Peace of mind
I see people at the beach having fun. I also see girl sitting alone at the beach, her bag is placed beside her and she's reading a magazine.
I feel the girl at the beach to relax and have some time alone.
Clara knew she had to get away from the house. It was her day off, and she had been envisioning herself resting, watching movies, and eating as much junk as possible with her feet up on the sofa and nothing to bother her. Rather than that, she'd gotten a chaotic house full of people and loud music.
She groaned as her bed vibrated to the rhythm of the music booming from her flatmate's bedroom. If only Clara had known that Eunice, her flatmate, was also not going to be at work today, Clara would have swapped days with her coworker and gone to work today. She loved Eunice, but the girl accumulated friends like fruits drawn to flies.
Eunice also had a tendency to bring her friends to the flat and let them run wild. All efforts from Clara to stop this had proved useless, so she'd learned to live with it and stay away from the house whenever Eunice's friends were around. But today she'd been caught off guard.
“Eunice, turn it down. It's barely 9am, for heaven's sake!” Clara yelled from her bed. As usual, the music remained at the same volume. Clara had always wondered how the neighbors managed to cope and why Eunice wasn't in jail by now. It's either the neighbors were deaf or enjoyed loud music, and Clara guessed the latter was the case.
“Okay, I've had enough! I have to get out of this house,” Clara said, sitting up on her bed and thinking of places to go. She didn't want to go to the library because the librarian had a scary look. Her bank account balance wasn't in a good place for shopping, and a restaurant or bar was out of the question because she also couldn't deal with obnoxious boys today.
Clara stood up, walked to her window, and opened the blinds. Wow, she thought to herself. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, a cool breeze swept by, and the sky was so blue. It reminded her that it'd been ages since she put on a bikini or suntanned.
“That's it! The beach!” Clara squealed in delight. She jumped off the bed and raced into the bathroom. She hurriedly cleaned up, put on her green bikini underneath a short black crochet gown, and raced out of the house.
“Whew. What a wonderful day,” she smiled to herself. The beach was about a 20-minute walk from their flat, so she decided to walk. She stopped at a stand to grab a cup of cool iced tea, some snacks, and a magazine and merrily continued her journey. As soon as she arrived at the beach, her face fell as she realized she didn't bring her beach chair. But she was lucky enough to secure one from a man who saw the worried look on her face.
With the chair secured firmly on the sand, Clara took off her crochet gown, used a band to secure her hair, sat down, and heaved a deep sigh of relief. The place was cool, not too noisy, and she felt at peace. Clara soon fell asleep, and she felt rested when she opened her eyes in the afternoon. She took out some snacks, grabbed her magazine, and started reading. At the same time, she was thinking of ways to get Eunice to listen to her complaints.
“Oh well, I'll just have to do something drastic if she doesn't change,” Clara mumbled, deciding to either sell her flatmate at an auction, or soundproof her own room. She happily decided to banish all thoughts of the noisy house from her mind, and enjoy her magazine and the beautiful scenery before her.