Chapter 19 Sand Dunes
sand dunes
Firm beneath our feet, until they shift.
In the morning we’re stiff. Rigid.
We groan our way out of the truck to the public loos, then take the track through the bush that banks the shore.
Trees crowd overhead; the path keeps dodging the beach like it’s playing hard to get.
Ten minutes later we cut left into the dunes—heaped walls of black sand—and the trail pinches narrow. Each step sinks deep.
I peel off my shoes. Cool grit slips over my arches, sifts between my toes, rises and falls like breath.
“Good idea,” Trent murmurs, doing the same. When his bare feet meet sand, he tips his head back, eyes shuttering, a soft smile tugging at his mouth: content.
We run down the dunes, losing shoes here and there, skipping shells that don’t bounce. I find extra-salty seaweed and chase after Trent with it. “Why are you running? You’re the Kelp King.”
“The glint in your eye . . . terrifying,” he yells over his shoulder.
“This could make a nice crown. Or wig.”
“Wear it yourself.”
“Then I’d be your Kelp Queen.”
He stops running to catch his breath, and I do too—
Fling.
The seaweed lands on his head and shoulder.
It earns me a tackle and we’re jumbled up together, legs and arms tangled.
Seaweed stretches from his head to my stomach, where my shirt has ridden up.
Between ribbons of kelp, his fingers skim my scar, pause and tense, and drift on, using the excuse of clearing seaweed to trace its edge.
Then, on a swallow, he and the seaweed roll off my skin.
Slippery.
Trent finds a smooth, dry spot near the dunes and drops onto it, arms and legs flung wide.
Starfish, I think.
Like the first time I saw him, in the orange shirt . . . It felt ominous, then. A dead starfish, something that shouldn’t pull me and does. But now . . . That dead starfish is a thing we share. He’s buried one, and so have I. Different losses, same undertow.
He hasn’t talked about it yet, but some form of that conversation is playing in his head. Has been playing since the moment in the studio.
He’s just waiting. For the right time.
I scramble on hands and knees towards the glitter of a shell. “Let’s bring something back to Grandpa. A shell, stone, piece of driftwood.” My breath hitches and I sift deeper into the sand. “See who finds the best?”
Trent rises to the challenge. He finds a smooth stone, I a spiral shell, and then he one-ups me with a shard of pāua that catches every colour of the sky and sea. I scour the beach, picking and plucking, Trent outdoing me at my side.
And then. The sun brightens, suddenly coming out from behind a white cloud. Light glitters on a long, smooth stick ahead. A bit of work, it might make a wonderful cane for Grandpa.
Trent eyes it at the same time, and the roll of his shoulders—he’s thinking the same. He looks at me.
I run for it. He runs for it.
I grab his sleeve, pull him back, slip a foot in front of him—
He has me by the t-shirt, a sharp yank, and I’m losing my balance; he lunges, I thrust out a foot, and he eats grit too.
We eye one another, the prized wood, and the army crawl begins . . .
Arms outstretched, so close . . .
A kid barrels in from the side, snatches the stick, and brandishes it like a staff.
Trent and I roll onto our backs, laughing. The beach is cool against my shoulder blades; the air is warm; the sun presses like a palm to my chest.
Behind us a high ridge looms, a dune paused like a wave about to break.
And then it breaks.
Short and sharp. He, on held breath; me, on quiet exhale.
“You’ve lost a sibling.”
“Too.”
“You’re keeping it all inside.”
“Too.”
“You’re hurting.”
“Too.”
He swallows, his Adam’s apple jutting. And I turn my head towards the sky, like his. And I snort.
Snicker.
He digs in his pocket and gently throws me back my fifty cents, raising a brow.
I catch it against my chest. “I thought you were crazy, back then. When I entered your bunkbed-bedroom. Who was this guy, who could hold all this in?”
There is no touch.
Not a flicker of furtive contact.
He doesn’t pull me in, press me to a pounding heart, doesn’t feather a kiss into my hair.
He doesn’t murmur anything soft, anything sweet.
And yet—
I’ll remember this as if all those things happened, held in the silence between us.
I felt it: comfort, connection, deeper than if there had been any touch at all.
I laugh so hard tears stream from the corners of my eyes, sand sliding beneath me. “Crazy,” I say.
He sighs, “Too.”