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“Hey! Come back here!”
Finnick didn’t mean to knock down her sandcastle. Honest. He just wanted to play with his friends at the sandbar and wasn’t looking where he was going. In fact, he was running so quickly—because he is fast— that everything had blurred around him, especially the girl and her sandcastle.
So he stops in his tracks, his heart dropping all the way down to his toes once he gets a good look at the girl. She looked awfully unhappy with him.
“I’m sorry!” he says, his feet carrying him over to her in a matter of seconds (because he’s fast, remember?) The girl still looks unimpressed, her arms crossed over her chest and her green eyes narrowed. He’s never seen a color like that. It reminds him of the pretty gemstone his dad wears around his neck—the one that matches the ring his mom has on her finger. The girl is also very pretty, so he tells her that, and watches the green disappear into her head as she rolls her eyes. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t see you. I was running too fast.”
“Well, now my sandcastle is ruined. It was impressive, and I was going to show my mom, but…” She gestures at the crumbling mounds of sand, and Finnick squirms a bit as his face warms up. But then the girl perks up, and his spirits lift, because she must not be angry with him anymore. He listens very closely to her next question. “You wanna help me rebuild it?”
“Sure!” He plops down beside her. “I like your hair.”
“Thanks.” It’s settled on top of her head in a heap, and Finnick likes looking at the stray pieces of curls that bounce whenever she moves around. “My older sister did it. She’s good at a lot of things, but not making sandcastles.” Then she reaches over and dangles a red plastic bucket from her fingers. “You see this?” Finnick does, so he nods. “We’re gonna use this for the smaller rooms of the sandcastle—oh, I want five small rooms, by the way.” She gestures toward another bucket that looks heavy and loud. “And we’re gonna use this for the bigger rooms—I want three. We’ll start with the big stuff first. Got it?”
“Yeah.” Finnick grins at her, and he’s relieved when she smiles back. “Let’s do it! It’s gonna look so cool.”
She’s a very good leader. She tells him how to make the mounds of sand smooth and tall, and she doesn’t even panic when the tide almost threatens to wash the sandcastle away. She assures him that it won’t get high enough to reach them up on the shore, and she must be right in the same way that he’s an extremely fast runner.
He falls onto the sand in a heap once he finishes sculpting all the rooms with her, his arms feeling weak from helping her carry that big bucket. It was already heavy enough without wet sand filling it up to the brim, and he didn’t think it’d be possible for them to tip it over onto the floor, but the girl was strong.
He watches her draw designs onto each room with light, careful fingers from his place on the ground. Her eyebrows are scrunched together and her nose crinkles a bit and sometimes she asks Finnick what he thinks of a certain design she etches onto the rooms. They’re really pretty—especially the one with a swirly, twisting pattern—so he tells her this and then she beams at him. She’s good at a lot of things, obviously, so he wonders if she’s a fast runner. And if she likes salt water taffy.
“I like you,” he tells her, because he does. “Do you want to get married when we’re older?”
“Hmm.” She tilts her head to the side as she examines a smiley face she drew onto one of the rooms. Something must be wrong with it, because she gently brushes it away and redoes it. “How old?”
“I dunno. Like twelve?”
“Yeah, sure. But why wait so long?”
“Well, we can’t get married right away. We have to wait a bit. That’s how the grownups do it.”
The girl nods. “I guess so. But grownups aren’t always right, because my mom once told me that it wasn’t safe for me to swim all the way out to the buoy and back, but I did it anyway and I didn’t even drown.”
Finnick’s mouth drops open. He whips his head toward the ocean to stare at the nearest buoy that’s bobbing above the surface of the water. He knew they weren’t actually so tiny, because he had once seen one up close when his dad took him on a night swim. He had to stay on his dad’s back for most of the swim—like a sea turtle—because he was told he’d get too tired if he swam all the way there. “No way! My mom says I’m not allowed to go swimming without someone watching me! Who was watching you?”
“Oh, there were lots of people on the beach. But I didn’t need anyone to watch me, ‘cause I’m a fantastic swimmer.”
“Was your mom mad?”
“Kinda.” The girl shrugs, and Finnick wonders if she’ll take him to the buoys. He’s a good swimmer, too. “She yelled at me a little, but she kept hugging me, too, so I think she thought I was impressive.”
“You are impressive,” Finnick says, because she is. “What’s your name?”
“Annie. What’s yours?”
“Finnick. Do you want to play with me on the sandbar? All my friends are already there. Maybe—” The words stick in his throat, and he suddenly feels shy, but it’s hard not to feel that way when Annie is looking him full in the face. “Maybe Mrs. Frayer will let us swim out to the buoys.”
“I have no idea who that is, but sure! I love swimming. But I need to show my mom the sandcastle first. She’s over there.” Annie vaguely waves in Finnick’s direction, so he turns around. He’s not sure who she’s gesturing at, considering there were tons of people at the beach, but he decides that it doesn’t really matter.
“Can I come with you?’
“Obviously. You’re my boy now, aren’t you?”
Finnick grins. “Yeah.”
“So come on.”
He takes her outstretched hand, and he giggles along with her as they kick up sand with their feet as they run. (So she is a fast runner. Finnick likes that about her, too.)
“Mama!” Annie stutters to a stop once they reach a blonde woman with huge, blue eyes. They remind Finnick of sea glass. They’re bright and sharp and if he didn’t have Annie’s hand to cling onto he thinks they might have cut right into him. “I made a fantastic sandcastle! He helped, too.”
Finnick waves at Annie’s mom, his grin growing wider once he feels Annie's fingers squeeze around his. “Hi! I’m Annie’s boy!”
When she furrows her brows and frowns at him, Finnick thinks that she looks a bit like Annie did when he knocked down her sandcastle. He fidgets a little, because Annie hadn’t been very happy with him then, and he feels a prickly feeling in his chest arise when he realizes Annie’s mom must be unhappy with him, too. He smiles even wider—maybe her gaze will soften.
“Does Annie’s boy have a name?”
“Oh. Yeah. Yeah! I’m Finnick.” He feels a flush of pride when her lips revert back into a straight line. “Finnick Odair.”
“Well.” She switches her gaze over to Annie, and Finnick decides they look just like each other when she smiles. “Let’s go see that sandcastle.”