Witches on the Beach Tonight
It’s 1985. I’m on a beach, the cool salt-filled waves lustily lapping the shoreline.
The beach sand is flecked with gold, iridescent in the sunlight. Sometimes during the year, the beach is covered in black sand after the waves rush up carrying heavy loads of rich magnetite washed down from the Sierra Nevada mountains in California.
But today, the sand is its normal creamy gold and the waves are brilliant teal, edged with white.
Around me in a circle are five or six women sitting in boho dresses or jeans, their crazy white and gray-flecked “mom hair” licked by the breeze. To me, they are very old. I’m only 14. In reality, they’re in their 40s or 50s.