Quiet place

This is a short creative fiction story I wrote for my Creative Writing class, as well as a bit of an
exercise in present tense. Enjoy.

He keeps his quiet place a secret from everybody else, save his parents. They’re the ones who brought him there when he was a boy, and taught him to skip rocks on the surface of the water. Now that he’s grown up, he doesn’t need them to take him there anymore. He’s an adult – he can go whenever he pleases. His parents understand why he enjoys going there so much, so they don’t discourage him. 

Running underneath the overpass, tucked away within the trees, is a creek. Or maybe it’s a river. He’s not clear on the difference but it doesn’t really matter. Sometimes it’s one, sometimes the other, but what matters is that it’s there. 

The riverbed is rocky, and stones cover the bank all the way back to the trees. Constant exposure to the sun overhead cooks them into a pale white, regardless of their original color. The darker ones haven’t spent as much time on land, and he enjoys going down to the creek after a storm to see how the rocks have been shaken up. They’re smooth enough to skip, and he spends a lot of time setting and breaking small records. He skipped one six times a while ago, and he’s been trying to replicate it ever since. 

For some reason, he prefers the dreary days to the sunny ones. Days when the skies are gray, the wind is blowing, and the air hovers between being temperate and slightly nippy are the best days to him. He can’t explain why, but he thinks they’re comforting. Perhaps it’s the universality of those kind of days; if it’s gray for him, it’s gray for everybody. Or maybe he just likes the color of the sky those days. That’s probably a factor as well. 

After skipping rocks for a while, he usually goes for a walk down the riverbank. Near his favorite skipping spot is a fallen tree. It’s been there for years, and it always looks the same to him, even though logically it should be rotting by now – perhaps that’s the nostalgia coloring his view. A ways past the tree, the creek widens into a definite river and swallows the riverbank, forcing him to start going through the trees. Fortunately, there’s a well-worn footpath running alongside the river that serves his purposes well. As he travels farther down the path, the riverbank inclines upward above the river, and the trees gradually thin out. This part of the river is especially beautiful come sunset, and when he was younger the sight of those last golden rays over the flora and the water made him think of Africa – or least, his vision of Africa. 

He lives a good life, he thinks. His parents love him, he gets good grades, he isn’t popular (not to his knowledge) but he has friends, and he has hopes for the future. But the world is still a harsh place, and sometimes he needs to go somewhere to unwind after a difficult day. That’s why he cherishes his quiet place so dearly, why he keeps it close to his breast even though he’d risk little by showing it to others. They’ve probably already been by at least once before, anyway. But he’s fine with keeping it to himself for now. Maybe someday he’ll find somebody special, somebody he wouldn’t mind giving his life to. Somebody with whom he can share anything. 

When that happens, he knows exactly what he’ll show them.