Birthday
Jane ate two before letting the rest go cold in their stale buns and white paper shells. It seemed like a poetic idea to bike to the boardwalk alone to eat thirteen hotdogs on her thirteenth birthday, but now she was glad she hadn’t invited anyone to witness her failure. She stacked and pinched together several paper shells in order to carry the remaining hot dogs to the trash, but stopped short when she saw her grandmother charging towards her in a red Marlboro bucket hat.
“Jane!” she cried. Jane dropped the hot dogs on the boardwalk, leaving them to a gaggle of gulls. She ran to unlock her bike from the railing and sped away from her grandmother’s cries of, “Why you throw away?” As she pumped her legs harder and the red speck behind her receded from view, Jane wondered whether she’d ever intended to eat all of the hot dogs or if a secret, unspoken part of her plan had been to do whatever she wanted with her babysitting money, no matter how wasteful.
Jane wheeled her bike onto the deserted shore as the sun began to cast the beach in orange light and purple shadow. She leaned it on its side and sat on the sand. The waves hushed and murmured, creeping further inland as the last brilliant point of light extinguished itself in the sea. Maybe she would walk her bike all the way home. Maybe if she came home late, her mom would be too tired to beat her. Maybe she would say, “Happy birthday, Jane,” and go back to sleep.