WHAT IT IS

A boy went camping with his friend, his friend's mother, and his friend's mother's boyfriend because his father was in jail for just one more day and his mother was enjoying her medication for her broken limbs a bit too much. That morning, the boy didn't have to wake up at 6AM for school as he usually did. Instead, he woke up when he woke up to a house that, at first, scared him since he thought it was empty. But it wasn't empty. His friend's mother was in the kitchen smoking a brown cigarette, and she was the one who told him that there would be no school today, his father was in jail, his mother was in the hospital, and, yes, there would be no school today because they were going camping.

They went camping at the beach, near a Navy base, and early the next morning, the boy saw a helicopter drop many men laden with black sacks into the ocean. The young boyfriend, the night before, made them all laugh. The night before, his genitals had shown out of his short swimtrunks. When he saw everyone was looking at his genitals, he picked some of his scrotum out, stretched it between fingers, and yelled, "Bat wings!" The boy could never imagine his father doing such a thing, and he certainly couldn't see his mother thinking it was funny.

In the morning, after the helicopter, the young boyfriend made the two boys breakfast: Ramen noodles with soy sauce and five eggs broken into it. When the boys got into the ocean after breakfast, and once the water started lifting them up and down in circles, up and down in circles, they both vomited. Small gray fish nibbled at the Ramen bits they erupted. When they had eaten the Ramen noodles, they had enjoyed slurping them because they were so long and curly. But, in the water, with the fish nibbling them, the noodles were no longer long. They were just bits--less than a centimeter--and gray.

The boys swim in the water all day. They push off the sandy bottom of the ocean to catch waves with their bodies. One of the boys has skin that becomes dark with the day. The other has skin that gets terrible red. They swim in the water for so long that they both chafe between their legs. They get what the young boyfriend calls "Ball rash," and the young boyfriend laughs at the way the two boys have to waddle around and cup themselves.

One of the boys--the one with the sunburn and the dad in jail for just one day--wonders if the men with the black sacks are still underwater. He never saw the helicopter come back to pick them up, so he worries he'll feel someone grab his ankle, pull him underwater, put him in a black sack, and carry him to some other place. And then someone does grab his ankle. It's the young boyfriend.