The Beach

She flailed around in the shallow waters, a movement that looked like drowning. She could have been a mermaid, the way her legs moved, slapping the wet sand and water. She could have been dying, if not for the thrill of laughter, of giggles all over her face like feathers, tickling her. She laughed for pure joy of finally being on the beach, of going to high school next year, of falling in love with idealism… she laughed for the world, and the sun and the salty water laughed with her.

Her vision was blurred because her glasses lay up on a towel, further along the strand. Not a single fine movement was visible to her, and she was almost totally blind to anything further than an arm’s length away.

She was nervous, flopping around in the shallows like a four year old taking swimming lessons. What if someone she knew where to walk by and recognize her? She was fourteen, she ought to be out tanning, she ought to be wearing a bikini. Instead, here she was, wearing a huge oversize T-shirt and a one piece black bathing suit. The day beamed down on her dark head, making her eyes squint tight against the sun.

She sat still for a moment, letting the water pool around her, cupping some of it in her hand. Raising it up to her face, she tasted the salt of it, like sweaty skin, and the grit of sand between her teeth. Her hair fell in wet tendrils down her back and she dreaded having to take a shower later, having to wash all the salinity out of her hair. “I wish he was here,” she whispered.

An idealism returned, coming from down the shoreline, walking steadily closer and closer until it did become real. The girl envisioned him as hard as she could in her mind, picturing the blue eyes, the wheaten hair, the slender figure. He was there on the shoreline, walking up to her, just a blurred image wearing black swim trunks.

Her heart pounded through her ears, making her brain swirl inside her skull. Her idealism was there. He was coming slowly and steadily, his hands swinging by his sides. She could smell the powder-fresh scent of him, but was it him? Her vision blurred and she squinted to see him clearer, afraid to move from the comfort of the cold water with the burning sun slapping it with its rays.

The idealism stopped, just a blur in black swim trunks. She saw the tan of his skin that she had been dying to run her fingers over… she could almost see the sparks of his blue eyes and the wheat of his hair. His name stopped in her throat… what if he was staring at her, not recognizing her without her glasses. What if it wasn’t really him at all, just a stranger? The girl was gripped with a sudden urge to run up the shore, grab her glasses, and stare at this figure until he either disappeared or was made known.

For a pounding minute, he stared at her, or seemed to. She teetered on the brink between wanting him to recognize her and wanting to disappear herself, not wanting to let him see her there, in her oversize T-shirt and black one piece. Like a five year old child, playing in the shallows. Her mouth opened to call out his name, to at least whisper it… and he began to walk away, a blur in black swim trunks, right down the shoreline, away from her… back into her mind, fading to an idealism once more…

She remembered to breathe then, and knew he could have suffocated her with the air in her own lungs, just by staying tantalizingly out of reach, out of reality.