Lexie

by Audrey Couloumbis

  “We have a problem,” Ben said as we neared the water.

  I sat in the canal, pushing sand ahead of me with my feet, mainly because my arms were tired. “What’s that?”

  “This canal is long.”

  “So?”

  “So there may not be enough water in that pool to carry him all the way out to sea.”

  “Huh?”

  “The water from the pool is going to spread out along this canal,” Ben explained. “Some of it may soak in. He could get stuck halfway to the water’s edge. Beached.”

  I still wasn’t worried. We could pick up that shark by the tail and pull it to the water. Ben didn’t know this, of course. I asked, “What do you think we ought to do?”

  “Digging deeper might help,” he said.

  I lay back in the canal and wondered how to tell him about sand sharks. I thought maybe I should get Daddy to tell him, and I could pretend I didn’t know either. That seemed like a good plan. Only I was too tired to walk all the way back to the house.

  “If we dig deep enough,” he said, still figuring things out, “the ocean might come to him.”

  Well, that was it, of course. “We could wait,” I said. “The tide will come in again.”

  “I knew that,” Ben said. He looked tired too, but he didn’t stop digging, not until we finished.

  We stood up and let our arms hang at our sides as we stared out at the ocean for a while. My arms felt too heavy to lift and maybe Ben’s did too, because we moved up the shore to think the situation over some more. At least, that was what Ben said we were doing. I was resting.

  We sat close enough to study the shark. It seemed to be studying us back. “Maybe we should move further away,” Ben said. “It’s looking right at us.”

  I didn’t move. “I saw a big shark’s eyes up close once at the aquarium,” I said. “They don’t really seem to look at anything. I mean, they must, but their eyes are so flat or something, it’s too weird. I bet we look like paper dolls to them.”

  “You might be right,” Ben said. “Did you know that flies see hundreds of you when they look at you?”

  “Hundreds?”

  “Well. Thirty or so, at least,” he said. “And chameleons are stranger. They can see you from two angles at the same time.”

  “You got that off the science channel?”

  “Science class. I bet that water’s getting too warm.” I could hear him thinking up more work for us to do. He added, “Maybe we ought to bucket some cool water in to him.”

  “I’m getting hungry.” I sort of hoped he’d volunteer to go back and get us some lunch.

  Ben looked at me the way he’d been looking at the shark. “You’re getting sunburned.”

  I didn’t feel it till he brought it up. I’d forgotten to put on the sunscreen.

  I remembered Ben had gotten pink at first. Now he looked brown all over. “I shouldn’t have kept you out here working like this,” he said.

  I was only a little kid, that was what he really meant. “I can stay as long as you can.”

  “We dug a hundred feet, I bet,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything to this. I heard his stomach growl.

  There were people out on their decks, firing up grills. Also, there were a few sunbathers and a couple of swimmers out in the water. We’d been so busy I’d hardly looked at anybody else.

  “You could go back long enough to eat,” he said in that same voice he used with Harris. “You can bring something back for me.”

  He wouldn’t argue with me, which was okay. I didn’t really want to fight. I didn’t like to be treated like I was no more grown up than Harris either.

  “Nope,” I said. I lay back in the sand, wet and cool.

  “Girls are so stubborn,” he said in pretty much the same tone he used when he talked about the shark.

  I waited to see how that felt. It didn’t bother me.

  “I’ll go back and get buckets and something for us to eat,” he said, getting up.

  “I’ll come with you,” I said. I had to get my own lunch if I didn’t want to look like a little kid.

  “Somebody has to stand guard over the shark.”

  He had a point. In case someone thought the shark could be dangerous, or in danger, it needed a guard. “Okay, so I’ll go back for buckets and lunch,” I said. “You’re a better guard.”

  I trudged back to the house. Once I was up and moving, I wasn’t so tired. I found Daddy in the kitchen with Harris. Daddy didn’t look as happy about this as Harris did. Probably I didn’t either.

  “What’re you guys doing in here?”

  Daddy made a pile of potato chips next to his tuna sandwich. “Harris needs time to get used to new places.”

  There was a plastic road map spread out on the table. Harris had a bunch of tiny cars that he moved along the roads, making motor noises for each one.

  “He doesn’t like to go outside much right at first,” Daddy said. “Maybe later.”

  I looked at Harris. He wore a pair of swim trunks and no shirt, a little boy practicing for going to the shore.

  “Where’s Vicky?” I asked. The food was on the table. I started to make sandwiches for Ben and me.

  “The stuff she took made her sleepy. Where’s Ben?”

  I waved a hand toward the shore. I wanted to talk to Daddy. It was going to be harder with Harris listening in. I was pretty sure Harris was smarter than he looked.

  “No turkey?” I asked.

  “Vicky finished it off,” he said. “That allergy medicine made her hungry. I’ve got a whole lot of other stuff to eat.”

  “What does Ben like?” I asked Harris.

  A little yellow taxi zoomed over to choose Daddy’s egg salad. Harris putt-putted his cars around the salt and pepper shakers and bowls. It interested me that Harris made each of those little cars sound different.

  “Are there olives with pimientos?” I asked.

  “Would I forget your olives?” Daddy asked.

  Mom and I chop olives into our egg salad. He turned in his chair and rummaged around in the refrigerator for them. He called to them, singing, “Knockity, knock, knock.”

  “Who’s there?” I sang back. Harris’s motor puttered to a stop as he gave me a wide-eyed look.

  “Ol-live.”

  “Olive who?” I asked, still patting egg salad onto the bread.

  “Ol-luv you.” We both knock-knocked on the tops of our heads, the way we always did at the end of that joke. I probably got a little egg salad in my hair.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Harris tap the top of his own head.

  “Olives are on the shelf in the door,” I said, slapping bread on top of the sandwiches. This time I would have to eat them along with the sandwich instead of in it.

  Daddy opened the jar and offered the olives to Harris, who eyed them suspiciously. “Me first,” I said.

  “So what are you and Ben up to?” Daddy asked me as he swung the jar in my direction. Maybe I could take my share for the whole week before Harris put his fuzzy fingers into the jar.

  “Ben found something in the tide pool, and we dug a canal to let it swim back to the ocean.”

  Daddy gave me a curious look. “That sounds like work.”

  “Hard work,” I said. “We’re really, really tired of digging.”

  “Why don’t you quit?”

  I didn’t want to tell it in a way that Harris could repeat, in case he could repeat. I couldn’t say sand sharks don’t bite, but I had to get the point across.

  “You know those fish with fins that people are afraid of? Only some of them aren’t dangerous? Some people don’t know that about them. And I didn’t tell. Only now some people might feel stupid if I tell.”

  “I see,” Daddy said as I slipped the sandwiches into a plastic bag. “So you figure you’ll set it loose.”

  “That’s what I thought. At first. Only now I’m tired of the whole idea.” I got the bucket Daddy kept by the water heater and a bigger one th
at Mom had used to hold ice. They were cleaner than my bucket. I said, “I thought somebody else could tell.”

  “I hope not,” Daddy said. “Somebody tells now, you lose the big moment.”

  “What big moment?”

  “It’s hard work, sure, but when you’re done you have this great story. Both of you will be telling that story to each other for—well, for a long time.”

  I didn’t think Daddy was getting it. “I thought you could tell. Like neither one of us knew about certain fish.”

  “He won’t be fooled. Not for long,” Daddy said. “You’ve been coming out here too long not to know about … fish. And he’ll be mad at me too.”

  That was a no. My shoulders slumped. More digging.

  Daddy said, “Say, maybe Harris would li—”

  “Forget it,” I said before Harris could get a hopeful look in his eyes. “He can’t come.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Ben will worry about him getting eaten.”

  “Oh?” Daddy’s eyes widened. “Oh! I get it.”

  I said, “So is there any other idea you can think of to help me?”

  “You’ve already dug the canal, right?” Daddy leaned back in his chair. “The hard part’s done.”

  “I guess.”

  “Just get the thing back in the ocean.”

  I gave up. I got two cold sodas and put them in one bucket, the other bucket held the sandwiches and a bag of chips. Salt is good when you’re sweating.

  I was almost out the door when Daddy said, “I have two words of advice for you, Stanley.”

  He meant the Stanley who went into the jungle. I forget the whole story. “Yeah?”

  “Sunscreen.”

  So I put the sunscreen into the bucket with the sodas. I didn’t want to get it all over my hands until after I ate. There’s nothing worse than a sandwich that tastes like sunscreen.

  When I left, Daddy was singing his version of “My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean,” which Mom says he is not to sing in front of children, meaning me. Harris was motoring along to the tune.

  While I was gone, Ben had dug the canal deeper. I could stand in the deep end of it and the edge came up to my knees, the waves rushed up around my ankles. The water was really getting rough out there, the ocean seemed kind of loud.

  Ben ate both of his sandwiches and half of mine. He tried to look like he was thinking but I thought he was tired. We didn’t talk much. Good beachcombing stuff would wash up by morning, that was what I thought about while I ate.

  My sandwich was a little crunchy on one side from holding it with sandy fingertips. Ben’s had to be crunchy pretty much all over. He was Harris’s brother, all right.

  When he finished eating, he said, “It must have to be really brave to live out there all alone.”

  “The shark?” He must have been doing some thinking after all. “Maybe not as brave as a little fish.”

  “Well, yeah,” Ben said. “Not only the shark. It’s so big out there, that’s what I mean.”

  “I forgot you never saw the ocean before.” Right away, I knew I shouldn’t have said it. “Since you were little, I mean. It must’ve looked bigger then.”

  “I saw it in the movies,” he said.

  “I forgot for a minute,” I said. “I never saw”—I thought fast, and I thought big—“New York City. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “You’ve never been to New York?”

  “Have you?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You have to be pretty brave to live there all alone too.”

  I didn’t say anything. I was finished eating, so I started putting on sunscreen.

  “Of course, I’m not saying I was all alone.”

  “I knew what you meant.”

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “Me too.”

  I drank my whole soda, so I had to walk back to the house to use the bathroom. Daddy had moved the deck furniture down to the beach. Vicky sat at the table with Daddy, sipping iced coffee. She had her feet tucked up under her long skirt. “Did you set it free already?” she asked.

  I guessed Daddy had told her. Or she’d heard me tell Daddy. “Not yet,” I said. “Way not yet.”

  Harris puttered around them, stopping for a moment to raise his arms and make weird noises like a garbage truck or maybe a dump truck. I climbed the steps to the deck.

  If this had been a usual day at the beach, Mom and Daddy would’ve been swimming for hours already. I’d be messing around at the edge of the water with my finds or paddling close to shore. I don’t much like swimming when the water is rough, but Daddy does. His hair was still dry. It was not a usual day.

  “You put on any of that sunscreen?” Daddy asked when I went back outside.

  “Yep.”

  “Everybody gets one bad burn, right at the start of summer,” Daddy said. “Better put on a little more.”

  So Vicky rubbed some of her suntan lotion on me, getting the spot between the shoulder blades where I could hardly reach. It felt cool and nice—not too cold, the way it does when I have a bad burn. It felt better having Vicky worry about my sunburn than thinking about old summers.

  “Caught it in time, I think,” she said. “We’ll put a little more on when this dries on you. Arms, shoulders, and back, that’s where you need it most.”

  I guarded while Ben walked back to use the bathroom. I rubbed in a lot more sunscreen. I rubbed it in until I couldn’t soak it up anymore.

  When Ben came back, he told me Daddy told him he could have just walked into the ocean. “Is that what you’re going to do from now on?” I asked.

  “What I’m not going to do,” Ben said, “is follow Jim into the water.” A person could get to appreciate Ben.

  When we poured the first buckets of water into the pool, we saw the water level had been falling off pretty fast. The shark had been swimming in much smaller circles.

  I started to feel better about this project. The water in the pool wouldn’t have lasted till the tide came in. “If you didn’t find this shark, it would have died out here,” I said. “You saved its life.”

  “Thanks,” he said, “for helping.”

  Water is heavy. That was what Ben told me to make it okay that I could only carry half a bucket’s worth on my own. We tried filling my bucket to the top and sharing the carrying of it. Ben was too much taller than I was and we spilled a lot of the water.

  Ben hauled both buckets by himself when I got so tired I spilled a lot of the water all by myself. He was so nice about it I sort of wished I’d told him about sand sharks. He’d gotten the water level up when Mrs. Brady walked by with her dog, Prissy, on the end of a leash.

  I felt like just sitting there, but I got into position to guard.

  Ben went up to her like a policeman and said, “Ma’am, I recommend you carry the canine. Sharks have been sighted in the area.”

  Just like that.

  I dropped to my knees as Mrs. Brady hurried away.

  When he came back to me, he said, “Why are you laying with your face in the sand?”

  I made sure all the laughter was out of me before I rolled over. “I think it helps sunburn,” I said.

  “Huh. Well, when you’re finished, I don’t think you should stand so close to the pool like you were. The fresh seawater’s made the shark feel a little peppier.”

  He was right about that. It was swimming faster circles. Ben made a lot more trips, hauling two buckets each time. The top part of the pool was much wider than the bottom and took more water to fill.

  I lost count of how many buckets of water Ben carried. By the last trip, he had this horrible gritted-teeth look that made me afraid he would really be mad if he ever found out about sand sharks.

  “Let me pour the water in,” I said as he finished the last trip.

  “I don’t think you ought to get too close,” Ben said.

  “You’re doing all the work and it isn’t fair.”

  He gave in. “I’ll stand next to you and warn
you if he comes after you.”

  “Deal,” I said. I hoped I would sound kind of like I was fourteen. I couldn’t help grinning. I couldn’t stop it the whole time I poured. I kept grinning.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Ben asked.

  “It’s the sun,” I said.

  He looked worried. “Sunstroke?”

  I didn’t know what it was. Talking about sunstroke made me feel sort of weak. I lay back in the sand and let laughter trickle out of me. I did know what it was. Ben was such a worrier. I didn’t know why that seemed so funny.

  Anyway, he sat down on the sand and said in this really annoyed way, “Girls.” Even that didn’t make me straighten up. I thought about his serious face when he’d said, I recommend you carry the canine, and I laughed until the whole weird feeling leaked away.

  We dug some more.

  Daddy and Vicky and Harris walked over to take a look at the shark. I figured Vicky wore the long skirt to hide her puffy legs. She said she felt better, though.

  I worried at first that they’d do that grown-up thing of smirks and private looks. They were fine, they acted like they were touring the aquarium. Daddy held Harris in his arms as if the shark might actually be dangerous. The shark did its part and let its back fin skim the surface as it swam in circles. Harris was so impressed his motor shorted out.

  I heard Ben ask Daddy how long a tunnel he thought we’d dug. “Fifty feet, easy,” Daddy said.

  When he and Vicky left to walk further along the shore, they warned us to be careful. Ben said, “Yes, sir,” like he was in the army. And still they didn’t grin at each other.

  Well, Daddy looked like he might. Vicky frowned at him without even moving her eyebrows.

  “I wonder what that was about,” Ben said to me.

  “What?”

  “The death look.”

  “The death look?”

  “When she looks at you like that, you have to toe the line,” Ben said entirely seriously. “I wonder what Jim did.”

  I didn’t know if I should be mad. Who was Ben to talk about anything my daddy did? Then again, I knew what Daddy was being warned not to do and I felt better knowing Vicky could stop him with a look.