Page 36

I wake up in a pink house.

Slip on a pink tank top.

Brush my teeth in a pink mood.

I bounce on pink heels around my almost packed up room, down the hallway, and out the door faster than a pink sunrise can break and spill into blue.

My steps leave emerald footprints in the dew on Haven and Holden’s front yard. If grass could talk, it would speak of the summer days spent roaming here. Of secrets told over tres leches, water hose battles on the trampoline, the backyard where I got the dreaded phone call.

The front door creaks. Holden’s eyes are barely open, his hair freshly peeled from his pillow, but he stomps down the stairs and pulls me into a hug. I’m back in the same embrace I burrowed myself into last summer when I learned the sky lost its stars. The hug feels different today, scabbed over and dwindling. I no longer feel the need to peel the dried maroon off and watch it bleed.

Scars don’t hurt when they’re healed, but you can’t outrun them.

“You’re up too early for someone on their last day of summer vacation,” I say.

“The sunrise is worth it.”

I cross my arms with a smirk. “Sunrise? You only wake up before noon for fish.”

He pokes my forehead. “And Quinn Kesslers.”

Haven steps down the stairs, a beach bag weighing down her shoulder, pink sunglasses on her nose despite the sky still dark enough for streetlights.

In the prologue to the rising sun, everything is pink. It’s impossible not to be, even with the thought of driving away tomorrow.

Today marks a new beginning.

That’s why we’re awake this early in the first place.

Last night, Everett and I were on the back porch with the cicadas, katydids, and locusts, eating a fresh batch of Liezel’s yam cookies when the idea struck. Even as far inland as Blair’s house is, the smell of salt hung heavily in the air. A beckoning call. A request for forgiveness. An olive branch.

“I’m tired of hating the ocean,” I said from the rocking chair.

Everett looked at me like he couldn’t believe the words just left my mouth, but he smiled and promised we’d go to the beach in the morning. There’s no better version of the shore than the one that spits out the sun into morning, at least that’s what I think.

Our plan to meet up to watch the sunrise turned into an early breakfast on the beach.

The twins and I file out of my car with our things, racing barefoot from the parking lot onto the beach. I stay behind to walk slowly, my ankle still wrecked, and spend more time with the seagrass whispering from the dunes. The sky is so pink I could jump with my mouth open and land with sticky sugar on my tongue. If I could jump. If clouds really were cotton candy.

Everett, Mason, and Jorge wrestle the wind to lay a blanket on the sand. We sit on the blanket to keep it from flying away. A picnic breakfast awaits: orange juice, cinnamon donuts, blueberry bagels, grapes, and sliced strawberries.

In the distance, a shrimp boat comes in from a scandalous night out with the sea. Small black figures meander toward the horizon: beachcombers, joggers, dogs off their leashes. Surfers won’t catch much this morning, but they’re front row to the pod of dolphins that swim by for their own breakfast. Patches of sea foam lose the war with the wind and zip like tumbleweeds down the beach. The water waves good morning millions of miles out, a glassy opal sheen the pelicans probably skate on.

We wait for the sun to join us, like watching paint dry on a canvas, but once the first orange slice burns across the sky, the rest rises the way an avalanche falls. The canvas is dry now, its colors a byproduct of light bestowing itself upon the world.

Then everything around us turns from hazy pink to burnt orange. Beachcombers’ footprints are small orange mountains on the soft sand. Wind-blown hairs reveal their secret gold undertones. Seashells slip from their camouflage on the dark brown sand. The cream cheese smeared on empty plates glows.

Conversation buzzes between nothing and everything, as it often tends to. Packing woes, college itineraries, the state of Loggerhead Lighthouse after this fall’s restoration project ends. There’s plenty to silently ponder where the seagulls chirp against the ocean’s tune.

“I told my parents last night,” Holden says. “About me and Mason. Well, just about me, but they figured Mason and I were dating.”

“How did it go?” Everett asks.

“It was fine.” He smiles softly.

“Better than fine.” Haven brushes her hands through his wild hair. “They said they want to have Mason over for dinner. Formally. And that they love him forever. Just like we all do.”

Holden holds his neck behind his hands, but he smiles like he’s waited forever for those words. His cheeks blush and he looks like he could cry the happiest tears I’ve ever seen.

With the sun now part of the day and breakfast done, we disperse.

Haven and I play tic-tac-toe in the sand. I block her row of scallops with a cockle. Mason and Holden stand at the wet sand, so still their feet sink slowly into the world. Jorge picks through a pile of shells on the trash line, looking for shark teeth. Everett lies down next to me, his hands in his hoodie pockets, his head on the sand.

His eyes trace the only cloud in the sky.

“What is it?” I ask, looking between the cloud and his golden face.

“A seagull, but like people draw it,” he says without breaking his trance on the sky.

I draw it in the sand with my finger. Context turns the rounded “m” shape into a greedy seagull’s wings against an endless sky. My eyes turn it into the cloud soaring above.

The sticky sweet sting of summer’s end sweeps me off my feet.

Everett and I walk down the beach, as far as my ankle will take me. The sandpipers run from us, their little legs a blur of reckless abandon. A patch of seagulls finally decide to kick on their wings and flee. A beached cannonball jelly glimmers in the sun.

The water collapses over the sand, disrupting the stillness. Live coquinas shuffle away from the sunlight. Broken, discarded shells make twinkling music against themselves. Soon, they’ll whittle into dust, but they’ll live forever as bits of sand. The sand soaks up the waves, turning darker where water no longer reflects the brightening sky. In an instant, the waves make it wet and shiny again. A cyclical, infinite film reel.

The waves come and go, even with nobody to watch them.

I’m tired of hating the ocean.

Suddenly, I’m magnetized by the thrumming waves.

A moment passes with a gust of wind before I decide to just do it. I trudge over the increasingly darker sand, walking past freckled olives, nutmegs, baby’s ears, jingles, until finally I make it, gasping when water rushes over my toes. The water feels like it always has—jarring and cool and exactly the feeling worth waiting an entire school year to feel again. This time, it’s on my terms.

Everett takes each step with me. Beyond the band of jagged seashells, the sand is soft beneath my toes. I stop knee-deep, where the water still hugs my legs but my shorts stay dry. Where I’m not technically swimming, but sea foam still fizzes against my skin. Waves still thrum in the same spot they did seconds before. I put my hands in and let the water slip between my fingers.

I close my eyes, breathe in and out with the whir of the ocean.

The ocean is synonymous with summer and sunlight and sunscreen. Ice cream and itineraries and insects. Fireflies and fireworks and fluffernutters. Moon jellies and mini golf and moonlight. Constellations and carousels and cotton candy. Tres leches and tanning and taffy.

I never hated you.

I open my eyes to show the ocean I mean it.

When I look at Everett, he wedges a hand in his pocket, then opens it out to me. Resting on his palm is a small pink coquina clamshell from our day on the bike trail. Four summers of us rewind in my mind. They live in rose quartz Saturn rings.

“It’s perfect.” I string the ninth shell onto the chain, then let Everett clasp it back.

“For your ninth summer at Piper Island.” Everett wills the entire summer pink despite everything trying to darken it. Nine summers stick to my skin like salt water.

Everett’s touch lingers on my neck, sending shivers down my skin despite everything trying to warm it. He pulls me in for a kiss. After he pulls back, he focuses in on my cheek, eyebrows furrowed as he swipes his thumb across it.

On his thumb rests a stray eyelash plucked from my cheek. “Make a wish,” he says.

I close my eyes, ready to continue a years-old tradition, but it doesn’t feel right. Just like conch shells don’t really tune your ear drums to the sea, cheek eyelashes, birthday candles, dandelion puffs to the wind don’t really change your fate.

Shooting stars are just meteors.

Wishes are just acknowledged desires.

Rollercoasters are just wooden structures.

I don’t need such illusions. Not anymore.

I open my eyes to the real world before me. The eyelash is already lost to the wind.

“What’d you wish for?” Everett asks.

“Nothing.” I smile. I think he believes me this time. “What’d you wish for?”

“Same.” He grabs my hand, strokes my index finger with his thumb. “There’s nothing left to wish for.”

The sun has finished painting everything in its path, leaving both of us golden in the morning light. I’ll miss this pocket of sand and salt and sunlight, but the sun rises everywhere.

Even in the darkest places.

I’ll be back, Piper Island.

Pinky promise.