2023 Short Story & Essay Contest: Third Place, High School Essay Contest
The river was erupting with bacteria, legions of flies and water gliders and gnats and mosquitoes and their countless larvae sharing the water with me, the sort of micro-life I often spend my time wishing I was free of an aversion to. I was waist-deep in it at the least, soggy clothes clinging to my equally sodden body, and clouds of decomposed organisms and sediment bloomed from beneath my feet with each step I took upon the velvety surface of the riverbed. Fabric and seagrass brushed against my skin, swirling languidly in rhythm with the hushed currents of the Potomac as they pushed gently against my body where it met the water’s surface border. I waded through the river, glad to feel the weight of my kayak as I pulled its own waterlogged body along beside mine. Buoyancy blessed the two of us, my kayak and I, in all our mass, and the marching ripples and waves our presence created met those created by my two friends and their kayaks, Micah’s the only one left unflooded by decisive capsizing. For that one precious moment, nestled in the river cradle shared by millions of micro-organisms, I did not worry about hand sanitizer or the illnesses carried by not-present leeches or the sensation of germs crawling on me, a feeling often experienced just as strongly as the feeling of the seagrass swirling around my legs and hips; I only felt the water’s gentle pressure as I trekked the river’s gauntlet of playfulness, made up of bubbles and ripples and fields of underwater grass. Our teacher, bringing up the heel of the group legions ahead of us, focused his stern gaze on us, angry with Misha and I for capsizing, and with Micah for lingering with us; I didn’t care, not even as an act of rebellion. I had only one thing to care for, not electrifying sickness or discomposing dirt, and certainly not feverish shame or the derailing anger of authority: Between the murky bacteria soup of the river and the overcast gray cloud wall of the sky, we three, kayaks in tow, seemed to glow together in our shared joy, golden and warm and refracted, changing; I once heard somewhere that sunlight is a disinfectant, and as I moved forward through the river, surrounded by friends and water and life, all softly scintillating in golden illumination, I accepted it more surely than I’d ever accepted the imaginary sensation of germs on flesh.
