Under the Blue

Chapter I

Above me they're selling fried pickles, below me they're selling souls. In between there is only a few feet of grated stone sand and a large expanse of recycled breath. The ocean stretches out the way people do when they wake up in the morning, all arms and legs and cracking moans. A tiny crab is scurrying around in the uneven crevices by my toes, simultaneously using prey and predator instincts to find a meal.

The sea omits a gurgling sprig of noise, a radio station belting one last bar of Elton John before losing life, and an echo of excited yelps drum down the shoreline.

"Look! A dolphin!"

I sink back into the sand where my feet had been poised to run. The dolphin, with its rounded snout, is just a bottlenose. Feet pound against the rotting wood of the pier as crowds of tourist families race to see the marine animal leap through the air and dive back in the water. Many of the dolphins that frequent this cove perform for the visiting crowds, even without trainers telling them what to do. It's because of the cheering. They like the noise.

I do not like the noise. The noise traps me. It pounds against my bones. There is only one feeling like it, when the sounds of other people become too much. It's as if I am trapped underwater in the ocean. Sinking, sinking, sinking. I want to let oxygen into my lungs but I can't, so I just let the want, the ache, I let it pulverize me.

Eyes closed, I pat the ground around me for the book. I hold it close to my face so that I can only see blank paper and faded blue lines. If I touch the next clean page, I can feel the footprint remains of past writing. Some of it is mine, some of it is not. The pen spits ink into my hand when I click it and congeals with my sweat.

Bottlenose. Lengthy scratch on the left side. Could scar. Not with a pod.

My notes are etched quickly, without extensive detail. The sighting isn't important, anyways. Bottlenose dolphins are entirely mundane for this pier. It's been a disappointing afternoon that followed an even more boring dawn.

Hunting lasted approximately 24 minutes within a two-hundred foot radi-

There is a man watching me. Not a tourist. Not a local. He sat against one of the pillars to my right during the initial dolphin frenzy and has remained there ever since. The man is a fire. He radiates something strange, teeth blackened from years of too many drugs and too few dental cleanings. His arms are lined not with veins, but tattooed names and symbols. I recognize one to be a gang sign.

He notices me looking, lifts the sandwich he'd been gnawing on, and tears off a piece. "Hey, Birdie, catch!" The chunk of bread lands just out of my reach. A seagull crashes into the sand nosing around for it, and I look away. If I don't give him attention, he'll get discouraged.

At least, I hope he will get discouraged.

"Birdie! Catch, Birdie! Does Birdie want something to eat? Is Birdie hungry?" Little tendrils of cheese and bologna hit my hair and chest.

He's high off of something and not giving up. Brushing the food particles off, I grab my grocery bag of things, slip the book safely back inside, and turn around to leave. Behind me, I hear the man stand, too. My heart is ramming against my chest so hard I am beginning to sweat. That means the tears are coming, and I can't let him see me shaken.

"Listen, Birdie, I'm sorry. You look hungry. Can I buy you a drink or someth'n?" His voice is getting louder as he jogs to catch up with me. We're in a bigger crowd now. There are people around. Witnesses.

"No, thank you," I tell him, meaning to say it quietly. Instead, I've shouted. A husband sitting with his wife and little girl stands from their striped towel and lumbers over, looking at me with concerned, hazel eyes.

"Is this guy bothering you?" he asks me without looking at me. He's put himself in between me and the man.

"No," I tell him, and then I run. I run in the clumsy way that one who decides to move faster than a cumbersome trot runs on the beach. I split my toe open on the stairs that lead to the boardwalk and don't let myself breathe again until I'm on the pavement of the road.

Did he recognize me? Not the one with the sandwich, who most likely couldn't recognize his own mother, but the other man. The man who looks like he must watch the news every morning. He might even watch two channels, to get the full impact of the news, rather than just one biased point of view.

"Okay," I whisper breathlessly, "it's okay." But it isn't. How could it be?

A raindrop rolls down my cheek just as a truck with surfboards in the back pulls out in front of me, stopping my dash dead in its tracks. The driver honks at me in a long, irritated stream like a shout. Beep becomes a sound with a hundred e's and no ending. I dodge around the back of the car and keep going forward, as if I have somewhere to go.

Eventually, I find an unlocked back gate. It's a rental house. Deserted. I wait in the bushes until the cleaning company truck left the driveway, and then I push the fence latch out and let myself in. My back spasms with exhaustion just as I hit the cocoon of a hammock.

The bag crinkles as I pull it over the edge of the hammock and rest it on my stomach. Carefully, I take out its soaked contents. One notebook, one t-shirt, two dollars, and one pen. Inside my sweatshirt: one knife.

The knife is blurry like a dirty mirror, but I can still see myself. I don't know who I look like. Not a person, that's for sure, or a damned bird.

Maybe a sand crab. Predator and prey.