I was nine years old. The air was warm. The sand blew around my feet. My hair blew in the breeze, wrapping itself around my arms. The beaded hair wrap I wore in my hair bounced against my arm, the beads tapping together. I ran my thumb over the seashell I had stuck in the pocket of the cotton dress that I wore over my swimsuit. A cacophony of swimmers, surfers, and other beach goers filled the air. 

    A beach shop was situated at the back of the beach. My parents had gone in just to get a license plate that read ‘OBX’ in bold black letters. 

    I wandered through the aisles. I glanced at the bright tie-dye shirts the tourists loved to buy. I was surprised by the abundance of those little plastic buckets with the shovels that always cut open my palms when they snapped. I walked past the rubber-soled water shoes that I never wore. The calloused soles of my feet were tougher than the bottoms of those shoes, anyway.

   Sure enough, I found myself back where I always was. I stood in front of the large wire cage of hermit crabs that I was always infatuated by. Their pearlescent-looking shells shimmered as the sun hit them. My brother soon came and watched them climb up the sides of the wire mesh with me. 

    I’d always been fascinated by them, and had always been greeted with ‘Next time.’ when we visited. But this time, as we were leaving the beach, we stopped back by the shop. My brother and I each picked a hermit crab. My hermit crab’s champagne-colored shell glistened with flecks of pink. My brother’s crab had a shell that had been painted bright blue. 

   On the drive home, holding our crabs in our laps, we’d decided upon names - Pearl and Rocky. The once vacant table that sat in my brother and I’s playroom now had two crustacean tenants