Building a castle is sticky, hot work. Sergio takes pictures of all of us behind the castle. Then Frankie, Tita, and I go into the shallow water to rinse the sand off our bodies.
“You think the jellyfish swam away?” I ask Frankie.
He squats down in the water, so the waves can wash over his shoulders. “What jellyfish?”
“The one from this morning,” I say, bouncing down in the water to rinse off, then standing up again. “The one swimming in the water.”
Frankie just laughs. “You always got to look out for jellyfish.”
I look around where I’m standing. The water around me is knee deep. Then I feel something brush against my leg, then grab my ankle and give it a good shake.
I scream, jumping up. Frankie really starts laughing because he grabbed me underwater to scare me. I start laughing too. Usually I’m not a chicken.
Tita’s laughing at us, then I see her point. “Look!”
Both Frankie and I turn around. I see a silver fish about eight inches long jump through the waves. And then another fish jumps up, wiggles through the air, and plops back into the waves.
“Oh wow! We need fishing poles!” I say to everyone.
“Naw, that’s just a mullet.” Frankie stands up. “You can’t eat those. They’re only good for cut bait.”
I shrug my shoulders. A fish is a fish to me. I’d still like to catch one this week-end.
Mrs. Sandoval calls to us to come eat lunch. I suddenly feel real hungry. My stomach growls as I follow the others under the shade and smell the skinny sausages Mr. Sandoval’s grilling on a short barbecue pit. Beside the brown sausages, he’s got a foil tray piled with flour tortillas.
“Serve yourselves,” Mrs. Sandoval says. She’s sitting in a nylon folding chair, and pulls Sammy, who’s wrapped in a towel, onto her lap. Sammy’s holding a sausage wrapped in a napkin, and he’s munching on it like he’s pretty hungry too.
Mr. Sandoval puts a warm flour tortilla on my plate then spears a sausage from the grill and sets it in the tortilla.
I thank him, then move to the square folding table behind him to squeeze some mustard on my meat and grab a handful of chips from an open bag.
All of this reminds me of being on a picnic, except there aren’t any ants. I like eating on the beach instead of going back to the cabin.
Sergio and Carmen take the other two folding chairs, so I sit on one of the two canvas stools near the ice chest.
I sit down, balance my plate on my legs, then roll the tortilla around my sausage. I take a small bite ’cause I know it’ll be hot. I chew the tasty meat, but also, I’m crumbling something between my teeth. I take another bite and kind of chew slower, staring down at the sausage. Then I realize what I’m tasting. Sand. Maybe it’s just my mind playing tricks. Even though I rinsed off, I still feel sandy, which isn’t surprising, since the sand’s in the salt water too. I can even feel it in the breeze cooling us under the tent.
“Alicia, you want a soda? Frankie, get Alicia a soda from the ice chest,” Mr. Sandoval says.
I nod my head because I’m still chewing my crunchy sausage taco. It doesn’t taste too bad if I don’t think about the crunching.
Frankie pops the top on a can of soda and hands it to me.
“Thanks,” I tell him and can’t wait for the cold drink to wash the sand out of my mouth. When I take a swallow, the red soda tastes saltier than I remember. I take another drink, and still feel the sand and salt in my mouth. This is something I wasn’t expecting, and I’m not sure what to think about it.
“Aw man!” Frankie groans loudly.
The others start laughing because Frankie’s dropped his sausage in the sand. I smile, but I don’t laugh. I know if I did that, I’d feel so embarrassed.
“Just wash it off in the ocean,” Mrs. Sandoval says.
Frankie shrugs, picks up the sausage, and carries it between two fingers down towards the water. I can’t believe it. I think I’d rather skip lunch that eat a sausage washed in salt water.
I watch Frankie bend over in the waves, wash off the sausage, then start munching on it. By the time he reaches the shade, he’s finished eating it and goes to the barbecue pit for another.
“You want to do some fishing today?” Mr. Sandoval asks Frankie as the boy wraps a tortilla around two sausages. He doesn’t drop anything this time.
Frankie nods as he takes a big bite. “Just you and me?” he says between chews.
“I usually catch the best fish,” Carmen says. “Sergio and I can come too.”
“What about Alicia?” Tita asks.
I look at Mr. Sandoval, hoping he’ll let me come along.
Mr. Sandoval’s moustache moves side to side as he stares at me. “Ever been fishing before, Alicia?”
I swallow, then nod. “Yes, sir. A couple of times, but I never caught anything.”
“Sure you did, Alicia. At Tío Chale’s pond. You caught that big goldfish, remember?” Sergio says, and he’s grinning like a clown.
My face starts burning up. What will Carmen’s family think if Sergio tells that story? Too late. Sergio loves to make me look stupid.
“Alicia was five,” he says. “And we were visiting my uncle’s ranch near Puebla. He has this rock pond in the middle of his patio. Some goldfish about this big live in it.” Sergio uses his hands to show the fish are about the size of the mullet I saw in the waves.
“Well one afternoon, while everyone else is taking a siesta, Alicia decides she’s going to go fishing. She finds a stick and some string, and jumps into the pond, and tries to tie up a fish.”
“I didn’t have any hooks!” I say to Carmen’s family, just like I had told everyone at Tío’s house that day. “And Tío said he felt like eating fish for supper that night.”
“You mean Alicia caught a fish with her hands?” Tita’s brown eyes are big and round as she looks from Sergio to me.
Sergio’s laughing more, and so are the others. “She grabbed the fish and stuck it under her arm pit, trying to tie it onto the string. That’s how my uncle found her.”
I only wish I had a story about Sergio and a fish to tell everyone. I want to crawl into a shell like a hermit crab.
“You know, Alicia? That’s a cool story,” Frankie says. “I tried to catch a flounder once, but it slipped out of my hands.”
“Well, unless you got arms like an octopus, you won’t be able to catch fish with your hands off a pier,” Mr. Sandoval says. He gives me a friendly wink before he asks, “Alicia, do you think you could use a pole and hook for fishing today?”
I finally smile. “Sure, Mr. Sandoval.” It seems like he’ll take me fishing with everyone else after all.
“Anybody want some cookies?” Mrs. Sandoval asks, and soon a bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies gets passed around.
The one I take is a fat, round one exploding with chocolate chips. I bite into it, only to taste some invisible frosting. It’s still delicious, but there’s a sandy, salty flavor too. I’m getting used to it.
After lunch I decide that washing a sausage in the ocean before eating it isn’t as yucky as I first thought. When you’re eating on the beach, a little extra salt water doesn’t make much difference.
Another hour in the water, then we pack up the truck and head back to the cottage to leave Mrs. Sandoval and Sammy to siesta while the rest of us go fishing. Tita says it’s too hot and she will stay with her mother. Mr. Sandoval and Frankie take time to fix a small ice chest with fresh ice and sodas. Carmen’s bathing Sammy, and that leaves Sergio and me outside. Waiting.
“Why don’t you stay here with Tita?” Sergio says as I sit on the crooked porch smearing sunscreen on my arms.
“Mr. Sandoval said I could come fishing,” I tell him, wishing Sergio would stay here with Tita instead.
“It’ll be hot. There’s no bathroom. Or shade. We’ll be out fishing all afternoon. I’m not taking my car. If you get tired, too bad. You’ll be stuck out there until everyone else wants to stop fishing.”
I say nothing at first. I want to fish, and Sergio can’t change my mind. Finally, I stand up and twist the cap of the sunscreen bottle very tight, pretending it is Sergio’s neck. “I’m going to get my hat and go to the bathroom. Then I’ll be ready.”
“Hey! Let me have that sunscreen lotion!” he says as I turn to go inside the yellow house.
I rub my greasy hands all over the bottle, then toss it at him. I hear it thump on the porch just before the screen door slams behind me.