by Emma Hamilton
When I was a little girl in Florida, my cousin Billie used to tell me there was a little red button in the shallow water of the beach somewheres, and when you pressed it, you’d shrink down about to the size of a Polly Pocket, grow gills, and be transported to a teeny tiny castle with a royal court of fairy mermaids. You’d leave your mama and your brother behind and live underwater forever, where you never had to eat peanut butter again. “I promise,” she’d say. “S’here somewhere. Keep turnin over the shells.”
We looked and looked and looked and looked, stingray-shuffling, bent over like broken bucket handles, salt water lapping against our calves, squinting against the sun’s reflection on the water. Our mamas would call to us from their separate blankets to come ashore and eat our tomato sandwiches. We’d sit between them in the sand and wolf a couple sandwiches down, the sun beatin up our shoulders, makin our faces hot, lightenin our hair like real bleach blonde.
“You sure the button’s at this beach?” I would ask.
“S’at every beach,” Billie would say.
We looked and looked and looked and looked, fueled by Wonder bread and mayonnaise, pokin hermit crabs left and right. Sometimes, I thought I saw it. “BILLIE!!!!!” I would scream. She would push through the water, liftin her little legs as high as she could, ready to go away. We had a plan. We would press the button before our mamas even noticed we had found it, and when they’d look for us later, we’d just be gone. But every time I thought I found what we were lookin for, the button was just a broken seashell, glinting reddish orange in the sunlight. We would not know what it’s like to eat off glass plates. We would not breathe easy like water through gills.
