A Dazzle of zebras 

Tracy Andrews is decidedly not looking forward to senior year of high school.

Senior year leads to graduation, which leads to her three best friends scattering to different colleges, which leads to widespread calamity, probably, and quite possibly total societal collapse. She can’t understand why everyone else seems so eager for everything to change.

But the more stubbornly Tracy tries to keep things as they are, the more changes this year throws at her. Her schedule full of language classes gets slashed by budget cuts. Her friends invite a stranger into their group. And the adorable boy she’d prefer to keep at a safe distance keeps smiling shyly at her in a way that gives her the uncomfortable sensation that her head is full of soup.

She’s not ready. For any of this. But senior year is ticking down, and if Tracy doesn’t find some way to accept the inevitable, she’ll miss this final year with the people she cares about the most.

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ONE

I guess it’s technically my fault the four of us are out here before the sun, lined up somber as a funeral, while next to us a seagull vomits delicately on a piece of kelp.

“I’m freezing,” Alfie says. He hitches his puffy jacket tighter around himself. “I am literally going to freeze to death right here on this beach.”

“How convenient,” Sophia says. “We can bury you at sea.”

I smile, but my cheeks are numb from cold. “Just roll you into the waves and let the tide carry you off.”

Nick just yawns and tucks his chin into his hoodie like a sleepy tortoise.

Thick fog clings to the water, but I can still make out the surfers in their dark wetsuits, bobbing on their boards as they wait for a wave. They seem so content. If I were out there, I’d be shouting, “Why didn’t I bring snacks?” at no one in particular.

“It’s August,” Alfie says. “It shouldn’t be this cold in August.”

“It’s sixty-five degrees,” Sophia says. “Straighten up.”

I click my tongue. “You’ll be sweating to death in a few hours when the haze burns off. Enjoy the cold while you can.”

Nick stretches his lanky arms over his head. “Can we do this already?”

It was Nick’s idea to come here that first summer. I had been bubbling over with nerves about the switch from junior high to high school. What if I get lost? I thought. What if I can’t open my locker? What if I go to the wrong room and it turns out to be a woodshop class and I accidentally saw off a finger? He thought it might calm me down a bit to go to the beach, and since then it’s become a tradition. Today marks our fourth—and final—year.

Alfie shivers ostentatiously. “This is California. It’d be one thing if we were in the Bay Area, but this half of the state is supposed to be warm. I’ve been hoodwinked.”

“You should write a strongly worded letter,” says Sophia.

“Yeah.” I frown. “To the sun.”

With a frustrated sigh, Nick takes a long step toward the water. His lemon-yellow Chucks leave deep imprints in the wet sand, and his arm moves in a graceful arc as he sends a flat rock out to sea. It lands in the shallow surf with a glunk.

“What’d you wish for?” Sophia asks.

“I wished you would all hurry up and make your stupid wishes so we can go get breakfast already.”

“Have some sentiment, Nicholas!” I say. “This is our very last end-of-summer-beach…go-to-the-beach-and-throw-a-rock-and-make-a-wish…in-the-ocean…early-morning…thing.”

“Who named it that?” Alfie cuts in. “It’s catchy. We should print it on a t-shirt.”

“This doesn’t make you feel all sappy and nostalgic?”

“Not really,” Nick mumbles.

“What!” I say, scandalized.

He shrugs. “It’s just another day. Like when people come up to you on your birthday and they’re like, ‘Do you feel any different?’ It’s like, no, not really. You’re not a whole year older since the day before, you’re only a day older. What’s really going to change from the last day of summer to the first day of school? Not that much.”

He’s wrong. He’s completely wrong. But there’s no point in arguing. I’ll let him have this one.

Alfie pulls his rock out of his jacket pocket next. “I wish—it weren’t—so—COLD!” Like a puffy little catapult, he leans back and then chucks the rock into the crest of a wave.

“Nice,” Sophia says.

“I was aiming for the surfer.”

“Oh. Well, good effort, anyway. Definitely not a waste of a wish.” She slips her arm through mine and huddles closer. “What’re you gonna wish for, Tracy?”

I don’t answer right away. If this were the summer before junior year, if there were no clock counting down the seconds to the last day of high school, I’d wish for something dumb and jokey. Like a pony. Or a castle made of waffles. But this year is different.

“I dunno yet,” I whisper. “What about you?”

“Wishing I don’t get Mr. Dixon for history.”

“Solid, solid.”

“And that I get into all the colleges I apply to.”

“Right.”

“And being valedictorian wouldn’t be the worst thing ever.”

“This is getting to be a lot of wishes for one rock, Sophe.”

She laughs. “I’m an overachiever.”

“Throw it already,” Alfie yells.                             

Her stone skips over the surf and slips beneath a swell. She gives a satisfied nod.

They all turn to me expectantly. I smile pleasantly back at them, my hands stuffed in my pockets.

“Any day, Trace,” Nick says. “Lifeguard Jeff is gonna get here pretty soon and he will throw us to the sharks if he sees us.”

“How do you know he’s not already here?” I say. “He could be hiding under that bunch of kelp just waiting for you to pass by, and then he’ll grab you by the leg and blow his whistle all shrill and loud.”

“Why does he hate you so much? He’s like, twenty.” Alfie scuffs his boot cast in the sand. He broke his ankle at Nick’s family’s Fourth of July party and just graduated off crutches.

“He hates all of us by extension,” I say. “I suspect there was a jellyfish incident.”

“There was no jellyfish incident,” Nick mutters. “Jeff used to be cool. Kind of. He was friends with my sister. But then he became a lifeguard and all his fancy lifeguard powers went to his head, so whatever.”

“Someone sounds jealous.” Sophia needles him with her elbow, but he ignores her.

We stand there a moment longer, until Alfie clomps over and places his hands on my shoulders.

“Tracy. You must throw your rock.”

“I can’t decide what to wish for,” I say. “What if I wish wrong, and there are all these unforeseen consequences? What if I somehow wish myself out of existence? What if I—Alfie. What if I accidentally wish for bangs?”

“We’ll pick a wish for you.” His face blooms with excitement. “Wish that—ooh, wish for Nick to have a tiny, wispy mustache.”

A throaty laugh bursts out of me. “Would he have to dye it blue like his hair?”

“I think a contrast might be nice. Maybe like a bubblegum pink.”

Nick slinks toward the water.

“Where are you going?” Sophia calls.

“I’m gonna go find my rock. I want a wish redo.”

She darts after him, laughing, and catches him around the middle to pull him back to the group.

“Wish for summer school to be canceled,” he says.

“No! Mr. Teakman’s taking us to get donuts to celebrate our last day. We can’t miss Donut Day, Nicholas!”

“You guys get donuts in P.E.?” Sophia asks, looking skeptical.

Nick rolls his eyes. “It’s summer school P.E.”

“Plus it’s a two-mile walk to the donut shop,” I add. “And it can’t be canceled. I need this credit or I’ll have to take P.E. during the school year and that would mess up All-Language Senior Year.”

“ALL-LANGUAGE SENIOR YEAR!” Sophia shouts.

“The dream.” Alfie grins.

Exasperated, Nick collapses to the sand. “We live here now.”

I wouldn’t mind that, if we’re being honest. We could catch fish for food. Make friends with a bob of seals. Play pranks on Lifeguard Jeff. I’d be perfectly okay if this school year never started. Or—fine, I guess it can start, but if it does start, then it can’t end. We’ll just stay in senior year perpetually, and nothing will ever change, and we can wear the same outfits every day like cartoon characters, and we’ll be best friends forever and ever the end.

…Maybe I’m being childish. No—I take it back, I’m definitely being childish. I just feel like the minute we all leave here, the minute I throw this rock in the water and we start to walk away, it’s all over. Or it’s all…started. I can’t even tell which anymore. Something will have started and something else will have ended, but either way it feels like too many changes and I am not interested, grazie mille.

But I guess they’re right. I should stop being stubborn. We can’t stay here forever. We need food. Nick and I have summer school. Alfie has to go to band camp, even though his broken foot means he just sits on a bench the whole time. And Sophia has to…I don’t even know. Do more SAT prep, or rescue children from a burning building, or cure cancer or something.

“Fine!” I say at last. “I’ll throw the stupid thing.”

Slowly, I pull my fist out of my pocket, bring it to my mouth to whisper a wish, and then throw. It sails farther than the others, disappearing into the froth of a crashing wave.

“Weird splash,” Alfie says.

That’s because it wasn’t the rock. It was a shell. I threw a shell into the ocean. The rock is still safe in my other pocket.

“Great,” Nick says. “Can we go now?”

He scrambles to his feet and stalks away from the water. Sophia chases after him, jumping like an excited puppy to bat the sand off his back. Alfie puts a hand on my shoulder and gives me a small smile before hobbling off, as well.

I stare into the waves a moment longer, running my thumb over the smooth surface of the stone in my pocket, overly pleased with my own cleverness. Technically, the school year can’t start until we all throw our wishin’ rocks. That’s the rule. If I never throw mine, senior year can never really begin. Time, you have been bested again! You fool!

The wind is picking up more. It barrels at me, pushing me backward as if to say, You can’t stay here, Tracy. You are not a fish.

You’re right, wind. I’m not. I’m a stupid human who has to do stupid human things.

With a heavy sigh, I turn away and trail after my friends.