"What Else Goes On That I Don't Know About" by Sherry Cassells

It’s been raining since Christmas yet the water is lower than ever before and there’s a newly revealed rock looks like the hood of a car and all sorts of imaginary accidents play consecutively in my head before I finally agree with Maggie that it’s a rock, although I don’t entirely agree, mostly because I can’t believe such a gigantic thing has kept its secret for so long. We were born in this house and thought we knew everything.

And then around the curve, another.

What else goes on that I don’t know about?

I keep losing them in the fog until I get them again with a crash like chewing tinfoil and then three more around the next bend and although I do not feel quite as betrayed by these, this time I say it out loud.

What else goes on that I don’t know about?

And that’s when she told me Claire was coming.

But first, our beach. It’s mostly rocks but before you picture it, before you let rocks similar in size and greyness roll into your head, let me tell you, our beach is an exuberation of rocks. How can I say it? Imagine you’re in audience at the OG explosion and you’re like I’ll take that one, that one, that one, that one over there, yes, that one, and that entire galaxy on your left, that one, that one, those three there, that one, that one, all of those, that one. I mean our beach was mind-blowing rocks some big as trains I bet but we only saw what poked out like the way icebergs are, their colours you’d have to make up names for like Spriken or Youtza or Lomury, and some so black your definition of black changed, some with stripes like flashes of light and you could see the similarities between them like family, you knew they hurtled eons (also a good colour name!) in one mass might have been their own planet even. And it was only our stretch of beach they populated so generously like the playground of a giant blessed child they were strewn and tucked and any other adjective you can think of.

I just want you to understand the celestialness of it you see.

When?

When what?

When’s Claire coming?

Now. She’s coming now. Today.

We had already turned back, all five of the new rocks were visible, the fog was ebbing or maybe it was me not minding so much I mean if you’re talking about being blindsided, the new rocks had nothing on Claire.

Sherry is from the wilds of Ontario. She writes the kind of stories she longs for and can rarely find. thestoryparade.ca