Alex Scott

Escape (The piña colada song): Part II

        It was June. I was 12. And I was about to have my first kiss. For the past week we had been planning how we would sneak out of our cabins. Although this wasn’t the hardest task, since we knew plenty of older kids who had done it before us, we still wanted to make sure that every detail was goof-proof before we got ourselves in trouble.

         We decided to meet at the dunes at 9:00. Often people hung out in other people’s cabins around this time so we were sure our counselors wouldn’t come looking for us. We decided to both dress in full sweats, and she pulled her hair back under her hood, so if we got caught it would just look like two dudes had snuck out of their cabin.

         I sent her one last text and made my way out of the back of the cabin.. You couldn’t get to the dunes by just any route, and I had never actually been to the dunes before so I was worried I’d get lost. They had put fences all around the dunes years ago to protect them from washing out into the sea, but no fence could stop decades of horny teens. I found the crack in the fence that my friends had told me about and crawled on through. I was nervous and sweaty. Maybe a full sweat suit was too much for a summer night. I wanted to take off the shirt but was worried Hannah might not recognize me in the dark without our agreed upon disguises.

         So I waited. 9:05 had rolled around and I started to get a little nervous. I knew I had to be back at my cabin by 9:30 or people might start to notice I was gone. The dunes were a big place though so I decided to look around, maybe I was just too close to the fence and Hannah had walked in further. I walked for a bit until I was surrounded by beach brush. I let my eyes scour the land looking for a sweat suit covered body, but instead I found a small break in the brush, just large enough for me to crawl through. I called out, “Hannah are you there?”

“Over here!” I heard in an eager whisper.  

My heart began to pound.

I got on my hands and knees, stuck my head through, and locked eyes with a mutually astonished skunk. 

Alex Scott