The Bear: A Novel by Claire Cameron

that my pj’s are off and I put my arms up to the sky. We are supposed to wait for our parents and it is okay because the sun is smiling on me and it feels nice. I let my feet wiggle around because the cookies have sprinkled sugar down into my toes. I hop on a foot and my bottom skin hits crunchy dirt. I see a little more sand a few feet over and closer to the water and I step and it feels really nice and soft on my feet. I let my feet jiggle more and my hands wave around and I laugh because it is fun and then Stick comes over too. He jumps and waves his hands like me because he doesn’t know how to dance other than jiggle up and down on the spot. My momma has to dance for him by taking his hands in hers or sometimes putting him on her hip so her legs are the ones dancing for him. If my daddy is dancing too I can step on his toes. He holds my arms and his shoes are shiny and black and slippery but if I balance just right and wear my sneakers not socks then I can stay on for the ride. But now Sticky is dancing like I am dancing and I look at him and he laughs with his face all bunched up in a smile and his small teeth are showing and the two dimples on each side. He puts his arms up like me and waves them around. I put a foot out and he puts a foot out. I wave my hand hard and he waves his hand hard. I put my thumb on my nose to do a na-na-na-boo-boo and he does it too. I stick out my tongue and blah blah blah.
    “Naked naked naked,” I say and I wiggle my bum.
    He laughs even harder and wiggles his bum and his dingle wiggles too but it is such a shrinky dink that it doesn’t wiggle so much. So I wiggle my bum more. “Bum bum bum.”
    “Bum,” he says laughing.
    I know I can make Stick laugh and laugh and it is like I am doing a job like a babysitter now because he is having fun. I start going in a circle and then I pretend to fall which is his most favorite and I go sideways in the sand and make it look like a cartoon when a head gets bonked with stars. “Boing boing.”
    And Stick laughs and laughs like when it’s really funny and he starts to walk around and his head rolls because it is so funny and his eyes are tearing but not tears like he is sad. They look like the same tears but they aren’t when you laugh and they come from a different place like they drip out from your throat and through your eyes. Tears when you are sad drip up from your heart. Stick has laughing tears and they squeeze out of his eyes and down his face. I bum-waggle again and again.
    “Boing boing.” I fall down and roll around in the sand.
    That makes Stick laugh so hard that he can’t stand up anymore and he falls down and says “Bong” in the sand. I roll and so he rolls too and we are getting sand on our skin because it is a bit wet and it sticks. I stand up and I am the sand monster.
    “Roar!”
    Stick takes a big clump and smacks it on his belly. It sticks there too even though the belly is so round and white. I try again and smack more on my leg. We start to smack more and more and we look like real monsters now. Stick starts to pile the sand on his hair and I rub some on his head too. I keep smooshing sand and get some from a pile that is more like mud. His hair isn’t yellow anymore and his skin isn’t white. He looks like a real-life sand monster and I can only tell it is still him because his eyes still poke out from all the sand. And I start getting it on my head too because that part looks cool and Jessica would think so too but she isn’t here. We keep piling sand and mud on our bodies and then smacking it on each other and it might be bad or it might be good. We get to keep doing it and get as dirty as we want and it is so fun to pile sand all over and I keep doing more and more and more but no one tells us to stop. I wish Jessica was here. We play so many times.
    Jessica has eight Barbies and they live in her room. I have no Barbies and I cried about it and so Momma said we could go to see Jessica’s at her house