Oliver had always felt like the less popular of the Curry twins, and the fact that no one wanted to meet him on the beach when he told them Ivan wasn't feeling well only validated his feelings. His parents had gone to Charleston, though Oliver wasn't sure why his mother had been so worked up over his dad's hangover. Old age must suck, was all he could figure. And though he'd said he'd watch Ramona, his mom had insisted on taking her with them. He'd been left with his brother, and while that prospect had at first been exciting, it'd quickly fizzled out when Ivan had professed he'd need to return to bed.

So now it was about two o'clock on a Saturday (though he wasn't exactly keeping track of the days), and Oliver was sitting on a beach chair by himself, down at the water, slathered in sunscreen and attempting to read a book he was supposed to read over the summer for an upcoming English class. Nothing in the world could have convinced him to begin homework so far in advance other than having literally no one to talk to and nowhere to go, and he'd tried messaging every one of the recent friends he and Ivan had made over the past couple of weeks only to be disappointed or ignored: everyone was busy, apparently. Too busy to come see him. Some had even asked first whether Ivan was around, and when Oliver had told them he was sick, they'd only then declined. Clearly Oliver's presence itself was not enough of a reason to hang out. As he sat trying to focus on the words of the text in front of him more to distract his mind than to actually jumpstart his assignment, he attempted to figure out what exactly about him was less appealing than Ivan.

Couldn't be his appearance. That was a given. They were literally identical, down to their eye color and haircuts and style. Sartorially, Oliver was a teensy bit more into band t-shirts than athletic attire, but they often wore one another's clothing interchangeably, especially once their mother had stopped doing their laundry for them and they'd had to rely on each other. Perhaps Ivan's eyelashes had been a smidge longer, or maybe he'd been a little more muscular, but any such differences were negligible to the naked eye (or at least the female eye). So whatever failings Oliver had, he figured, must exist in his personality. There must be something inherently annoying or unpleasant about him. He'd suspected it for some time, really, that he lacked the wit, the ability to tell a story like Ivan. He just didn't have that sparkle to his speech. Perhaps Oliver was just a bit dull, or irritating. Or maybe it was something more subtle, more in Ivan's flirtation skills. Ivan had been kind of wrapped up in some girl he wouldn't say much about, someone he'd been out in the water with, checked his phone a lot for.

Course, Oliver had been wrapped up in some girl, too, or more precisely, he wished he'd been wrapped up in some girl. That Clio, the one who'd sent him images. Not just the one, but several, lots, a new pic or video every night, and each closer to being pornographic than the next. God, she'd been driving him insane, because she hadn't even shown up at any of their gatherings! She kept saying she'd be there but then making excuses about why she wasn't. She was teasing him, for sure, and he was waiting for her to ask for money, because even though Oliver was fifteen and intellectually mediocre, he had enough common sense to start wondering whether "Clio" existed at all, whether this was going to turn into some sort of scam. If it came to that point, he'd tell his parents.

Maybe.

Well . . . probably not. No way he wanted to show them the images he'd been getting off on for the past few weeks. He didn't even want to show those to Ivan. They were his secret; the more graphic they'd become the more shamefully he'd indulged himself over them. He couldn't admit that to anybody.

Why didn't this girl just show up? Why couldn't she be real?

The words on the page before Oliver sharpened after remaining a blur for who-knew-how-long. He glanced at the page number. Thirteen. Thirteen? He'd made it through thirteen pages, apparently, and couldn't recall a thing he'd read.

Sighing, he set the book on the small table he'd dragged down and placed next to his lounge chair. Against his better judgment, he grabbed his phone and began to scroll through nonsense, desiring though afraid to look through Clio's messages, afraid of what he'd feel, of the agitation they might cause. And yet, even thinking of them was making him uncomfortable. Think of something else—of anything else! The ocean. It was big. Like, really big. What was on the other side of that water? He looked up and out at it, at the sparkling cerulean, such an amazing color, today. Weird to think that at some point all of it got so deep that it dipped into those trenches—what were they called?—well, there was the Mariana one, anyway. He'd learned about that one. And he'd learned there was so much stuff down there that people didn't know about because they hardly ever got down there. Every time there was an expedition, new species of freaky sea creatures were discovered. And the ocean looked so innocuous from his position, like a wrinkled bed sheet (of course, there could be a lot of secrets under a wrinkled bed sheet). It was difficult to really grasp the vastness of the ocean, how quiet, how crawling with strange life forms that aquatic netherworld actually was.

A brief wind picked up, blew his half-empty can of soda off the table. Oliver stood to grab the trash before it could get too far and realized, embarrassed, why his trunks had felt so tight. How? He'd tried to divert his thoughts, hadn't he? Toward octopi and eels and slithery, tentacled, sliding, slippery, exploring . . . ooooh.

He hurried to sit down and pull his towel over his lap. Sand. Look at sand . . . movies always made that look good, rolling around with someone in the surf, making out in the sand . . . Argh!

The sun! Surely it was burning him right now. More sunscreen. He needed to spray up again, surely. He'd love to have someone else to rub sunscreen all over, shoulders, back, stomach, ass . . . God!

He couldn't avoid thinking of her. Everything came back to Clio. It was no good, no good at all, and was that such a big problem? Really? He scanned the beach, and he realized with some relief and a lot of resigned mischief, that he seemed to be absolutely alone. The umbrella was enough cover from behind, wasn't it? And the towel covered him front and sides. . . .

Giving in, Oliver settled back comfortably in his chair, situated the towel, and held his phone at an angle so as to avoid the glare. Then he pulled back up Clio's pictures and slid his free hand surreptitiously under the edge of the towel. He couldn't help himself, dammit. He just couldn't! He was so damned uncomfortable! And it wouldn't take long, anyway; he could tell that.

Funny how in no picture did she show her face. Never her whole face. Her mouth in a lot of them—that was sure. Those lips! Around all sorts of things, even a video with her tongue moving deviously around some kind of toy she stuck in and out—whatever it was, it hurt him so good to watch it. That one got him every time. And all the images of her body that revealed far too much, what she did to herself. Oliver had no words for most of her self-inflicted pleasures; he knew only that they were beyond anything he and his friends had been exposed to back at school, beyond anything any girl had let them see, or even beyond what any girl their age probably knew, and though they'd a few of them talked about the snippets of porn they'd caught, that'd been mostly bluster. The kind of stuff Clio sent him—he felt absolutely mortified receiving it yet couldn't resist the titillation. He sensed there was something terrible about his infatuation with it, but he was too young and too impulsive to deny himself the gratification.

Unexpectedly and much to Oliver's frustration, a call came in, blocking the image on his phone. It took him a moment to gather his wits, and after a groan of annoyance he realized it wasn't a parent calling but an unknown number, or more accurately no number at all—just the word "unknown."

His first inclination was to let it go, especially in his fomented state, but then he wondered if maybe it were one of the town kids with some plans in mind. He was pretty bored, after all, in spite of his current preoccupation. So he answered, and this is what he heard in a voice that seemed to magnetize the very blood in his veins: "Sorry to interrupt, Oliver, but I'm waiting for you. I'm ready."

The phone slipped from his hand into the sand. Frantically, the boy picked it up and tried to blow the grains from the crevices of the device.

"The rocks. There's a little cave. Will you come find me?"

"C-Clio?" Was all he could manage. His throat had gone dry.

"Everything you've seen—you can have it, if you hurry."

He tried to ask her questions, but she was gone, then; she'd ended the call. Oliver took only a moment to clean himself up before he took off toward the rocks she must've been speaking about. To his right, looking out at the ocean, was an imposing promontory. To his left, the beach went on and on until it dwindled to a vanishing point. The rocks, large black lumpish things, could've housed copious niches. Surely that's what Clio had meant—she waited for him somewhere within them. All he had to do was find her. He glanced back at the house only once, though he was unsure why he did it. It wasn't as if Ivan watched him. Nobody was anywhere, as far as he could tell, and even if there were people around or in windows of the other houses, what could they think? That he was taking a walk down the beach? That he was enjoying the sunshine? No one knew the tempestuous state of his mind, the churning in his core. His entire body would've moved itself of its own accord even if his mind hadn't been willing; of that he was sure. And had he had any ability to think beyond the surface, he might've questioned whether he was willing, really, but he didn't have that capacity. Not anymore. Oliver was woefully typical for his age, incapable of thinking too deeply when his physical needs overcame rational thought.

Somehow, he closed the distance between his beach house and the rocks, and within what felt like mere minutes, he was searching them for an opening. They were cool to the touch, dry farther back where they merged with the earth and clearly held no secret spaces, so he crept closer to the water, and as he stepped in up to his ankles, his calves, the cliff jutting overhead, the rock slickened with seafoam and clusters of barnacle. Oliver began to wonder whether he'd heard her right, wondered whether he should turn back. He'd left his phone under a towel on his chair, having no pockets in his trunks, and so he had no way for Clio to contact him. But he could find no sizable opening in the rock, even as he moved deeper into the water. He was up to his thighs, now, and just following the perimeter. Maybe she'd meant for him to scale the promontory. It went up pretty high. There could be all sorts of openings above. And yet just as he thought it, Oliver sank nearly waist-deep when the sand below gave way, and at the same moment he discovered that the rock did indeed curve inward and up at an odd angle, into a black opening large enough for him to climb into quite easily.

So he did, and the only trouble he had was finding a bit of rock to cling to that wasn't slimed with algae or sea snails.

The opening exposed a shallow pool that likely filled with seawater when the tide came in, but right then, Oliver found it rose about to his ankles. He was otherwise enclosed in an airy, shadowy ultramarine alcove, the depths of which were difficult to make out due to insufficient light and the reflective nature of the water. A bit of sunlight snaked down from above, teasing shimmers across the rock surfaces. The boy, tall for his age, was able to stand full-height, though his shaggy auburn head nearly touched the top of the cove, and the echo-y nature of the place threw his breath back at him in an unnerving manner.

"H-hello?" he tried, not sure he wanted to stay very long if games were involved.

No answer came to him, and yet he knew he was not alone.

"Clio?" Oh, if only he could remember what she looked like! Her face, anyway. He was sure she was absolutely stunning. Everything about her was—the parts he'd seen, anyway. The parts he couldn't remember must be equally irresistible. Why meet in the dark, like this? It was so strange, so secretive. What was she doing?

A movement somewhere, off to his left.

Oliver spun, and yes! to the thrill of his pumping brain there was definitely a shadowed figure there, but it stayed out of the scant light.

"Clio!" he tried again. "Is it you?" He didn't know what else to say to her beyond confirming her identity. That seemed the most important thing to do. Oh God, why was he shaking? Was it really so cold?

"Hi," was all she said, and he trembled ecstatically to recognize the voice from the phone.

Now that he'd been reassured, though, he hadn't a clue what to do or say. He could only stand in that throbbing pocket of secrecy, listening to the expansive billowy ocean beyond, frantically trying to avoid turning to cracked glass inside.

"It's all right," she said, drawing nearer, though he still couldn't quite make out her features beyond her height and her curvy figure. "You don't have to say anything. I know what you're thinking. Just close your eyes."

Even as he dropped his lids and enclosed himself in darkness, Oliver found breathing difficult. His lungs inflated and deflated erratically, and his limbs grew tense.

"No need for worry," she soothed, close enough to him now that he felt her breath on his cheek. Her fingers brushed the bare flesh of his arms, his shoulders to his palms. "I'll give you everything you want, everything you saw."

Images flashed through the boy's brain, of moist lips and pink tongues, wiry curls peeping from criminally small bits of fabric and thin pale fingers brushing against sensitive areas, strings caught up around perfect mounds of flesh, taut outlines suggesting arousal, every position, begging him to join in touching her, to taste her—so many images he'd been gifted, and he wanted all of it, so badly . . .

That smell . . .

What was it?

Oliver caught an odor, foul, so foul—of dead things, fish and rot, garbage, and even as her hands were probing him, as they'd reached for his pulsing center and her hot, wet mouth had drawn so near his own he could feel the very vibrations in the air between them, the boy opened his eyes.

Raw flesh, cracked and brittle, oozing and pustulant, presented itself before him, her eyes yellow and reptilian, her mouth filled with sharp, crusted little razors. All the stench of decay reeked forth from that hole, and in one pained and horrified cry, Oliver shoved the lizardish creature away from him and sloshed as quickly as possible through the cove, not daring to look back as he slid through the passage he'd climbed up into (paying no attention to the scrapes and bruises he gleaned on the way out).

He shoved through the ocean waters, up onto the beach, and once he was safe on the sand, he didn't stop running until he was back at his beach chair in front of his house, where he picked up his phone, permanently deleted all his images and videos of Clio, and promised himself that never ever again would he become infatuated with any pornographic imagery, no matter what.