When Kaya comes in he is visibly shivering, skin goose-pimpled, blue under his suntan, lips white, nose purple. He throws himself on his towel, shivers there so violently that for a while he almost bounces off the sand. Slowly the shivers subside, and he lies there on his stomach like a sleeping infant, mouth open, eyes closed. Quickly his skin dries in the sun and she can see the white dusting of salt left on him. His hair is a tangle of curls, he is all muscle and bone, relaxed like a cat. A cat in the sun. A young water god, some child of Poseidon.
She looks around at the beach, squinting hard. It’s way too bright. Always the low grumble of waves breaking, the hiss of bubbles bursting. Haze in the distance, everything seen in a talcum of light.
“Can we really stay out here exposed like this?” she says suddenly, feeling a shaft of alarm spear her again. “The starlight won’t kill us, the radiation?”
He opens his eyes, looks up at her without moving. “Starlight?”
“From the sun, I mean. It’s got to be a massive dose of radiation, I can feel it.”
He sits up. “Well, sure. Might be time for more sunscreen, you’re so white.” He presses his forefinger into the skin of her upper arm. “Ah yes, see how it’s a little pink now, and goes white when I push there, and takes a little while to turn back to pink? You’re getting a sunburn. Let’s put another coat of sunscreen on you.”
“Will that be enough?”
“It will get you through another hour or so, I think. Especially if you go back in the water. We don’t usually just lie out here in the sun. Just long enough to warm up again and go back out.”
“How many times do you go out?”
“I don’t know. Lots.”
“You must be hungry at the end of the day!”
“Oh yeah.” He laughs. “Surfers are like seagulls, they say. Eat everything in sight.”
He sprays the sunscreen lotion onto her skin. She feels a little salty, a little raw, and the lotion is soothing. His hands when he touches her to spread the lotion behind her ears and up into her hairline are cool and smooth. She can tell by the way he touches her that he has touched before, that young as he is, he would be a good lover. When he lies back down she looks at him candidly. Feeling a little incandescent, stomach unknotted at last, cool but warm, she says, “What about sex on this beach, eh? Right out in the sun? You people must do that!”
“Yes,” he says with a little smile, and rolls over onto his stomach, perhaps modestly. “You have to be sure not to get sand in certain places. But, you know, it’s mostly something we do out here at night.”
“How come? It’s a public beach, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes. But it doesn’t sound like you mean what I mean when you say public.”
“I thought public meant it was yours, that you could do what you want.”
“I guess, yeah. But being public also means you don’t do private things here.”
“I think you should just do what you want! And I’d like to jump you right here and now.”
“I don’t know. You could get in trouble.” He peers up at her. “Besides, how old are you?”
“I don’t know.”
He laughs. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I don’t know. Do you mean how long I’ve lived, or how long since I was born?”
“Well, how long you’ve lived, I guess.”
“One day,” she says promptly. “Actually about two hours. Since I got out in that water.”
He laughs again. “You’re funny. You do seem kind of new to this. But hey, I’m warmed back up, I’m going to go back out for another session.” With a quick darting kiss to her cheek he jumps up. “See you out there. I’ll check you out, I’ll stay right outside from here and keep an eye on you.”
He runs down to the waves, splashes through the shallows stepping absurdly high, jumping as he runs, then leaps into the waves and turns to get his fins on, then swims farther out at speed, stroking smoothly, ducking under broken waves right before they reach him. It looks effortless.
She follows him in. It’s a bit colder than last time; her skin feels taut and warm, more sensitive to the water. But soon she’s back in it and comfortable, and the lift of a wave pulls her back into the sun, and she’s off to the races.
The waves are a little bigger, a little steeper in their faces; Kaya says it’s because the tide is now going out. The sun is higher now, and the ocean is simply ablaze with long banks of liquid light, heaving slightly up and down, up and down, lined by the incoming waves, which as they rise before her turn a deep translucent green. Now as she floats she can look down and see through clear water to the sandy bottom, yellow and smooth. Strands and even big clumps of seaweed float below the surface in masses. Once she sees a big fish swim between the strands, a fish with a spotted tawny back, the sight of which gives her a jolt of fear; it disappears, she calls out about it to Kaya when he swims by, he laughs and says it was a leopard shark, harmless, mouth too small, not interested in people.
She’s getting used to her fins, and finds she can kick from her hips, and swim along at what feels like a great speed. She’s a mermaid. Duck under the broken waves, feel the tug of the wave’s underturn, shoot up out the back through green water. Or over waves just about to break, swim fast at them, breast up them rising fast, crash through their crests and fall down their backsides, laughing. Crack of a wave’s first fall right ahead of her. Swim in with a swell trying to break, she can keep up with it, it picks her up and she’s sliding down the face again, this time at an angle ahead of the break, sliding sideways ahead of the break and across the surface of the wave, which keeps rising up before her, steepening at just the right speed to keep her falling down across it. Holding herself stiff and doing nothing else, and yet flying, flying so fast she emerges from the water from her waist up, she can even put her hands down on the water like the other bodysurfers and plane on her hands, and fly more!
Delicious.
Now there’s an old man out here, with what looks to be a granddaughter or great-granddaughter on a short rounded board, and as the waves rise he launches her on the waves like throwing a paper airplane, both of them grinning like maniacs. The mermen and mermaids spin down the faces sometimes, rise back up on them, dance with the wave’s particular shape and tempo.
The waves get bigger, steeper. Then there’s a shout and everyone is swimming hard out to sea, trying to catch a big set. As she crests one wave she sees what they have seen, and her breath catches: a really big swell, and it hasn’t even hit the shallows and begun to rise. Looks like it will break far outside her. She swims as fast as she can, just like everyone else.
The rest of them crest the big wave before it breaks, but she’s inside still, and has to dive under it. Go right to the bottom, clutch the sand down there, feel the breaking wave push her, lift her and push her down again, flapping her like a flag, and in the midst of that one of her fins comes off. She keeps on the bottom, comes up with a hard kick off the sand, reaches the surface just in time for the next wave to break right on her, it throws her down and then back up again, and without having to do a thing she is tossed back up to the surface, onto a hissing field of bubbles infused with sand that has been ripped off the bottom, she’s in a slurry of sand and seawater now. Immense roar. And here comes the third wave, outside and building, she tries to get out to it before it breaks, swims as hard as she can but she’s still out of breath, still gasping hard, and the wave’s top pitches toward her and suddenly she has the sickening realization that she is going to be at just the wrong spot, that it’s going to fall right on her, she takes in a deep breath and ducks her head into her chest—
Wham. It hits her so hard the air is driven out of her lungs, and then she is being flailed about, her whole body tumbling, no way to tell up from down, a wild tumble, the washing machine for sure, but so much bigger than those little ones that she’s utterly helpless, a rag doll, when will it let her up? Will it let her up? She’s running out of air, feeling an emptiness in her head she has never felt before, a desperate need for breath, she’s never felt that before and she panics, she simply has to breathe right now! And yet she’s down there swirling with the sand torn off the bottom, eyes clamped shut, whirling about, she’s going to have to give up and breathe water, damn, she thinks, after all that, to get home and drown a month later. Star girl killed by Earth how stupid—