...ing -2003- ⚡ Must Read

That was the thing about being seventeen in 2003. We were the last year who remembered a before. Before the war in the news every night became just another commercial break. Before the internet learned to bite. We still had flip phones with antennas, and the only thing we feared was a busy signal. But that summer, something else was bleeding in.

I swam up. Broke the surface. Gasped.

But the something was already behind my eyes. It was the knowledge that we were living in the pause between two frames of a film. That 2003 wasn't a year—it was a breath held too long. And the exhale? The exhale was coming. It would sound like a plane hitting a tower, a war starting over nothing, a friend logging offline for the last time. It would sound like the end of the -ing. The end of being . ...ing -2003-

In late July, we went to the reservoir. Six of us, crammed into a Ford Taurus with a busted AC. The water was the color of weak tea, but we didn't care. We dove in anyway. And for ten minutes, I felt nothing but the cold. The blessed, mindless cold. Then I opened my eyes underwater. That was the thing about being seventeen in 2003

“Yeah,” I lied. “Just something in my eye.” Before the internet learned to bite

“You okay?” Jenny asked. She was treading water two feet away, perfectly fine. The Frisbee arced overhead. Normal. The year 2003, normal.