Young Writers Society

"Sure."

He hands it to her.

The girl takes it without hesitation and puts it to her lips, inhaling. As soon as the tobacco enters her mouth, her whole face contorts in distaste, but she refuses to choke and hack, instead removing the cigarette coolly and letting the white smoke leave her, quickly brushed away by the sea breeze. She hands it back to him.

"Thanks," she says, her voice raspy. Her eyes and lungs are burning.

She resists the urge to scowl as the boy begins to hum again. He reminds her of a boy that her mother introduced her to at some party last week. They even looked alike. They acted almost the same way to her: politely superior. The girl begins to walk again.

"See you around," she says, then adds, "Thanks for the smoke,"

"You're welcome," he says.

He follows her for a few steps.

"Hey, uh--"

He seems to realize he doesn't have anything planned to say. He shrugs.

"Where are you goin'?" he asks as unobtrusively as possible.

The girl turns when she hears the boy speak again.

"Where are you goin'?" he asks.

She shrugs. "Don't know. You want to come?"

She is planning to walk as far as possible before the sun goes down and she must hurry back to the fancy beach house her parents have rented for the week. Her mother is giving yet another party tonight, but the girl would rather stay on the beach by herself, away from the haughty eyes of the company her parents keep.

He grins again.

"Sure."

He starts humming again as they walk. They see the thin girl with the vodka bottle. They're getting closer, but still out of ear-shot.

"She looks interesting."

He half-laughs. They also near the curly-haired girl walking her dog, and he waves at her.

The girl shrugs again.

"I suppose." she says in answer to his comment about the girl with the vodka bottle.

She squints slightly when the boy waves at a girl with a dog. She vaguely familiar, but the girl can't place her. She shakes her head. It doesn't really matter. The girl is feeling irritable as she thinks about how soon she'll have to head back to the beach house.

He's no longer humming. (He stopped when he last spoke.) He continues through the sand with a confident, level-headed walk. He's lazily slow but takes long strides--he has somewhat long legs, even for his height. He's sort of scrawny, but his features make him look like a movie star in spite of it.

"Hey," he says to the curly-haired girl when they reach her.

He stops, scratches his head absently and glances behind him at the guy dressed in black, then looks back at the girl.

"Molly! Get here now!" She shouts at her dog,

A guy with blond her comes up to her, she looks at him, while her dog happily chases her tail, ignoring the fact that her owner had called her. She sees behind the guy is a girl, maybe about the same age as him. She gives a small smile,

"Erm.. hi," she says,

Do we have names?

Elle folds her ams acorss her chest as she walks, noticing a dog playing in the sand. It's black, and about size of a large cat, as she walks past, it greets her happily. Elle had never had any other pets than her large doberman, and this small, insightfully playful thing seemed somewhat odd against such a dreary background. She though for a moment of the beaches back home, but felt a wet nose on her hand, and smiled slightly before crouching down to scratch beneath its jaw.

"Hey," a girl calls out. She is younger than Elle, around 15, and is standing with another guy and girl. Elle looks up, but the girl only smiles.
"What's her name?"

"Molly," and at this, the dog turns her head and glances guiltily at her owner. Elle stands up.

"You been to the party?" The boy says, he's fair haired, and is smoking a cigarette. Elle glances at her bottle, then back to the loud music on the beach, nodding. Imagining what she must look like: a scrawny teenager, holding a bottle of straight alcohol. Normally, she wouldn't drink vodka straight, but tonight was a little different.

"My friends like to get into it," she smiles, "but I only come because of the music," (which is not entirely untrue) The Smashing Pumpkin's are playing loudly on the sterio, 1979, though it's difficult to hear over the hum of the ocean.

Elle crosses her arms again, and glances out to sea.

"I was just coming out here to stop myself throwing up, or doing something stupid..." she pauses, throwing a glance at the three, and thinks better of it. "Any of you' want to come?"

Yeah i'd say we have names, i'm just not giving out my character's name.
The young man starts to walk meaninglessly along the beach, in no particular direction, heading nowhere.

She turns to the girl with the bottle, Molly barking at her wanting this person to play with her, Emma sighs and takes a hold of her dog's collar telling her to sits. The dog sits down obediently her tail waggling madly. After only two seconds of sitting down she gets up again and tries to eat the sand. Emma looks at the girl again,

"Erm.. I don't know, whats your name anyhow?" She asks.

Ok, I guess I'll join in. I take it we are all on this beach?

Ari looks out on the late afternoon sun on the beach near Eilat, Israel. He sighs, heavily. He reaches into the front pocket of his army fatigues and pulls out a cigarette and a lighter. He lights the cigarette and puts the lighter back into his pocket. After taking a long drag, he holds the cigarette in one hand and pulls out a picture of his girlfreind from his pants pocket. He begins to stroll aimlessly down the beach, his M-16 assault rifle clinking against his back. He pauses for a moment, thinking about everything and nothing at the same time. A few moments later, he takes another drag on the cigarette, and adjusts the red paratroopers' beret on his head. As his hands move back down from his head, they brush his beard, which he hadn't trimmed in a week.
"Hmm, its getting a little scraggly. I'd better trim it as soon as I get back," he thought to himself. He continued to himself, "and to think, it just started coming in a couple of years ago"
As he said this, he began walking aimlessly along the beach again, when a small black dog came bounding towards him. He smiled, he loved dogs. Too bad his mom was allergic, he thought.