The Dock by Michael Ball

I road my bike right onto the soft sand that lie in front of my cousins' melancholy old summer cottage. When I stepped off my bike the sand was as expected, extremely hot, and sent a burning sensation up my legs. It was a very hot day in the middle of August. I dropped my bike and helmet on the ground and ran up the two small steps leading to the front door. I walked inside the old cottage, the very stifling morning air still trapped inside. I walked to the bottom of the stairs and yelled to my dreary cousins still half asleep upstairs, "come on it's high tide." In a matter of seconds my cousins ran down the steep, creaky stairs, and before I knew it I was outside once again with my suddenly wide awake cousins at my side. We all grabbed towels that were draped over the backs of the many beach chairs stationed around the back deck. We then started walking toward the dock. Once again I got a burning sensation on the bottoms of my feet as I walked along the dark black pavement. The bottom of my feet felt like I was walking over the top of a hot frying pan. My cousins and I hurried our pace to reduce the burns on our feet, and soon arrived at the dock. When I got to the dock I looked at the bottom of my deeply pained feet, they were the same shade of red as a tomato. I didn't spend much more time thinking about my burned feet, and soon I found myself running down the ramp toward the dock. As I ran down the dock the old ramp wobbled below my feet. When I hit the dock I didn't stop there, I continued to run straight off the dock. For what seemed like an eternity I had a weightless feeling about my body. I then hit the water and my burned feet were immediately soothed by the cool water. As I plunged toward the bottom I opened my eyes and saw the dark brown mud that covered the bottom. I stayed on the bottom studying the mud for a little while. At first I thought I saw a huge lobster, but it turned out it was only part of an old, rusty, mangled lobster trap. Then I realized that my lungs were in great need of air. I gave my legs a very powerful kick, and then another, and another. After a few seconds of this I started to see light coming from the surface. Finally I broke the surface and took a deep breath of air. I was immediately struck by a huge, cold splash of water from my younger cousin's canon ball. An enormous amount of extremely salty water went into my mouth. I spit it out as fast as possible. When I got back to the dock I pulled myself out of the water and onto the dock. I yelled to my cousin, Daniel, who had splashed me, who was now running away, "Yah, you better run." I felt drops of water dripping off my body. I thought at that moment, what a shame my cousins have to leave in two days. My days of riding my bike down to their cottage everyday and having fun on the beach all day will be over. I look forward to the time every summer when my cousins come down from Medway, and live in Scituate for most of the month of August. I enjoy this time so much because even though I am the oldest cousin, the next cousins in line, Liam and Devin, are close to me in age, so it's always fun to hang around with them. Even though some of my other cousins like Daniel and Kyle are younger they don't seem that much younger because they are always hanging around with Liam, Devin, and I. Also there is my younger brother, Henry, who is always with us, and he is Kyle's age. The time in the summer when my cousins come down is so enjoyable because we all like the same things, and do so many fun things together. I didn't waste much more time thinking about this because I was suddenly shoved from behind, off the dock, by my cousin, but before he could get away I locked my hands to his forearm and pulled him in with me. After a few more jumps I was able to see the rocky bottom of the harbor through the crystal clear water. Since the tide was going out and the water was getting shallower, I decided it was probably best for us all to stop jumping. I said, "one more jump and then we are going back to the cottage." After our last jumps we raced up to our towels and threw them around our shoulders. We all started making the walk back to the cottage so we could start whatever fun activity was next on the list of things to do for the day.