The people around us had fallen silent.
A teenager carrying a boogie board stared openly at the woman.
A father drew his toddler closer.
Someone murmured, “Are you kidding me?”
The woman raised her phone again but did not begin recording.
She returned to her blanket, snapped her towel sharply through the air, and sat as though the entire scene had become boring.
Noah never released the flag.
Twenty minutes later, a lifeguard’s whistle sliced through the beach noise.
One sharp blast.
Then another.
Every head turned.
A senior lifeguard descended from the tower carrying a golden box wrapped in a navy ribbon.
He was older than the others, perhaps in his sixties, with sun-darkened arms and silver hair beneath a red cap.
Captain Reyes was printed across his shirt.
Something about him stirred an old memory.
Then I recalled Simon waving toward that exact tower while Noah hauled buckets of wet sand across the beach.