From Distant Shores

A small crowd had gathered by the time I reached the shore. My muscles ached, but the girl I dragged across the sand was still breathing, thank God. I learned CPR as a Girl Scout and, again, when I first began work as a lifeguard, but I'd never actually performed it in the wild, and feared I might have buckled under the pressure of the crowd.

A kindly woman wearing a green sunhat handed me a towel to wrap the girl in, as she was quite naked. Efficiently swaddled in the large, floral patterned towel, I laid her flat on the sand. Her fair chestnut colored hair pooled around the light brown skin of her head and her hair had amber beads braided through it. At least I thought the beads were amber; I honestly wasn’t sure what to make of them, as I’ve never seen any gemstones play with the sunlight the way those beads did that afternoon.

“Does anybody know this girl?” I asked the crowd. Obviously, no one did or else they would have stepped forward by now, but I knew it was the correct thing to ask.

“You,” I pointed to the young man in the red swim trunks who’d told me about the drowning girl minutes earlier, “run to the nearest shop and get whatever’s the cheapest piece of clothing you think will fit her.”

He nodded and was off. Despite appearing to be a few years older than me, he must have been somewhat innocent, as his cheeks were bright red, no doubt at the sight of so much female skin. You don’t encounter enough young men like that.

Placing my hands on my knees, I took a breather. I imagine many of these onlookers were still in a state of bafflement following the odd lightshow that had streaked across the skies earlier. Honestly, I would still be among the dazed beach denizens wondering aloud what that flash of blue and green that had streaked across the sky had been. In a few minutes I heard possibilities ranging from experimental government aircraft to meteorites floated as explanations, but I wasn't able to consider them long as a panicked young man had raced across the sand to tell me he saw a woman drowning just offshore.

When I'd arrived at the scene the naked girl had still been conscious, thrashing and wailing while onlookers watched in dismay. I did not blame them for not leaping in to help the girl, as the current was strong that day, but I did tell them to make way before I charged in.

The undertow was strong, and even an experienced swimmer such as myself knew better than to fight it head on, especially when I had to carry a passenger. I’ve spent my entire life in and around water, and it still took all my strength and wits to get the girl safely to shore. She’d already lost consciousness when I reached her, which, honestly, may have been for the best. Lifeguards can never be too careful when rescuing someone from the surf, as they’re liable to drag their intended savior down with them if they’re panicked.

There was a gasp as the girl’s eyes snapped open and she sat bolt upright. In the process, the towel slipped, and she inadvertently flashed the onlookers. I stepped between the girl and one man in a bucket hat who appeared to be activating his phone’s camera. Yeah, you just try it, I thought, just you try it, pervert. That fancy new iPhone will be decorating Spongebob’s living room before you can click record. He seemed to get take the hint, lowering the phone.

The girl must have been in a state of shock, because she whipped her head back and forth, mouth opening and closing like an automaton. She didn’t speak so much as she produced a series of popping noises. Each time she moved her head, the beads braided in her hair danced through the air. The way those beads played with the light was unlike anything I’d ever seen before.

The young man returned with a sundress from one of the nearby shops. I thanked him and helped wrap the towel around the girl before leading her to the nearest changing tent. I handed her the dress girl. “Here, put this on.”

She held the dress in her hand as if it were a strange artifact.

“Jida?” She said with a quizzical expression.

“Clothes,” I said. “Dress. You put it on.”

“Jida k’lik…” She carried on with numerous other words that sounded like utter gibberish. She said it all in an accent that sounded like… I want to say it sounded like a mix between Swiss and Muppet. Darndest thing. I figured she must be under the influence of something.

“Dress,” I said, gesturing to the article of clothing she currently held to her chest. I did my best pantomime of putting a dress on. “You put it on.”

She clearly didn’t get it, and, judging by the way two teenage girls in the crowd –which had followed us to the tent—were tittering away, I was doing a poor job of explaining it. With a sigh, I chose the only other option available. It was a tight squeeze, but I managed to fit into the tent with the girl, closing the flap behind us. I can’t say I’ve ever had to help get a dress on a complete stranger, let alone one in such a complete state of undress.

After a few vain attempts where she shielded her head when I tried bringing the dress down over her, she seemed to pick up on the idea, raising her arms up. As I pulled the dress over her head our eyes met. In the dark of the tent, I noticed that her eyes shimmered turquoise with specks of gold. On the beach I’d thought her eyes were blue or green, but in the tent, I swore when our eyes met, I was looking at a pair of cosmic images I’d seen taken by the Hubble telescope on the cover of National Geographic.

Screw your head on straight, Jenna, I thought as I tied the string around her waist, ensuring the oversized dress would fit her relatively snug. I could think of few ways this moment could be anymore awkward than if I stopped to gaze in the other girl’s eyes.

When we reemerged, the teenage girls clapped their hands, with one giving an enthusiastic sitcom, “Wooooo!”

“Ooo-wooooo!” The girl responded in kind, throwing both arms in the air. I was left trying hard not to blush. What a day this had turned out to be.

“There you are, dear!” Through the crowd emerged a large woman with pink hair like cotton candy. She was wearing a yellow coat and holding sky blue umbrella. Her cat eye sunglasses had hot red frames that made her expression difficult to read.

“Jida!” The girl exclaimed, leaping forward to embrace the large woman.

“You know this girl?” Once again, Jenna the Lifeguard here, asking all the obvious questions.

“Yes, yes,” Pink hair said in a voice that made me think Miss Piggy had smoked too many cigarettes. “I am this girl’s tutor.”

Since when did tutors take their students to the beach? If I’d been a police officer, I’d probably have had so many follow-up questions, but I was but a teenage lifeguard. The girl was saved, clothed, and seemed relieved to see the older woman. My work here was done.  

As the two of them headed off towards the parking lot the crowd began to disperse. A few stopped to thank me for my bravery (“It’s nothing,” I say to one, “Just doing my job,” to another). All the while, I watch pink hair leading the girl into an old Volkswagen Beetle, convinced I’d never see this peculiar pair ever again.

Things didn’t speed back to normal after I pulled the naked girl from the waves. It was the last week of July, and I was beginning to pack my bags for my first semester at the University of Nebraska. Honestly, the thought that I’d finally be somewhere other than Southern California was so fresh and exciting that even a day as strange as the one I’d experienced earlier that week couldn’t distract me from the fact that I was finally breaking away from my sun-soaked birthplace.

“But Jenna, won’t you miss the beaches?” Everyone was quick to ask, seeing as lifeguard was an extension of my lifelong time spent in and out of the water, from marine biology classes to my decade of swim meets (I was closing my senior year of high school ranked among the top high school girls in the State of California). I was ready with an easy response: The University of Nebraska had offered an outstanding scholarship.

This was a half-truth by omission.

The real reason I’d accepted Nebraska’s offer was that I’d simply grown tired of California’s culture. It’s that 49er spirit. Nearly two-hundred years ago people flooded into California looking to strike it rich on gold. They were fueled by dreams and the promise that anyone could strike a fortune if they had enough grit and determination. Then, like now, the only people who really struck it rich were the ones peddling goods and services to the dreamers. Whether they seek their fortunes in Silicon Valley or Hollywood, entire generations were wasting away hoping they’d strike it big through sheer force of will. The Gold Rush never ended, and, maybe something like one in a million struck that vein that’d set them on their way to the top, but most left broken, or wound up among the growing homeless population.

As far as my cynical teenage mind was concerned, the American Dream was a flowery way of describing a gambling addiction. Nowhere was that more true than in California. I felt a sense of riotous empowerment when I made my decision to leave the state for university. Peculiar as the circumstance had been, the naked girl and her pink-haired chaperone were either tourists looking to taste the west coast, or immigrants hoping to realize their own dreams of gold.

I was ready to give up on California dreaming.

I’d almost forgotten about the drowning girl when I found her waiting for me at the end of my shift the final week of July.

“Jenna Lin?” She asked.

At first, I didn’t recognize her: fully clothed in a blue tank top and salmon-colored capris and her chestnut hair now tied back into a braid that tickled her lower back. Still, those peculiar beads played with the waning sunlight.

“Oh hey,” I said when it finally clicked that this was the same girl I saved. “I didn’t recognize you for a second.”

“I am now clothed!” She said with a radiant smile.

“Yes indeed,” I said, unable to contain a laugh. “I assume you remembered how to put them on yourself.”

“I learned quickly.”

English couldn’t have been her first language, so I didn’t spend long thinking about her phrasing. I was just glad to know she’d turned out okay. “

“May I have this walk with you?” She asked, gesturing down the beach.

“Sure.” I didn’t see a problem with that, as I’d had no plans that quiet Thursday night.

“I wanted to thank you for saving me,” she said once we’d strayed far enough away from the rowdiest beachgoers.

“It was no problem, really,” I said with expected humility. “Just part of my job.”

“Job...” The way she said it made me think she was tasting every letter of that single-syllable word. She held it on her tongue, then added, “Not all jobs involve rescuing others from threats of life and death.”

That made me smile. “No. I suppose most jobs don’t involve fishing naked girls out from the sea.”

“I can’t imagine there is such a job! Even in a world such as this.”

“Yeah. Earth’s pretty wild.”

“I like it,” she said, flashing that radiant smile again.

There! I was seeing it again. In the setting sun her eyes once more shimmered with turquoise and gold. Even wearing a sweater, I felt a chill. I knew something was off, but there were too many things that didn’t add up. Had I stepped off a cliff into The Twilight Zone?

“You’re not from around here, are you?” I finally managed to whisper.

“You are correct, Jenna.”

This was where the camera would whip pan to Mr. Serling, nursing his cigarette as he explains how screwed I am.

The girl reached into her pocket and retrieved a small disc-shaped device. It was made of a green metal that appeared to emit a sort of organic luminescence. I gulped as she met my gaze with those eyes that looked like galaxies.

“My tutor said I was to dispose of the memory of these events so that your government could not question you about the nature of my arrival.”

“Are you going to neuralyze me like Men in Black?” I asked.

“If you mean, am I going to remove your memories of me... no.” She answered with some hesitation.

“Honestly, I’d have probably not thought about it again if you hadn’t come along.” I played it chill, but I kept a cautious eye on the glowing disc in her hand. I was going to have a hard time forgetting the girl again after this.

The girl bit her lower lip. I wondered if it came naturally to her, or if she consciously mimicked human behavior.

“I’d rather not,” She said. “My arrival didn’t go as planned, and I ended up in your ocean. If not for you, I’d be dead.”

“I can keep a secret,” I said. “I haven’t told anyone my friend Katy had a crush on Jonah Hartman for eight years.”

“What is this crush?” Of course, this concept meant nothing to her. “Was the crush a matter of personal security for this Kay-tee?”

“Oh yes!” Time to fully commit to this bit. “It would have been absolutely devastating if anyone in our school found out. We’re talking social suicide.”

The girl pondered this. Was she buying it?

She nodded. “That seems most serious indeed.”

Phew!

“So, you’re going to let me go?” I said, hoping it didn’t seem desperate.

“Yes,” she said, putting the device back into her pant pocket.

I let out a sigh of relief.

“So... What are you going to do now?”

“My tutor and I were already planning to relocate somewhere else along your coast.” The girl put both hands in her pockets. “I’m disobeying her by note wiping your memory, so I’d better not tell you where.”

“Perfectly reasonable.”

She smiled and I managed to smile back. Wherever she was from, in that moment, we were just two teenage girls keeping secrets from the adults in our lives.

“So,” I began, “can I know your name?”

Her smile fell to a blank expression.

“I shouldn’t…” There she bit her lip again.

“It only seems fair, since you know mine,” I said, praying she wasn’t going to reconsider her decision not to scramble my brain.

“What the hells,” she said, extending a hand to shake. “Tela.”

We shook hands and went on our separate ways. It was the last I ever saw of Tela.

As Tela had warned me, I received a visitor from the United States Government two days after our follow-up appointment on the beach. The woman who questioned me fully embodied arrived at my family’s home her nicely pressed suit, fully embodying that Dana Scully vibe. She mostly kept things basic, asking if I had seen anything peculiar –other than the lights in the sky—and I feigned ignorance. I had rescued a girl from the water within an hour of the incident, but there was nothing peculiar about it. I must have made a convincing liar because I never was contacted again after that.

Two weeks later, I moved into my freshman dorm at the University of Nebraska.

In the end, I moved back to SoCal after two years in Nebraska, finishing my degree at the University of California Santa Barbara. I shared an apartment with a friend from high school in a complex not far from the beach, and I have to admit, I’m a lot happier here than I was in Nebraska.

When I’m done with my courses, I like to walk along the beach. One to two hours every night where I have nothing but my thoughts with a soundtrack of waves and gulls. Now twenty, the cynicism of my home state has softened. Now I wonder how I could have ever wished to be anywhere else.

And on some of those nights I’ll think of Tela, one of the west coast’s stranger immigrants. I stop and look up at the stars, wondering if she’s gone home, as I did, or if she’s still down here, trying to realize the California dream. What was she really? How many more like her could be walking the beaches of California right this moment? At the end of the day, I suppose it doesn’t matter.

Wherever we go, although it may be from distant shores, we’ll always have the stars.

THE END