Clarisse and I skip away from the water, Oliver following closely behind. I can hear his excited breathing, a jagged in and out. I can feel his presence, his energy over my shoulder as we make our way toward a playground. The equipment casts shadows on the sand in the moonlight, swings and slides and a metal cage to climb upon or hang upside down from.
Next to the playground is a small pavilion used as a concession area, its service window closed, a wooden menu board nailed above depicting hot dogs and slices of pepperoni pizza with prices in hand-painted numbers. There are picnic tables and a few trashcans, some seagulls picking around, conditioned to come to this place looking for scraps of food, a chunk of hot dog bun or a stray French fry.
Clarisse climbs to the top of the slide—a bright blue plastic tube that makes her hair stand on end with static electricity when she emerges from the mouth at the bottom. She lands on her butt, her body making a soft thud on the sand. Oliver runs over and grabs her hands, pulling her to her feet. Then his hands are on her waist, and he lifts her above his head for just a moment before putting her feet back on the ground, a pair of ballet dancers practicing a delicate lift. Clarisse stands against Oliver’s body, looking up at him as he pulls her even closer, his hands resting low on her hips.
“Your turn!” she says, breaking free from him. “Come on, sis,” she says to me as she sprints past me, running back to the top of the slide. I follow her up the ladder, the bottoms of my sandy feet almost slipping on the metal rungs. Oliver climbs behind me, breathing heavier than before.
“Let’s form a chain,” Clarisse says, reaching behind to grab my feet so that I’m straddling her now. Oliver sits behind me and does the same, his long legs reaching all the way to Clarisse. I can feel him getting hard through his shorts, and I can feel myself pulsing against Clarisse in front of me. Oliver stretches his arms forward, reaching for Clarisse’s breasts. “Uh, uh, uh,” Clarisse warns. “Bad boy.”
She lets go of the edges of the tube, and we slide down to the bottom as one, landing in a pile with Oliver on his back on the bottom, me on top of him, and Clarisse on top of me. Clarisse jumps up and turns herself around, now straddling my waist so she can see my face and Oliver’s. “If you want to touch us,” she tells him, “you have to follow our rules.”
“Okay,” he says, “I’ll do anything you want.” His words are staccato from the weight of two girls on his rib cage. “Anything.”
Next to the pavilion, there’s a boardwalk that takes visitors to the parking lot. It’s built about two feet off the ground, with wooden posts that disappear into the sand. There is tall beach grass all around, so high you can stand within it and blend right in, perfect camouflage. If you remain still enough and barely breathe, it’s like you’re not there at all.
I’m the leader. I part the beach grass like I’m parting a beaded curtain. I make a diving motion with my hands, a swimmer separating the water, my body becoming a blade. Oliver and Clarisse walk behind me, navigating around pieces of rock and seashell. When we let go of the grasses, they gently snap back into place, and we are hidden in our own cocoon of sand and wood and grass. Then we duck down and crawl into the space beneath the boardwalk. There is just enough room for our three bodies, as if the space were made just for us.
Oliver lies down on his back between Clarisse and me. He stares up through the slats of the boardwalk, slivers of moonlight making a pattern of light and shadow on his face. Clarisse and I are both propped up on our sides, our elbows sunk into the cool night sand. We face Oliver, but we also face each other. I catch Clarisse’s eyes for just a moment. Even in this half dark, they dazzle me.
“So do you like me and my sister?” I ask Oliver.
He grins because of course the answer is so obvious. He says it without words, just a low sound, nearly a grunt. “Mmmm-hmmm.”
“Do you want to touch us?”
“Mmmm-hmmm.” A little louder now as if the director has appeared from thin air to lead the actors, reminding them of their motivation, of what’s at stake. Try it with more longing this time, more desperate wanting.
I put one finger up to Oliver’s mouth, and say “Shhhhh. We don’t want anyone to hear us.” I grab his hand, the one closest to me, and slide it under my bathing suit top to feel my bare skin. “Do you want to touch me here?” I ask. Then I guide his hand down between my legs. “Or here?”
“Uh, um, everywhere,” he says. I notice his toes are curling and relaxing in rhythm with his breathing.
I let his hand remain between my legs, hoping he can feel me pulsing through my bathing suit bottom.
“Now, do you want my sister to touch you?”
“Oh hell, yes,” he says.
“Go ahead, Heidi,” I say to Clarisse. “Touch him anywhere you like.” I am the director now, placing the characters where I want them within the scene.
Clarisse runs one finger up Oliver’s leg, grazing him gently through his board shorts. She pulls her hand away, looking uncertain for a moment. I reach over and place my hand on top of hers, guiding now, our skin joined and melting, blurring where I begin and she ends, as if we truly do come from the same place. Our one hand is not uncertain now, and we slide our fingertips under the waistband of Oliver’s shorts. We feel his skin damp, slick with sweat. We slide farther and farther until we reach him. Then Clarisse lets go, and it’s just my hand, and I’m not sure what to do exactly, but I have an idea, and the boy’s legs squirm in the sand, as I go on and on.
Clarisse lies on her back and wriggles her T-shirt off over her head. She folds it a few times lengthwise, making the thin blue cotton a bit thicker. “Now, let’s make this more fun,” she says. “Lift your head,” she tells Oliver, and she wraps the T-shirt around his eyes, a cotton blindfold that smells like Clarisse. Oliver laughs softly. “There we go,” Clarisse says when she’s finished securing the T-shirt with a thick knot, and Oliver puts his head back on the sand.
She starts kissing him, and I watch her mouth moving upon his, their lips and tongues moving in rhythm, Clarisse’s eyes closed. Can she feel me staring at them? They are so close, their bodies so real—I can smell skin and sweat and salt and sand. I can feel Oliver in my hand, smooth and hard. It feels like an illusion, a figment of my imagination as though I am some kind of inventor, creating this experience, all these feelings. Clarisse opens her eyes to look at me and then pulls away from Oliver.
“Your turn,” she says, and the boy turns his eyeless face toward me, his mouth open, his lips plumper than I remember, slightly swollen from Clarisse’s kisses. At first, I keep my eyes open and my lips closed, letting him reach for me with his tongue, licking my lips, my chin, searching for my open mouth.
Then Clarisse unties her bathing suit top, and lets the thin straps fall into the sand. She puts Oliver’s hand on one of her bare breasts, and I see him squeezing it and rubbing it before I close my eyes, falling into the kissing, into Oliver’s mouth that is so warm and wet. I’m losing myself in him, can feel some hidden rhythm unlock inside me, and now I know exactly what to do, know what will come next. His other hand is inside my bathing suit bottom now, his fingers inside me.
As we kiss, I lose all sense of time and being. I feel as though my body might lift up at any moment and drift into the sky, a feather on the wind, soft and weightless as a cloud. I feel a breaking, an overwhelming urge to cry out. Just as I think I might float away, I hear Clarisse’s soft voice in my ear, bringing me closer to the ground. “Now, now,” she says. “Don’t keep him all to yourself.”
I pull away from Oliver’s mouth, and he laughs, saying, “It’s okay. I have enough for both of you. I promise.” He takes his hands back—one from Clarisse’s naked breast, one from between my legs. He unties the drawstring of his shorts, sliding them down so we can see all of him now. “Who wants to go first this time?” he asks.
The boy’s entire body is muscle—I can sense it rippling and writhing even though I see him lying perfectly still—his eyeless face, the blood in his veins glowing blue-black in the slivers of moonlight, coursing, coursing. It hits me that there is something sacred about this, about him offering himself, an animal rendering up its soft underbelly to strangers, vulnerable, only looking for comfort, for pleasure. But to render can also mean to melt down, as in rendering the fat of an animal killed for its food, for the comfort and pleasure flesh provides when devoured.
Clarisse leans down slowly, putting him in her mouth as he stifles a moan, trying to be quiet. I can hear the water slapping the sand in the distance and an unknown insect chorus singing in broken rhythm. Clarisse’s eyes are pinched shut. She’s not quite sure of herself, I can tell. In spite of that, she moves like a dancer, her body making time with Oliver’s body. I feel wetness between my legs—my insides sticky, a kind of priming. Each cell within me is swelling, swelling. I feel a sudden hot breeze blow through our tiny space, the humidity so high you swear you can reach out and grab the air, feeling it in your hand like a fistful of hair.
I watch Clarisse’s mouth on Oliver and enjoy the throbbing sensation building inside me. I drag my fingers across the cool sand, a way to release some of the pressure. I dig in, feeling the coarseness of the sand against my sticky skin. I dig deeper until something stops me—something hard, a jagged piece of rock. I free it from the sand, cupping it in my palm. It’s dark and heavy in my hand, the surface bumpy, covered in tiny holes. My toes curl, and I feel a pulsing between my legs.
Oliver’s eyes are closed. He runs his hands through Clarisse’s hair. He breathes faster and faster, grabs on to her shoulders, and releases a low moan. I smash the rock against the top of Oliver’s head. Bright blood splashes on the sand, a constellation of red appearing before me. The strike makes Oliver shudder, which knocks Clarisse from his body. She hits the back of her head on the boardwalk above us and winces from the pain.
“Evelyn, what the fuck are you doing?” Clarisse hisses and then she looks over and sees the rock in my hand, the blood fanned around Oliver’s head like a halo. She starts to cry.
I feel language rise up from somewhere deep within me, knowledge pulled from my very soul. I can see it all clearly now, my focus sharp as the scalpel’s edge. There is nothing to block my view of the light of reality, the shining sun of this world I’ve created. I look into Clarisse’s face, as though I’m looking into the infinite, into everything that is at once knowable and unknowable.
“I’m taking the test.”