1. Once there was a girl who died because she cut school and went to the beach. It was June, the first warm day of summer, and she was getting dressed that morning, pulling on her navy blue knee socks, buttoning up her white blouse, rolling the waist of her pleated woolen uniform skirt to make it kneeling-at-the-altar legal, and something in her skin said no; something in the sun-washed air, the smell of blooming catalpa and honeysuckle, the song of Carolina wrens, made her reach for her bathing suit. And with her suit tucked under her uniform, white blouse tied at the waist, she sauntered past the gawping gang at the bus stop: I’m skipping. Wanna come? And how much they wanted to, but how much they feared the retribution of Father John, Sister Mary Jerome, their fathers, their mothers, their guidance counselors, their college recommendations, their Permanent Records. They watched her walk away, already wafting the scent of Coppertone and freedom. Never to be seen again. Some said riptide. Some said cramps from eating clam cakes and not waiting sixty minutes before swimming. Some said jellyfish. Some said shark. A shark no one saw but that must have been waiting, lurking, just under the surface of that deceptively still water, the shark of God’s grim wrath, always waiting to punish us sinners.
2. Once there was a girl who died because she cut school and went to the beach. A foolish girl, hitchhiking down the road in her orange crocheted bikini top and cutoff jeans shorts. Asking for trouble, that girl was. Showing off. You weren’t there, but someone you know was. Your cousin’s best friend. Your babysitter’s brother. Your neighbor, and he’s a policeman, and should know. That girl went diving from the rock cliffs, the ones they closed off with a safety rail, after. She swam out past the buoy line, where the bottom drops off all of a sudden and your legs kick and kick in water suddenly grown dead cold, where wicked currents wait. Where she waits now, they all say. If you duck under, if you swim beyond the rope. She waits, seaweed in her hair, fingers grown long and slimy like squid, ready to grab your leg, ready to pull you down, and you’ll scream and scream but the only sound will be the glug of water filling your throat, and you’ll thrash and fight but the only sound will be the gentle lapping of waves on a rocky shore, where far off, on summer sands, mothers rub sunscreen on their children, look out at a calm blue sea, and turn back to that new Danielle Steel book, you know the one, everybody’s reading it.
3. Once there was a girl who died because she cut school and went to the beach, and now we all go, every year, in her honor. Her name was Patty Murphy or Sandy Perry or Betty Brady, nobody really knows what her name was, it happened when our mothers were young, or when their mothers were, or even before; maybe it happened in the black and white days when girls wore skirts to the beach and straw hats with streamers, and there this poor girl was, long skirts tangling around her legs, dragging her under, only a straw hat with pink ribbons left floating on the gentle waves, or maybe she ignored the DANGER RIP CURRENTS sign and got pulled out to sea and was found, crab-chewed, twenty miles down the coast, or maybe it was a shark that got her, or maybe the girl was pregnant and her evil boyfriend lured her out past the rocks, where the lifeguard couldn’t see, and held her head under until she drowned, and then her ghost haunted him until he threw himself off the cliff and died too, serves him damn well right, or maybe she never made it to the beach at all, maybe she was hitchhiking (stranger danger!) and got picked up by the wrong car, or maybe the right one, and maybe she’s out there now, still wandering, still hitching rides, still ditching school, still breaking rules, still having more fun than any of us will ever know.
