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“The faster you get into the water, the faster you’ll warm up.”
Miles grumbled but pushed himself under. There was a brief moment of cold that shocked him before he adjusted, and Beckett was right — he felt a lot warmer with his shoulders submerged.
Now it was time for revenge. He swam to Beckett, able to see two blurry legs under the water, then jumped up. Before Beckett could react, Miles sprayed him relentlessly with water.
They splashed each other for a good five minutes, then swam around and body-surfed the waves. It was nice, especially under the hot sun.
“What are you thinking about?” Miles asked an hour later, when they were floating on their backs, looking at the sky. Thick, white clouds, some tinted with gray, drifted in from the north.
“Nothing,” Beckett said.
“You say that every time.”
“I’m genuinely thinking about nothing.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It’s not impossible. People who meditate do it. Monks,” Beckett said.
“Oh, are you a monk now?”
Beckett was not a monk. He was about to begin his third year of uni, studying biomedical science with the goal of getting into med school. Just like Miles.
“Maybe I should meditate,” Miles continued. “I saw this YouTube video about how loads of successful people meditate.”
“That sounds like the kind of thing Addison and Wesley would do,” Beckett said.
“Meditate because billionaires do it? Yeah. Neither of them would be able to do it successfully, though. They’d spend the whole time stressing about their GPA.”
Beckett laughed. “Or their stock market portfolio.”
Miles laughed too. “Or their LinkedIn profile.”
“The two of them are so similar and they don’t even realize it.”
“Yeah. It’s weird that they hate each other.”
“They don’t hate each other,” Beckett said.
“Yeah, I know they don’t actually hate each other. They’re closer with each other than the rest of us, not that either of them would ever admit it. But they argue all the time. You know, sometimes I find them in a room alone, bickering, and their faces are like this close to each other.” Miles raised his hand in the air to show Beckett the distance of an inch between his forefinger and thumb. “It’s almost like they’re…”
“Yeah?” Beckett prompted in a quiet voice.
“Like they’re actually going to get into a fistfight someday!” Miles finished. “God, I really hope that doesn’t happen. We’re gonna be the ones who are going to have to patch up their wounds, you know.”
“Miles. Don’t tell me you can’t see what’s going on with them.”
“What are you talking about?”
Beckett hummed. “You’ll figure it out one day.”
Miles spent a minute attempting to understand what Beckett was talking about. “You’re just trying to distract me from my question,” he concluded. “What were you thinking about?”
There was a splash as Beckett rolled into the water. He appeared beside Miles, his head blocking out the sun, so he was outlined in gold. “I was thinking that I was getting cold. Want me to show you Tidal River?”
*
Tidal River was a five-minute walk away, and by the time they arrived, the sun had already evaporated all the seawater from their skin. The river was shallow and thin and a brown-orange color, like it was ginger beer instead of water.
