Page 53 of Nights Without Night
“I win!” I crow as we both stand up at the tail of a wave, a few feet closer to the shore than Isadoro.
“It’s cause you’re so skinny,” he protests.
“It’s cause you’re so skinny,” I mimic in a high voice. “You’re such a sore loser. I’m just better than you. What, did they not teach this in training?” I tease.
“Brat,” he says, shoving me into the next wave.
“Hey!” I splutter, lunging and yanking at his leg until he falls. I scream in delight as he bursts out of the water and toward me, swimming away from him and into deeper, calmer waters.
When we exhaust ourselves like children in the waves, we walk out into the heat again. We spread our towels in the sun and lay there, the water evaporating from our skin and leaving salt behind. When the sun’s itch becomes too much we move under the parasol and nap in the breeze.
I blink awake as I hear Isadoro get up next to me. I watch him through slit eyes as he goes into the water and then back again to sit right at the wave’s edge. I follow his lead, taking a dip before joining him.
“Let’s build something,” I suggest. He smiles at me.
We don’t have any tools, but it doesn’t stop us. We carry wet sand away from the water’s reach and I get to constructing a castle as he builds a protective moat around it for when the ride rises. We used to do this all the time in summer when we were children.
“Remember the time we started a sand war with those kids we didn’t even know?” I laugh.
“Oh my God. They looked so fucking surprised when you lobbed that first ball at them. Everybody was always on about what a troublemaker I was, but you were just as bad.”
“We were a couple of little shits,” I agree. Isadoro was always more of a thrill-seeker, but I was responsible for a fair share of misadventures. “Or, oh my God…remember that restaurant we used to terrorize?”
“Fuck! I had almost forgotten about that.”
“We were, like, so convinced that the owner had tried to run me over. I probably just stepped out onto the road like an idiot,” I say. The owner of a local Indian restaurant had, in our overdramatic minds, tried to kill me, and we’d spent the summer sticking ‘closed’ signs on his restaurant’s doors.
“Didn’t you draw a middle finger on some of the posters?” Isadoro says incredulously as if it’s not our own past.
“Oh, my God.”
“Not to mention the time we made those water balloons filled with pee. We literally peed into a bucket for that one. We put more effort into that than most of our science projects,” Isadoro says, laughing loudly.
“Jesus, I think I’d repressed that one. We were so awful, we really were. Oh, but remember when you found a wounded bird? We were so sad when it died…”
“Oh, yeah. It had a good funeral though. I like that we buried it with one of your little clay animals, so it wasn’t alone.”
“Yeah. Okay, we weren’t that bad.”
“Yeah, only to people,” Isadoro chuckles.
“Eh, people kinda suck anyway.”
When we deem the castle as good as it's going to get, we wash up, dry off, and walk to a nearby food truck for lunch. We don’t order much, the heat robbing us of our appetite, but the squid we buy is so fresh and good that we go for seconds. We compliment the two women manning the truck and they smile their thanks.
“We catch some of the squids ourselves, actually. They come out at night, near land where they’re attracted to light. You don’t even need to put anything on the lure, a squid jig is enough,” one of them explains. Isadoro and I look at each other, communicating without words.
Inspired by the conversation about our past mischief, we decide on the spot to go out and fish squid that night. We finish our food as we plan.
We spend the rest of the day lounging and playing on the beach. When we’ve had enough of the sun, we pack up and head back to the boat. After cold showers and clean clothes, we go buy the necessary supplies. We already have the line, rods, and coolers, so all we need are the squid jigs and some ice to keep the squid fresh. After we store everything away we go back into town for dinner. We meander around to pass the time, fizzing with anticipation.
When it’s late enough, we head out. We’ve already decided on the perfect spot. We steer the boat towards the lighthouse and then anchor far enough away from the other boats to not disturb them.
“We probably need a permit for this,” Isadoro says.
“We’re only gonna catch a couple, come on.”
We sit on the swaying boat for hours, under the expanse of stars. The town is small enough not to cause too much light pollution, and they are bright pinholes of light in the black. The moon is almost full, dripping silver into the waves.
