My Friends the Allens -- Rocks
by Mark Aster


A storm is burning itself out a hundred miles offshore.
Here, in a sheltered place below the dunes, only a little
wind penetrates, and the sound of waves crashing on the
beach, beyond the jumble of rocks.  Late afternoon.

Pat, thirteen, in a pale green t-shirt and cutoff jeans,
appears on the top of the dune, standing up on her toes,
barefoot.  She cranes her neck and looks out at the rocks
and the water.  Julie, eight, comes up behind her, pulling
herself up by handfuls of beach grass, straightens up
to stand beside her sister.  She is small and skinny,
nut-brown like Pat from long weeks of the summer that is
about to end.  Sweat beads on her skin.  Her tank-top
lies abandoned somewhere in the sand behind her; all
she has left is a worn pair of boy's swim-trunks.  She
looks up at Pat's face, and then out at the rocks and
the sea.  Her back and her chest are nearly as brown
as her nose and her legs.

Pat smiles seriously at Julie, and makes her way
quickly but carefully down the face of the dune, to the
quiet place below.  She holds her arms out and reaches
with her legs, feeling ahead with her bare feet, hopping
from hummock to hummock.  She is tall for her age, not
as awkward as she was last year, confident of her step.
She reaches the bottom cleanly, and jumps lightly to the
beach.  Turns to look up at the sky and her sister.

Julie looks down at Pat, the beach, the face of the
dune.  Her arms are crossed, and she stands for just a
moment in the wind, lightly moving her hands on the
skin of her upper arms.  Then she grins, and throws
her arms up above her head, and jumps forward, thumping
down onto her bottom, and sliding pell-mell down the
dune, shrieking with glee as she rolls and slips
between the hummocks and comes to a sandy chaotic landing
at her sister's feet.  She looks up at Pat, and smiles,
and reaches up her arm, and says "Ouch!"

Along Julie's left arm, just at the shoulder, is a long
white and red scrape, where the sand on the way down was
a little slow getting out of her way.  In the center of
the scrape, a few drops of blood are oozing out in a fine
straight line.  Pat, her eyes warm and sisterly, kneels
down, takes Julie's arm theatrically in her hands, and
puckers her lips.  She kisses the scrape, her lips on the
line of blood.  Julie giggles, and shudders, as Pat's
mouth presses firmly against her skin.  Pat's eyes close,
the wind dies entirely.  Then she raises her head and
makes a face, her lower lip back, canines exposed, eyes
wide and eyebrows up.  "Vampire!" shouts Julie, and she
screams, and Pat screams, and they both run shrieking,
arms waving, across the sand and up onto the biggest rock,
up its flat sloping back, where you can see the beach
and the white breakers where the waves crash in.  Pat
gets to the peak first, and she stands panting as Julie
catches up.

"Down!" whispers Pat, and the girls throw themselves to
their stomachs on the rough dry sun-warmed rock, Pat's arm
over Julie's back, heads close together.  "What is it?"
breathes the eight-year-old, panting from the tumble down
the dune and the run up the rock.  "Them!" Pat replies, and
they lift their heads and look out over the lip of the rock.

On the beach, five small boys, eight or ten or twelve,
are running in the surf, gathering stones, whirling their
arms and shouting and throwing the stones in wild arcs
out over the water, shouting into the noise of the breakers
as the stones hit and splash and vanish, pushing each other,
gouging the sand with their heels, throwing more stones,
tearing along the beach in all directions.  The girls watch
silently, catching their breaths, pressed against the hard
platform of the rock.  The boys throw and shout and splash
out along the beach, away from them, getting smaller and
quieter in the distance, until they are gone around the
bend of the coastline, hidden by the next jumble of old
red and black rocks.

"Why do boys always throw rocks?" Julie asks when they stand
up.  Pat is quiet and concentrated as they pick their way
down off of the biggest rock and onto the outer beach.  "I
don't know.  Some boy thing."  "Girls don't throw rocks much,
right?" Julie asks.  "Guess not," Pat says, still thinking,
weaving between the smaller rocks and onto the flat sand, wet
and gleaming in the lowering sun.  They walk over the dry part,
down to the waveline, and their feet are wet and sandy.  A few
more waves, and the footprints and heel-gouges of the vanished
boys are utterly gone, and Pat and Julie stand alone on the
beach, sun in their hair, waves crashing in from the distant
storm, gulls wheeling over the rocks.

Julie sits down on a broad flat stone just at the waterline,
watches the waves slide up and flatten themselves at her
feet, clear water and salty foam, cool tickling on her soles.
"Are they all still there, do you think?" she asks Pat.
"Who, all?"  "Daddy and Aunt Kate and everybody.  Back at
the house.  Do you think they're all still there?"

Pat looks down at her, tilts her head.  "Of course, silly!
Where would they go, and leave us behind?"  "But they might
go somewhere just while we're gone, and come back just
before we come back.  They might!"

"Silly!" Pat says, and grins, and stands for a minute just
looking at Julie, her hair tangled and sandy, her body
thin and smooth and perfect, face relaxed and wondering.

Pat wanders along the shore, the waves coming up to the
tops of her ankles.  She reaches down and picks up a large
stone, solid and black and rough, and weighs it in her hand.
The sun sinks toward a bank of clouds in the southwest.
From somewhere far ahead, the wind carries the hint of a
shout.  A wave crashes against a half-submerged rock, and
the spray hangs in the air for a long time, like smoke.

Julie sits with her legs apart, feeling the coolness of the
wet sand on her toes, humming to herself and not thinking
anything, watching Pat watching the ocean, rocking gently
back and forth on her stone.  Pat takes a step, stops;
takes another step, cocks her arm back, stops.  Julie
stops rocking.

Pat draws her arm far back, then sweeps it forward over
her head, and the stone, heavy and wet, arcs out over the
water.  It slips through the air quickly, not hanging like
the spray, but moving as fast as the eye can follow, hitting
the water suddenly and finally, vanishing under a splash of
sea that is instantly swallowed up in a large splash of
breaker, and then it is gone completely.  Pat stands looking
out after it, and the wind whips at her hair.

Julie comes up beside her, moving delicately through the
restless water, and puts her hand in Pat's.  Pat squeezes
Julie's fingers gently, but doesn't turn.  "Do you know
now?" Julie asks, looking at her sister's profile, the
wind flinging her hair around her eyes.

Pat turns, looks at Julie, reaches out and takes her other
hand.  "No, no I think I still don't know," she says, and
she pulls her sister toward her and puts her arms around her,
and they stand with the water moving around their ankles,
arms around each other, looking out at the ocean with the
sun setting, until they get cold, and then they slip like
shadows back up the beach, through the rocks, over the dune.
Two more joyful shrieks drift back over the waves, and
then the beach is alone again, and the waves slowly get
quieter as the distant storm wears itself out, and the
night comes down.


My Friends the Allens -- Rocks
by Mark Aster
The End