Today I am remembering how good the sun feels on my skin. I envision the days spent at the beach with friends in high school, how we'd call one another sometime in the morning and make plans to go lay in the sand that afternoon. How I would throw on a suit, squeeze sunscreen from its tube, scurry to look for a towel while Jessica waited in her Mustang, as Jordan pulled up in her Volvo. I always had a pair of obnoxious sunglasses and a book which I intended to read and never did.

We'd roll the windows down or roll the top down and drive down Highway 278 with either the radio or Regina Spektor's cd brazenly singing to the traffic. And we would sometime go to Sonic and we would sometimes honk at tourist boys and then laugh and drive off, over the bridge, onto William Hilton Parkway, and through the island until we came to Burkes Beach, where there was usually free parking.

We would track across the sand and often complain of the heat under-toe. We would decide not to care and throw our Rainbow flipflops off and run across the white, loose sand to the packed, wet sand from where the water had just receded back to low tide.

We would lie our towels down.

We would drink our gatorades or waters or slushes and we would bask in glory.

Things we talked about never meant much, else I would remember them now. The importance of the beach was not the conversation. Of course not and rather, it was the purpose of being there, of letting the sun darken us, of watching the people from Ohio mill around and look for shells and sometimes we talked about how white their skin was before looking at ours and laughing at how white ours was, too.

The beach was about just lying there and letting the wet sand soak our towels. It was about twenty minutes on the stomach, twenty minutes on the back. About pretending to read a book and instead talking about inconsequential things. It was about taking pictures, and sometimes going in the water, and never feeding our food to the seagulls.

Near the end of our stay, our stomachs would be tight with irritated redness and we would cover ourselves and haphazardly talk about aloe vera. Then we'd suggest going to the mall to shop and always decided not to because we surely get caught in traffic.

We'd walk back over the sand, complaining of the heat.

We'd get in our car and decide we needed to find something to drink.

We'd turn the music up and lower the windows and swing our seats back and throw our legs out and we'd drive back through the island.

And we would be teenagers who cared not about insurance or scheduling or jobs.