e Little River Review - Gorham High School!

Bethany Marshburn-Ersek
�e �ings Megan Carried
The Things Megan Carried
Megan was forced to leave New Orleans a�er Hurricane Katrina and go to California to live
with her aunt. Megan carried her cell phone, her lifeline to everything that was going on with
her friends in New Orleans. She never let that cell phone leave her pocket. In her cell phone, she
carried 43 contacts and pictures of her friends back home. At night, a�er avoiding making eye
contact with anyone, Megan carried her dishes to the sink and then walked to the porch, dragging
her feet in sadness. Megan called her friends in New Orleans, and talked to them about who was
going out with who; she told them that she hated it in California, how she had no friends and she
asked them why her life was so messed up, but they couldn’t tell her. A�er all, their lives were
messed up by Katrina, too.
Megan resented the hurricane and the way it had ruined her life. �e hurricane had taken her
from her friends, her house, and her school. It took her from her so�ball team, which she loved
dearly.
It was September, and Megan had to register to go to a strange school in California. Her
mother was back in New Orleans, trying to �gure out what to do with their �ooded house. She
carried resentment with her to the breakfast table and to the car and to school and back home.
She carried it in her pocket out of habit, even though it was like having acid; it ate away at her
sense of self. Megan carried more than any girl should have to carry. She carried loneliness
because she missed her friends, and she carried a desire for things to go back to the way they
used to be. Sometimes, when she was feeling especially down, Megan carried grief to the back
porch where she would close her eyes and imagine that she was back in New Orleans and that the
hurricane had never happened. She would let the dry heat of California in the Spring turn into the
humid heat of New Orleans. She could literally feel the water droplets condensing in the air and
feel beads of sweat form on her forehead. When Megan opened her eyes, she expected to see the
spanish moss that dripped from the cyprus trees, and the heavy, sweet, cell of magnolias in the air.
She could hear the rumble of the daily a�ernoon thunderstorm back home, but instead she saw the
orange and avocado trees of California. One day, when she was in a hurry to get home to tell her
aunt some big news, she accidentally forgot her cell phone on the desk of her seventh period class.
With the cell phone, she forgot her sadness, and her longing to return to her old life.
�at day, Megan carried hope that she could have a social life in California, and that she
could be happy, despite her unfortunate circumstances. Megan carried a smile on her face all
the way home. When she got home, she burst in the door, �ung her backpack onto the ground
and ran into the den, where she found her aunt watching her one-year-old cousin Holly, who was
crawling on the hazelnut-colored carpet. Megan’s words were like �reworks, eat one animated
and exciting, as she told her aunt that she’d been invited to go to Angel Stadium with Connor
Ramirez, the junior class treasurer, and a bunch of other kids. Megan didn’t know who else who
was going and she didn’t care, the important thing was that now she had some friends, o�cially,
and it felt good to be included. As she walked to her bedroom, Megan glided as if weightless. She
felt the resentment, sadness, and self-pity li� from her shoulders, and it felt nice to carry nothing.
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