Seeing it from a few hundred feet in the air, I think it would look like snakes all slithering a different path to the water. I live on one of them. Laila Lane, off of Dock Road, off of the main road; the third snake in the chain.

Dad used to take me on bike rides down to the beach, the place that marked the end of concrete, and the beginning of something a little more metaphysical. A private beach we called Cedar Beach had receding dunes and railroad vine, and the constant smell of dead barnacles seeping out from under the sand. Two faded wood benches faced the bay, probably so that old couples could sit and watch the boats head out and head back in. Seagulls and piping plovers hawked above like scavengers. We never had any food scraps for them.

Early mornings were so calm and soothing, listening to the waves catch up to each other, leaving foam where the sand started to dry, watching the wind make the cattails dance. But by midday, once we left the beach, we’d smell like rotten fish bellies and we’d be pulling fat, bulging ticks out from weird crevices in our bodies. If we swam that day, our toes would be black for the few to follow.

We’d bike all the way to the end of the road, and up onto the overgrown path, lined by the rich neighbor’s hedges, which I’d later come to know as the “cidiots”. We could never see their house from the road, but after the hedges ended and finally we were surrounded by trees and a wooden fence, we could see the full-sized windowed balcony, weathered dark wooden panels, and statue fountains at the end of a brick walkway. Sometimes they’d play classical music on their surround sound system and we’d try and spy to find out more.

There was one protruding bump on the path, down closer to the beach. It was a tree root in the shape of an upside down U. I always had to ride over it. If I didn’t, I’d turn around and try again. I was just that way.

In third grade, Mrs. Zeltmann would make phone calls home because I rushed through my work so I could have reading time. Apparently, this was a bad thing. But I could never get through a book. I would get about halfway, and that was it. It was a roller coaster in my brain that never stopped loop-dee-looping. I would read the same line over and over, not because I didn’t get it, but because my eyes wouldn’t let me move on. I’d be stuck on one line for minutes, reading it over and over and over, unable to break the cycle.

I would wash my hands four times in a row, scrubbing at them so often that the skin on my knuckles became so hard and lizard-like that if I closed my fist, the cracks in my skin would bust open and bleed. Red would fill those little lines on my knuckles, looking like the snakes that slither in every direction.

I used to cough so hard and so often that my parents took me to doctor after doctor to test for asthma. “Blow”, the doc would order, then bark at me for not blowing hard enough. I was fine, though, really, I was just coughing until it sounded right. Nothing was wrong with me.

It all started with that tree root by the beach.

Some years later I revisited that beach with my neighbor Timmy. We were in sixth grade, too young to drink, but we’d find empty beer bottles the teenagers left behind, some already broken, some fresh. Stepping over muddy swamps filled with dead cattail stems, we’d go check out the duck blinds, painted green and always smelling of rotted wood and sea salt. Every now and then one of our foots would fall victim to one of the swamp pits, gushing down into the earth and sucking it back out soaking wet and brown. Empty neon orange clips littered the ground inside and all around the duck blinds, but we were too innocent to know what they were at the time. That’s when I learned what the acres of land behind us used to be. Only a few feet behind us and up a small hill used to be a slave plantation, where they burned slaves who misbehaved. That’s why the dogs always barked when we walked that way; dogs have a sixth sense I was always told.

I didn’t go back to Cedar Beach for a while after that, and as I graduated girl to adolescent, my mom started begging me to invite some friends down there to hang out. By the eighth grade, I had only brought one friend home with me: poufy pigtail Mel. The girl that walked on her tiptoes down the hall and carried a briefcase instead of a backpack. The girl that wore purple and pink striped stockings under a tutu. When we got home from school, we took my two whippets down to the beach, their nails scraping against the pavement until we reached the overgrown path. I wondered if the road served as a nail file for them. We got to Cedar Beach and let the dogs off the leash to sniff around while we sat on the bench meant for old couples. Melissa stared out across the bay, looking delusional.

“You know, my dad just went to jail for touching a little girl” she said, not breaking her gaze.

She never came over again.  

A few years later and I was caking liquid foundation onto my already smooth skin, lining my bright blue eyes with thick black liner, and spending a ridiculous amount of money to have blonde highlights in my hair. Just the year prior my mom bought me brown eyeliner because “black was too dark for me.” The boys laughed at me and Connor called me “poop eyes”. I laughed with them, but when I got home from school, I scrubbed it off with a baby wipe and threw the brown pencil in the trash.

But black was too much. My parents pulled me into the bathroom with my makeup bin on the counter. The same makeup bin that they had bought me with all the makeup in it that they had purchased.  “Pick three things. The rest is garbage.”

That was around the first time I’d been to the beach again since Melissa. I was with promiscuous Sara, Trey, and Alex. Sara knew about my crush on Trey. He was also the first boy to ever show an interest in me. We walked down to the beach under an overcast sky. Sara pulled out a water bottle and took three big sips, wrinkling up her face and coughing. I gave her a look.

“It’s called vodka,” she laughed at me, urging me to take a sip. I was too scared, I’d never had a sip in my life.

Trey took a sip and suddenly I was game. It burned down my throat, fire in my stomach, and back up again to my mouth, making it water. For the rest of the walk I watched them drink, too scared to take any more for myself.

We got to Cedar Beach, Sara stumbling and giggling, eventually falling into the sand and laughing even harder. Alex and Trey seemed normal; was she faking it? We walked down to a dock, with a small, white fishing boat tied up to it, creaking as the waves pushed its fiberglass side up against the buoy. Sara jumped onto the empty boat, and I looked around, scared that someone would catch us.  

“Trey, come here” she giggled. He stepped onto the boat as she drunkenly grabbed him, pulling him closer until they fell backward and he was on top of her. He didn’t get up. I awkwardly waited with Alex, disappointment running through me.  

“Steph, I’m sorry,” she mumbled as she climbed up the stairs on all fours back at my house. My mom came into the foyer.

“Hi Ms. V!” she said, loud and incoherent.

“Honey, are you okay?” Mom looked worried, asking me if Sara had diabetes and what was wrong with her. We helped her up to my room as I explained what happened, leaving out the part where I had tried the vodka. As we turned Sara toward my bedroom door bedroom, she turned the opposite way, throwing up orange goop all over my mom.

She never came over again.

A year passed and Trey asked me to be his girlfriend. Actually, he didn’t ask it. He typed it on his computer screen: will you go out with me? I said yes, of course, despite his cowardice way, and when the bell rang we stood up and awkwardly hugged each other in front of Mrs. Demarco. I walked the halls for the rest of that day with pride.

We were together for five months before we went down to the beach. It was another cloudy day, but this time it was frigid. With a blanket over his shoulder and my hand in his, we walked, my palm sweating against his despite the cold. I didn’t think I was ready. I also didn’t know how long I could keep telling him that for.

We sat on the bench meant for old couples and he made me feel good. But I wasn’t ready. I looked around.

“What if someone comes?” I asked, looking at the house behind the dunes. I was sure a cidiot lived there, and cidiots don’t come out in the winter.

“No one will” he assured, not really knowing if it was true. “I love you.” That was the first time he said it, and I didn’t know it would be the last.

We lay in the cold sand, kissing, and I let Trey take something from me I would never get back. We swiped the sand off and headed back in awkward silence. He didn’t hold my hand. “See, I told you that you were ready.”

Later that night, after Trey left, my mom came to me crying.

“I know you had sex with him.”

She told me over and over again that God told her. God had come to her with a message, a sign, and he told her that I had sex with Trey. I hated God for a little while after that. He ruined my life. I called Trey crying, telling him what happened.

I cried myself to sleep, not just that night, but for many nights after.

He never came back again.

Stephanie Vitarelli is currently the Development Manager for Developmental Disabilities Institute, a non-profit specializing in helping children and adults with autism and other developmental disabilities. She's had short stories published in The Cortland Writer, Chicago Literati, and Haunted MTL. She hopes to one day publish a novel in the horror genre.