We wait all summer for it, Lauren and I—the Beach.

School ends in June. July is spent at home with our families cooking out, playing softball, decorating bicycles for block parties, and running among the cool, grassy backyards that form the labyrinth of languid summer days.

We aren’t twelve years old anymore, but neither are we fifteen. We spin round and round together, suspended in that sweet space where starlit imaginations and childhood dreams are not yet pierced by doubt, shame, or envy. Oh, our bodies are budding, all right: tie-dyed tee-shirts hide our hard, rosebud breasts, and our tan, lanky arms and legs pitch every which way, like fawns.

The Beach waits for us until August, when our families come together for one week of vacation on the shores of Litchfield, South Carolina. We sit pent up in the hot back seats of our parents’ cars watching the landscape change from Ohio to West Virginia to the Carolinas. When the sharp, undeniable smell of southern state paper mills penetrates our nostrils and the air thickens like sweet tea, we know we are close.

Scrub grass and clam shells crunch beneath the wheels of our little caravan as it enters the circular drive of the cedar-shake beach house. Bringing in duffel bags, coolers, and beach chairs is an interminable process, worsened by the banality of making up our beds with fresh linens and helping our mothers unpack groceries.

Finally, we are permitted to worm our way into the dank swimsuits we pull from the depths of our luggage. We relish the sound of our bare feet slapping against the wind-worn walkway that is our portal, delivering us from a long summer of anticipation. Ahead, the ocean: a massive belt of blue-green ribbons that swell and heave. The rhythm of waves grows louder as we approach.

Grasping hands, we scream and dash across the spongey sand; then, sharp shells, the skip of water, a steep drop, and the familiar, blessed, incomparable cold that wipes away all memory of the earlier school year.

We do not see the first wave, it has been building quietly while we play. It sends our bodies spinning like constellations onto the shore, where we lie breathless, mouths agape, awed by the ocean’s power to render us silent.

We rise, steady ourselves, and run back to the water for more.