The Juliet Stories by Carrie Snyder

of them can read the warning.
    They pause between rocks, the five of them, on a sheltered plot of sand warmed by the sun. They have come to the end of the beach, beyond which boulders make a gradual ascent up the rock face and curve around into the open sea; but they can’t tell from here.
    Nobody says: Let’s go back now. Nobody wants to be the one to say it.
    Dirk’s white hair lifts in the breeze. Juliet notices his green eyes. Though younger, he is already taller than her. She fights the urge to grab him and push him. She wants to beat him at something: climb faster, climb higher. It is the only suitable expression for what she feels.
    She scrapes her knee in her hurry to climb the next stone, Keith and Dirk at her heels.
    Isobel, stuck with Jonathan, falls behind.
    The waves are higher, wilder, louder. Juliet pushes on without thinking, following the San Juan boys, who disappear from view, then reappear, always seeming to be just around the corner. The sun stands at noon. The wind rises.
    And so does the tide, with stealthy speed. There is no more sand below them. Water runs in between the boulders and eats away their passage to shore.
    “Wait for us!” Isabel hollers, and Juliet pauses.
    She and the boys stop. They look down, and they see ocean below them, clear beneath frothy waves, limpid green.
    Juliet smells smoke, but it is Dirk who discovers its source, above them. He and Keith climb up and up until they are standing on a ledge looking down on Juliet, now joined by Isobel and Jonathan.
    “It’s a cave! A real cave!”
    “I’ll never get him all the way up there,” says Isobel. “He weighs a ton.”
    “Do not!” says Jonathan.
    The cave is not deep, as Juliet expects, more like a cupped hand of rock, a shallow shelter overlooking the bay. She climbs into it and stands. She can’t see her mother on the beach, but perhaps it is too far. Isobel lifts Jonathan and scrambles up last.
    “Thanks for nothing,” she says to Dirk, but she too is drawn almost instantly into this perfect pocket, this camp improvised by the San Juan boys. It is clear that they visit the hideout often: a collection of dry sticks and driftwood stored in one corner; a vessel of rainwater that can be covered by a lid. Everyone takes turns dipping their hands and drinking from cupped palms.
    The three boys, not much older than their visitors, welcome them courteously. One dusts the floor with his hand before offering the girls a seat.
    Another guts the shark with a knife and throws the guts onto the rocks for the seabirds.
    Over the open fire, several whole fish sizzle, stabbed onto sticks. Everyone is suddenly ravenous. They eat with their hands, carefully, so as not to choke on the bones.
    Shark meat is denser than fish. The San Juan boys discuss meals past. They claim to have caught and cooked a pelican, and as proof show off a pelican’s skull, but Isobel teases them: You found that on the beach. The conversation is in Spanish, and Juliet’s is weakest. She listens in silence until one of the San Juan boys addresses her directly.
    “Do you like the fish or the shark best?” Keith translates.
    “I know what he said!” But words for a reply slip from her. She shrugs. The San Juan boys laugh and Juliet flushes and says, in English, “The fish.”
    Dirk tells the boys, “She likes the fish,” and Juliet discovers that the question was not idle. The boys wish to offer her more food, whatever she desires.
    Isobel prefers the shark. She sits primly upright, her legs crossed at the knee, feet curled around her left hip. Unlike Juliet, she does not lick her fingers but eats delicately off her palm and brushes her hands together lightly to clean them.
    Until the tide turns, the San Juan boys tell them, there is no way back to shore. No one finds this news unwelcome.
    When the girls need relief, they scramble over rocks around the corner, towards the open sea, until they are out of sight. Perched side by side, trying to pee down a