesitant, I didn’t know if it was too soon to ask a potential personal question like this one.
“Well, to fill you in, those kids are the ones who got me and my dad fired from our last job. We worked at the Marriott down on South street, my dad was a manager and me just a towel boy. Those kids came almost everyday to the hotels pool and treated me like I was their slave or something. One day they asked me to get them a towel, so I did, but when I handed it to them they insisted that I get a new one that I hadn’t touched with my bare hands because I was contaminating them with my poor filth. When I refused they complained to the CEO of the company, one of their greedy incoherent parents and the next day my dad and I were fired. Left looking for a job in the middle of the summer and taking whatever we could get to make ends meet.” He sounded poetic in the way he talked. “Don’t get me wrong I like working at Bob’s, but those kids are just --------.” I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t relate to his life or his struggles and I found it hard to come up with words to try and show how angry I was for him. So I didn’t comfort him, I didn’t pity him and the words “i’m sorry” never slipped through my lips. All I said was “So what are we going to do about it?”.  And moments later, when darkness was creeping over the sky, we were running back to Bob’s in our attempt to one up the rich snobs.
I had never broken and entered before, not before this night at least. Raleigh fiddled at the lock on the back of the store door while I recited the plan out for us both in an attempt to make it sound more sane.
“First we are going to get the minimal amount of fireworks necessary to outshine the rich kids show. You said their house is across the bay right?”
“Correct.”
“Next we are going to find a way onto the harbor somehow?”
“Here’s the thing about snobby rich people Ver, they always leave their keys in their boat because they’re too drunk to remember to take them out. They also have enough money to buy a new Yacht if there's ever got stolen.¨
Maybe it was the thrill of the simple misdemeanor or the way I got caught up in Raleigh's graceful actions, but these thirty minutes were caught in a blur and as soon as I knew it I was on a stolen Yacht, with stolen fireworks, with a boy I met just a few hours ago.
We settled in the middle of the bay with a perfect view of the raving party just one hundred yards away. As we sat waiting for the rich kids show to close to an end, Raliegh and I sat on the boat in complete contentedness.
“Raleigh's an interesting name, what does it mean? And I don't mean the oxford definition, I mean what does it represent about who you are?” Raleigh was clicking the flint on the lighter trying to get the fuse to catch.
“I guess it could represent my life. It’s not typical, sometimes hard to understand and definitely not simple.” I stared in awe. He was not the first person I asked this question, but he was the only person who responded with such truth. I envied how quickly his mind processed.
“I wish I had a title that meant as much as your name means to you.”
“Ver, if your name depicted anything about yourself, it would be Eunoia,” he saw the confusion in my eyes and continued. “Eunoia means beautiful thinking and that’s what you do, you think in the most beautiful ways possible.” I was left speechless for the second time that night. I didn’t know what to say and my only wonder was if he was being truly genuine or if he was just telling me what I wanted to hear, seeings that I had only known this boy for twelve hours of my existence. Time had never seemed to be in my favor. “Okay, it’s time to give the world something worthy of seeing”, he said. And with that, he clicked the flint on the lighter once again, the fuse caught ever so quickly and I watched the flame glisten in the night sky. But nothing happened. The firework seemed as still as the bay and that’s when I saw Raleigh’s face turn from pure excitement to utter panic. He didn’t have time to tell me what was happening. His hand hit my side and sent me falling backwards out of the boat and into the black abyss. I had never been more confused in my entire life. Did he think this was funny to push me overboard? I didn’t think it was something that he of all people would find humiliating. It might have been the beginning of summer, but the temperature of the bay water had to be fifty degrees. It was so cold. I had a sudden shock wave rush over my entire body and the fight to resist my lungs from gasping for air triggered my eyes to remain jolted open. That’s when, through the distorted watery lens, I saw it. I unfortunately and immediately understood everything that had just occurred.  A massive explosion. It was bright, it was magnificently beautiful and even through the large volume of liquid that lay between myself and the world above, it was terrifyingly loud. It was as if the sun was just born ten feet away, it was way too close. It wasn’t in the sky like a firework should be, it was right on the water. I realized at this moment, something went wrong in our meticulously thought out plan. I struggled to the surface and gasped for my first breath while, in the same instant, quickly panning the surroundings.  What was left of the stolen boat was in a blaze of dancing fire and everything else was scattered, with large pieces of ash falling in the water around me.
“Ra.. Raleigh!”  I screamed with every piece of air I had left.  He didn’t respond. The scene was terrifyingly silent.
He must’ve known something was wrong with the firework, he was intelligent and trained enough to know what a defect looked like. When he pushed me into the water, I realized, he most likely saved my life. And underwater when my breath had just seemed to run out, my only thoughts were of him. My only feelings were for him, and my only regrets were tied to him. In this chaos I knew what I wanted to say. I wasn’t speechless, and for the first time I knew exactly who he was. There was no apprehension of his geniality or question if what he spoke was true. He had just saved my life and I knew he was different. He is the one, I thought. The one who I can tell my obscure theories about the universe and why things are the way that they are. The one who could understand my true mind, more than it’s transparent face. Someone who could describe who I was and see my hidden complexity. And I wish I could have told Raleigh right then right there, that I never wanted to stop talking to him for all the days I had left.
I can’t describe what it’s like to fall in love in twelve hours. I can’t describe exactly what Raleigh looked like and I can’t even describe the way my stomach aches with just the thought of his eyes. But I can describe his thoughts. I can understand why he did what he did and I can understand that he is so much more that his projection. He might have been perceived as nothing special to this world, but that is completely untrue. He was so complex, so deep, and he was the first person I didn’t have to be two dimensional around. I realized that I had been wrong. Before Raleigh I thought that in order to truly know someone, you have to understand them in their times of contentment, but he had proven this false. It’s not these content moments in life where you're able to see into another's mind, but rather these explosive moments in life where you can see someone's true beauty. I knew who he was as soon as his faced turned to panic, as soon as he pushed me off the boat into the water, and as soon as he sacrificed his soul for mine.