Anchor
by Angela Huo | Grade 10 | Scholastic 2021 | Flash Fiction | Silver Key
“Are you ready?” my father asks.
LED flashlight dangling from his wrist, he swerves around piles of wrinkled beach towels and damp seashell collections to reach the door. I avoid looking at his expectant smile, jerking my shoulders up and down in a shrug as I focus on shaking the sand from between my toes. Gritty grains fall one by one onto the tiled hotel floor while the air strains around us, thin enough to unearth forgotten sounds. A throat clears. A heartbeat. The mechanical ticking of a clock. My father’s steps lag, shuffling closer and closer until he offers me a bucket with paint peeling off. I grab the bucket’s rubber handle with my right hand, hoisting it above the floor. He slips on his sandals and tugs the door open. As I step out of our hotel room and onto coarse sand dunes, a pungent, briny tang wafts around me, forcing me to blink away tears. Goosebumps crawl up my arms and down my thighs. The night chill hugs me like a shroud.
Ahead of me, my father flicks the flashlight on and summons a steady beacon of light. It washes across the beach, discovering a Hersheys wrapper, a bleached piece of driftwood, abandoned plastic shovels and pails and castles. My flip flops sink into the soft dunes, the lingering daytime heat caresses my feet. I drag the shoe out, sending a spray of sand arcing in the air behind me with each step. I trudge over to the ribbon of coast my father strolls along. During the day, the sand here is trodden and wet, pummeled by thousands of staccato footsteps and enfolded by the sea in salty embraces, as if a rippling blanket of blues and greens. But as I chase after the circle of light, the sea resembles a creature, one that beats against the shore, icy water climbing up to snatch at my ankles, before giving up and slithering back with a hiss. I shiver from the touch.
The steady patter of sandals on sand halts as my father freezes. He crouches down on his hands and knees, left hand hovered over a patch of ground like a claw machine. Joints stretch open, and then the claw drops. Ripping through the sand, my father’s hand emerges clutching its prize: a handful of wriggling limbs. Clumps of damp clay crumble to the ground as a pale, curved shell emerges. Two bulb-like eyes retract and bury themselves in an oval opening on its box shaped shell. Three pairs of ivory legs fan out, posing a rib cage around its translucent underside. Valley folds crease its shell and branch out in symmetrical “v” shapes, folding into thick, pointed clubs.
I ask my father to get rid of it. He laughs at my reaction and brings the crab closer to my face. As it springs to life, pincers clicking open and clacking shut, I lurch away until cold water grazes at my heels. The crab looms, so close that I see bristles of hair vibrate on its legs, masses of foam frothing from its mouth, the toothed edge of its claw opening wider and wider. Something nips at my nose. Eyes fluttering open, my vision fixates on two claws snapping in tandem, their flurry of attacks bouncing off of skin. I scowl, wrestling the pincers away from my throbbing nose as I turn to my father’s beaming face.
“I told you so,” my father says. As he pokes at my ribs, I can’t help but laugh. This crab soars into my bucket. The next one, bigger than the first, is spotted by me. My father shows me how to hold it, and I follow his example, sandwiching the shell between forefinger and thumb. It, too, soars into my bucket.
After two hours pass, we decide to turn around and return to the hotel. Wet sand coats my hands like frosting, and sprinkles of salt gild my charcoal hair. My father’s shirt drips with sea water and flutters in the wind. Hobbling under the bucket’s weight on one side and clutching my dad’s arm like a warm anchor on the other, I slosh through the silt and lift the bottom of the bucket with both hands, sending the ghost crabs tumbling onto the beach. Dad stands over me with his hands on his hips and a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. As the crabs scuttle over one another, some dashing away, while others burrow into the ground, we stand and listen to the nightime chorus: A seagull’s cry; a hummed tune; the ocean’s methodic snoring. I plunge my warm hands into the ocean, stroking the water one last time as ripples arc out across the surface and soothe waves, lulling back and forth, back and forth.
