Grace, five years old
“You don’t have to be afraid of me, you know?” Jake tells me, standing over me and covering up the sun. I don’t like that he takes my light away. I don’t believe him when he says I don’t need to be scared.
“Why did you go out in the water?” I ask him.
“I don't know.”
“You could've drowned.”
“But I didn't.”
“But you could have. Mommy said so," I remind him.
Jake looks at the sea before sitting down beside me. “Why don't you go out in the water?”
“I don't want to get eaten by sharks," I say.
“There are worse things than getting eaten by sharks.”
I pat the wet sand with my shovel.“No, there’s not.”
“Yes, thereare,”he says, forming a pile of sand with his hands. “Way worse.”
“But if you get eaten by a shark, you die.”
“That’s the point.”
I don’t understand why he says things like that. He’s not right, and that’s why he scares me. “I don’t like when you say mean things,” I tell him.
“I wasn’t being mean. I was being honest. Why do you care? You hate me anyway.”
I go back to playing with my sand castle and wish he would go away. Not far away like last time, but far enough so he doesn’t scare me. Jake waits for my answer, but I don’t give him one.
“Do you know what today is, Grace?”
“No.”
“It’s the anniversary of the day he took me,” Jake says.
I feel scared of that man and scared of Jake. I want to run away from my brother, but he's too close. He'll grab me.
Jake is silent for a long time before he lies down in the sand. I hope we don't have to talk anymore.
“Someday, Gracie, you’re going to hear things about me… really bad things. And they’re probably going to be true, but just remember that I didn’t ask for this. He was like a shark, ripping me up piece by piece. I had to try and get away, right? I had to stop the attack. You would’ve done the same, right?”
I don’t understand what he’s saying, but I don’t want him to be sad either. I reach up and wipe the tears off his face with my sandy fingers. I kiss Jake’s cheek and whisper in his ear, “That’s why I don’t go in the water.”
Jake blinks at me. “You don’t understand anything I’m saying, do you?”
I shake my head.
He laughs through his tears.
“Jake?” I say, wiping more of his tears away. “When are you going to be okay again?”
“I don’t know, but I feel better being here on the beach,” he says.
“Maybe we should move here,” I say, “where you can feel better all the time.”
