nihilist

the beach

***

"Beau let's go," a voice rings out in the dark two am streets. The sounds inside the small house are widespread as three boys stand outside, leaned on an old minivan.

Tonight was your typical Friday night in the town of Grover Beach, a small one located in the sunny state of California. Most kids here or practically any other small, run of the mill town hated it. They had the imagination to dream of making it out of there and running far away to some place brighter, bigger, better. But Beau liked it here. It was better than the other places he's been to and he knew he probably wouldn't have the ability to get out of here. So he suited into the beach nearby the school and the local stores. He watched the sun set from his window and the teens who found comfort in the quite streets at night.

"Come on we don't have all night," Parker chanted as he checked his watch. It was getting late, well late enough that they were gonna miss out on their weekly ritual of leaving weekend parties to sneak into the town pool that Parker's very rich, very boring parents owned.

Maybe it was the whispers and laughs as they snuck past the gates or the ever so pleasant sound of the crash of water when someone jumped off a diving board, but something about leaving the parties early to sneak in there made them feel alive.

"I'll just take the city bus," he licks his lips and his jaw tightens, avoiding their gaze.

"Beau it's time you get over your little fear or whatever of cars," Aaron, another one of his friends spoke out.

"It's not a fear," his voice is firm but louder now.

Beau Grey had a thing with cars. It was small. He didn't like to bother people with it because he found it useless. His foster parents even found it as a good thing because while his younger sister begged them to drive her here and there, he took the citywide public bus to his desired destinations. But one thing that was clear was that he was not afraid of them.

"Don't make this a big deal guys, I'm taking the bus and I'll see you there," he turns and with his back towards them, he doesn't see Parker grab his arm which forces him to turn around with his face contoured in a mix of confusion and anger.

"Get in the fucking car Beau."

"Get your fucking hands off me," his eyes were hooded.

With the only sound being the mix of teens laughing and music blaring from inside the house, the two boys stayed silent, locking eyes with each other until one gave in. And that one was Beau.

He took the boy's hand off his arm before turning and walking away from the surprised crowd of his friends.

***

Beau had only visited the beach a couple times. His earliest memory of it was right after his first day of school. He was in sixth grade and his foster mother picked him up and insisted they visited "one of my favorite places" were her exact words.

She bought him a vanilla ice cream while they laid on a blanket and let the sounds of the crashing waves comfort their ears. Since none of them could make a coherent sentence, those sounds were the only ones heard out.

For one minute, she checked her phone but when she looked up, he wasn't there. An immediate rush of fear was pumped through her bloodstream as she searched frantically for her son. After witnessing him with his toes dipped in the sea-salt water, she sighed a breath of relief before quickly grabbing him from behind.

"Relax Mom I was just seeing the water," when those words came out of his mouth she felt her heart warm. He had called her "Mom".

So as the minivan started up and steered past him, he began walking. It wasn't a big that they were mad at him. Although he liked his friends, he also liked the company of being only with himself. He could think clearly and everything was so quite without the constant blabber of his friends conversations.

The other times he's been to the beach here were either school trips or the one time with Catie O'Donald. She had dragged him there the past year after the final period of the last day of school. As she asked him to apply lotion on her back as some sort of seduction device, he did it nonetheless, but the pleasure he received was from watching the sun set. She babbled on about her summer job at the pool and how her family and her were visiting Greece in August. Nodding through the monotone conversation, he laid on the towel with his sunglasses seated on the bridge of his nose. The sun kissed his skin and it's warmth made him feel sleepy.

Cate asked him to take her virginity that day.