That first night on the beach Emily did nothing; she didn’t move; she didn’t sleep; she didn’t write; she didn’t think. She did nothing, except appreciate.

The sand was smooth and unobstructed as she set out in search of a good sitting spot—save for the uneven tracks from her and Ashley’s race earlier—as though no one had traipsed across the surface for ages. As she sat down near the shore, she stripped down to nakedness and left her three-ring binder crammed with paper a few feet away from her, so she could appreciate a world without distractions.

The scent of the salty ocean air accompanied by seaweed assailed her nostrils from her vantage point. Until this point in her life she had only seen three different beaches: those of Myrtle Beach in South Carolina, Destin in Florida, and the Lake of the Ozarks, where the water was dirty and brown, only moving dispassionately from one side of the lake to the other, and reeked of dead fish and mold. However, each time she had visited the ocean’s turquoise waters, she had the same experience; the same sensation of some unseen force tugging at her, trying to tell her something--though she hadn’t been able to fathom it yet. It was such a comfortable, familiar feeling, despite the pain--almost a longing, an aching in her heart--which always followed.

She appreciated the view of the tip of the sun disappearing behind the sea in the horizon, breathing in the ribbons of magenta, purple, deep blue, and black that divided the sky. She observed the moon reflecting a rippling strip of white off of the gray-green water miles away, just before the place where the world dropped off into nothing but sky. She watched the stars blink down at her from the cloudless sky--a thousand glittering eyes keeping reticent vigil of the earth below them.

When the sky became encompassed in black during the deepest hours of the night, the only way she was able to tell whether she was awake or not was the serene rhythm of the tide lapping at the shore, and the constant rolling thunder of the waves crashing out at sea. No sounds of other civilization penetrated the tranquil location because of the property’s seclusion. There were no barriers between Sandalwood’s private little section of beach and the public’s--only a few signs alerting anyone who wandered far enough--yet it remained a silent, unoccupied stretch of land.

She laid back and allowed the grainy surface of the beach to consume her body. She let it run through her fingers like silk, dug her toes into it until she reached a cool, slightly damp level of sand. She sank into it as though it were the sheets and pillows of a bed without edges, sensed it massaging her back, rolling off of her arms, sliding down her body, until she could no longer sense any physical part of herself, and only felt the sand. She forgot her skin, her hair, her organs, and her blood in the mass of tiny granules and became transformed into a part of the beach. She heard a heartbeat, and knew that it could only be the heart of that entire beach pulsating underneath, above, and all around her.

When the golden tip of the sun broke in the sky to the East, she remained unmoving until it had folded back all of the layers of night into a grand cerulean blanket overhead. As the tide came up and licked her toes, she lie still in her sandy encampment. Her vision reached all the way into town where hotel guests were emerging from their rooms to tramp over the sand and brave the thrashing waters.

She arose from her envelope of sand—not bothering to brush off any of the beige matter that clung to her skin—dressed, looked around and thought: Yup; home…She picked up her binder, sat down cross-legged, and began to write…

*

The sound of the phone ringing woke Sarah from a dead sleep, but she did not move to answer the phone. "Answering machine," she told herself, and rolled over, trying to fall asleep again.

Two rooms away, Ashley slept on, as she had for the previous day and two nights. Never had she harbored any intentions of waking up for something so trivial as a phone call. Had she known who was calling, she wouldn’t have wasted a minute flying down the stairs and picking up the receiver.

Kerry was solidly ensconced in a dream and couldn’t be bothered to answer a phone so early in the morning.

So it was Emily, in for a brief amount of time to stuff some Easy Mac down her throat and wash some of the irritating sand away, who picked up the receiver. She was already dressed for a day out on the beach, and heading towards the door when the phone gave two very annoyingly loud blats and drew her back into reality. She garbled a few curse words into an unintelligible mess as she picked up the receiver. "Yo, Sandalwood Chateau."

"Hello, is Ashley there?"

"Hold on." Emily looked around the room, but Ashley was a floor away, happily enshrouded in a world where dragons were real and white sodas were not. "I don’t think so—can I take a message?" She looked eagerly towards the bright sunshine, glistening off of the untouched sands. There was writing and exploring to be done.

"This is Mrs. Newhall—I just need you to tell Ashley to call me back…"

Emily scribbled a few random words onto a sheet of paper. "Will do, bye!"

It was a message that sadly never passed on to the other residents at Sandalwood Chateau, for Emily, in a bout of her legendary forgetfulness, had forgotten to pin down the paper containing the important message. As she bounded out into the summer sunshine, a gust of wind caught the paper and blew it firmly beneath the refrigerator.

*

Kerry watched the bodies on the dance floor shiver and ripple together in some sort of instinctive dance that nobody quite knew. The mass would split apart into groups, only to flow together like stray drops of water on a smooth surface. Not one person mattered anymore—no, it was the group, and what the group wanted to do. The coagulation was the only thing that mattered anymore…

Friday night at the Red Line, only three days into Kerry’s new job, was the busiest night. Saturday nights meant that there was a DJ and head-pounding karaoke music, but on Friday nights, a loud, live punk band took the stage. The dance floor—wooden tile laid down by the Red Line staff—literally jumped from the tonnage of bodies teeming across its smooth surface. Tonight’s live band was a group from up north that called themselves the Gallant Losers, much to Kerry’s amusement. She was on back-up vocals for the group, filling in for one of the girls that had gotten laryngitis. Normally, Kerry was supposed to be the main feature on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. She filled in as a waitress on Mondays and Sundays.

"Hey, Karen!" Janice, one of the two other back-up singers who’d never managed to pick up Kerry’s real name, shouted over the music. "We’ve got a long break! Let’s go grab a drink!"

Kerry wondered whether it was wise to drink and sing, but decided that the guitars belonging to the Gallant Losers would cover up any mishaps on their part. She stood up from the cheap metal folding chair placed backstage for her, and followed Janice and Regina towards the exit. They skirted the edge of the dance floor, aiming for the long bar on the other end of the room.

The bartender wasn’t in sight when they reached the polished bar top. Kerry scanned the racks of brightly colored liquids in search of her friend Kyle, a reedy sort of character that worked the bar on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but saw nobody. She didn’t remember if Kyle worked on Fridays or not. "Not very good, is he?" Regina, a snotty woman with dark hair that had been dyed pink, asked derisively.

"They never are in such shoddy towns," Janice replied, flicking a strand of purple hair out of her eyes.

Kerry rolled her own eyes, but decided to say nothing. She had no lost love for the two punk rockers, after all, but it wasn’t wise to let them know that this early in the night. Later, it wouldn’t matter. She wouldn’t see either Janice or Regina ever again. The Gallant Losers were apparently a traveling punk band that had hit up several places like The Red Line—all over the country. It didn’t sound like an optimally fun lifestyle to Kerry, but each to her own.

"Where is he?" Regina whined.

Finally rolling her eyes, Kerry began, "I’m sure—"

"Where is who?" a deep voice interrupted her. Kerry turned, fully ready to berate whoever had interrupted her for being so rude—and completely forgot everything from her name to the color her toenails were painted right then.

Standing there on the other side of the bar was the most perfect man Kerry had ever seen.

Kerry had always been on the boy-crazy side. It was the primary reason she watched soap operas and any movie containing Vin Diesel. Over the years, it had developed into a fine art—Kerry had almost a finesse when guy-watching was involved. She had admired guys in all shapes and colors and had held conversations with many of them, but she found herself tongue-tied with surprise. Never had she seen such a spot-on embodiment of her perfect guy on TV or in real life, much less standing three feet away.

Smoky blue eyes—check. Brown hair, kept trimmed close to his head—check. Tall and burly—oh, yes, definitely, double-check. Kerry’s eyes bulged out as she realized that the bartender was wearing a black shirt that read "Volunteer Fireman" in taped-white letters. She didn’t need the sudden plummet of her stomach, or the accelerated flutter of her heart to tell her that this piece of perfection was The One.

Their relationship started off simply.

"Hi, what can I get you?"

*

Sarah was bored.

Admittedly, she had plenty to do. There were still letters to be written to her friends back at the summer camp she usually worked at, or she could even call her parents and update them on her situation. She could admire the sunset or play on the computer, but she felt strangely compelled to do neither. Ashley was still sleeping, despite the fact that she’d been sleeping for the past two days and nights, Emily was out on the beach, and Kerry had been called in to fill in at work. Sarah could not have possibly known that her friend was meeting the man of her life at the moment; she was lying on her back on her bed, looking up at the hundreds of fairy pictures pasted all over the walls.

There were a plethora of different settings present—fairies in glass bottles, skimming over the foliage of an untamed forest, dancing against a tarp of the stars, standing on a blazing dune of desert sand. The artist—Kerry’s great-aunt of sorts, Adelaide Baumberger—had held no preference for each type of scene, but Sarah found her eyes drifting to a pastel-drawing of three fairies, garbed in seaweed and sand, exploring rocks on the beach. The outcropping of rock could be none other than the one just down the shore from Sandalwood Beach, a cove that everybody just called SeaCrest Cove. Sarah wasn’t sure why they called it that, but she tended to believe Kerry wouldn’t purposely make up names to lie to her. The very image shown was one that was visible from the window of Sarah’s bedroom, so it didn’t take much to wonder from where Adelaide Baumberger had drawn that one from.

"My own fairies: Zeke, Jezebel, and Cameron" was written under that picture in very neat, tiny script.

There was a muffled crash from two rooms down the hall, followed by a loud, British curse-word. "Ruddy git…" Sarah heard, and laughed quietly to herself as she realized that Ashley was talking to the hammock, out of which she had just fallen. She heard heavy, tired footsteps move towards the stairs. "Oi, who’s that laughing?"

Sarah’s giggles exploded. "Are you from London or Missouri?" she called back.

"Neither. Illinois." Because Kerry, Sarah, and Emily had spent their entire lives in Missouri, it was often forgotten that Ashley had moved around quite a lot, and didn’t even live there. She was a legal resident of Illinois. She entered then, her eyes narrowed at the bright sunlight that came in through Sarah’s window. Her hair was pushed haphazardly behind her ears, and she looked as though she could happily spend another two days asleep.

"Fall out of the hammock again?" Sarah asked, trying and failing to look sympathetic.

Ashley’s answer was a shrug as she took residence in the desk chair, yawning as she did so. "We had a spat," she explained. "It won—gravity apparently does apply to me. Heh. Thought I was all-powerful." She brushed off the soccer shorts she slept in and rolled her head back on her shoulders, obviously trying to get rid of a cramp. "What’re you up to? Staring at the fairies?"

Sarah pointed at the one she had been scrutinizing. "Kerry’s great-aunt was apparently a very good artist," she observed. "That’s the view from the window."

"Is it?" Ashley leaned her head back in order to eye it critically. "Well, she certainly uses strange color combinations—but I guess that gives it a surreal look." She turned away from the drawing, disinterested. "Is that all she drew? Fairies and whatnot?"

"‘Whatnot?’" Sarah echoed, one of her eyebrows jumping away from the other. "Are you done with the British yet?"

"Turkeys are done, people are finished," Ashley returned, not bothering to hide the gleeful grin that accompanied every bad joke and snotty correction that made its way past her lips. "How come you’re not on the beach?"

Moving her eyes to another fairy portrait—this one a misty forest setting—Sarah gave a shrug. "The water’s too cold," she said emphatically, and turned onto her side. "Kerry’s at work, and Emily…well, I don’t know where Emily is."

"Oh." Ashley digested that with her usual shrug, followed up quickly by the mandatory, "I’m hungry."

"Kitchen’s downstairs," Sarah offered, in the same way she had said "Cafeteria’s downstairs" back at school. The Myers Cafeteria, an integral part of the "Musty M," had been on the ground floor of the Myers building. The four friends had managed to end up living in the same hall together for four years, with four different roommates. It was common knowledge that they would have murdered each other long before had any of them had to share a dorm room. "You’re twenty-one. Make your own food."

"Eh." Ashley did not move. "That requires not only getting up, but traveling down a flight of stairs, remembering which bottle is the mustard and which is the ketchup, and finally going through the process of eating and digesting food. I think I’ll stay hungry, thanks."

"Suit yourself."

For a long time, neither so much as twitched a muscle, until Ashley forcibly hauled herself out of her seat. "You know," she commented offhandedly as she stood up on shaky legs, "I reckon sleeping for over forty-eight hours straight makes one a bit disoriented." To prove her point, she staggered forward and reached for something to support her weight should she fall. Her hand swiped the corner of the picture that had trapped Sarah’s interest earlier.

Both winced as the frame thudded on the carpet. It lay there face down, a victim of Ashley’s latest klutz moment.

"Well, it’s not broken," Ashley said brightly, leaning down to collect the picture.

Sarah breathed again. "Clumsy," she teased, reaching out to take the offended item from Ashley. As Ashley held it out, still face down, both saw it at the same time.

On the back of the heavy paper was what could be nothing else but a map. Long lines, drawn by a careful artist’s hand, crowded against each other at uneven, small intervals, with numbers written in fine print everywhere. The lines squiggled and curved together, belying altitude on the flat paper. Sarah realized what it was first. "A topographical map!"

"Yeah." Ashley let go of the paper, but squinted at the map nonetheless. "It’s a pretty rocky area, too. Steep inclines and stuff…" Her fingers traced an area packed with the lines, trailing

"You know how to read these?" Sarah demanded, drawing the map closer to her eyes.

Ashley wiggled a hand to show that her knowledge was limited in the area.

It did not take long for Sarah to notice the bright red "X" on the left side of the map. "Hey, what’s this?" she asked, pointing. "It looks like…"

"It’s a treasure map!" Ashley interrupted, bouncing unsteadily on the balls of her feet. "A treasure, Sarah! A real treasure map!" She bounced again and would have repeated her actions had her foot not gotten caught in the train around the bed. This action landed her in an inevitable position on the floor. Still, she was too excited to notice. "A treasure map!"

"Yeah, yeah, I think it is." Sarah turned the map around, trying to figure out which way was correct. "Isn’t that what the big red ‘X’ always means?"

The sound of the front door opening warned them that Kerry was home. "Should we tell Kerry?" Ashley asked, her eyes shining mischievously. "Just think of the look on her face when she realizes that I’m awake…Speaking of awake, I shouldn’t be! Don’t tell Kerry I was conscious! Toodles!"

Ashley disappeared out through the door just as there was the clatter of happy footsteps on the stairs. Sarah counted under her breath; just as she reached three, the door flew open and Kerry practically danced in. "I," she announced, arms out in a gesture of disbelief, "have met the most wonderful guy—and he asked me out!"

Sarah sat bolt upright, tossing the map/drawing aside as she did so. "You’ve got a boyfriend?" she demanded, eyes wide.

Kerry proceeded to tell Sarah all about "the most wonderful guy," describing details down to the way he held his glass or the funny note in his laugh. Sarah tuned most of it out (as she was known to), but her attention was finally drawn back into the conversation when Kerry asked, "Was that Ashley I just saw in the hallway…?"

"Nah, you’re just seeing things," Sarah replied, and turned the fairy portrait over before Kerry could see the back of it. It would be such fun to find this treasure and then show Kerry.

And what a surprise they were going to have for her…