stingrays by joey maighread

Every spring, the lifeguards come to our school. They show slides in the auditorium to scare the crap out of us about bad things in the ocean.
Jellyfish stings: don’t rub sand on it because it’ll make it worse.
Stingrays: shuffle your feet in the sand so you don’t get jabbed with that devil tail.
Rip tides: swim to the sides or you’ll get pulled out to Cuba.
Sharks: try not to look like a baby seal.
Whatever.
I’ve seen those slides seven times. I’ve lived in Lucas Beach all my life and from my bedroom window, I’ve seen the ocean every single day. [continued...link below]

With the ocean, you never know. It might wave to you like it’s saying, Hey! Let’s have some fun. Or, the rip might grab you and take you somewhere so far away that you’re lost forever. You can’t think about it too much.
I’ve been swimming in the ocean since I was a baby. My mom taught me how to swim in the bay. My dad taught my brothers and me how to surf when we were like two-years old, or something.
I have my own board. My brother Kevin—he’s nearly in college—gave it to me. It’s pretty long, but I get waves.
Sometimes, when we’re out in the water, we see dolphins.
Dolphins stick together. They care for the young and the ones who get hurt or sick. If you see a dolphin, you can bet there’re no sharks waiting around because a dolphin will beat a shark’s ass. And the shark knows it.
There’s no way to tell if there’re stingrays around, though. You just have to walk carefully.
A stingray stung Phillip Gunderson’s brother right in front of our house. (Get this. Phillip Gunderson’s brother’s name is Ray. How totally random!) My dad went out to help and told Ray to stick his foot in a bucket. Ray was all yelling and rolling around on the sand.
I didn’t really know what was happening because I was only like six then. Kevin told me that the stingray’s tail has poison in it and can swell a foot to the size of a football. Then, the poison goes up through the leg. He said, “It really hurts a guy’s you-know-what’s.”
You-know-what’s? I wanted to ask what he was talking about, but I decided that it would be better to pretend like I knew. Kevin gets all freaked if I ask too many questions, so I just nodded.
“It makes a guy’s nuts get all inflamed and junk,” my other brother, Sam, explained. I still didn’t really understand. I could tell from the expressions on my brothers’ faces that flamed nuts were serious.
Back then, I didn’t know a lot of stuff about biology because I didn’t have Health Ed yet. I had three older brothers but I’d never seen any of them naked, thank God. Now that I’m in seventh grade, I know what nuts are, I’m just not sure what they’re for. We’ll probably study that next semester. Whatever.
Melissa Kohlberg—Mel—is my best friend. She told me all about nuts and said that kicking a guy in the nuts could kill him. DAMN— good to know.
In Health Ed, we mostly learned about our own bodies, like getting periods and junk. Menstruation. My teacher, Mrs. Dana, loves—LOVES—that word. Every sentence, she was all: menstruation, menstruation, menstruation. Mrs. Dana is usually OK; she’s pretty cool except for that word. Mel and I call it our “period.” It’s way less creepy.
Mel got her period already. She knows a bunch of stuff and when I ask her where she learned it, she tells me “that’s a no-talk-topic.” Or she doesn’t answer me at all.
She hasn’t lived in Lucas Beach all her life. She came from Montana or Minnesota or somewhere. That’s where her real dad lives. Her mom married Ron, so now Mel and her sister have a baby brother.
Mel is afraid to go in the ocean and that lifeguard’s slides didn’t help. I told her to not think about it, but she still won’t go in.
Mel’s new dad, Ron, owns the Lucas Beach Pizza and on Saturdays we get free cokes and chili fries. Ron is nice when other grown-ups are around. He smiles when he talks to us, but his eyes don’t. One time he touched my butt. It might have been an accident but I’m watching him. If he tries anything, I’ll kick him in the nuts. I mean it. Six years of soccer practice is going to come in handy, asshole.
On the boardwalk, there’re tons of stores. Mel and I have a game we call the five-finger-free-for-all. We walk from one end of the boardwalk to the other. When we get to the end, we go into the public bathroom handicapped stall, and compare who lifted more junk. Mel usually wins.
One time, Mel had stuffed a bunch of jewelry up her sleeves, but she couldn’t reach a pair of earrings that were way up there, so she took off her sweatshirt to shake out the earrings. There were all these red marks across her left arm; they looked like scratches from a cat but Mel is allergic to cats. Some of the marks looked older and some looked new, like puffed-up red worms.
I said, hey, and pointed to her arm.
Mel looked really annoyed and put her sweatshirt back on. She forgot to pick up the earrings.
She didn’t talk for a while, then she told me that she did that to her arm, she’s trying to stop, and if I told her mom about it, she would tell my dad about me stealing.
I promised not to tell. I won’t, but I think maybe I should.
There are these girls at our school. Megan, Kelsey, and Kaitlyn. Megan and the K’s have also lived in Lucas Beach for their whole lives, just like me. Except that—unlike me—they are Little-Miss-Perfect turd faces, and they’re total bitches to Mel. Which is really retarded since she used to be friends with them, before she was my friend.
One thing about Mel that I haven’t mentioned is this: she’s the only girl in the seventh grade with boobs. Big boobs. Boys are always trying to hug her.
Megan and the K’s are jealous so they made up a rumor about Mel and this guy, Brandon. They were saying that Mel let Brandon do stuff to her. A big frickin’ lie and the whole school ate it with a spoon. Morons.
During homeroom, Kelsey asked Mr. Steralli if she could use the restroom. Two minutes later, I walked up to his desk and asked if I could go, too. He goes, “June, you know the rules. Wait until Kelsey gets back.”
I knew he was going to say that. Mr. Steralli is a huge dork and only wears blue clothes.
“Mr. Steralli, it’s my time of the month. I kind of have a heavy flow because I just started and...”
He practically slapped the hall pass in my hand and shoved me out the door. Guys do not—DO NOT—want to hear a word about menstruation. I mean, periods.
P.S. I made up the part about having my period.
In the restroom, I had a talk with Kelsey. I reminded her that she still sucks her thumb when she sleeps; I saw her do it when she spent the night at my house last month. It would be mega-embarrassing for her, if that were to get out. I’m just saying.
First she mad-dog stared at me. But then she told me about how Kaitlyn started the whole rumor about Mel. “Kaitlyn made up the whole thing because she likes Brandon. She’s jealous because she’s flat as a board and she stuffs her bra.”
I might have repeated the bra thing to a couple people.
I was going to tell Mel about how no one would be talking about her and Brandon anymore. But she stopped showing up at school for like a week. I called her house a zillion times. I rode my cruiser over to the pizza place on Saturday; she wasn’t around. I rode to all the places we hang out. I didn’t see her anywhere.
On Monday, I saw Mel and her mom coming out of the vice-principal’s office. No one was smiling.
The next day, Mel was in homeroom.
I was all, what’s up?
Mel said she had been going over to Brandon’s house for a week, while his mom was working. She said that they were just hanging out, having some beers, and some other stuff.
“Oh?” Lame response, but what could I say? I didn’t even know they were talking. I didn’t know Mel drank beers. Or that she did other stuff.
Mel started hanging out with Brandon after school and on the weekends. We were still friends but she was pretty busy so we didn’t talk as much.
I was busy, too. I was riding my cruiser, when I saw Mel on the boardwalk.
She said, “We should hang out this summer, go to the beach and junk.”
I said, “Yeah, we should.”
The next day, Mel just showed up on the beach in front of my house. I set my folding chair next to her’s and we watched the waves. The morning had been overcast, but it burned off and the sun was warm.
She had new cuts on her arm. Just the left one.
She said that she’s going to be moving back with her real dad to wherever. She told me that Ron had been doing stuff to her. When Mel found out he was touching her younger sister, she told her mom. Her mom went all ape-shit; there was all this screaming, crying, and throwing stuff. So now they’re moving back. But here’s what’s totally messed up, her mom is staying in Lucas Beach, with Ron the pervert. Unbelievable.
“Yeah, unFUCKINGbelievable.” A tear rolled out from under Mel’s sunglasses.
“Mel, let’s go swimming.”
Mel shook her head. She said that Lucas Beach was bad luck. She was going leave this place and she was never—NEVER—going to lay eyes on the Pacific, or this piece-of-shit place again. As long as she lived.
C’mon, I said.
“No way, I’ll probably step on a stingray.”
“You won’t,” I said. “Don’t think about it.”
“No, June. I’ll step on a stingray. Guaranteed, that’s how it goes. You’ve never been stung and you probably never will be.”
I started to shuffle into the water but Mel wouldn’t move. I could see shadows moving through the hollow of the waves. Dolphins.
She folded up her chair, saying she was going to take off. “Our plane leaves at 7:20.”
We promised to keep in touch; e-mail and call. She said that I could come visit her at her dad’s in Michigan.
People say that kind of stuff when they leave.
I told my mom what happened to Mel and her sister. Whenever we had lost soccer games or something, my mom would take us down to the water. She said that the salt in the ocean comes from all the happy tears ever cried and when you’re in the ocean, you’re in pure joy. Sounds like a load of crap, but it works. That’s just me.
The truth is, I didn’t want Mel to go in the ocean with me. I was glad she said no, because I think she may be right. Some people are for sure going to step on a stingray or get lost in the rip. And, some people don’t. One thing though, you can’t think about it too much.

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