Sticky

Jessie hated sticky days. She grumped on sticky days. Sticky sun, sticky sweat, sticky sand.

Jessie hated sand. She couldn't stand the way it snuck into her body's crevices and made itself at home in the stickiest parts of her swim suit.

"I'm getting back in," she said, leaving the family beach blanket for icy river water.

She inched slowly into the current, goosebumps clawing up her back like an electric freeze. She plucked at the elastic of her suit under the water's dark green curtain, anxious to rid herself of the miniscule pebbles.

"Cannon ball!" she heard her brother shout. She caught a glimpse of his scrunched, skinny body catapulting off a boulder and through the sticky air before it hit the water. The splash sent sandy droplets into her hair and eyelashes.

"Stop it, David!" she shouted, her fists hitting the current in angry disgust. She marched back to the blanket, sand crawling through the folds in the sticky fabric.

"Oh, Jess, come on. You're no fun," David teased. "Hey, let's play badminton."

He had dragged the rackets along. It was his sport of choice that summer, though they didn't have a net. They found fun in smacking the birdie as hard and as high as they could. Points were redacted if it got stuck in a tree.

Jessie sighed and pulled herself off the blanket again, dragging her feet into the grass, cut blades sticky on her wet toes.

The game ensued. Sun dappled her vision through the breaks in the trees as she tried to return David's ridiculous volley.

She caught it, but barely, launching the plastic birdie towards the water.

And David wasn't one to quit. Or lose. He chased it, out of the grass, through the sand, into the river.

As he pulled his racket back, ready to smack the crap out of the birdie before it broke the water's surface, a swallowtail fluttered into his follow-through.

Thwack!

The insect hit the beach. The birdie fell to the grass at Jessie's back.

"Ha!" David laughed. "My point!"

"David!" Jessie scorned. "What did you do?"

She rushed to the butterfly's deathbed of sand, wings sticky and half-buried in the stuff.

"Whoops," David said.

"Good grief," Jessie sighed.

There wasn't anything to do. The poor thing was gone. She returned to the grass, less sticky now that her feet had dried.

"That's probably a crime somewhere, you know," Jessie shouted at her brother.

"Oh, forget about it. They die every day," David said.

Not like that, Jessie thought.

They finished their game when their hair was dry, folded up the blanket and headed up the hill. But the swallowtail stayed stuck in the sand as the sun set.

-

This story was written in response to the Grains of Sand Challenge issued by Cendrine Marrouat: "Let's explore the world of the tiny, but mighty particles through poetry, stories, and personal essays."