Coral

We slept on the beach that night and only woke up in the morning because it was starting to rain. The night before, you had been angry because your mother had taken away the keys to your car just to spite you. So I picked you up and we drove out to the beach even though the signs told us that was illegal. After all, what are friends for?

By morning, you were laughing at the raindrops. We made fun of everyone who'd ever sucked, and ate the peanut butter and rice cakes and built a sandcastle that was taller than we were.

Bits of coral washed up on the beach and we put them in our pockets.

"Thanks for coming," you said. We were positively drenched.



I shrugged and found that you couldn't skip a rock on lapping waves. "It's cool," I said. Your once-blue dress was completely covered with sand. Usually I was the friend who wore the skirts, and even I had the sense to put on some real clothes before going to the beach. At least you remembered to grab your jacket, the denim one that used to be mine. "Besides, it wasn't like I had anything better to do."

You stuck your tongue out at me, and then had to spit, because you got sand in your mouth. I laughed at you.

Eventually we got back in my car and drove home, and it took me three hours to vacuum all the sand out. You went upstairs and took a bath. I didn't drive you home that day nor the next nor the day after that.

You set up castles of shells and corals and rocks on my dresser and enacted tales of princesses while I read fluff fiction.

And for three days, your mother never did call.