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It's mid-afternoon by the time they make it to the cottage. While Ike dashes inside to claim the best bedroom, the one with the memory foam mattress and the view of the water, Kyle slips away to take a walk along the shore. Clouds, darkened and pregnant with rain, lie indolently at the far edge of the sky. But here the clouds are wisping and piling up white, innocent of precipitation.
With another glance at the promise of those distant clouds, Kyle smiles and starts across the road they'd driven up moments ago. Chunks of asphalt are scattered about, with matching cavities in the road they used to be part of. His mother will get that taken care of, probably before the end of the week. Kyle kicks one of the free pieces regretfully, watches it skitter across the road, bouncing off fellow chunks of asphalt and a lone rock until it careens into the long grass on the other side.
At the top of the pathway down Kyle pauses to inhale the ocean, breathing deeply enough to salt his blood, letting the crisp tang fill him before he climbs down the foothold rocks onto sand. He makes his way along, sinking slightly with each step in sun-softened sand, feeling the heat even through the canvas of his shoes. He's been warned by his mother often enough not to go barefoot because of all the glass and "other things" (he almost wonders why she doesn't just say needles and condoms, but he knows it's because he'll always be her baby, even though he isn't the youngest and, at 15, is well into manhood by Jewish convention), so he resists temptation and remains shod.
He's on the beach proper now; nothing but sand and sea in his sight, even in his peripheral vision. He looks in both directions: there's a cluster of gulls milling around not far off to the right, probably picking at the carcasses of crabs left behind by the last high tide.
A ways off to the left rise the unmistakable spikes and spires of a sandcastle. It's in the middle of the tide zone, built out of and upon the sea-darkened sand. Kyle makes for it. On the way he passes a swatch of seaweed strewn with dehydrated jellyfish, translucent and deflated, tentacles stretched and curled and stilled on the sand. He steps over them, glad he kept his shoes on. The sand here is packed, firm under foot, and he strides along easily.
As he approaches the castle, he begins to see the scope of it: there's a main structure culminating in a tower set upon a built-up area, with a number of smaller buildings attached, enclosed within a turret-capped wall, which in turn is encircled by the obligatory moat. There are outlying structures as well—defense bunkers, maybe? And a long path dug toward the ocean. Probably a sluice to feed the moat, which is deep enough to retain water even with the tide out now.
Careful not to tread upon anything, Kyle moves closer to examine the architecture, impatiently brushing back the long flop of his curls every time the wind whips them into his face. There's a drawbridge over the moat, a piece of driftwood with a groove swerving down the length, not deep enough to be an actual crack. He imagines his mother having it filled in and paved over, and smiles as he pictures an inch-high version of the woman directing her workers here. Whoever made this castle chose to leave the groove, though; the attention given to the rest of the engineering tells him so and Kyle smiles more.
In addition to the bridge, there's a narrow raised path leading from one of the bunkers to the castle and Kyle now considers that this may not be a defense bunker, after all, but housing for serfs under the lord's protection; smaller than the castle, this group of structures also has its own moat. Both the castle and its small city are adorned with pieces of shells and sea glass and other detritus turned to art and function, the claw of a crab erected in lieu of a cloth banner atop the tower; further detailing is carved in, rounded strokes of a fingertip here, sharply precise ones from a stick or a pocketknife there.
Kyle circles the perimeter, admiring the design and execution. On the far side, he discovers that the mounds he'd initially taken for more bunkers are in fact letters molded proudly from the sand. He takes a step back and reads: K E N N Y.
Something cold and wet splotches onto his forearm. Kyle looks at the moisture on his skin, then tips his head back to look straight up into the sky; a second raindrop drags his lashes down.
He blinks a couple of times at the slate clouds, then returns his attention to the sandcastle. He watches it begin to crumble under the pummeling of the rain, sand softening beneath the city's edge, the foundation eroding away, towers sliding into the moat.
Kyle stands still, shivering lightly in the cold rain, witnessing a civilization fall into ruins before his eyes.
When the high tower collapses, burying all but the tip of that proud claw, he turns and makes his way back up to the road.
Late the next morning, after a leisurely brunch, Kyle returns to the beach. The gulls are there, in a new position farther down the shoreline. There is no sign that Kenny's castle ever stood, and Kyle is all the more pleased to have seen both it and its fall.
The backs of his flip-flops snap gently against his heels as he angles down to the water. The sand cradles his steps, clinging and letting go with reluctant squelches. He gazes out at small waves rising, their brilliant white peaks rippling length-wise to join up into one wave. He follows this wave in, watching with a flicker of disappointment as it crests too soon, crashes down before it reaches the shore, its ripples swallowed by others coming behind it.
The whitecaps lead the way up the shore, snuffling across the sand, lapping over the rubber soles to meet Kyle's toes, the cold seeping through his skin and rushing up through his oxidized blood in a gasp. Foam melts against his skin, melts into the sand as the water falls back.
He doesn't go in deeper. Doesn't move at all, just lets the water come to him. He has always been like this; even as a small child, he would pick his spot and wait patiently. Maybe some day he'll go to meet the ocean, but today he is content to let the ocean come to him.
It takes a while for the next wave that reaches him to come along, bringing another pleasurable shock of cold. He smiles at the sparkles of sunlight playing across the sheen of water, formed as the incoming waves start to catch up and overlap the ones ebbing. The sun itself shimmers, bright round reflection painted on the wet sand. Kyle bends and touches it, pushes into it, soft and slick and cooler than his skin.
He slips out of his flip-flops when he straightens up, bending again only to loop the straps around his fingers. The waves are reaching him with more frequency now, the pleasure warmer as his body adjusts. His toes burrow into the sand and the waves uncover them, the ocean playing hide-and-seek with him. Sand runs out to sea, the tide dragging it from beneath him, and he laughs in sudden sinking delight, caught off-balance.
Kyle rinses the sand from the bottom of his feet before slipping his flip-flops back on. He wanders up the beach, bending to pick up stray broken sand dollars and winged oyster shells as he goes. The sand is still damp here from the last tide. Firm. Excellent building material. He glances seaward; the tide is coming in, and it's likely no one will ever see the castle that is forming in his mind.
He kneels in the sand, and with his fingertip begins to map out the blueprints.
It's not as elaborate as Kenny's, but when he stands back to survey it, Kyle is happy with what he has built. A high wall surrounds a castle with even higher twin towers, which are joined together halfway up by a stone bridge with shallow, arched doorways at either end. It had taken him close to fifteen minutes to find a suitably long and flat stone for that, and he's particularly pleased with the effect. One tower comes to a pointed spire; the other flattens into an open-topped turret with a small pond, lined with overlapped periwinkle half-shells to prevent the water from being absorbed. A narrow path, wide enough for a single miniature individual on foot, juts from the spired tower, winding from base to the single window near the top. Kyle isn't sure if it's obvious the opening is meant to be a window and not a door, but he feels strongly that all princesses—and princes, for that matter—should be allowed the joy of climbing in and out of the window to their room.
The rampart is thick enough to support turrets of its own, though none of them have the luxury of a pond since they were designed as defense positions. The shallow moat surrounding it all is mainly for show, as the wall and its stone gate (another quarter of an hour looking for that one) are a formidable defense in and of themselves.
Since Kyle chose to etch all of the decoration, the shells he picked up earlier are still in a pile to the side. He begins to arrange them in the sand next to the castle, but it's obvious from the start that he won't have enough. The tide, though creeping up the beach, is not really encroaching yet so he goes off to gather more shells.
He still doesn't have enough, so he uses his finger to sign his own name in the sand beneath the bits and pieces spelling out in tribute, THANK YOU KENNY.
When Kyle starts to head for the beach the next morning, his mother shoots a look at his father, who mentions in a premeditatedly casual tone that they haven't seen much of Kyle since they arrived. His brother chimes in, and Kyle finds himself dragged off to wander streets lined with taffy shops and endless bric-a-brac depots. He lets Ike put the cow-shaped hat on his head, but draws the line at having his picture taken in it.
By the time they get back to the cottage that afternoon, the look on his face is enough to convince his mother to move their planned drive along the coast to the evening.
Kyle is not expecting to find anything but peace of mind, so he's a little surprised to discover the thud of his heart against his bones telling him how hard he secretly was hoping for something.
Kenny has chosen a simple design this time too—a tower telescoping out of the sand, surrounded by a deep moat. Additional protection comes from the school of small but fearsome serpents swimming the moat; and the beast that suddenly comes into view, patrolling the land perimeter at a slow scuttle.
And beside it all, curling in the damp sand, two small words: For Kyle.
They don't write out dedications or signatures after that. It's just understood now, like the rhythm they fall into without explicit negotiation. Sharing the beach, trading off mornings and afternoons.
The summer passes like that. In the first couple of weeks, Kyle thought about asking around, finding out who Kenny is, maybe meeting up with him. But with each day and each castle, their creations growing more and more elaborate (though never reaching the grandness of that first one), Kyle's curiosity yielded to the pleasure of their private and esoteric communication.
It's a late summer morning that Kyle goes down to the beach and finds someone already there, sitting in the sand: a dark-haired boy, about his own age, wearing a brown tee-shirt with a red hem and neckline. With a rush of anticipation, Kyle goes to meet him.
"Kenny?" he says when he's close enough.
The boy turns and looks up, tugging out his earbuds with one hand and shading his eyes against the sun with the other. "Are you Kyle?" Kyle nods, and the boy smiles. "I've been admiring your sandcastles all summer. I kind of wanted to meet you; I hope you don't mind."
"Thanks, dude." Kyle returns the smile as he folds himself down onto the sand. "Yours were awesome too."
"My dad was basically obsessed with sand castles for about a week when I was seven." The boy grins, fond and rueful at the same time. "He 'outgrew' it, but I guess I never did."
The smile shimmering in the boy's dark blue eyes is infectious, and Kyle reflects it back even as he feels it seeping into him. "I'm glad you didn't, Kenny."
"Oh, I'm not Kenny. He's—he was my friend."
The change of tense twinges inside Kyle. He sits quietly with the boy, who tilts his head to look out at the ocean.
"My best friend. He died earlier this year," the boy resumes after a moment. "He used to come with us when my parents brought me and my sister here, when we were little. I wasn't with him at the hospital when he. In his last moments. I didn't get to say goodbye. After a while, I thought maybe coming here..." The boy falls silent again, still gazing off.
"We—I haven't been here for years. When I got here, I found out this is a private beach now. Which, obviously, you know," the boy says, turning to him with a wan smile, folding his arms across his drawn-up knees. It's clearly rhetorical, so Kyle doesn't nod; he just listens as the boy continues, "I came down anyhow, early in the morning. I just wanted to do something for him here. It had to be here," he says softly, and Kyle's eyes slide away from the private moment. "He loved it here, man. He didn't have the greatest life, but he would laugh and smile here like nowhere else.
"So I came here, and built him a last castle, and said goodbye."
Kyle gives the boy and his friend another private moment before he looks over again. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be."
"I mean," Kyle clarifies, "I'm sorry I intruded on that."
"Don't be." The boy's fingertips briefly touch Kyle's where they rest on the sand. "Kenny got two castles." He grins now. "I bet he really liked that. I liked it." He glances down at his hands before looking up again through the dark strands of hair that have drifted into his face. "It was cool exchanging castles with you this summer. Kind of like writing letters, you know?"
Kyle does know. He remembers watching the first castle in the rain. He wonders if that's what civilizations really are: just love letters from the gods to one another.
The boy is speaking again. "It gave me something to do, something to look forward to, and." Another flash of smile, another glance away, and then the boy shakes his head and looks back at Kyle. "I mean, that first castle, that was Kenny's. I built that one just for him. But I meant what I said with the second one. That was for you. All the ones after that." The boy shrugs helplessly. "Those were all for you." He looks away, lets out a breath impatient with himself. "I know it doesn't make sense. I don't know you or anything. I just. That's what I was doing," he concludes softly.
It doesn't make sense. But that's what Kyle has been doing too.
Their fingertips meet again in the sand. "Yeah," Kyle says, and their fingers curl around each other; "yeah."