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“Good thing you’ve got such a hard head.” Alice smiled above me.
“I knew my hard head would come in handy someday.” I opened my mouth in a big grin, pushing through the pain of my swollen lip telling me to stop. As I beamed up at the four faces hovering above me, instead of grinning back at me, every set of eyes bulged wide with horror.
“Oh, hell no.” Alice covered her mouth.
“Oh, good Lord.” Doris sucked the air through her teeth.
“Blimey!” Bryce twisted his face. “That’s not good!”
Sylvie gasped and cringed.
“What? What’s wrong?” I asked, fear taking hold at the horrified faces looming over me.
They all looked at each other and then back at me.
“Uh, you, uh ... You knocked out a tooth.” Sylvie grimaced and pointed to her front tooth.
“What?” I gasped, touching my face. My fingers found my teeth and then the hole where one should be. “No! My tooth!” I sat up quickly, everyone tumbling back on their heels to give me room. “My tooth! It’s gone! We have to find it! We have to find my tooth!”
Panic clutched me as I rolled onto my knees, my search for my missing tooth starting in the surf crashing onto the shore.
“Where is it? We need to find it! Get it in milk right away! They always say to put it in milk to keep it alive! Someone go get some milk while the rest of us hunt for my tooth!”
Instead of leaping into action and scouring the surf with me, they all stood silently watching me scurrying around on my knees, my fingers digging through the sand, hoping my little lost tooth would miraculously appear.
“Hurry up! We need to find it!” I begged, visions of what I must look like with a missing front tooth invading every inch of my mind.
Sylvie stepped closer to me. “Marge, you likely lost it when you got hit. Out there. In the ocean. We’re never going to find it.”
I ignored her and kept searching. “It’s got to be here somewhere. Would you broads get your asses down here and help me find my damn tooth?”
“Marge, dear. Sylvie is right. It’s gone. There is no way we will find it,” Doris soothed.
Refusing to accept that my amazing surfing experience had ended with me looking like an NHL hockey player sitting in the penalty box after a fight, I ignored them and kept digging. The sunlight caught a white object lodged in the sand, and I gasped as I grabbed it. “Ha! My tooth!” I ripped it out of the sand and hoisted it up. “I found it! I knew I would find it!”
But as I held up the little white object and saw the pitiful looks on the widow’s faces, I realized I wasn’t holding up my own tooth. I was holding up a shark tooth.
“Oh, crikey. Close, but no cigar,” Bryce said.
“Well, you do love sharks,” Doris said, tipping her head. “Maybe you could have one shark tooth. I bet that would look neat.”
“Doris! Donotgive her any ideas!” Alice smacked her forehead. “You arenotgetting a shark tooth implanted in the gaping hole in your mouth, Marge. Don’t even think it. Don’t even entertain it. Under no circumstances will I ever hang out with you again if you have one weird shark tooth beaming back at me when you smile.”
I looked at the tooth and then tipped my head. “I dunno. Maybe it would look kinda cool. It would make me look pretty tough, I bet.” I shrugged as I envisioned myself snarling and showing off my new shark tooth. The thought took away the sting of accepting my own tooth was long gone.
“Throw it into the ocean, Marge. Please,” Sylvie begged. “I’m with Alice—no shark tooth implants. Let’s get you back to the resort and see if we can find a dentist or something to patch you up. Okay?”
“And not with a freaking shark tooth,” Alice added. “With a human-looking tooth. Because I’m not going to be your friend if you are walking around beaming that gaping hole at me all the time or snarling at me with a shark tooth. I’ll only be your friend if real human teeth greet my eyes when you smile. Come on. Let’s go. We’re finding a dentist. Now.”
“It’s gone? It’s really gone?” Still trying to come to terms with the quick change of events that had ended up with me looking like Mike Tyson, I sat back on the beach, staring out into the ocean that would now be the home of my beloved tooth.
“You sure you’re alright?” Bryce asked. “I feel terrible this happened to you.”
After taking one more moment to grieve the loss of something that had been part of me since I was a child, I bid goodbye to my tooth and rose to standing. “I’m okay. I mean, other than my missing tooth, I don’t think I lost anything permanent.”
“I’m just really sorry about that,” Bryce said.
I walked a few steps forward and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Bryce, it was absolutely awesome, and I don’t regret it for a second. Getting to surf was incredible, and sometimes we have to pay a steep price for amazing experiences. This time, the price was, unfortunately, my tooth.” I shrugged. “But what’s done is done. No sense crying over spilled milk.”
