Beachland

When I was a kid my mother said that I was a fish. Or, if not a fish, some sea creature that she had found washed up on the shore at sunrise. No, a lost mermaid princess or the daughter of Poseidon. She said I was born with sand caught between my toes and shells spilling out of my tiny fists. The birthmark on my neck was a scar of where my gills had been in a former life.

We lived ten minutes from the beach when I was young, so most weekends or warm afternoons, my sister Alice and I would don our swimsuits and fill our water bottles before piling into our mother’s old red van. Alice always made sure that the buckets and shovels were in the car even though they lived in the trunk, sat next to the rainbow umbrella we never used but always brought just the same. Standing outside the car, we would strip off our coverups and drench ourselves in sunscreen. My mother would always try to get me to wear a hat. “Look at Alice, she looks so cute in her hat.” But I refused. It would just fall off in the water anyway, and I wanted more freckles on my nose. The three of us looked like pack mules as we walked to a spot on the sand, setting up camp somewhere just before the steep drop down to the damp sand and the water. We always left our flip-flops in the car; they would only get weighed down as we walked. In the summertime when the sun was high and strong, we would burn the bottoms of our feet.

I hated waiting the mother-mandated thirty minutes between putting on sunscreen and wading into the ocean. “Why can’t they just make a sunscreen that starts working right away?” Alice would just roll her eyes and my mother would pretend not to hear me, so I never did find out the answer.

And then: my mother’s watch alarm would cut the air, a harsh contrast to the gentle sound of waves crashing and palm trees swishing in the breeze. My mother always set a timer so I couldn’t argue with her about how long it had been. The second I heard that horrible beeping I’d be off, bounding like an over-eager dog into the water. Alice preferred the sand, only wading in up to her ankles when she began to overheat, but I was a fish. I would stay in the water all day, only coming back up to the dry sand when my mother ordered me to drink something or eat my lunch. I didn’t care that it made my fingers so pruney and shriveled that they stayed that way for the whole car ride home. I loved the ocean. The waves would knock against me and I would lean my body back, letting them catch me for a moment before I slowly sank under. I would always swim out far past where I could stand, and my mother, standing at the edge of the damp sand where the waves could just barely kiss her toes, would call me back in. 

It was a game: in, out, in, out, in, out. 

I was almost like the tide.

We stopped going as a family so often when my mother was laid off and had to take a job as a secretary, working “crazy, shit hours” at a law firm in downtown Los Angeles. Not long after that, we moved into a little apartment near her work, which wouldn’t have been too far from the beach if there was no traffic, but there always was. She never had the time to take us anyway, even if it weren’t for the long drive. I missed our old house, our old routine, those golden afternoons on the California coast. I still went with my friends every once in a while, piling into my best friend Sarah’s mother’s shiny black car after school on half-days when the sun was out, but it wasn’t the same.

Partly it was just that we were getting older. Middle school law dictated that anyone who wore a one-piece was weird. It was a rule Sarah took very seriously and demanded I did too, so I had to trade all my old swimsuits in for impractical, uncomfortable bikinis that put my stomach on display for the whole world. I nodded along as Sarah talked excitedly about how she was finally starting to grow boobs to fill her swimsuits and couldn’t wait until her chest looked like mine. 

One afternoon, as we sat cross-legged on her beach towel drinking ice-cold lemonade and playing a game of MASH on the inside cover of my copy of Lord of the Flies, she told me she’d heard that someone on the basketball team had been talking about me in the locker room. Her voice was giddy, her tone begging me to be excited about this news. I plastered on a smile and tried to pretend that the thought of those boys discussing my body while they changed didn’t make me queasy.

“Whatever, it’s not like they actually like you more than me, it’s just that you have boobs.” Sarah told me. Her tone was meant to be teasing, but there was a tinge of resentment in her voice that made me feel like I’d done something wrong. It passed quickly though, and she went back to predicting her future and chattering about how she was in the process of convincing her mother to let her buy a push-up bra, and then she’d be the one getting all the attention.

I held my tongue, not wanting to ruin her excitement with tales of lingering eyes and lewd comments from men my mother’s age. I didn’t tell her why I no longer ran down to the water alone while she sat up on the sand soaking up the sun. Didn’t tell her how men would whistle and shout profanity, not realizing or not caring that I was thirteen. That their vulgar words drowned out the call of the waves, pushed me away even as the ocean tried to draw me in.

Alice had taught me that the best thing to do was ignore it, to keep walking and keep quiet. Any sort of response would just encourage them. 

When we were little, Alice and I had this game that we played almost every time we went to the beach. I was the sea queen and she was the sand queen, rulers of neighboring kingdoms, each with our own magic powers. There was an evil force infiltrating our lands, manifesting in dark streaky lines that ran from the top of the damp sand into the water, and we had to work together to stop it. Our mother told us that it was just oil from some big accident, but we knew the truth. There was a terrible, bird-like beast that was causing it to spread, hoping to suck all the magic out of our lands. Alice would chase away his minions, the seagulls that were unlucky enough to land nearby, and I would use my powers to summon a nature-defying wave to knock the great beast down. Together, we would bury him in the sand.

The summer before ninth grade, Sarah finally achieved her dream of becoming cool, due less to her slowly developing chest than to the two weeks she’d spent at summer camp with two of the most popular girls in the grade. I hadn’t attended, and she’d forgotten her promise to write, but when she got home she told me all about how they had helped her kiss the fourth-cutest boy in camp. I tried to ignore the pang of jealousy at how close she’d become with girls who had never given us the time of day back in middle school. At least she was dragging me up the food chain with her instead of leaving me to be eaten by wolves the second I stepped foot on the high school campus. It was nice to know that, despite her newfound popularity, Sarah and I were still a package deal. And it wasn’t the worst feeling, being liked. Before, we had been teased or ignored, a consequence of my mediocre fashion sense and Sarah being in the school band. She’d stopped playing flute over the summer and was now desperately trying to fix my sense of style. She even lent me her shimmery lip-gloss to apply in the bathroom before class each morning so that I would fit in with ‘her and the girls.’ At lunch we sat at the good table in the cafeteria, the one next to the big window, and I learned to gossip about bands and boys and teachers who were either really mean or really hot. I could tell that the other girls all liked Sarah more than they liked me, but I quickly figured out that if I just agreed with what everyone else was saying, whether or not I really did think Mr. Davis was dreamy, no one would question my place at the table.

At the end of September, on what our new friends called the last good beach weekend of the year, Sarah and I were invited to a party in Malibu. Sarah assured me that being invited was the pinnacle of popularity—we were two of only five freshmen invited—and that I had better be cool and not blow it for the both of us. Even my older sister Alice wasn’t invited and she was a senior, although she assured me that she wouldn’t have gone anyway because popular kids were the worst and she couldn’t believe I was even hanging out with them. Still, she drove me to the outlet mall almost an hour away and helped me pick a new swimsuit for the occasion.

“You’re lucky I took you and not mom,” she said conspiratorially as we walked back to the car. “She never would’ve let you buy a swimsuit with that neckline.”

Alice even offered to drive me and Sarah to the party, since my mother couldn’t, but Sarah had secured us spots in one of the guys’ cars, which she deemed a far cooler mode of transportation. Squeezed into the middle seat between Sarah and a junior I’d never spoken to, I wondered if it wouldn’t have been worth looking slightly less cool in exchange for more leg room.

The September heat had been ruthless that year. We’d all been complaining for weeks as we sat through poorly-air-conditioned classes, drenched in sweat. Today, though, no one was complaining. As we got out of the car and stepped onto the scorching Malibu sand, it felt like it was still summer. Despite her promise that we would stick together, Sarah immediately darted off with some sophomore girl to get drinks. I tried not to let myself be mad at her for ditching me as I stood awkwardly on the outskirts of everything, telling myself that she was just caught up in the excitement. But I couldn’t help feeling a twinge of frustration, both with Sarah and with myself for being so lost without her by my side. A wave of relief came over me when I spotted two open beach chairs. I darted over to them and laid out my bright blue towel on one chair, placing my bag on the other to claim it for Sarah if she ever returned. Looking around, I saw that everyone else had already taken off their cover-ups, so I stripped down to my brand new bathing suit and slid on my sunglasses (rather, Alice’s sunglasses that I was borrowing) before stretching out on the chair. 

Over the chatter of the party and the blaring pop music, I could just barely make out the sound of the waves crashing on the shore, but they called to me all the same. Past the edge of the party the beach looked deserted, and I wanted to run down to the water, to the safety and comfort of the waves. On dry land I was out of place, a blemish on this otherwise perfect party, but put me in the water and I would make it my home. I forced myself to stay anchored to the chair, remembering my promise to Sarah that I would be cool.

Someone sat down on the chair next to me, sliding my bag to the edge of the seat. I turned to him and pushed my sunglasses up on my head. It was the boy who had driven me here, and hard as I tried I couldn’t remember his name. He was holding a drink in each hand and promised it was just lemonade, so I took it and drank. I was glad for the lemonade and for the company. Even though he was a senior and an athlete and I was barely one step above being a total nobody, he was surprisingly easy to talk to. I felt my nerves slip away, and I found myself joking about how it was ridiculous that we were all at the beach on one of the hottest days of the year and yet nobody wanted to swim. As soon as I said it I began to worry that he might take offense at my calling his friends ridiculous, but his smile put me at ease.

“You know, we could go down to the water if you want? Go for a swim?” 

I wondered if he was as drawn to the ocean as I was, as intoxicated by the ebb and flow of the water as it washed over him. Or maybe, I told myself, he was just hot. At least Sarah couldn’t tell me that it was uncool to go swim if he was doing it with me. As the two of us walked down to the water’s edge, the music from the beach house was rendered inaudible, a mix of distance and the overpowering roar of the waves. Up there it had been hectic and loud, but this was my domain. This was where I belonged.

The boy and I waded out to where the water reached our ankles. He lingered there as I swam out further, letting gentle waves crash over me and drench me in saltwater. After a few minutes I swam back to him. We had come down here together and it would be rude of me to just ignore him. He met me halfway, where it was shallow enough for me to stand, the water just grazing the bottom of my ribcage, although it only reached his hips. I think that I had planned to convince him to swim out further, to join me in my dance with the waves. It was so nice out there, so peaceful. Before I could say anything, though, he gently placed a hand on my waist and told me that he thought I was cool. Without waiting for any sort of response, he pressed his lips against mine, his hand creeping higher and fumbling around haphazardly with my chest. I stood frozen, a scream or a sob or both caught in my throat as he shoved his other hand down the front of my bikini bottoms. I wanted to push him off, to summon my childhood power and call a wave to knock him back, but the water around us stayed calm and my arms stayed heavy at my sides. Tears burned at the corners of my eyes as he kissed my neck and spoke low in my ear: “You like that, don’t you,” not concerned with my pleasure at all.

It was an eternity before he pulled back. 

“Aren’t you gonna return the favor?”

But I was a statue, my gaze fixed on the horizon, a point just over his shoulder. I was immoveable. I was not really there.

“Whatever, fuckin slut.” And when that got no response: “You’re so weird, I can’t believe I almost let you fuck me.”

He stormed out of the water and back up the beach to the party. Once he left, I began to shake, tears hot and stinging as they ran down my cheeks and dropped off into the water. My breath, when it came, was heavy and gasping. I tried to let myself sink where I stood, forcing my head underwater, but instinct kicked in and sent me shooting to the surface, gulping for air.

Eventually, Sarah appeared at the edge of the water. She stared at me for a moment, looking like she might say something to comfort me or ask me what happened, but only said: “You should come back up, the pizza’s here.”

Slowly but obediently I made my way out of the water. We walked silently up the beach. The music grew louder, but it still seemed so far away. A piece of me was still standing in the water, frozen in place as wave after wave crashed over me. Just before we reached the gate, Sarah turned to me. I could smell the sharp notes of vodka on her breath mixed with something sickly sweet. 

“He just wanted to hook up. Why’d you have to be so weird about it?” 

I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. She felt like a stranger.

Once we were through the gate she left my side immediately, melting back into the group. I found my bag lying in the sand next to the chair I’d left it on, and I pulled out my phone. Alice answered after a few rings.

“Please, can you pick me up?” My voice was barely more than a whisper. No questions asked, she was on her way.

I sank into the beach chair, unable to ignore the people staring at me as I sat there. I was sure they were talking about me, passing around some version of what had happened. I couldn’t bring myself to imagine what he had said when he came back to the party alone. What Sarah had been told as the story was passed around in a drunken game of telephone. What everyone had thought when they’d seen me slink back still soaking wet. I couldn’t let myself cry in front of these people.

Alice pulled up outside in her beat-up red minivan, the one my mother used to drive. The umbrella no longer sat in the trunk and the sand buckets had been thrown out years ago, but every once in a while Alice and I would still find grains of sand embedded in the upholstery.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Alice asked as she pulled out of the small parking lot.

“No.”

We sat in silence for the rest of the drive, the radio jumping between last year’s pop hits and crackling static.

When we got home, I shut myself in my room, pulled my scissors out of my desk drawer, and began hacking the awful swimsuit to pieces. I swore I would never wear one again. Never wear anything that left me so open. Every time I closed my eyes I was back in the ocean.

When I was nine I got pinned underwater by a wave. The water had been calm, and there was no warning before the tide changed. I’d been leaning forward, preparing to let the wave carry me quickly toward the shore, but instead it had pushed me under. I was a strong swimmer but the water bore down on me and I couldn’t make my way to the surface. When the wave finally passed and I was able to come up for air, I swam as quickly as I could, terrified that another wave would come and hold me under before my feet found solid ground below them. For years, that was the only time I’d ever been afraid of the ocean. Now that breathless, drowning panic was all I could feel.

By the time I threw the scissors down I was heaving and gasping for air so hard I almost puked. My heart slammed against my chest, echoing throughout my whole body. The stillness, the inability to move. The blood raging through my veins, daring me to give it some release. 

That was the first night I ever tried to hurt myself. I didn’t really know what I was doing, I was just desperate for some sort of release, something that would let me come up for air. But after that momentary sharp sensation, that sudden space to breathe, a new anxiety set in. I’d barely left a mark, more of a scratch than a cut, but I was terrified that someone would be able to see it and understand the intent behind those already-fading lines.

As we left for school on Monday, Alice asked me why I was wearing a sweater in the heat. I pretended not to hear her. At lunch, when I sat down at my usual table, the nice one by the window, everyone was talking about the party. Sarah wouldn’t meet my eyes and I had a sneaking suspicion that before I’d sat down they’d all been talking about me. I didn’t say a word the whole meal, and no one made any attempt to include me in the conversation. I barely heard what they were saying, anyway. I could see him, the boy from the party, sitting just a few tables over. Being in the same room as him again, I could barely breathe. All I could hear was the sound of rushing water.

After school, as I waited for Alice by her car, Sarah peeled off from the group she was walking with and made her way over to me. Her hair was straightened and her make-up done in the same way as the rest of her friends, which it always was lately, and it struck me how different she had looked at the end of last year. She didn’t look like Sarah anymore. 

“So… me and the girls talked. And it’s probably best if you don’t eat lunch with us for a while. Just while things are weird.” Her eyes were glued to the ground as she spoke.

“Right,” was all I could manage to say without my voice breaking. I wasn’t even surprised, which was as painful as the fact that she was abandoning me in the first place. She had always wanted to be cool, and even before the party I’d never quite fit into that plan. Never quite fit in with her new friends. I hadn’t changed like she had, hadn’t grown up. I was stupid not to have seen it earlier, before the party, before this whole mess. 

Her eyes briefly met mine and I caught a glimpse of the old Sarah as she whispered: “I’m sorry.” I might have even believed her if she hadn’t immediately turned and walked away, back to her new friends who had been watching from the other side of the parking lot, laughing.

Hurting myself became habit. It didn’t feel real. I justified it by telling myself it didn’t really count as self-harm. I was in control, could stop any time I wanted. I didn’t even use a razor. And then I did use a razor, but I didn’t cut deep enough, didn’t bleed enough, didn’t want to die enough for it to be a real problem. I was just doing it for attention, though my biggest fear was that someone would notice. I was just doing it for a breath of air, though the relief only lasted for a moment before a new, more violent wave of panic crashed over me. I was glad when the autumn air turned brisk, the gray sky threatening rain that rarely came. People stopped noticing that I was hiding beneath my clothes.

Sometimes my mother asked if I was all right or told me that I seemed off, but she always believed me when I assured her that I was just tired and busy with schoolwork. She wasn’t around enough to pry any further, with her work hours stretching late into the evenings, and my grades hadn’t dropped so she had no real reason to be concerned. Alice was harder to convince. She saw me every day at school so she knew I didn’t have friends anymore. She even sat with me in the library during lunch some days, despite my constant reassurance that I was fine eating alone. We never talked about it, but there was something about the way she looked at me when she thought I wasn’t paying attention. So much pity and a little bit of fear. She didn’t know what had happened at the beach that day, but she knew something had. A few times it seemed like she was going to ask me, but she never did. I was grateful for it. If she had asked, I might have told her the truth, and telling her the truth would have made it real. If I kept it to myself, everything could still be fine.

As a kid I would always burrow my feet into the sand by the water, where the waves reached up to my ankle bones. I loved the feeling of sand between my toes. I would stand there, planted, and try to keep my balance as the water knocked against me, playful in its attempt to throw me off my feet. I liked the feeling of trying to hold my ground, no matter how unsteady I felt. I was good at it too, keeping myself upright for ages, sinking deeper and deeper into the sand before finally letting the wave knock me down, where I would splash around in the shallow water, still joyful in my defeat.

The summer after ninth grade flew by in a flurry of errands to prepare for Alice’s impending departure for college. I accompanied her on trips to Bed Bath & Beyond to register for anything and everything she could ever want so that it would be ready and waiting in a store halfway across the country, where she would end up purchasing only the essentials. Still, it was fun to pretend she didn’t have a budget. We walked around the store armed with scanners, targeting cute throw pillows and string lights (and boring stuff like a shower caddy and a trash can), and I felt almost normal. Almost like myself.

And then there were days when I was back in the water with him. In my memory, the waves were thrashing and angry, salt water crashing over my head and dragging me under. In my memory, he was the sea.

Once Alice left for college and my sophomore year was looming, the days where I felt like myself were few and far between. Alice’s room was like an odd, abandoned shrine, just waiting for her to occupy it again. I went in there a few times to pick through the clothes she had left behind, pulling out a few sweaters to wear as my own. Just last year, I’d been so excited about the start of school that I’d planned my first day outfit weeks in advance, Sarah sitting on my bed as I tried on Alice’s dresses until I found the one. Now the room was empty. On the first day of school, I yanked a random shirt off its hanger, not even paying enough attention to realize it had a stain on the collar.

The semester passed in a haze. Everyone else seemed to be having fun, my classmates all caught up in the sophomore-year euphoria of not being the youngest ones on campus, but I was simply there. Not a part of anything. Sometimes Sarah would give me a half-smile as we passed each other in the hall, her hand more often than not intertwined with her boyfriend’s, but she never tried to talk to me. When she was with “the girls,” she wouldn’t even make eye contact. 

I became accustomed to the monotony of my life. I kept my grades up, spending lunch completing homework that I tried to convince myself was urgent. I rode the bus to school since  my former ride now lived halfway across the country in a dorm room. I wore headphones in the hallways so I didn’t have to hear my classmates babble on about weekend plans and crushes and all of the normal high school things I should have been enjoying. I wore sweaters every day to cover the mix of puckered, purplish scars and newly scabbed over lines that appeared each night in the few moments when I let myself feel too much instead of nothing at all. I ate dinner in front of the TV when my mother was working late, which was most nights, and it was almost like living alone. 

Alice came home for winter break in time for the last three nights of Hanukkah, and the three of us singing prayer around the menorah was like a memory of what my life had been before. My sister had a million new stories and a bit of a superiority complex because she was finally a cool college student, but having her around cut through the haze, brought me back to myself a bit.  It was bittersweet—I was happier than I’d been in ages but it forced me to acknowledge how desperately lonely I had been since Alice left. She breathed life into our apartment, which had seemed so small before she left for college but felt endless and empty with her gone. 

One weekend, after I had started school again but before Alice had flown back for her spring semester, it happened. As sisters do, Alice barged into my room looking for a sweater that she was sure I had stolen while she was gone. I was only half dressed, and I tried to pull my sweater on before she noticed the dark lines climbing up my wrists.

I will never forget the look on her face.

We both stood in silence as I wrestled the sweater over my head. I wrapped my arms close to my stomach, as if somehow the sleeves weren’t enough to cover my scars anymore. As if somehow, hiding the proof could make her forget.

“How…” Alice was unsure of the question she wanted to ask, and we fell back into a heavy silence.

“Please don’t tell Mom.” I said finally, spitting the words out quiet and fast so that they wouldn’t leave room for a sob to escape. It did anyway, loud and gasping for air, my body trembling. I’d had so many nightmares that began like this, and what would she say? What do you say to someone at a time like this? How could you ever find the right words?

And then her arms were wrapped around me, asking no questions. She just held me tightly and whispered shhh shhh it’s okay shhh and her voice was the sea.

I’m ten years old. I wade out into the ocean, the water clear enough to see the gravelly sand agitated beneath my feet. The waves crash rhythmically against my shins, my knees, my stomach, and I let the cold water knock me back on my heels as I make my way deeper. Alice stands at the edge of the water and I call to her. She takes a tentative step; I charge forward. Up to my shoulders, finally, my toes lifting off of the sand as the water swells and touching down lightly again as it recedes. The sun is surprisingly hot for so early in the spring but not yet strong or steady enough to lessen the icy bite of the water. The waves are feral, knocking me around. The ocean wants to lead in this dance and I let it. I hear my mother calling from up on the sand, insisting that I swim closer to the shore. In an act of resistance, I dive under the water, surrendering every part of me.