I wonder what he’s running from.
I also think he’s a bit of a jerk, just ditching what the rest of us are doing, acting as if his swimming is important somehow—a priority that no one else can really understand.
I miss my phone, but as days pass, I begin to lean into the rush of the ocean and the voices of the boys. I’ve found a book to read, a Narnia fantasy that Meer says is Kingsley’s favorite from the series. I barely remember it from when I was younger, but it’s good. In it, a boy becomes a dragon and he’s miserable. Trapped. He can only turn back into a boy by having his dragon skin painfully ripped off by a lion.
The boy is Eustace Scrubb. The name on the note I found in the kitchen drawer.
The story also makes me think of the tale about the donkey skin burned to release the trapped human inside. And of Brock’s escape, and the way it captured Kingsley’s imagination.
When I’m tired of reading, I write game ideas in my sketchbook, or tell the boys the plots of video games I’ve played. They listen like we’re sitting around a campfire and I’m a counselor telling ghost stories. While I’m talking, Meer draws ornate patterns on his own skin, or makes other people do it. He is mapped over with bubble-letter sentences and dolphins and skulls and pinups both male and female. The new entries are dark and black, and the old ones beneath them just a delicate blue.
One day, while Tatum is in the ocean, Brock interrupts me explaining the plot ofLuigi’s Haunted Mansionto say that the internet told him Sharpies contain neurotoxins.
“Shut up,” says Meer. “Tell me good news only.”
“I’m serious,” says Brock. “I don’t know what neurotoxins do, but what if they make you so you can’t have sex or something?”
“Well, that would suck,” says Meer. “But probably strawberries have neurotoxins, too.”
“Strawberries are pure and good,” says Brock, popping one in his mouth.
“You don’t know that for sure. They could be a silent killer.”
“Strawberries make you virile.”
“Liar.”
“Okay, I made that up. But they don’t have neurotoxins. Don’t try and ruin them for me.”
“Let me draw on you,” says Meer. “Let me make you pretty.”
“I’m already very pretty,” says Brock. “You drew on me yesterday.”
“You’ll be even prettier.”
“Fine. Neurotoxin me up. When I die, the internet will be like, he kicked Ritalin but he was done in by an overdose of permanent marker.”
He flops over on his belly and Meer writes bubble letters across his back.LOSER.
“You look gorgeous,” I tell Brock.
“I can read with my back skin,” says Brock. “I know what he wrote. Meer, why are you such a little butt?”
“It’s my nature,” says Meer.
As the sun lowers in the sky, Tatum finally comes out of the sea. He flops down next to me, wet.
I’m in my green bikini with a baseball cap shading my eyes. My head is propped on a rolled towel and I’ve been explaining how inLuigi’s Haunted Mansion,there’s a level of this creepy building that’s a garden, with water lilies and grass growing out of the floor, vines and flowers everywhere, taking over.
“Is there food?” Tatum asks. The water forms droplets on his shoulders where there’s still a bit of oil from the sunblock. He’s breathing hard.
“We ate everything but the cut-up apple,” says Meer.
“I’ll take that,” says Tatum. Brock digs in the cooler and tosses him a mason jar filled with apple slices.
“Go back to the story, Matilda,” says Meer.
“This angry gardener ghost is the boss of the level. So when he sees you, he waters this evil piranha plant and it explode-grows up to the top of this tower.”
