Christening

We said we were cousins. It made us feel closer, tethered by more than our parents’ choice of caravan park, the same populated beach. The days wandered with us hand-in-hand, palms sticky and jammed tight. It could have been true. Your face was rounder than mine, softer, but we shared the same furrowed cheeks and thin bridge of nose. Once, a woman in a faded Coldplay t-shirt, ice cream smear down Chris’ cheek, told us she could see it across the eyes. Just there. She gestured to our brows like we might not know where to find them. We were sprawled out in the shade, itched with sand. It was the weather adults waited for, then complained about. Parched sky. You’d lightened your hair, squeezed lemon juice into the roots, massaged it in like shampoo. Streaks oiled your shoulders. The tang of skin reminded me of my mother’s baking, meringues sluiced in berries. Sharp. Crisp enough they’d snap if I pressed a finger to them, would scatter sugared confetti across the kitchen floor. You pulled a camera from your backpack. It was a lilac iZone, a 13th birthday present, and you cradled it like a small child. You twisted the lens towards us, our limbs a tangle of awkward shapes, blobbed on the towel like dough left out to rise. Say cheese. I smiled like the film might not see it, wide and toothy. Across the beach, parasols crested and fell. Tourists flocked to the sea like turtle hatchlings scuttling to safety. We all wanted to escape the heat. You reached the surf before me, glided into the waves. Knee-deep, I rocked from toe to toe, sands slipping from my grasp. On the shore, dogs scrabbled, shook their fur. The cliffs were dark against the horizon, stained with taffy-coloured tents and paper-thin figures. You faced me, all breath and sea salt stings. A handful of surfers slithered past, boards leashed to ankles. You ducked, bobbed beneath a wave. It was too murky to see. When you surfaced I inhaled like coming up for air. You splashed my forehead. The grin that split your face made my insides squeeze, like a tight embrace. The next day you knocked on the caravan door with a bracelet draped on your wrist. From the camp’s gift shop, a thin cord strung with cowrie shells the white of discoloured teeth. I dabbed one with my finger, wished it was mine. Often you knew what I would say before my mouth formed the syllables. You pulled a second from your pocket, threaded it on my wrist. We spent the sunlight scouring the foam for sea creatures; spirals flipped in search of sea snails, mussels prised open. A whelk clutched in the pearl of your fist. Limpets bunched on stones. Our midden of shells, I told her. At the far side of the cove was a dead stingray, tucked in a cluster of rocks. Five or six children, temporary relatives like us, dared one another to prod it with sticks. You shooed them off. What would you call it, you asked, if there were more? A fever. We let the sea toss us on the final afternoon, danced across a current that threatened to suck us in, suspend us there. Churns of seaweed tickled our ankles. I felt buoyant when you tossed your head back. That laugh was the closest I’d come to religion. Suitcases in the car, you handed me the Polaroid. We’d left it on the towels. It was overexposed, distorted. Our arms were smudged lines, the curve of my hip a puckered mauve. Your hair haloed gold. Perhaps I was too close to see it clearly. At home I tacked it to the wall, and our mouths were two orange rays.