The tourists are the only ones who ever actually leave.

          It’s the end of August and they’re slowly crawling to their cars and driving back to their fancy suburbs, sunburnt and wearing shirts with your town’s name on it. It makes you laugh every time you see a boy with St. Joseph Lifeguard stretched across his chest while he stumbles across the sand.

          You’ve grown up in this town, from riding the bus to kindergarten to driving half the neighborhood when you get to high school. The girl whose last name is only one letter off from yours is always on your right: from cubbies to lockers, from yearbook photos to smiling on stage holding honors certificates.

          I’m going to make it out of here one day, the brave dare tell anyone who cares to listen. You always listen. And then you always watch them ride back into town one by one, dating the girl from their sixth grade geometry class or engaged to the boy from two doors down like there aren’t over seven billion people in the world with no connections to this town to fall in love with. You watch as they slip back into the framework like they never even left; like they never dreamed of cities with greater rivalries than one between two high schools. A rivalry that middle-aged men far past their prime boast about, wearing their “War by the Shore” shirts to the grocery store.

          Oh, you’ll be back, the once brave ones tell the current dreamers with a chilling laugh, and the dreamers laugh back. We’ll see about that, they say, and four years later with a degree in education from a school eight states away, they see. They put the out-of-state pennant up in their classroom: the classroom they used to sit in the back of, chin resting in their palms while they imagined living in a landlocked city where they don’t run into their first-grade teacher at McDonald’s.

          Why would you come back? The brave students ask. I would never come back. The once dreamers just laugh and say, We’ll see about that.

          Your biggest fear is that someday, you’ll see too. You’ve grown up in this town, but instead of growing with you, it constricted around your neck like a shirt you’re five years too old for. The closest college you’ve applied to is eleven hours away, and your best friend’s mom gives you a strange look as she realizes that when you tell her your options. Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana–no Michigan?

          Whenever your future is brought up, you tell your parents, When I leave, I’m not coming back. You say it with so much conviction that they almost believe you, but it doesn’t stop them from saying, You’ll be back.

          At night, their words bounce around in your mind, and you kick your sheets until they’re tangled around your ankles like the cuffs this town has on you. What if you run out of money and have to move back in with your parents, or your mother gets sick and you need to come back to take care of her, or the only job offer you receive is from the company downtown because you used to tutor the CEO’s nephew in Spanish.

           You can see your life here so clearly that it terrifies you: watching your daughter play volleyball in the same jersey you wore; hearing your son complain about your old biology teacher who only talks about his daughter’s blueberry farm; sitting in a beach chair while your kids splash around in the waves, watching the tourists toss their beach bags in their trunk and drive back to their big cities, sunroofs wide open and windows down.  

          They’re the only ones who ever actually leave.