Toes
Morgan decides that the beach smells like eggs. Like the egg Harry lobbed at him that day last summer, all sour-stenched and bad. It had landed by his feet, shattering across the hopscotch squares he’d chalked on the decking. The waves of rot rolled over him, made him retch. Mam grounded them both that day: Harry for the egg, Morgan for the chalk.
Sea air is good for you, Dad says. It toughens you up. Morgan inhales a lungful of the egginess and waits to be toughened, but Mam catches his wrinkled nose and tells him off for pulling a face.
*
Knees
Mam hands out chicken-paste sandwiches all battered and dented from the journey to the coast. Morgan bites down, hears grit crunch loud between molars, spits. Mam pulls a face at him. Dad calls him ungrateful. Harry smirks.
He wanders off to explore the rockpools, their slimy surfaces as hazardous as their innards are inviting. Bladderwrack beckons to him; limpets hug the rock. He slips, splits open a knee, bites back tears. Dad says boys aren’t supposed to cry.
*
Shoulders
Someone brought a football. Morgan watches from a distance as Dad and Harry kick it back and forth, skidding on sand and never missing a pass. Mam cheers on both sides equally, her voice whipped away by the wind.
He traces the shoreline, his footprints thieved by the tide, and watches his family. They are smaller at this distance. If he holds out his hand just right, he could hold them in his palm. He waves. They don’t wave back. How small he must seem to them. If they held out their hands, they could flick him out of sight, like a speck, like snot, like sand.
*
Head
He’s never waded so far out. The seawater washes away the egginess, the rot, until all he can smell is salt. He bobs with the waves, feels sand curl and shift underfoot, and keeps his eye on the horizon. He’s tough now. Tougher than anyone on the beach, even Dad. He doesn’t turn back, not once, not even as the water soaks his t-shirt and the ground shifts deep and he’s up to his neck, hopscotching with every step to find the sand beneath.
***
Amy Slack is a writer and editor from the North-East of England. Now living in London, she is currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck. Amy’s short fiction has been presented at MIR Live and published by FlashBack Fiction, Honey and Lime, Ellipsis Zine, and Milk Candy Review, among others. You can find her on Twitter @amyizzylou.
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