Chapter 4
The immediate aftermath was a suffocating silence, save for Noah’s muffled sobs against my shoulder. The next wave rolled in, slipping beneath the wreckage of the castle and dragging the remnants into the sea, erasing three hours of love and memory in seconds.
The people around us had stopped moving. The Fourth of July revelry within a fifty-foot radius had died. A teenager with a surfboard stared with open disgust at the influencer, whose name I later learned was Tiffany. A father nearby pulled his toddler behind his legs. Angry murmurs began to ripple through the crowd.
Tiffany, oblivious or simply uncaring about the real-world hostility brewing around her, had returned to her blanket. She snapped her towel through the air, sat down cross-legged, and continued speaking to her phone, pretending the horrific display of cruelty had been a highly entertaining piece of content.
Noah never let go of the flag. He clutched it against my chest, his tears hot and wet on my skin.
Twenty minutes passed. I was quietly trying to convince Noah to go get some ice cream, to leave this poisoned place, when a sound sliced through the heavy, humid air.
FWEEEEET! FWEEEEET!
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It was a lifeguard’s whistle, but blown with such ferocious, lung-busting authority that every single head on the beach snapped toward the sound.
A senior lifeguard descended the wooden stairs of the tall white tower. He was an older man, late sixties perhaps, with deeply tanned, leathery arms, a barrel chest, and thick silver hair poking out from beneath a red visor. Captain Mitchell was printed in bold white letters across his chest. In one hand, he held a sleek, heavy-looking megaphone.
