The Ocean Left Her to His Hands

Our parents both “worked” very late,
“Work” was their codeword for bar hopping, and God knows what else.
The earliest they’d get home was 3 am,
The latest they’d get home was never.
So I learned to take care of myself and my younger sister, Lila.
Every evening, after we ate dinner and finished our homework,
We would walk the boardwalk watching the sunset,
Watching the people,
Tourists, locals, friends.
But I always found myself drawn to one girl,
With long black hair, which faded into the darkness of the ocean after the sun set,
She remained close to the water,
Letting the tide sweep over her legs with each current.
She was always there when we arrived,
And there she stayed after we left.
When Lila was at a friend’s house sleeping over one night,
I decided to go down to the boardwalk and talk to the girl.
When I crossed the sandy grounds and finally found myself at her side,
I saw she that was crying.
Her tears fell heavily, but she made no sound.
She let the ocean collect her tears,
Taking her sadness for itself, taking away her pain.
She said nothing when I sat next to her,
Or when I waved, or even when I said, “Hi.”
She just sat, letting the waves glide over her legs,
One after the other,
until all the tears were gone.
She looked about my age, maybe a year or two younger,
But the dark circles under her eyes and the even darker,
Deeper, look of pure exhaustion gave her the look of an old woman,
Who had completely lost all joys in her life.
It didn’t take a genius to know that the badly applied foundation
Around her eyes was not for the purpose of beauty or cosmetics,
But for hiding, for pretending.
I sat with her that whole night, and eventually,
I woke up with her head resting on my shoulder,
The brightness from the sun showing the shades of black, purple, and blue,
Which were so poorly covered by her tan foundation, at least four shades lighter than she.
This became a routine for us for years,
I would continue to bring my sister down to the beach as per usual,
But now we were accompanied by the girl,
And she was accompanied by us.
After three years of this,
Lila, now ten, asked me how we could have befriended someone

Who never spoke,
Never waved,
Never smiled,
Never did anything, really.
I told her that she didn’t have to say anything to us,
That she was a friend to us,
And we would always be one for her.
She never asked me about our unspoken friendship again.
No matter the weather each night,
We would go down to the beach,
Whether it was a beautifully sunny day,
Or a day where the clouds were so thick,
It made me wonder if the sun was still in our sky.
But one day, Lila fell very, very sick,
And I stayed home to take care of her.
Everything I tried to do for her,
She’d dismiss, telling me to go to the beach and see the girl.
I told her it was okay, it was just one day,
But she insisted.
Nevertheless, I was her big sister,
And I had the final word, so I stayed with her and cared for her the whole night through,
Until she made a full recovery in the morning.
Lila made dinner for the first time that night,
I had taught her all my recipes by then.
When we finished our dinner, we got ready for the beach.
We opened the door, and saw that the sky was black,
Pitch black, unlike anything we’d ever seen before.
It was beautiful, but eerie, as it was barely early evening.
When we got to the beach, we hopped the fence to walk to our usual spot to meet the girl,
But she wasn’t there.
The water was not moving, as though time had frozen with her absence.
We walked up and down the beaches, but she was nowhere to be found.
When we asked the lifeguard if he’d seen anything, he told me that he’d never once seen her,
Nor had any of the locals that we asked, and our feelings beginning to turn frantic.
She seemed to be gone, as though she’d never existed.
We spent the night looking,
And when we finally started for home the next morning, defeated,
We passed a man with dried blood painted across his shirt, face, and hands.
He looked at us with a saccharine smile, and said as he passed,
“The waves were tired, and so was she. So, I took care of them both.”
When I turned around to look at him again, he was gone.
And so was she.

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