Annihilation

We met on the beach in the middle of summer. 

His hair was swept into cool blond waves, a Hollywood prelude to his pearl-white grin. I smiled at him and he looked right past me to my sister. She giggled as I lay back and closed my eyes, begging the sun to torch away my disappointment and leave nothing behind but a pile of salt-white bones stretched out on the sand.

The warmth disappeared a moment later when he crouched over me, blotting out my only chance at sun-drenched oblivion. Instead, he offered me that damned grin, and I decided to put off my death a little longer.

His name was Gabe. He joined us for Pictionary that night, and every night for the rest of the summer. My sister didn’t mind being the third-wheel. She was a glutton for punishment — a nasty family trait. She followed him around just as he followed me, and when it came to sitting down to play together we were delighted that Gabe looked good from any angle. But hours later, when we were heavy with drink and ready for bed, it was just the two of us, our nervous hands and desperate mouths pushing into new territory. I whispered his name, Gabe, as if it were something of a prayer, or a secret just between us.

On the last day of summer—it was a Saturday, if I recall correctly— Gabe didn’t turn up. My sister and I feigned nonchalance, going about our day as any other.

“Maybe he’s busy today,” she said, squinting out at the flat expanse of the sea.

I simply nodded, already convinced that he had abandoned me; that he had found a boy with nicer hair living on a cleaner beach, or otherwise met his untimely death walking along the cliffside. I wasn’t sure which I’d have preferred.

“Should we wait for him?”

I shrugged. “He knows where we live.”

We waited anyway.

When the day finally surrendered to night and the sea met the sky in a haze of purple we trudged back up to the house, the air between us thick with the stink of melancholy.

“Just one last swim,” I said, turning back to the ambling waves, “I’ll be in soon.”

It was colder than I expected, and I shivered as the water lapped at my waist. My skin puckered with goosebumps and I ran my fingers over my arm, remembering our last night together.

You’ve got the jimjams. He had been kissing my neck when he stopped and looked at my arm.
What? 
He had run his knuckles back and forth over the bumps on my arm. You’ve got the jimjams.
You mean goosebumps?
No. Jimjams.

I lay in the shallow water. My body floated like debris, and I wondered if the tide was strong enough to throw me against the rocks until I became fragments and dust, or if it would simply drag me out to sea.

Either way, I think I’d let it, if it tried.