Everyone at the Sand Sculpting Contest, Imperial Beach, California, 1985

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Lynn Mundell

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Jennifer says none of us have any imagination or experience, so we should make a sand Pop-Tart, which will require zero skill. We all stand around in different colored bikinis like a box of crayons melting in the summer sun. “Sussudio” is playing on Amy’s transistor, and everyone argues about whether it’s a made-up girl’s name or a feeling or what. Donna wants to make a big sand surfboard so we can take turns posing on it while she snaps our pictures with her instant camera, but Jennifer says it will cave in after the first girl. Melissa wants to make our school mascot, a Scottish Highlander, everyone calls Angus. Everyone laughs, saying that’s too hard, until Melissa’s tears and Maybelline Great Lash are flowing in little currents over her tan cheeks. Then Jennifer says, Okay, for God’s sake, we’ll make Angus, and Karen cleans up Melissa’s face with her bandana. We all agree we’ve wasted a lot of our time. By now the adults have wheelbarrowed wet sand away from shore and started sculpting. The college boys next to us say they’re making Rock Hudson’s face as a tribute because he’s sick with nobody knows what. They say only losers make actual sandcastles. All around us, fantastical creations are beginning to appear from the sand—a Kraken, an oyster filled with a pearl necklace, a giant pirate ship. The adults use rakes, cake molds, snow shovels, and cans of spray adhesive nobody told us about that makes all the sand stay put. We finally get to work on Angus, using our hands and an ice-scraper from Barbara’s dad’s car. When the wind picks up, our Sweet Honesty mixes with the boys’ Sauvage Extreme. Everyone passes around the baby oil, and as we cook we tell each other we look so good. Seriously, the Highlander is like a child’s Play-Doh model of a Scotty dog, which Renee says is close enough as she breaks open the Cool Ranch Doritos and the Sour Patch Kids. As we eat our lunch, the boys finish a passable Rock Hudson. They look at our Highlander and say it’s not too late to start over again. Kimberly says we should all make the Challenger together, and for once everyone agrees. The boys lug the sand up from the shore, and everyone starts mounding and patting the space shuttle. A man with dark hair and tinted sunglasses sits down in the sand to watch us. By now, we are surrounded by Neptunes, a Moby Dick, and busty mermaids the boys all ogle. While we work, the sand is a fine film on our faces. It collects in black rings around our oily ankles, underneath our nails, and even on our mouths, coated in Lisa’s Dr. Pepper Lip Smacker. Jennifer says we’re finally done, while at the same time, on the transistor, a news announcer says the Night Stalker is still out there somewhere. The wind is really starting to pick up, so Donna takes photos of Rock Hudson first, before he gets buried, then us, the boys, the contest winner, which it turns out is a huge castle, the Challenger ahead of the waves crashing into it, and even the stranger captured just before he jogs away. Everyone is quiet for once, watching the Polaroids’ magic. In the photos, we slowly develop, first as pale blobs, then taking shape into a bunch of people covered in sand. We almost look like the rest of the abandoned creations on the beach, which, even while they were being so carefully made, were never going to last beyond the day.

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Lynn Mundell is editor of Centaur and co-founder of 100 Word Story. Her work has been published in The Sun, Wigleaf, SmokeLong Quarterly, Tin House, Five Points, Booth, Best Microfiction, and a W.W. Norton anthology. Her chapbook Let Our Bodies Be Returned to Us was published by the University of South Carolina in 2022.

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