by Jen Malone
We walk in relative silence for a bit, our only conversation having to do with the biting wind and the frigid sand oozing between our toes. It was sixty-five degrees this afternoon, and at home, a few miles inland, the night air still felt balmy, but here on the coast’s edge, with the wind whipping off the water, it’s downright cold. I clutch the blanket closer to my body, but remain steadfast in my quest.
When I notice Will staring at me, I point to a spot in the distance where the crescent beach begins to curl in on itself. “President Roosevelt—Theodore, not FDR—once delivered a speech at a hotel up there.”
“And she’s back!” Will says.
I squint at him. “What does that mean?”
“You’ve just been acting a little . . . different . . . tonight, that’s all. But that was a hundred percent Decker thing to say!”
We’re only halfway to the vague destination I’d indicated, but I drop my blanket. “Here looks good.”
I don’t address his comment. Contrary to the presidential trivia that slipped out unbidden, I have no interest in bringing Decker to the party tonight, nor any other version of regular me. Tonight’s me is dangerous and mysterious and a little bit off-balance, and Will needs to roll with that, because he’s not getting anyone else.
Not tonight.
Fortunately, he follows my lead and deposits his gear next to the blankets. I immediately unfurl the umbrella and jam it into the fluffy sand, rocking it back and forth to drive it deeper.
“Hey, whoa! Easy!” Will steps behind me and puts his hands over mine, slowing my rhythm. “It helps to twist it down a bunch first, then you rock.”
Do I like having Will boxing me in, his body bumping against mine? I consider it, and decide I might. That maybe it could even enhance the distraction effect. “That’s what she said,” I murmur, adding a little innuendo to a flirtation we’ve both been keeping very PG thus far.
He laughs, and I duck out from between his arms and grab one of the shovels. “Should I do you or do you want to do me?”
“That’s what she said,” he replies, grinning.
I lie on the sand, tucking my arms by my side and stretching my legs. “I meant who wants to be first getting covered by sand. But you were too slow, so it’s me!”
My eyes glitter with challenge now, and not an easygoing, flirty one.
“Um, okayyyy.” Will’s normal confidence is wavering as he tries to track my swinging moods. I half expect him to call bullshit on my behavior and hop the T home—the Blue Line has a station just a few blocks down. But he doesn’t. He drops to his knees and begins pushing mounds of sand into the hollows of my hips. My body is humming with a restless energy that makes it difficult to hold still, so when he switches to scooping handfuls and drizzling them over my jeans, I’m grateful for the weight of it, grounding me.
Will pushes sand into me, dumps it onto me . . . but he doesn’t pat it down to hold it in place. For the most part, he’s keeping his hands from directly touching me; I can sense he’s still puzzling out what’s going on with me and whether he should ask about it. He shouldn’t. Rivulets of sand escape from each side of my kneecaps.
After a few minutes he breaches the silence. “I can’t remember, were you there the time my parents took us to the sand sculpting competition here, or was it just Alex who came?”
“The what?”
“I guess that answers my question.” He moves to the end of my body and covers my feet, cementing them into place. “They hold the International Sand Sculpting Festival here every July, or at least they used to, I’m not sure if they still do. These sand artists from all over the world create unbelievable sculptures throughout the course of a couple days. Then there’s judging the last day and they shut down part of the road and set up a street fair. It’s fun.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Sand artists? That’s a real thing?”
“You mock, but I’m telling you, they are seriously talented. You should see pictures.”
I take a deep breath, fighting to rein in the instability pulsing in my veins, urging myself to relax into the here and now, to find my banter, to let Will provide the escape from reality I’m craving. Exhaling, I try. “If only something existed that could show us anything, anywhere, at any time and was small enough to fit in your pocket and connected to, I don’t know, some kind of web of information—”
Will cuts me off. “Shut it, smartass. Point taken.”
He rocks back on his heels, brushes his hands on his pant legs, and pulls out his phone. After typing for a few seconds, he holds the screen a couple feet above my face and slowly scrolls through a photo gallery.
I was picturing sandcastles, but these are so much more; they’re huge and detailed sculptures of all types. Pirate boats that are practically life-sized, enormous sea monsters rising from under the sand, and two people embracing. Some are abstract and others are incredibly intricate. They all command my attention. I can’t wrap my brain around how they could be made out of regular beach sand.
“Wow! They sculpt these in a couple of days?” I ask.
“Yup.”
“But what about high tide?”
“They do them up there, away from the water line.” He gestures toward an area behind me, closer to the sidewalk and the open-air pavilions lining it.
“Don’t they need the sand to be wet to make it stick together?” The castles of my own happy beach days were all constructed in the low tide flats.
“They use hoses. It’s big-time.”
Will tucks his phone back into his jacket and shrugs. He moves above me and begins filling in the scoop of my shoulders, leaving my neck and head free. Now that we’re in the rhythm of a conversation and the sand covering my chest is as heavy and comforting as the weighted vest my dentist uses when she takes X-rays, the adrenaline buzz I’ve been riding since running out of my house earlier begins to recede. I still can’t stomach thinking about my fight with Sibby or the words my parents spoke when they thought I wasn’t listening, but at least I can hold focus without my attention jerking here, there, and everywhere.
“And then what, they just knock them over at the end?” I ask.
“I assume so? Or maybe they leave them to fall down on their own? I’m not sure—we never stuck around for that part.”
“New subject. That’s depressing.”
Will coughs in surprise.
I try to turn my head to see him, but my movement causes my shoulders to break free of their sandy constraints.
“Hey!” he protests.
“Sorry. Why’d you react like that?”
He shrugs and resumes his task. “I wouldn’t have expected to hear a girl who erases her own chalkboards every week say that knocking down sandcastles is depressing.”
“Oh. Well, that’s different. I acknowledge there is some level of craftsmanship to what I do, but you just showed me a museum-worthy, twenty-foot Grecian god. I color chalkboards that give you the price of cupcakes.”
Will laughs. “There’s a distinct value to that.”
“Yeah, a literal one: three ninety-five each, a half-dozen for twenty.”
Will shifts to my right side, his hands methodical as he scoops and releases piles of sand grains. “I meant to your artistic contribution.”
“Maybe. But no one is crying tears when I erase a menu, least of all me.”
“So are you saying that you would feel sad about erasing your work if your designs were more intricate? Or twenty feet tall? What’s the qualifying factor? Won’t your mural be both those things?”
“But my mural won’t be erased—it’s paint, not chalk.”
Will glances at me, and he seems to be guarding his words when he says, “So that gives it more value, in your eyes? The idea that it’s permanent?”
My knee-jerk response is to answer, “No!” but then I make myself consider his question. “Maybe? I guess there’s some value in how many weeks it will take to create. Compared to an hour or two on one of my chalkboards. You know
? Which is not to suggest it wouldn’t be heartbreaking to see two days of work on a sand sculpture knocked over in thirty seconds, though.”
“You would really cry over sand mandalas then.”
He huffs an annoyed breath when I move my neck again, to try to see him. “Stay still!”
“What are those?” I ask.
“Something Tibetan monks make. They start with an insanely detailed geometrical design, and then take days, or weeks in some cases, using small fragile tubes and funnels to fill in every tiny shape with colored sand. I’m talking ridiculously detailed and delicate designs.”
He retrieves his phone once more and types for a minute. “Here, screen time!”
Will tucks his head next to mine and extends his arm straight over us so we can watch a sped-up time-lapse video showing a group of orange-robed monks bent over a table, completing a pattern that looks like a hundred stained glass window designs, each fitting inside of one another. I’m intrigued and not at all expecting what happens at the end when . . . they brush the whole thing away. All those endless hours of tedious, painstaking work just—poof! Gone. A tabletop of swirled sand is all that remains when the music stops.
“What just happened? Why did they do that?” I’m incensed.
“To honor the Buddhist belief that all material things are transitory.”
Danger! Danger! This is edging far too close to subjects I’m not considering tonight—not ever, but especially not tonight.
Will rolls to his side and rises into kneeling position again. He pushes sand into my left side this time and I’m nearly encased. I try wiggling my fingertips and toes underneath the sand to see how trapped I am, and my big toe on my left foot pops through.
Will swats at it. “I said to hold still!”
“Sorry.”
He ignores my apology and resumes his task. “I don’t know. The mandalas and the sand sculptures—I think part of what makes them so magical and awe-inspiring is the fact that they won’t last. If they were made of marble and in a permanent museum exhibit, I don’t think they’d capture people’s attention the same way. You’re kind of breathless that they exist and also sad at the same time because the beauty is fleeting and you can’t keep it.” He shrugs. “It makes you appreciate them more while they’re here.”
He moves back to my feet and the sand now fills in my clavicle enough to prevent me from lifting my neck to watch his progress, so I’m stuck with my head turned toward the ocean in the distance.
The reckless abandon I felt earlier is gone now, my mood overtaken by his words, the steady slap of waves, and the drowsy weight of the sand. I’m quiet, but far from peaceful. I won’t find peace tonight, not after everything that happened earlier or Will’s contemplative words now. I’d happily settle for the blissful oblivion of escape he’s always offered in the past, but that’s not coming either.
The harder I stare into an endless black sea that bleeds into an even more endless black sky, the more I get swallowed up by the atmosphere. The water is emptiness. The sky is emptiness. The shadows are emptiness. And I am small and inconsequential and lost. A hollowness twinges in my belly and I fight to center myself in the sensation of the sand blanketing me or the car horn sounding far behind me, because if that hollowness goes spinning off, I’m scared I might go with it.
And then it does. There are fingers encasing my brain, starting to squeeze, but instead of feeling it in my head, it’s in my stomach, where acid bubbles over, and in my chest, where hysteria climbs.
My limbs are slogging through a swamp I am certainly no feral goddess of, as I thrash my head and try in desperation to free myself from the prison of a hundred thousand tiny grains holding me captive. Will appears in my field of vision, his movements also frantic as he shovels sand off me. “It’s okay! It’s okay—calm down, Decks!”
I finally twist free and scramble up, jumping away from him. “You BURIED ME!” I accuse him.
“You asked me to! I didn’t know you were claustrophobic!”
“I’m not claustrophobic!! I’m— I might be—” But I can’t say the word dying. I can’t ever say the word dying, because then it will be out there, in the realm of possibility. “And you—you—BURIED ME!” My finger is an accusation, jabbing through the air at him as I back away. I angrily scrub the sand from my sweater with my other hand.
“Oh shit, I’m—I’m so—” He takes a breath and tries again. “I’m sorry. I was only trying to follow your lead with your big plan for a nighttime ‘day’ at the beach.”
The mania is back, heating my blood, stealing my logic. Because, yes, of course I was the one who ordered him to do it and it’s not like my brain went to “bury” at first either. But I don’t care. I don’t care. My skin is crawling and I’m desperate again.
This isn’t working. None of this is working.
Will, frozen in place, is watching me warily, his palms turned up in defeat.
Over his shoulder, a wave crashes ashore and moonlight forms a path to the water, beckoning me, and a new escape plan forms.
“Let’s go swimming.” I issue the words as a dare, but inside I haven’t quite decided if I hope he’ll agree or if he’ll try to stop me.
Will tries to play them off as a joke, snapping his fingers. “Darn. Too bad there’s not another polar bear plunge scheduled until next January.”
His deflection firms my resolve. I know what I want now. “I’m not kidding! Our night needs this,” I insist.
To prove how serious I am, I yank my sweater over my head, then my T-shirt, standing in front of him in my bra. His eyes widen and his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. I hold his stare as I peel off one leg of my jeans, then the other. I’m hit with a rush of power and I like it. It has a dark edge to it, but it’s far from the awful nothingness of a few minutes ago, and that’s something.
My hands go to my hips and my head tilts. “Are you afraid of a little cold water, Will?” I coo. “Don’t be afraid. Let’s not be afraid tonight, okay? Pact?”
I hold my hand out for him to shake, but he ignores it. His face is now full of concern, which I pretend not to notice. I don’t want to imagine what this twisty-turny night must look like from his perspective. What I must look like.
“I don’t think this is responsible, Decker,” he says, calm and reasonable.
But I am neither calm nor reasonable. I don’t know if he’s referring to me stripping down to my underwear or my suggesting a frolic in frigid water, but I don’t need clarification because my answer would be the same either way.
“Fuck responsible.”
“Decks—” He takes a step toward me, hand outstretched, but I dip to the side and step away from his grasp, cackling. I turn and race across the sand, letting the salty air invade my lungs. My ankles sink deep with each step and I’ve only gone about thirty feet before I begin to experience hints of the same fatigue from the derby track, happening so much sooner than it did there. I slow slightly, darting a look behind me to see if Will is following—he isn’t—but I don’t let anything stop me. I hit the flat sand and my legs move more easily now, my breath deepening. And then I’m at the water’s edge. I halt and take a single breath before plunging in.
The water is an icicle to my heart, sharp and harsh and unforgiving.
Yes.
More.
I dip lower, nearly immersed now.
Alive, alive, alive! my brain screams.
A wave takes my feet out from under me, tossing me through a roll, but I scramble for purchase and reemerge in the shallows as the remains of it pull back to sea. I stand, throw my arms wide and toss my neck back, spinning in the surf as I soak up the moon on my face.
I’m shot through with starlight.
Alive, alive, alive!
“Amelia!!” Will calls. He’s panicked—I can hear it in his voice and see it in his posture as he jogs to a stop a few feet away, just out of reach of the creeping surf. He holds my belongings in his hands. Dropping my clothes, he opens the bl
anket in outstretched arms and pleads, “Come out! Please!”
But I only grin at him, feet planted wide, as water swirls around my ankles and droplets of it cluster in salt-clumped chunks of my hair, releasing in streams down my bare shoulders and collecting in the cups of my bra.
A strand of seaweed cuffs my calf as the ocean attempts to lay claim to me. But no one and nothing can own me in this moment. I shake it free and finally move, striding toward Will, strong and sure along the carpet unfurled by a single strip of moonlight.
I am a selkie, trailing luminescence.
Alive, alive, alive!
I walk straight into the blanket and Will closes it around me and steps to my outside, patting me dry with movements as impersonal as any guard at an airline security checkpoint.
No. Not okay with me.
We’re alive—I’m alive—and there is nothing impersonal about that, and he needs to feel the enormity of it too. I press my ass into his hands, spinning to face him and weaving my fingers into his hair.
I am a siren, gold-throated bargains. Alive.
My intent must be telegraphed on my face because his eyes widen. “Decker, I—”
I rise on tiptoes and press my lips against his. They are heat personified, his breath steamy as I nudge his mouth open with my tongue. For one faltering instant, I wonder if he’s going to push me away; I even acknowledge that I’d deserve it for taking, instead of asking.
But then his fingers press into my hips and he drags me closer, a groan escaping his throat.
I am a sea witch, tidal tendrils and tremors.
I smile into his mouth, and curl my fingers deeper into his hair.
Alive, alive, alive.
His breath winds through me like smoke wisps, the kiss tangling my brain so intently it takes several seconds to register a noise that’s out of place among the crashing waves and the swirling wind. The moment I isolate the sound I rip my mouth from Will’s, dropping to the sand and tossing my sweater and jeans over my shoulder to reach my coat underneath, then digging through its pockets to locate the ringing.
If it’s Telemarket Suzy, so help me I will smash this phone to pieces.
