Secrets in the Sand

chapter 3

Hey readers! There's 3 of you now! Please comment and tell me what you think so far :)

Derek POV: I get to the beach at 8:15 the next morning, and hoping to find another message in the sand, but I don’t find anything. I don’t know why I thought there would be. I guess when I saw the message yesterday, I got the feeling that it hadn’t been the first time the mystery sand girl had written anything there. Oh, well. I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up, I should have known there wouldn’t be anything there. I sit for 45 minutes until it’s time to open, just admiring the beauty of the beach. I should come early more often, it really helps to clear my mind.

Maya  POV: I wake up at 8:45, but Kayla’s still asleep, so I decide to let her sleep. She looks so peaceful in her sleep. Watching her sleep, you wouldn’t know that she had so much pain hidden inside her.

Kayla POV: I wake up at 9:15. I feel a little guilty since I know that Maya always goes to the beach right when it opens at 9:00, but she says it’s fine. Maya makes herself some eggs with cheese melted on them. She asks if I want some, knowing that this was my favorite when she first met me. I almost say yes. They look so yummy. I love eggs with melted cheese. I actually start to say yes, but then the voices take over. ‘You’re so fat, you don’t deserve that food.’ ‘Why should you have something so yummy, you don’t deserve any of it.’ ‘That food will make you sooo much fatter than you already are.’ I end up saying no. Maya says I have to eat something, though, and I know I should, since I’m trying to get better, so I grab a low-calorie granola bar and shove it down my throat before I can think twice about it. The voices start torturing me again when I do that, but I am able to shut them up since I will probably burn those calories walking to and from the beach today. After we eat, we have to get dressed to go to the beach. I get dressed in my black tankini, with shorts and a t-shirt over it, and slip on all of my bracelets to cover my scars. I envy how beautiful Maya looks in her black bikini with neon polka-dots. She leaves her hair down in its perfect golden waves and puts on jean shorts and a neon striped tank top. Ugh. Why is my best friend so perfect. Standing next to her, I look even uglier than I already am. I start to put my disgusting brown hair up in a messy bun, but Maya stops me. She insists that if I’m not going to wear my hair down, I should at least let her french braid it. I let her, and it actually doesn’t look too bad. I still look ugly as shit, but at least my hair actually looks kind of pretty. Once she finishes braiding my hair, we head to the beach. On the way there, I decide to try to shut out the voices for today, and just have some fun at the beach with my best friend in the whole wide world.

Derek POV: Maya doesn’t get there at 9 like she normally does. I guess she slept in today. She finally gets here at 9:45, and she’s still the first one here. Her friend, Kayla, is with her. I’ve seen Kayla at school sometimes, and I’m pretty sure we have english class together. She seems nice enough, and she’s pretty, just not my type. She has straight brown hair, hazel eyes, and pale skin. Her hair is in a french braid today, and it looks really good on her. The one thing that makes her less pretty, though, is the fact that she is extremely skinny. She wasn’t always this skinny. When she first moved here about 2 years ago, she was sort of thin, but not skin and bones like she is now. I think she’s probably anorexic. I think back to the prayer I saw written in the sand. I wonder if the mystery sand girl is a friend of Kayla’s.

Kayla POV: When we get to the beach, there isn’t anyone else there except the lifeguard, Derek. I know that Maya has a huge crush on him, and I see her blush when she sees him. I look at him, and it kind of seems like he’s blushing, too, but I can’t really tell since he’s all the way up in the lifeguard chair. I see them look at each other, and then quickly look away, both of them definitely blushing this time. It’s so obvious to me that he likes her, but I don’t think Maya realizes it. I wonder if Derek realizes that Maya likes him. Probably not. People are so blind like that sometimes. Like, everyone else can tell except them that their crush likes them, it seems so weird. It’s as if liking someone makes you blind to what the other person is feeling, and you’re left guessing, when everyone else can see it so clearly. I then get an idea. Maya has done so much for me, maybe I can do something for her. Since I can see it so clearly, maybe I can help them see that their feelings are mutual.

Maya POV: I see Derek and automatically feel myself blushing. Kayla gives me a look, and I glare at her, making sure she knows not to say anything about it. We walk through the beach, and pick out the best spot to sit. It’s just past the furthest point that the tide will come, so that we’re close to the water, but our stuff won’t get wet. We set our stuff down, strip down to our bathing suits, and get closer to the water. I love looking at all of the beautiful things that the tide brings in, and Kayla seems to as well. I glance over and see her inspecting a little crab very closely.

Kayla POV: I just love sea creatures. I’m pretty neutral about the beach itself, but all the different creatures and living things in the ocean just fascinate me. I want to be a biologist when I grow up, and I’m fascinated by how many different types of creatures all coexist in one huge body of water.

Maya POV: I start looking at shells for my collection, and Kayla calls me over. She’s playing with a tiny little crab. It’s the same crab that has come in with the tide for a few days now. I know it’s the same one since it has a birthmark on it that kind of looks like an infinity symbol. Kayla tells me that the crab too small and weak to swim against the tide away from the shore. It will be eaten by predators on the shore soon. She asks if we can take it and keep it as a pet, and I say yes. We get a bucket and fill it with sand and water and gently set the turtle in there. Kayla grabbed an apple and a plastic knife from our lunch sack, cut it up into little pieces, and placed it into the bucket for the turtle to eat. I decide we should name our turtle, so I ask Kayla what gender it is.

Kayla POV: Maya just asked me what gender our turtle was. She obviously didn’t pay attention in biology class when we learned that you can’t tell what gender a turtle is until it’s an adult. I tell her this, and she looks disappointed, and I ask her why. She says that she really wanted to give our turtle a name. We talk for a few minutes and then decide to give our turtle the most obvious name for it: Infinity.