Eighty-Two: Green Mountain Bay

That weekend, the class organized an outing to Green Mountain Bay.

Urged on by my friends, I still signed up in the end, though in truth I wanted nothing less than to go. Perhaps getting out for a while would help me recover my mood.

After class on Saturday morning, we set off. Since we were going to the sea and would be staying overnight, I specially brought an extra set of clothes to change into, just in case.

Before long, the others had barely found a place for their things in the temporary thatched shelter set up on the beach when a crowd could no longer wait a moment longer, stripping off their clothes and cheering as they ran toward the ocean.

"Xiaobei, come swim with us!" Huasheng and Xiaolang held the swim trunks they had just bought from the shop high above their heads and shouted to me from a short distance away.

"Maybe later!" I answered, though I did not move.

Huasheng and Xiaolang did not bother with me any further and ran straight into the changing room nearby.

The air was crisp with autumn, and there was not a single cloud in the sky. Sitting on the sand before the shelter, enjoying the sea breeze and looking out at the breathtaking union of sea and sky, I felt my heart relax in a way I had never known before.

"Xiaobei, what are you doing sitting here alone? Hurry up and get in! Everyone's down there having fun!" Just as I was drifting, almost on the verge of sleep, Aqing came up from the shore, his clothes soaked through.

"Why did you go in without taking your clothes off?" I stared at him in amazement.

"It'll dry soon enough. Come on, go down and have fun. What's the point of staying up here by yourself?" As he spoke, Aqing took off his shirt, wrung it hard, and hung it on a wire line inside the shelter to dry.

"Then... then I'll go change..." I reached into my backpack on the table nearby and pulled out a pair of spare gym shorts. I had not brought swim trunks, so these would have to do. They were mesh anyway; once they dried in the sun, they'd be fine.

"Then hurry up. I'm going down first!" After hanging his clothes to dry, Aqing ran back down again, bare-armed.

When I finally reached the shore, I saw that this beach had become the kingdom of our class. The girls were playing in the surf at the water's edge, while the boys were all out in the sea, swimming in little groups of three or five. I slowly made my way deeper into the ocean, and before long the water had risen to more than half my body.

When we came ashore, nearly everyone carried the salty, fishy scent of the sea on their skin, the unique smell of the ocean.

Soon, a line of people had formed outside the changing room, waiting for the showers. After changing, we all began taking pictures on the beach one after another, the camera freezing all the beautiful memories of youth in that single instant.

After swimming, everyone was hungry. Under the class leader's arrangement, we split into the groups we had formed earlier and set up the grills one after another. Then we pulled charcoal from the sacks and placed it beneath the grills. But the humidity by the sea was so heavy that the fire refused to catch for ages. Lighters, newspapers, every kind of fire-starting tool was brought into play. After a long struggle, we finally managed to get the charcoal burning.

Then it was time for the barbecue. As for grilling, nearly all of us were already old hands. We brushed on oil, turned the skewers, and everyone worked with focused enthusiasm, busy and delighted. Before long, the fragrance filled the entire shelter.

With our own hands, we earned our meal. We ate and grilled at the same time. Though now and then the flames flared so fiercely that our eyes stung with smoke, everyone was overjoyed. Before I knew it, I had forgotten my sorrow and forgotten Lele, sinking wholly into this rare and precious ease.

"Xiaobei, come walk with me outside," Xiaojing said suddenly, walking up to me while I was eating chicken wings.

"Ah, all right." I answered absentmindedly, hurriedly gnawing through the rest of the wing in my hand. Then I grabbed a tissue, wiped my hands, and stood up to follow Xiaojing out of the shelter.

The two of us kept walking forward. The beach stretched long and endless before us, yet we did not stop. Perhaps somewhere ahead, there were things we were both seeking.

Xiaojing told me that recently she had fallen for a boy from the neighboring class. She was willing to remain quietly in the background, and when the time came, she would do her best to help him. The sun was slowly sinking, and the blazing sunset clouds were reflected across the boundless sea, making the whole scene dazzlingly beautiful. It turned out that everyone was striving for their own happiness.

Not long ago, a girl from the Tennis Association had thrown herself from a dormitory building and died by suicide. Xiaojing and I both knew her, and before long that made us talk about the subject.

Later, Xiaojing told me a story, a story about herself, about the person dearest to her, someone so dear she had called him brother, and how he had been taken from her life.

It turned out that our sorrows were strangely alike. Yet on Xiaojing's face, I had always seen happiness. Sometimes, perhaps, concealment is not necessarily a bad thing.

"Let's head back," I said at last. I had no idea how far we had walked before we finally turned around.

When we returned to the shelter, the barbecue was nearly over. Some classmates were singing, some were playing cards, and everywhere rang the laughter of our youth. I did not know when Xiaojing had disappeared. Having little to do, I picked up a bottle of beer and slowly walked outside the shelter. On the beach, a bonfire party was in full swing. I found a clean patch of sand and sat down at a distance.

"Xiaobei Li, why are you sitting here? Why not go over and join everyone?" The homeroom teacher happened to pass by and, bending slightly, asked me this.

"Heh, I just wanted to sit alone for a bit," I replied perfunctorily.

"Go play with everyone. It's no fun being alone," the homeroom teacher said softly, patting my shoulder.

After the homeroom teacher had gone, I got up and returned to the shelter. Xiaolang was drinking with several people from the neighboring dormitory. Seeing me come in, he immediately handed me a bottle and grinned, challenging me to chug it.

Chugging was never my strong suit. After half a bottle, I was already having trouble.

"I'll do it." Somehow Xiaojing appeared from nowhere. She snatched the bottle from my hand and drained the rest in one gulp.

"If you can't handle it, call me. I'll help you," Xiaojing said with a laugh, glancing at me before shoving the empty bottle back into my hand and running off outside to play again.

Everyone was busy with their own things. Only I stood there dumbly, clutching the empty bottle, at a loss for where I ought to go next...

By then it was already deep autumn, and by the sea, the cold needed no explanation.

Before I knew it, the night had passed into its second half, and I could not keep myself from growing sleepy. Fortunately, there was still a little heat left under the grill from the barbecue earlier. I added a few more pieces of charcoal, stoked the fire back to life, then lined up the chairs in the shelter side by side and lay down with my coat in my arms.

The chairs were too hard, and I slept miserably, but there was nothing else to be done. I did not know when the fire had gone out. All I could feel was the cold growing deeper and deeper with each passing hour. Around five in the morning, I was finally awakened by the chill.

The surroundings were utterly quiet, and only a few classmates who had stayed up all night were idly playing cards.

So I went out of the shelter alone, sat down by the sea, and gazed toward the faint light at the edge of the sky, silently waiting for dawn.

Revised on October 12, 2010.