Summer was our favorite time of year. Mother and father always took us to the beach, and we got to swim and build sand castles and be alone. It wasn't like school where people were always badgering us; here, we were left to our own devices, and that's the way we liked it.
We spent our days content to sleep into the afternoon and lie around the house, because night was our time. At night, when the beaches were deserted, we'd sneak out to the ocean.
When we were young, we were savages. We danced and howled and occasionally tried to build bonfires (how we never burned anything down I'll never know.). We were kings in our own domain. We played games and held competitions. We liked to swim out as far as we could before we got too scared and see who could hold their breath the longest. I usually didn't win, as my fear of being washed out by the tides often startled me back up to the surface. When the games where done, we'd race back to the shore as fast as we could muster, as if we thought something was chasing after us (and, in all honesty, we probably did). We'd crawl back up to the edge of the surf, over-excited and gasping. We'd laugh hysterically and wrestle to warm up.
When we got older, it was more a game of testing boundaries. Getting out of the house and back into it again was nearly as fun as whatever we did when we reached our destination. We exchanged bathing suits for cigarettes and games for illusions of rebelliousness or maturity. We'd leave our night-clothes on the shore and jump into the freezing-cold sea buck-naked. It was sort of silly, really, but somehow the prospect of getting arrested made the experience that much better. When we came back up, shivering and giggling like the children we were pretending not to be, we'd lay down where the grass began and talk aimlessly for what could have been hours.
That was when it was best for us. At those times, I loved him more than I thought anyone could love something other than themselves. The world had a sort of mystic, ethereal quality and my cynicism faded.
One night, we fell asleep there on the grass. We awoke just as the sun was rising, strangely content despite the fact that we were lying outside naked in near-daylight. We got on our shorts, now crusty and covered in sand, and stumbled back into the house, miraculously avoiding capture by our parents. When we got back up to our room, we laid there on the bed and ignored the fact that we both smelled disgusting. I've never slept as well before or since that morning.
I never questioned the way things were. Even though we always did our best to separate ourselves from everybody else, in the back of my mind I still believed it was normal. I thought everyone lived the way we did.
I liked it that way.
