Ani King
Summerland®
Let's say we haven’t hung out since middle school, but we run into each other on an app and swipe right. And let’s say instead of a quick hook up, we decide to go on a real date. Let's say that for our date we take the bus to the strip mall Summerland® Beach Rooms just outside the city, the one with the long lines but the good beach rooms, let’s say we always wanted to go back in the day, but our moms said it was too expensive, a waste of money, an experience no better than seagull shit on your face, they misremembered summers from when they were young, saying anyone back then could walk into a lake or splash into a pond or dive into an ocean without coming out oil-sheened or covered in rashes; let’s say when we begged to go on the middle school field trip to Summerland® they said no, and swore it wasn’t because of the money, but because we had the inlet, but let’s say the inlet is smells like piss and rotting fish, let’s say no one would ever risk swimming in the water and the sand is planted with torn shopping bags and fast food wrappers. Let's say for our date at Summerland® you bring a beach bag that says Fun! on the front and let’s say it’s stuffed with three big towels and a bottle of the same cheap sunblock we’ve used our whole lives, and let’s say we smear it on our arms and faces despite the UV filters in the beach room, and we keep inhaling the chemical-coconut smell of it, and let’s say I bring enough money to pay for a couple bottles of water and a couple of soy burgers with soy fries that will come to us on a plastic tray that we can eat at the real wood composite picnic table, because let’s say that we rent out one of the nice big rooms, with real sand and enough space for the dyed blue water to build into meager waves, like a real beach day, and let’s say after we eat we try to build a sandcastle with the vintage red plastic pail and two yellow plastic shovels that I found on eBay, but we’ve never done this without soda cans as bases for the towers, or waterlogged plastic candy wrappers for decoration or plastic straws to stick in the top, imaginary flags rippling out in an imaginary breeze, so they look like shit and they fall apart as soon as we take our hands away. Let’s say instead of a sandcastle, we build a ring of lumpy drip castles, the sand slurry plopping from shoddy anuses made by our loose fists, and let’s say we laugh for a long time at our shit castles, and the let’s say it feels stupid at first, but we play at being monsters, like when we were kids, but let’s say we wade out into the water even though neither of us can swim, but let’s say it doesn’t get more than waist high in any of these rooms; let’s say we splash until the water is frothing on top and then we come out roaring and stomping, we smash our ugly, SoftServe shit castles, and let’s say we don’t stop there, let’s say we dig furrows in the weirdly clean, weirdly pale sand so deep that we find the building flooring beneath and let’s say it’s just cold cement, coated in pockmarked brown plastic, and let’s say we dig a person sized hole that goes all the way down the Summerland® floor and we climb in together, let’s say we melt into each other like our drip castles and we bury ourselves up to the neck like we always wanted to when we were little, but can you even imagine if we’d covered ourselves in inlet sand so the fleas made homes of our bodies, so our moms shouted us home the whole way? But let’s say when we close our eyes we can’t help but imagine the swelling whine of traffic whipping along the freeway that loops over our neighborhood, we imagine waves trembling onto the Summerland® imitation shore and carrying the cellophane remains of someone’s last microwave burrito, waterlogged maxi pads and tampons, Band-Aids and wrist braces, weed tangled wristbands from a night at the club, disposable razors and disposable needles and disposable lighters and disposable diapers, and let’s say we don’t go home to tell our moms we came here and they were right: it’s expensive and we missed being young and playing at the inlet, let’s say instead we pool the remains of our money and take a couple forties to drink while we hold hands under the overpass; let’s say we watch sunset smoking red-orange over the inlet, and the water twitching, and the children down there squatting over the treasures of the day, and the last of daylight pouring sticky and slow over them, let’s say we listen to them shrieking with the sea gulls, playing monsters, obliterating their own sandcastles in the elongating shadow of the Summerland® billboard.
Mermaid Park
Wade into the Mermaid Park swimming area up to your shoulders, shiver along with the buoys until your lips turn blue. Do this all evening when you arrive, and the next day, as soon as the sun rises, dart across the damp sand down to the shore. Turn pink, then red, skin bubbling up and sloughing away, pray for scales to reveal themselves beneath the tender flesh. An old wound breaks open with your skin: if you are really your mother’s child, when will it show? A pair of middle school aged girls are there with their dad for a custody exchange. It’s not like she’s gonna be here on time if she even comes, one of them says and flips her hair, rolls her eyes, plays with her phone. The younger girl complains, she always makes us wait for her. The whole place smells disappointing, like burnt popcorn and old fish.
Fidget over an extra cheese pizza in the motel room, because that’s what your dad used to order when he brought you here, and tell your girlfriend about the two girls, tell her again about how you feel like too much of your life has been the tedium of waiting for your mother. When she offers you aloe gel with a fragile smile, one that says she hopes you will sleep tonight instead of staying up drinking and complaining, lie and say you will wear sunblock tomorrow. I’m sure you’ll get to see her this time, your girlfriend says. She is only trying to help, but her parents are reliable. Fight over your impending wedding: the location is too far away from the ocean, can your mother attend if you do get to invite her? Cry (again) in the bathroom. Sleep fitfully under the weight of your lover’s arm, then rise at dawn and leave the room like you are escaping, go back to the swimming area to watch for the arc of tail fins slicing through the water and slashing at the sky. When you were little there were a couple of summers here that were just you and your mother. You remember her taking you in the water, you remember clutching her tight, flat against her back with your little legs wrapped around her waist while she swam so fast that the water tried to separate you. Back then she held you close with one arm and wouldn’t let it. Back then her tail seemed endless, rippling and rolling behind you.
On the last day before you go back to your apartment, your job, your life, wait with the others--children and adults, all of you scanning for tails and fins, all of you listening to the gulls shriek overhead, trembling in the cold water and salt-brining from the knees, the shoulders, the neck down. Watch as the two middle school girls hug and say goodbye to a mermaid who must have given them her eyes, her small hands, they wear her appearance in miniature. Watch them return to tapping on their phones, watch their mother be taken back into the sea. Pretend not to hear your girlfriend calling from the motel door; it’s time to pack and go home she shouts. Wait by the water and watch the sun bend light across the day, a gleaming white streak burning into your eyes, like a familiar long-flung tail.
The Sounds of Summer Camp
Wunderkind has to pee, but instead they get in line to take the next swimming level test. Wunderkind hears birdsong and shouting. A camp counselor reminding everyone to line up nicely. Someone playing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on a ukulele badly, someone singing along with it in a different key. Swimmers splashing in the lake, contained by a half circle of buoys and two lifeguards. Short, sharp whistles preceding orders to dog paddle, to back-float, to stop splashing or pushing, to start getting out of the water. A line of kids chattering while they wait to use the outhouse bathrooms. The wooden outhouse doors creaking open, and slamming shut, percussive.
Wunderkind hears counselors saying no one gets to cut in line, but not stopping it from happening. Charlene calling everyone from Walnut cabin over to wait with her, halfway up the line. Charlene saying no way to Wunderkind, like they would even ask. Charlene and three girls in stylish monokinis tittering at Wunderkind’s size-too-small, shoplifted snakeskin print bikini, the breasts Wunderkind love-hates spilling over the top and sides, hips in abundance. Charlene saying Wunderkind is a slut as loud as she please while the smell of Hawaiian Tropic and cucumber-melon body spray creates a full circle barrier around her. The violent smack of two older boys landing cannonballs. More whistling, more shouting. Wunderkind still has to pee, they focus on clenching around the fullness, the ripening ache.
This is how it sounds when it happens: the whisper of Wunderkind’s feet shuffling in the hot sand, the squelch of Wunderkind’s thighs rubbing together, flung-water sputtering, splashing, sloshing as everyone else swims, and another girl saying oh my god thanks bitch as Charlene lets her cut in front of Wunderkind. Water pouring over and over again from bright plastic pails to cool, damp sand. This is Wunderkind squirming and dancing in line, and this is Wunderkind saying no when the same junior counselor asks if they need to use the bathroom, and this is Wunderkind refusing to leave the line and this is Charlene refusing the junior counselor’s request to save Wunderkind’s place so they can run to the outhouse, and now this is everyone growing quiet as urine runs down Wunderkind’s leg, dribbles on the ground, soaking into the sand when Wunderkind can’t hold it back, and now this is the sound of Wunderkind being told you can’t go swimming like this, you have to go clean up and the sound of Wunderkind’s refusal is nonononononono, shrill as a whistle, frantic like birdsong, and this is Wunderkind leaving the line and running past Charlene, straight into the water, diving under the first row, then the second row of buoys, and swimming out until their arms hurt, finally this is the sound of lake water slapping against itself, Wunderkind lifting their face and breathing deep, all the rest of the sounds of summer camp muted and far away.
Ani King (they/them) is a queer, gender non-compliant writer, artist, and activist from Michigan. Ani is the first-place winner of the 2024 Blue Frog Annual Flash Fiction Contest, a SmokeLong Grand Micro Competition 2023 Finalist, and has had work featured in Split Lip Magazine. They can be found at aniking.net, or trying to find somewhere to quietly finish a book without any more interruptions.
