Pet Rock

His name was Louis.

He was black, round, craggy. Could fit in the palm of my hand. Spent most of his short life on the painted ledge of my window sill. All the neighborhood girls would come to my window. They acted like they wanted to see me, but I know better. They wanted to see Louis.

I told them all, Stephanie, Jennifer, Mary Ann, Florence, and, of course, Cathy, I told them all that he was volcanic. Spewed out of Mount Vesuvius. You know, the volcano that covered Pompeii with hot, poisonous ash and left all those mummified and contorted bodies. That’s what I told them. I have an active imagination. They might have believed me.

Actually, I found him at our local swimming hole. Stubbed my toe on him; the original meet-cute. Picked him up and I just knew his name and his whole backstory. In reality, he was a chunk of tar from the paved road a few yards away.

Regardless, Louis was the star of my block that July. And me, too, by a degree of separation.

Then, one day, he fell off my shelf, and broke in two.

Louis had done the impossible: he had reproduced via some sort of macroscopic mitosis.

Now I had Louis and Clyde; double the attraction. So I thought. Suddenly, the zeitgeist had shifted. The moving finger, having writ, moved on. Louis was no longer the “It” rock.

At first I blamed Clyde. Instead of my palm-sized pet, I now had two irregular-shaped friends, one larger than the other but both small. No longer was Louis larger than life. In fact, I held a press conference from my bedroom window. Stephanie, Jennifer, Mary Ann, Florence, and, of course, Cathy showed up. I made my announcement.

Louis had died. So had Clyde.

There was an immediate commotion: Was there to be a burial? Any last words? What had happened, exactly?

No! No more questions. I pulled the shade closed. Once the girls had all departed, I placed Louis and Clyde in the pocket of my bathing suit.

That weekend we went back to the lake. I walked to the water’s edge and withdrew my friends, placing them down at the gentle shore. “Go, now,” I whispered. “You’re free …”

They sat there motionless.

“Go, damn you!” I cried. “Go!”

Still, they stayed.

I ran to the edge and picked up my pet rocks in my hand. I squeezed them one last time, thinking of all the memories of that week in July. Then, I hurled them out towards the center of the lake.

The lifeguard blew a whistle at me and told me to stop throwing rocks at the other swimmers, but I paid him no heed.

Wiping a tear from my eye, I went back to the picnic table where my family sat, and had some barbecued chicken.