Iris Wheeler: Being 20 Something

Lighthouse point:

There’s something unsettling about entering your twenties. You think everything will change immediately, but the truth is, it takes time. And when you’re stuck in a small beach town, that waiting can feel endless. Every summer in Lighthouse Point had felt the same, but this year was different. I turned twenty in March, and after finishing my sophomore year of college, I was looking forward to a summer of relaxing — home, with my family and friends, after a grueling semester.

At school, I poured myself into everything. I was studying for my BFA in Film and Television Production, and thanks to a full scholarship, I could give it my all. Films were my calling, writing was in my blood — directing felt like destiny. My upcoming third year meant my biggest project yet: directing my own short film. When it was done, I planned to submit it to festivals up and down the East Coast.

It was a monumental leap. I’d never shown my work publicly beyond campus screenings or the safety of friends. Festivals felt daunting, terrifying even. But I was determined. Who knew what could come of it? Maybe an internship before graduation. Maybe doors I didn’t even know existed.

I’d already called up local friends to act, scheduled filming dates, cut the budget, rented equipment. But with May looming, half a script written, and no locations locked down, I was starting to panic.

“Thirteen pages down, okay… okay. But where is it going? Ugh.”

I stared out the cottage window at a pair of pre-teen girls pedaling by on beach cruisers, envious of their carefree laughter. Why couldn’t that be me again? But fifteen was long gone. All I could do now was try to enjoy the brief happiness that was summer.

From downstairs came the smell of turkey chili — Pop Pop’s favorite — wafting from the kitchen. It reminded me of high school nights, working through homework while Nana cooked.

“Come on, Izzy. THINK.” My laptop screen stayed blank. “Well, this is eventful.”

I caught my reflection in the mirror: the same wide-eyed little girl, but older now. Sharper cheekbones, no more buck teeth, freckles still dusting my nose, dark curls bouncing past my shoulders. My eyes turned back to the laptop. Time Stands Still by Iris Wheeler. I read the title aloud in a mocking voice.

“Ugh, this is pointless.”

I slammed the laptop shut and let my gaze drift to the Indiana Jones poster on my wall.

“What?!” I snapped at it. “It’ll get written.”

“I’m just having a little writer’s block… that’s all.”

If Spielberg could have writer’s block, then so could I.

“My god, Izzy. Get it together, dude — you’re talking to a poster.” I laughed, then groaned. Worse, I was comparing myself to Spielberg. “Maybe I just need a breather.”

And I knew exactly who to call. Abby Melas — my best friend since birth, practically my sister, and the one person guaranteed to kickstart my summer. I often called her my “Second,” film-set lingo for an assistant director. Abby was definitely mine in life.

Late May showers, bring strange encounters:

Despite the last two weeks of May pouring down inevitable rain, the South Shore of Long Island was alive again. Tourists trickled in, locals came home, spring was blooming, and the town began to bustle. Abby and I still frolicked around despite the weather—riding our cruisers everywhere, just like when we were seventeen. Alitalia’s for pizza, frozen custard at Abbott’s, beers at Calhoun's. Same old spots, same old magic.

As much as I loved the city and college, the memories here always came rushing back with summer. There was nowhere like this place, and I treasured it.

Sitting outside Captain Calhoun’s, perched at a barreled hightop beneath the dented green tin awning, I let myself soak it all in. Abby went to grab us a bucket of beers. I reveled in the slow-turning ceiling fans, wooden shaped like palm leaves, the ocean breeze swirling through, the first sip of ice-cold beer with just a hint of lime, and the salty air filling my lungs as if I were swallowing the ocean whole. Oh yeah—this was home.

Even the sound of dune grass swaying in the breeze was something I’d missed during those dreadful, endless winter months away at school. I missed the boardwalk echoes, footsteps rattling over planks, the feel of soft sand beneath my toes as I walked home past cottage after cottage.

Abby and I spent hours at Cal’s, talking about my film, tossing around ideas.

“Okay, so it’s a coming-of-age story then?” she asked.

“Essentially, yes. But there’s more to it, Abbs—”

“Well, hit me with the logline.”

I slid the summary across the table. “I submitted this to my professor back in January. Tell me what you think.”

She skimmed it, muttering as she read the pitch about seven friends, heartbreak, a love triangle, my father’s diagnosis.

“Oooh. Heavy. I like it.”

“You do?”

“Yeah! Logline here—‘Over six turbulent months, a young woman caught in a love triangle within her tight-knit group of friends must confront heartbreak, hidden desires, and her father’s cancer diagnosis—only to realize her greatest love story is the one she writes with herself.’”

“Yes, I love it,” Abby said, eyes alight. “ This is the role I’ve been waiting for.”

I laughed. “Love how you already think I'm casting you!”

“Oh please Izz, You know I can't resist the drama!” I snorted a laugh.

Abby always assumed she’d be my leading lady. She wasn’t wrong that she’d kill it—Abby was multi-talented. Acting, writing, music. It ran in her blood. I envied her sometimes, but mostly I just felt lucky to call her my best friend.

She scribbled on the draft. “Okay, maybe your summary’s a little… wordy. Here—‘Set against the backdrop of seven friends navigating their twenties, this drama centers on a young woman torn between two companions: her longtime boyfriend and her best friend harboring unspoken love. When her relationship crumbles, a secret romance ignites, threatening the group. Amid emotional chaos and her father’s illness, she begins a journey of identity and independence, realizing fulfillment comes not from love gained or lost, but from finding strength within herself.’”

I rolled my eyes. “Wordy?”

“You’re lucky I love you.” But damn it, her version was good.

“Relax, Izz. You’re still the genius director here.” I looked down, a little deflated, but Abby leaned in, serious for once. “This is your story. You’re going to make it amazing. You bring images to life. Stop being such a shoobie….”

“Youre bumming me out” she joked.

I laughed, the weight lifting again. Abby had always been my right hand, my biggest cheerleader. By the time we left Cal’s, it was nearly nine.

We hugged goodbye.

“Catch you tomorrow? Maybe finally sign up for that surf lesson with a certain someone?” I teased.

“Yeah, and maybe pottery class too,” she smirked, flipping me off.

“Bite me.”

“Later, loser. Love you.”

“Love you back, assface.”

I pedaled away, the paths thinning until I had to walk the bike beside me. Passing colorful bungalows, I wondered if I was really ready to direct my first short. Silly reels were one thing. But this—This was real.

Halfway home, I stopped, closing my eyes to listen to the waves rolling in. Then—

THUD.

A volleyball slammed against my head.

“Shit—sorry! I’m so freaking sorry!” A tall guy hovered over me, rambling apologies.

Another jogged up, light-brown hair messy, pale eyes cutting through the dusk. He smirked.

“Ya know, cutie, you walked through our game.”

“Cutie? Excuse me?” I brushed sand off my jeans.

“Hey, I’m just making a point— you're cute and you walked—” I cut in.

“Yeah, well, luckily I don’t care about your points. Because my head might need medical attention now.”

“Dramatic much? quite the actress I see.”

“Try director, dipshit.”

“Oh yeah? Any movies I’d know?” he grinned

“Yeah. It’s called, "Bite Me?” I shot back.

He chuckled. “Spicy. I like it.”

I stormed off, muttering “asshole,” “stupid tourists, never fails” but his voice trailed after me:

“For the record—I’m not a tourist. I live here now. Twenty-two Shore Walk.”

“Drop by anytime, cutie.”

Later that night, I replayed the encounter. The nerve, the audacity infuriated me. But those eyes… golden, flecked with green and blue. My favorite colors. Damn.

I needed a distraction—I called Abby:

“Well, was he cute at least?” she teased.

“I don't know…Maybe. A little.”

I shook myself out of it. “Anyway Back to the point”

“Right—so plans for tomorrow,” she said.

“Yeah, you said you've got a shift?” I added.

“Ugh, yeah I picked it up last minute, sorry” she replied.

“ eh, no worries… well just meet up when you're done?”

“Definitely, I'm down” she said, “Moms, been houndin’ me about the shop's organization, so I'll definitely need a beer”. We laughed.

It would be Friday night—the first with everyone finally back in town (most of us anyway). As I hung up the phone and let my eyes drift shut, the image returned: a blur of sand, the echo of laughter, and those sea-glass eyes I couldn’t shake. Something told me they would find me again—whether I was ready or not.

Friday morning arrived and I decided to kill the hours with some writing until it was time to see Abby. I still had a script to complete after all. Before I knew it my mind was racing with inspiration, my fingers flying across the keyboard typing and pouring out everything I'd be feeling in that moment. I glanced over at the clock and to my disbelief and it was time to head out. Feeling productive and Saving what I had, I closed the laptop shut for another day of writing. I quickly threw on some clothes and my favorite hoodie. I headed out the door, yelling goodbye to Nana and Pop pop.

Rosie’s Shack stood at the far west end of the boardwalk. The spot on weekends. Easy beer without getting carded. Best beach view in town. But it came with cons: running into old classmates you didn't like or—worse—exes. And tourists, always the shoobies.

Nonetheless, there we were, Abby and I catching up with old friends over beers. The band ‘Iraitions’ reggae tunes, happily swinging in the night air on someone's bluetooth speaker, beer pong splashing off the plastic folded tables nearby.

“Izzy, what up!” shouted Conner, an old highschool classmate; one of the jocks..

“Hey conner, how’s BU treatin ya?” I replied back, dreading the small talk as Abby drifted off in Jessica Mackey's direction, one of our old Theatre buddies from highschool. Completely deserting me, I muttered “Judas” at Abby under my breath as she whispered back “Suckerrr”. She smiled back, escaping the clutches of Conner Graves.

“So how's film school Izz!” asked Conner,

“Uh, it's great, the usual. ya know” faking a cheerful voice.

“You're lookin’ fine girl!” cutting me off mid sentence,

“Thanks.” I awkwardly smiled back,

“Ya know what? I think Abby needs me for a second Conn.” I smiled, fleeing the scene. Once I caught up to Abby again, she was chatting it up with our old high school buddy, a drama enthusiast like us, Jessica Mackey. We talked about recent movies playing at the Beacon, our local movie theater.

I nearly spit out my beer when I spotted him on the driftwood logs by the fire—the volleyball guy, the so-called “not-a-tourist.” Blue-green eyes catching the flames.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I muttered.

Abby followed my gaze. “Wait, wait—that’s the guy?!”

“Yes,” I hissed. “Oh my god, Izzy, he’s hot.”

“Abby!” “What? He is!” she laughed, nudging me. “And judging by the way he keeps glancing over here, you’re about to be hot girl summer material.”

I rolled my eyes. “Please. He called me cutie. Like, ew. Who even does that dude?”

“Guys who look like that,” she teased.

“Ey, Cutie! I was hoping I'd see you here” he said, happy to see me,

“Intresting. And why are you here shoobie?”

“I told you” he chuckled, “I live here?” a teasing smile;

It was charming— but definitely annoying—his arrogance and confidence— I couldn't deny that.

“Right.”

I bypassed him, rolling my eyes. I walked straight towards the beer coolers, vanishing into the crowd. He kept an eye on me the rest of the night—It was unnerving to say the least.

The college crowd would come rolling into Rosies taking it over on weekend nights, after working their day shift summer jobs. Everyone had one, Mine? At The Beacon and Abby’s? at her moms cozy bookshop up the street, called The Salty Quill.

Locals brought their own coolers to Rosie's once it past about 9:45 pm. That was usually the time when the shack stopped serving but allowed us the west end beach area for bonfires; so long as the crowd was well behaved and of age. Well, most of us anyway.

Rosies, being a staple in Lighthouse Point, had remained standing there since the early 70s. The sixteen-by-eighteen-foot shack, painted a weathered red with simple white trim, still stood as a local fixture. The red-and-white outlined lettering of "ROSIE'S SHACK" marked its ongoing presence. A small, hand-painted rose graced one end. A large service window hinted at its daily function, and a few bright, multi-colored wooden tables sat outside, ready for customers. These tables, a temporary splash of color would be neatly stowed away at closing time. It was clearly still the hub it had always been, a right of passage for locals each summer. So when tourists occasionally came trekking in, it boiled my blood to say the least.

My favorite ritual was reading Rosie's plaque on the side of the shack with Abby.

“if ya don't behave by the rules a’ the shack, ya neva comin’ back, Shoobie .”

- Rosie “shacklife” Torrence, 1974”

She’d been gone years now, but her spirit lingered, woven into the boards of the shack, into the nights that belonged to us. For so many, it was just a weekend hangout. For me, it was the place for family, where stories began, and sometimes where they ended.

And tonight, as the fire cracked and the tide whispered against the shore, I couldn’t shake the sense that one of those stories had just started.

Flashback: Delilah. What's it like in New York City? :

I loved hanging out at the Salty Quill after those dreamy morning shifts at the Beacon. Whatever films had flickered across the screen that day followed me like ghosts, and it always felt right to end up in that little bookshop down the boardwalk. If the silver screen was my escape, then the Quill was the place that gave that escape a voice.

At fourteen, I had this habit—if a film script really hooked me, I’d race down to the shop, scan the screenplay, print it out, and study it word for word. Dialogue, structure, rhythm—I plastered them across my bedroom walls like talismans. Between Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and Curtiz’s Casablanca, there they were: pages curling at the edges, a shrine to my obsession.

Delilah Melas, Abby’s mother, was the one who fed that fire. She made me believe the world stretched farther than Lighthouse Point, that dreams didn’t have to die here in the salt air. She’d once chased her own ambitions beyond the shoreline—followed a musician to the city, followed the idea that stories could save her. For a while, she even believed they had.

But the city took more than it gave. Abby’s father never came home from a gig one night in ’96, lost to an alleyway and the opioids that swallowed so many of that era. And though Delilah stayed in New York a little longer, it wasn’t love for him that rooted her there—it was what came next.

It was the call. I’ve imagined it so many times, even though I wasn’t there—the sound of Delilah’s voice cracking down the line, the coil of the phone cord twisting in her hand.

“Hello? Hi, who is this?” Her voice light, unknowing.

“Yes… this is she.” A pause. Then the silence lengthened, and with it came the grief.

“What? Are you sure?” she whispered, shrinking into the receiver.

“And… the baby?” Her voice faltered. “She’s… okay?”

Her tears came like waves, the soundless kind that hollows you out from the inside. She pressed her hand against her chest, the floor beneath her turning foreign. Her baby cried from the bassinet by the kitchen, but Delilah could barely breathe.

“To lose a sister…” she thought. “To lose a soulmate?”

That was the night something inside her cracked. Not just the loss of Abby’s father, but the loss of her childhood best friend—Helen Wheeler, my mother.

When she came home with Abby in her arms, it wasn’t just to return. It was to atone.

From then on, our lives became knotted together in ways no one else could understand. Delilah and I were two anchors on the same rusted boat, each dragged down by different weights. Hers was the guilt of leaving, of not being here when Helen needed her. Mine was the hollow absence of a father who had vanished long before I could remember his face.

Our anchors were different, but the chain was the same. And though we never said all of it aloud, we always knew. There were times I caught her looking at me with a shadow in her eyes—as if she saw Helen in me, and all the ways she had failed her. Times I couldn’t look in the mirror without wondering if my father was still out there, living as though we never existed.

We carried those silences like salt in our blood. Abby was Delilah’s light, her flame—but it was me she shared that shadow with. Two lives tethered to the same boat, drifting, haunted, always circling back to the same loss.

In the fall of 1998, Delilah put down the pen and opened the Salty Quill. She built it for the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who felt the world tilted against them. She said it was for Abby, but I knew it was also for me—for Helen’s daughter, who needed another kind of mother.

My mom’s death was called a tragedy, an unsolved case, a home invasion gone wrong. Some said it was a drifter, others whispered about an escaped patient from a city psych ward. The papers buried it as an accident of proximity, but none of them knew her. None of them knew that she was more than the girl who died alone in a beach shack.

Delilah knew. And in her knowing, she carried the weight.

Her silence, my father’s absence, my mother’s ghost—we were bound by the same thread of loss, two anchors dragging from the same battered boat. Each of us carried our own weight, our own secrets, yet the tide always seemed to pull us back to Lighthouse Point. Maybe it was guilt, maybe it was love. Maybe both.

What I know is this: Delilah stayed. She stayed for Abby. She stayed for me. And in staying, she kept Helen alive in ways the rest of us couldn’t. That was her anchor, and in time, it became mine too.

Shoobie, don't bother me:

The memory ebbed, leaving only the pull of the present….

Back on the beach, the night swelled with laughter, clinking cans, and reggae drifting from someone’s Bluetooth speaker. A group nearby sang off-key, but Abby and I didn’t care—we danced, arms thrown around each other, shouting choruses until our throats burned.

Somewhere between pong matches and bad karaoke, the shine wore off. I’d done the rounds—caught up with old classmates, listened to stories of majors and semesters away, and even had my fill of cheap beer. Now I was restless. Bored, maybe. Abby was busy chatting with an ex who looked smug and she looked anything but, so I slipped away, climbing the sandy mounds to my usual hiding spot.

From up there, I could watch without being seen. Abby knew my habit well enough; over the years she’d grown used to me peeling off from big crowds. Sometimes I blamed anxiety, sometimes just exhaustion from being “the sad story.” The girl with the dead mom. The cautionary tale.

Not that Abby ever treated me like that. She was a true extrovert, radiant even when she didn’t try to be. An actress, through and through. She sauntered into rooms like she owned them, and people—especially boys—always noticed her first. I’d learned not to mind. She was sunshine, I was shade. Yin and Yang. And yet, our dark humor stitched us together tighter than anything else. That was our balance.

The only other person who ever understood me like that was Hunter Mariner, but he was still out west in San Diego.