12. The Elephant

I looked into the eye of our elephant. Jill was right, it did look sad, lying there in the sand like a prisoner of the beach. Her solution was to add a cartoonish smile but Omar, who was in charge of detail, refused. "It's meant to be realistic." he said, fussing over the wrinkles on the trunk.

"What's the point in making something if you're going to make it sad?" Jill stepped back, admiring our work. Thanks to Omar's artisitic talent the elephant was our greatest piece yet. It was a shame it wouldn't last.

Curtis watched, relaxing on his towel, having done his part. He had kickstarted the project by creating a huge mound of sand, using a heavy steel workshovel, leaving a deep pit in the beach.

"That's a neat artistic choice to have tires instead of feet." Curtis rarely partook in the actual sculpting, preferring to ridicule our work with mock congratulations, trying to get a reaction from Omar. "That's a really great anteater but didn't you guys say you were making an elephant?"

"It's not done." Omar would respond patiently.

We took our group picture, posing in front of our beast. There was the year we made the Sphinx, the year of the octopus, and, the one that started it all, the year of the personalized Mount Rushmore. Finally, things were beginning to feel like summer. I loved this place.

Wasaga Beach is a long strip of sand that would take about three hours to walk across. I had done that once with my parents, strolling next to the water, picking up driftwood and seashells, watching my footprints vanish in the waves. The width of the beach changed every year, depending on how far the water came in.  It was almost one hundred of my steps from the edge of the bay to the first row of cottages. The top sand was a fine bright powder but underneath there was darker, sterner stuff perfect for castles. On a still day it was quiet but usually there was wind enough to create a soothing rhythm of waves breaking.

On the weekend, all of the tourists flocked to the main beach, packing themselves into a tiny zone. The boys played soccer, frisbee, and volleyball in tiny courts amidst a sea of towels, accidentally knocking over family picnics without apologizing. The girls sunbathed, passed out on their stomachs while their backs were crisped red. Gross.

I preferred our summer routine. There was so much to do. We usually met around nine or ten, starting the day by trying to set the frisbee record, established yesterday as a paltry eighteen consecutive catches. We would swim, but not past the third sand bar unless someone's parents were present. That was really the rhythm of the summer. Get sandy. Swim. Dry off in the sun. Repeat.

We went inside from noon 'til two in the afternoon, avoiding the heat. We ate lunch together, watched Gilligan's Island, and planned the afternoon. There was a lot to do from organizing our ping pong tournament to building our sand sculpture. Tonight, we would eat dinner with our famalies and then get back together to watch a movie or play a board game. It was paradise.

We were covered in sand from the sculpting so we hit the water. Omar was terrible at splash wars, often turning around to blindly fight back. I would wait in the pocket between his shoulders while he tired himself out. The trick to victory was accuarcy, precise splashes to the face beat volume. Curtis understood this best, splashing the least but the most accurately. Jill was a firm believer in quantity over quality. She would move in extremely close and fill the air with water, getting every bit as wet as her victim. You could splash her in the eyes but if she was really intent on winning she was liable to crash into you, pretending it was an accident.

We were lucky because we lived about forty-five minutes away from the main street. We could leave our sand sculpture for the whole summer and it would be untouched by rowdy teenagers, the natural predators of beach art. We usually left our sand sculptures to be melted by the wind, taking pride each time a stray couple strolled down the beach, stopping in admiration. Not this year.

I told my friends everything, including Curtis. They agreed to my plan. We didn't tell Noa, even though I still needed her help, she wasn't really part of our group. I wasn't avoiding her but I was so busy with my friends that I hadn't seen her since breakfast. To be honest, I wasn't sure that she could be trusted. I hated to judge her because she had some sort of criminal past but I was being realistic.

Jill carried the garbage bag in the basket of her bike, the chain grinding roughly as she pedalled through the sand. No one was around. We put the garbage bag into the pit. then we knocked our elephant down, filling in the hole, burying the bag with the DVDs and inserts.