If You Remember ‘Coastline,’ Don’t… (Part 1)

It’s hard to purposefully forget something. The more you try not to think about it, the more you think about it. And the more you think about it, the more you obsess over it. You try to keep it tucked away in the back of your mind, but now the back of your mind is the only place you visit. You become engulfed with it, with the idea of forgetting. This happened to me, and now, it’s ruined my life. This all started around 10 years ago, when I started to dig though some of my old stuff. It was my Junior year of high school, and my parents wanted me to help my grandparents clean up their attic. I wanted to go hang out with my friends, maybe get a little high, but my parents insisted I went and helped. So, reluctantly, I took the 30 minute drive  to my grandparents house. “Zeke!” my grandma said as she welcomed me with open, wrinkled arms. I hated that name. My grandparents are good people, but one thing bad about them is the way they treat me. I’m 16 years old and they still treat me like a child. Maybe it was because I was their only grandchild, or maybe because they hate to see me grow up, but sometimes it got annoying. Nowadays, I miss it.

I actually enjoyed cleaning the attic. It was like going through a time machine, reliving memories that have been tucked away for years in the back of my mind, collecting dust. Every time I picked up a photo of a 3-year-old me stuffing his face full of chocolate cake, or one of the many Junior Pro Soccer team trophies I got from when I was first getting into soccer. Back then, I was really into it, collecting players cards and buying anything that slightly resembled a soccer ball. But by Sophomore year, soccer didn’t excite me as much as it used to. I was still good, but instead of practicing, I threw my soccer career away for weed and women. As the attic got clearer, the more I remembered. Until, I found the thing that started this all. An old, vintage TV with a Nintendo 64 plugged into its side. I was instantly sucked though time, sent back to when I was only 5 or 6, when I would play this low-budget children’s game named “Coastline”.

All of it came flushing in like a flood, all the times I would come rushing home from school, begging my parents to go to my grandparents house to play this gameThe main character was Goldy, this goldfish who lives by the seashore. There was another fish, a smaller one, pretty sure her name was something like Emma or something. Her and Goldy had some type of relationship, but it wasn’t something romantical, I think. It was more like a father-daughter type relationship. You would play as Goldy would go around doing jobs. There was Benny the Bear and Geeky the Goose, making you do all types of odd jobs they were too lazy to do. And I remembered the villain of this game, Warthead the Wolf  or something like that. He was this old, withered down wolf who had a big wart on his head. I remember the wolf would make a deal with you and then, then I forgot.

My mind just went blank. I felt like I knew what happened next, but my mind won’t let me remember. It was like something was blocking it. I started scavenging through the old cart of Nintendo games, looking for this lost game. But I couldn’t find it. I asked my grandparents about the game. “Hey, have y’all seen that ‘Coastline’ I used to play all the time?” I asked my grandma. She looked at me with a blank look on her face. “What ‘Coastline’ game?” She asked me, in the most confused tone I’ve ever heard. “That game I used to play all the time as a child, the one with the goldfish, do you remember it?” I asked. “Hm… I don’t think I’ve ever seen you play a game like that before, in fact I don’t remember even owning that type of game ” What. I was stunned. I vividly remembered all the missions, whether it be to give the fox a basket of berries or help the bear build a tent. And I played it all the time, how could she have forgotten? My grandpa was the same way. “What game?” he said when I  asked him the same question. Maybe they forgot, they did have a whole game store worth of games in their attic, so maybe it just slipped their old, frail brain. But that doesn’t explain the fact I couldn’t find the game in the attic. Maybe they threw it away, or maybe I just missed it in my frantic searching. Whatever the reason was, I tried to forget about it. My grandparents thanked me for my work and I drove off. I was halfway done on the highway when my mom called me. “You get the work done?” Mom said as she boiled another pot of coffee.

“Yes, Ma”

“Did you actually work?”

“Yes,”

“Sure. Just make sure to be here by 8”

“Ok, I will”

I lied. And she knew, but she didn’t care. I could come home drunk as an alcoholic and she won’t even bat an eye. She would just scroll on her phone, reading the same post over and over again. So I turned to the Walmart parking lot, where all my hippie friends hung out. “Yo, Zeke!” Kyle called out. “Dude where have you been?” He asked me with his scratchy, high pitched voice. I seriously think that kid has never hit puberty. But somehow, the girls found him attractive, I just found him douchey. But he was the one with weed, so I had to deal with it. “I had to work at my grandparents.” I told him while lighting my roll. Even with the weed, I still couldn’t get my mind off Coastline, no matter how hard I tried. “Hey guys I got somethi…” Kyle or someone started to trail about something unimportant. I just couldn’t stop thinking about that game. I was trying to run away from it, but I ended up chasing it. Why was I trying so hard to find this game? What about it was so addicting? I knew I couldn’t ask my parents about it, they would just tell me to forget about it. But I couldn’t just forget about it, there was something about this game, and it was destroying me. I needed answers.

“Hey, did y’all ever play this one game called ‘Coastline’?”

Everyone looked at me. “Dude, what are you talking about? You haven’t said a word all this time and now is the greatest time to start a fucking conversation?” Tyler said, in the harshest way imaginable. “Just a game I used to play as a kid,” I answered with a defensive tone. “Well maybe don’t bring it up in the middle of me talking about my dead uncle, asshole”  Rebecca said, obviously trying to hold back tears. “Dude, you’re too focused on the past… you haven’t even thought about taking a job,” Kyle said. “Since when the fuck did you become my parent?” I shot back. I knew he was right. Everyone was talking about their future these days, and I didn’t know why. I never really thought about that stuff back then. All I did was go to school and go home, maybe get high in between. I had no time to argue with anyone, and I was already embarrassed enough, so I packed away my stash and drove out of there. God, I felt like an absolute jackass when that happened. I was so obsessed with this stupid video game from my childhood that I couldn’t even notice someone talking about something so personal. What makes it worse that it was from the hottest chick I knew too.

It was around 10 when I got home. My mom was passed out on the table, surrounded by overdue bills and unpaid taxes. And my dad was still at work, which was basically his second home. I walked right past her, heading straight to my room. I tried getting some rest, but I don’t know if it was a mix of the high or my curiosity, I just couldn’t. All on my mind was that damn game. I just needed to play it again. So I got on my computer and got to searching.

I searched “Coastline old nintendo game” Nothing. I was confused.

I then searched “Coastline nintendo 64”, 0 things related to the thing I was searching for.

What? I could excuse my grandparents not remembering this game, but Google? What was happening? I started looking up the characters in the game. Goldy the Goldfish, Benny the Bear, ect. Absolutely nothing. I looked through pages upon pages of google, scrolled down so many forums but there were zero things related to the game. I was so confused, why wasn’t anything working? Did I imagine this entire game in my mind? No, I couldn’t have, I knew this game was real, but it felt like the entire world was telling me it wasn’t. And it’s not like I could just forget about it, I couldn’t. It’s like I had to prove the game existed. It wasn’t just calling my name, it was basically screaming it. I stayed up all night looking up thing after thing, trying to catch this lost game. And yet I couldn’t find anything. That’s when I received a text.

“How do you know about coastline?” Stella texted me.

This came as a shock. Someone else knew about Coastline. Finally. Stella was one of the junkies at the parking lot. She was freshman, she should have been a sophomore just like the rest of us, but she was held back for grades. Which is surprising, since she was the only reason why I had a decent grade in math in 8th grade. She and I had been friends for a couple of years now, but I didn’t really know her, so it came as a surprise when I received this text from her.

Me: “How do you know?”

Stella: “I heard you talking about it in the parking lot. I wanna talk about it”

Me: “THANK GOD. I thought i was the only one who knew this game”

Stella: “What do you remember from the game?”

Me: “What”

Stella: “What do you remember doing in the game? Do you remember the ending? ”

Me: “I remember doing missions for the town folk. Then I remember making a deal with that wolf character”

Stella: “And after that?”

Me: “Idk”

Stella: “Are you serious?”

Me: “Yes”

Stella: “Are you sure you don’t remember anything after that?”

Me: “Pretty sure”

Stella: “Damn it, cause I don’t remember anything after that either”

Me: “Really? That weird”

Stella: “Dude, we need to talk about this, something wrongs going on”

Me: “What?”

Stella: “Just meet me at the library tomorrow”

That’s where the conversation ended. I didn’t know how to respond. I thought there was a breakthrough, but Stella just knew as much as I did. I was left with more questions than answers. If the game exists, then why didn’t it show up anywhere? And if she knew about the game, why didn’t she speak up when I asked if any knew about it? Was she hiding something? I was so confused. Things got even more confusing when I got an email. It was from a person named “dont_trust_the_wolf”. It simply said:

“stop trying to remember it, please”

TO BE CONTINUED….