Free Sag Harbor by Whitehead Colson Page B

with the top down.) Then we were in Sagaponack, popping into the roadside deli for supplies, and a few minutes later we pulled up at Left Left, the beach down from the town beach. No permit needed, no lifeguards. And this year, no parents.
    WE TRUDGED IN FORMATION UP THE DUNE , beach grass lashing our calves, entering that strange zone of black sand at the head of the beach. The black sand was twice as hot as the rest of the sand on the beach, inspiring cartoony cries of “Ow, ow, ow!” in former times, and a stoic teeth-gritting today. There weren't many people. We had our pick of spots.
    “Let's go over there,” Randy said.
    “Over here,” Clive countered, and we followed him to a spot above the tide line, demarcated by a garland of dried seaweed. Clive had always been the leader of our group. He was just cool, no joke. I pitied Marcus for his victimhood; I pitied Clive because he had to hang out with us. He was that rare thing among us: halfway normal, socialized and capable and charismatic. Like—he did sports. Basketball and track, captain of one of the teams at his school, I can't remember which, he was good at both of them. Sometimes he tried to get a basketball game together, two-on-two, but after a while we just started playing three against him, and he still won, leaving us a sorry sight at the side of the court, bent over and dizzy, palms on our knees and reaching for imaginary asthma inhalers. Imaginary asthma inhalers created a placebo effect, which was better than nothing.
    Before Reggie and I had an Empty House, and thus the meeting place/departure point for expeditions, the one sure way not to be excluded from that day's adventures was to be the first one over at Clive's crib, where all the major decisions went down. Crack of dawn was a bit excessive, but the thinking went that you couldn't be ditched if you stuck close to Clive. Tall and muscular, he had the physical might to beat us up, but he broke up fights between us instead, separating combatants while dodging their whirling fists, and no one complained. A reluctant Solomon with a soul patch, he endeddisputes over the important issues of the day, such as who called shotgun first, who had next on the diving board, who was up on Punch-Out, the video game in the lobby of the East Hampton movie theater that we worshipped like a pagan totem while the white people stared. He knew how to talk to girls, had girlfriends, plural. Good-looking girlfriends, too, from all accounts, with all their teeth and everything. Last summer he'd even dated an older woman—in her twenties! Who lived in Springs! Who had a kid! He had his problems like the rest of us but he hadn't let them deform his character yet. Not back then.
    We picked our spots around camp, laying our towels down, weighing down their edges with sneakers and sodas to keep them from flipping up. And it happened, like that, after an increment of time so tiny that neutrons and protons were the only witnesses: we got sanded. In the towels, scalps, clumping on sweat along our limbs. It had begun, the gritification of the day. Some windy afternoons, the wind agitated the sand into a needling layer two inches thick. It hovered above the beach, the atmosphere of a different planet, saying, You should not be here. But what was another warning among so many?
    We were the only black people on the beach. My sister's group was grown up, dispersed, and most of the moms from our neighborhood frequented the town beach, which had a lifeguard. “Stay within the markers!” There was a nice bit of suspense when you rounded the bend to the town beach and saw the flag—red, yellow, or white—signaling how rough the surf was that day. On red-flag days you heard the thunderous hammer of the waves before you got over the dune and saw the mist of smashed-down water floating above the battered shore. On calmer days the most important sound was the lifeguard blowing his “Shark Attack!” whistle. Everybody wanted