The Beach

Trace knew the exact moment at which her childhood had ended. Most of the others her age didn’t, or at least they pretended not to, but she knew. It was a rainy Thursday afternoon. Her mother came home from work, tired and looking rather blurred, as if she were standing far away. She looked around the house and saw that the chores were not done, the third time that week. She sighed, and in that sigh was the answer.

There were no tears. She had heard that there often were, especially from the girls, and Trace had wondered if perhaps she was strange for not crying. Mostly, she felt a sort of cold, heavy numbness, like her body had turned to liquid lead, and she had the peculiar sensation that she was underwater. She reasoned that it was no surprise; she had always known this day would come, and others before her had gone as she would. As was customary, her family (which is what she called them for lack of a better word) escorted her to the dock, but they did not speak. As she stepped on the ramp with all the other somber passengers, she noticed her little brother gazing at her with his large, ink-blue eyes; for a moment, she thought he was crying, but then the doors closed and he was gone.

* * * * *

“Don’t step there.”

Trace gasped, startled by the voice.

“This is Graddie territory. You shouldn’t be here.”

Trace knew this, but she didn’t want him to know. Graddies were all the same: absolutely impossible. The fact that one had bothered to speak to her was mildly shocking; generally, they merely snapped their fingers and pointed, as if they thought you would be unable to understand them otherwise.

“Why are you here? Don’t you know the rules?”
“I thought Graddies were the only ones who knew anything.” This was a risky statement, and as it passed her lips, Trace halfway wished she could swallow it. It was a very bad idea to make a Graddie angry; they could do horrible things to you.

“I don’t like your attitude. What’s your name, anyway? And why are you here? Answer my question.”

“My name is Trace. I was looking for a book for a project I’m doing.”

“What sort of project?”

“A research one. For a Graddie in my crib.”

“Well, you shouldn’t be in this section. Everyone knows it’s off limits.”

Trace nodded. She knew, that was certain. “I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

“Wait. Trace." He hesitated slightly after saying her name. "Who assigned you the project?”

“A girl named Ebony.” Ebony was one of the younger Graddies who was still waiting to be informed of her departure date. She had noticed Trace almost right away, and had lost no time in giving her tasks, sometimes as outrageous and repulsive as arranging hook-ups with the male Graddies. Trace had vowed to herself that if she made it to Graddie status she would never engage in such debaucheries as hook-ups. She wondered if this male knew Ebony; she wouldn’t be surprised, because while the female Graddies thought Ebony obnoxious, she was extraordinarily pretty and had no trouble getting the males to notice her.

“Never met her.” That cleared her question up. The male shifted feet restlessly. “I need you to do something for me, Trace.”

She was surprised. He had been talking to her for a long time, and this was the second time he had used her name, something that Graddies never did. And his voice when he asked her was not demanding like the others’, but mild with a hint of--could it be actual pleading?--in it. “What is it?” She sounded rougher than she meant to.

“I need you to come with me.” He looked directly into her eyes and began to step toward her, seemed to think better of it, and instead took a step back. “Right now.”

Trace didn’t know what to say. “Ok.” She said the only thing she could say. She knew better than to argue with him. Too much was at stake.

He walked out of the library onto the street. He was small, for a Graddie, with pale blond hair and golden skin. He didn’t walk with the typical Graddie swagger, but with a light, cautious step that Trace found very odd. It is strange they way that I am judging him, she thought. She couldn’t help it; from the minute she had arrived, the instinct to identify whoever approached was bred into her. All of the customs of The Beach were. The name Graddie, for instance. Now it seemed so automatic, but when she arrived, it had to be explained: Graddie is short for Graduate, the Dinks who made it and get to leave The Beach. Crib, that was another strange word; it didn’t mean “a baby’s bed”, but rather the place where all Dinks lived. Dinks, too. She hated being called that. It was short for “Delinquent”, and even though most of them really weren’t, it was their name.

“Where are you from? I mean before The Beach, of course.”

He startled her once again. “I was from Southern Idaho. Small town. You wouldn’t know.”

“No, I guess not. I’m from Memphis. Tennessee.”

Why did he offer this information? Why was he asking her questions? Trace found it interesting that, even after she referred to her former home in the past tense, he referred to his in the present.

“Ok, here we are.”

They were at the water’s edge. Although the Welcomers had told them how great the ocean was, and how they should all try to spend time there, Trace had never really been interested. It was all part of the propaganda of The Beach; the name sounded so wonderful, like a vacation spot rather than a corral for adolescents in a difficult phase. Sometimes she wondered if it had always been this way, parents sending their teens away when they became too much to handle. She suspected that it had not.

“Don’t you want to know why we’re here?” he asked.

“In my experience, asking questions to Graddies is a bad idea. I figured you would tell me eventually.”

He looked at her hard, with a look that expressed a sort of puzzlement at her sarcasm. He shouldn’t have been surprised, though. As a Dink, she had been conditioned for sarcasm. It was one of the many survival tactics you learned if you didn’t want to end up as a Welcomer. Welcomers were Dinks who did not survive the test of The Beach and were deemed unprepared to return to society. They were responsible for welcoming the incoming ships and ensuring that the new batches of juvenilia got an introduction (not that the Welcomer’s version of The Beach was accurate). The mere thought of being doomed to spend the rest of her life in this place made Trace sick to her stomach. She could not even begin to imagine how awful it would be.

“Ok, look. You’ve probably noticed that I’m not a typical Graddie.”

“Why would you say that?” Her voice dripped with venomous cynicism.

“I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”. Ooh, he was not easily angered. Another reason he was strange.

“Ok, I’ll play along. Would you please tell me why we are here?” She eased up on the sarcasm a little bit; after all, he seemed nice now, but he was still a Graddie.

“I want to get off. No, I need to get off. I have to. And I need your help.” He stared directly into her pupils, shooting a look that in every way showed sincerity.

“How?” She had a million other questions, too many to ask. Never before had anyone actually spoken the thing that she had desired since the moment she came. And a Graddie…

“There are emergency rafts stored in the Welcomers’ huts. They are there in case a flood or tidal wave were to hit The Beach. I saw them once when we were hazing some Dinks who had just arrived.”

“Can you get one?” She wondered if perhaps he hadn’t considered this, but the look of scorn that followed her question told her otherwise.

“Do you honestly think I hadn’t thought of that? Yes, I think I can. But I’ll need your help. You have to distract the Welcomer who lives in the hut. It’s an old guy; been here for twenty years, at least. It won’t be hard. You just sort of have to…flirt.”

“What!” She had not expected this. If there was one thing Trace had no experience with, it was flirting. “What do you mean? I can’t!”

“Of course you can. Just think of it as playing a mind game. Like you do with Ebony when you need to distract her.” How did he know about that?

Trace kicked the pebbles on the sand thoughtfully. She looked around. There, about fifty yards away, was the Welcomer’s hut. My chance at freedom is inside that hut, she thought. She drew a deep breath, then turned back toward the town. She could see her crib from where she was standing. Ebony would be there, most likely with some male; Trace would not be missed for at least another couple of hours. It sounded so good. Just a quick distraction, and then she would be free. Living on an island that was ruled by beauty and popularity and all the fickle whims of adolescence was not an ideal circumstance, and it was often very dangerous. Teenagers were not known for their excellent judgement, and Trace feared for her life constantly, especially around Ebony. One blow from the fist of her many male pleasure-bots, and Trace would have more to worry about than just research projects. But if they got caught…

“I’ll do it.” She sounded shaky, but was slightly relieved to find that her voice did not convey the full extent of her fear.

“Great! Now, we have no time to waste. Follow me, and when you see the Welcomer, I need you to act immediately. Create a distraction. Strategically rip your clothes or something, whatever it takes to get the dirty old man’s attention off of me and the hut.”

She shuddered at the thought of what that might entail. “Hey--wait! I need to ask you something!”

“Make it quick.”

“Why is it so important for you to get off this island? You’re a Graddie; you know that you’d be going back anyway.”

“I want to get back home and find my little sister. I don’t want her to come here. It ruins you; The Beach ruins you. She’s too…good for this place.”

Trace considered her own brother. She tried to remember if she had really even thought about him since she had arrived at The Beach. She had mostly been worried about herself.

“One more thing--I told you my name, so what is yours?”

“Vox. Now let’s go!” He began making his way across the sand to the Welcomer’s hut. Trace, walking behind him, watched him carefully. Vox. The name sounded familiar. Then it came to her: Latin class, training grade one. Vox meant “voice” in Latin. Voice…it seemed appropriate, being that his was the only voice that had ever echoed her thoughts, the voice of an individual, not a Graddie. A wave of excitement, hot and electric, flooded her veins. She was really getting away!

The had nearly reached the hut. Vox gestured that he was going somewhere around the back of the hut, and motioned that she should knock on the door. She took a lusty gulp of air, and slowly raised her hand. She knocked. Slowly, the door swung open, and Trace gazed in horror at what lay inside.

* * * * *

She still thought about him once in a while. She wondered if everything he had said was a complete lie, or if he really did have a little sister. She hoped that the girl had never come to The Beach, regardless of what her brother had done.

Trace could never figure out how she had underestimated Ebony. Maybe it was because she had assumed that someone so beautiful could not possibly be capable creating such a well-calculated plan. She would never forget Ebony’s face when she opened the door to the hut and found her waiting on a chair; a smile, almost sad, but a sadness completely devoid of warmth. It was as if someone had tried to put the emotion on the face of a doll--the expression was there, but nothing could make it human. She saw this smile again, once, when Ebony was turning her over to the Graddie council.

Stirring from her reverie, she glanced out the window. A ship was on the horizon, and that meant three hundred new heads. She would greet them warmly, and grin, and explain the wonders that The Beach had to offer, and lie, lie, lie through her teeth. It was a shame, really, but she knew that, even if she told them the truth, they would not believe it--at least, not at first. Then she would go back to her hut and sit, and wonder how, after seven years, she still hated it with a passion so fresh.

She walked slowly up to the dock to meet the ship. She knew from her years of experience to stand back a little, to let the soon-to-be Dinks with their eyes rolling circles in their heads have a little space. After a shell-shocked moment, they would break from their trance and begin looking for some sort of guide, and she would make her entrance. Often, they tried to touch her, to reach out to her because she looked older than them, but she would not let them. She could smell them, fear and excitement and pubescent sweat, all rolled into a heady bouquet. They were ready, and as the first one walked toward her, she moved to meet him. Then she saw them: his two, big, ink-blue eyes. She wondered if he recognized her; she thought that his eyes showed he did. Without a word, he walked past her to the next Welcomer. She hoped that his fate would be better than hers.