Twenty years ago, this beach was ours.

We spent almost every day in the sun, until our limbs tanned in stripes from the shirts and shorts of different lengths we wore.

Her nose was perpetually peeling from sunburn; the skin beneath was always pink and speckled with just a little blood. I thought it was a little weird at first, because I was eight and kids are like that. But she told me not to worry (because it happened every summer) and I got used to it quickly, because kids are like that, too.

The beach was always empty, save for the occasional vacationing family from the city. We didn’t like it when there were other people on our beach, so we’d always find an empty stretch to build our sandcastles. We knew every inch of the wet sand for miles either way—like I said, it was [i]our[/i] beach.

Plus, there was a secret spot, that no family with loud dogs and angry teenagers ever found. It was a secret because at one point the sand would end and meet a rocky stretch that old fishermen liked to set their chairs up on. It looked like the end of the beach, to anyone else.

But we knew better. We’d pick up some of the rocks (the smoothest ones, that skipped better), and we’d walk past the sleepy fishermen through a pathless stretch of thorny brush. The brush deterred everyone else, so the prize it hid—a hundred lonely feet of sandy shoreline—was all ours.

When we graduated from sandcastles and splashing, we talked and we swam. She was older by a year, so when she left our little K-through-8 and started attending high school in the big city, I had questions for her every day. She said my questions were silly, but she answered them the best she could. She’d talk about her new friends, and we’d speak for hours until we had to go home because we were out of water and snacks and were too hungry and thirsty to stay any longer.

One year, she began to take a yellow floral parasol with her, to keep the sun off her face. The first time I saw it, it was the most feminine thing I’d seen in her possession, so I made fun of it. She blushed, and sputtered that it was to keep her nose from peeling. And even though I laughed at her, she brought it the next day, and the next.

Her nose never stopped peeling, though.

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Today, the beach is loud and choked full of people playing music on Bluetooth speakers.

I blame the internet. There are no secrets anymore, including good beaches.

I haven’t been back in town for more than ten years. The little school building is the same, but the asphalt roads and the smell of spent gasoline is new.

I almost don’t want to visit our secret spot, because I realize that I’ve never been there by myself. When I reach the rocky place, I pocket a smooth stone, because I'm pretending that things haven't changed.

The thorny brush isn’t there anymore. Now it’s a parking lot for a movie theater.

And when I reach out secret spot, I see that it's just as full as the rest of the beach. I don’t get a chance to skip my stone, because there are too many kids swimming in the water, and I would hit them if I tried.

As a final insult, there’s a new whitewashed concrete building sitting just where the sand and asphalt meets. It’s a little ice cream shop, with a bad logo and a cheesy name. No way in hell it’s part of a chain.

I’m thirsty, so I walk inside to get a soda. The inside of the store is air-conditioned and just as quaint as the outside. Pictures and seashells hang from wooden pegs off the wall, and Beach Boys plays from a ten year-old amp.

And then I see it, proudly sitting on a little shelf next to the faded framed photos and gaudy miscellany: a sun-bleached yellow parasol, with white flowers printed on it, exactly how I remembered it.

While I’m staring, the owner of the little store comes up to my barstool to take my order. She’s wearing a fishing vest over a bikini-top and jean shorts. The tip of her nose is sunburned and peeled.

Just as I’m beginning to fumble with my words, a flash of recognition widens her eyes.