The Truth About That Summer

sixty-two

I do as I told Luke I would and stop at the beach on the way home. It's quiet today, only a handful of families lingering about now, slowly tidying up their things, kids still chasing seagulls while their moms pack their toys.

I sink into the sand, cool without the sun beating down on it, and let the evening breeze pass over me, closing my eyes and inhaling deeply.

The low-tide smell of seaweed greets my nose. I've always loved that smell.

A shout in the distance pops my eyes open. Two small children, edging closer and closer to the water, laugh and shriek as the cold water creeps towards their toes. It was their mother I heard, yelling for them to stay close. They would be leaving soon.

My head tilts as I watch the children disobey her. The smaller of the two, a young girl with two curly pigtails, hops into the shallow water, splashing her dry t-shirt. The larger one, the boy, simply watches, looking over his shoulder towards his mom, and back to the girl again and again.

In the end, he takes the girl by the hand and drags her up the sand, back to their things and disappointed mom. The mother complains about the wet shirt and the girl seems to stomp her feet.

That's when I look away, giving them privacy as my mind is sucked into a memory.

Casey and I were older than those kids. I was probably about seven, my rebellious streak already exhausting mom, something she told our father often.

That day, she'd told me not to wade through the shallow pools left in the rocks from high tide. She had a whole list of reasons: the rocks were slippery and sharp, covered in slicing barnacles. I could fall and cut myself, or worse, crack my head and drown. The pools were home to lots of pinching creatures.  It would hurt horribly if they got me, she said.

I didn't listen. Casey was nearby, but not in the rocks like me. He was busy in the sand, building a mega castle, extending his moat as long as he could. Luke was with him, too, carrying buckets of sea water to their castle, pouring it into the moat, and repeating the process again. Each time he returned, the water had soaked into the sand again.

I didn't want to do that. I don't know where the Coopers were that day, or Brynn. So that left me to entertain myself.

Either way, I was being careful as I climbed through the boulders. I watched every step, purposefully avoiding any sharp barnacles or particularly slick rocks. I side-stepped icky green algae and kept my eyes peeled for any creepy crawlers in the shallow pools.

The creepy crawlers were the whole point, though. I liked plucking tiny crabs from the warm water, letting them crawl across my fingers before dropping  them back into the tidepools, watching them flutter slowly into the murky sand again.

Sometimes I found hermit crabs, too. I always planned on taking them home, hiding them from Mom. But I never did.

Finding a particularly flat rock, I looked over my shoulder and found Mom's nose in a book. Settling onto the rock, I hung my feet in the tide pool, the water nice and hot from the sun.

I loved how warm it was. I remember closing my eyes and soaking it in a little before getting to work.

Creeping forward, so far forward that my nose almost touched the surface of the salty water, I gently peeled small stones from the sand, hoping to find a new, tiny friend beneath them.