She met her boyfriend in the parking lot behind the beach and did it there. They sat in her car,

quiet. Only the waves made sound outside. 

Are you about to break up with me? he asked. His voice was quieter than usual, but it

stayed flat like he was answering a question rather than asking one.

He’d broken the silence before she could initiate the beginning of the end. He was always

good at anticipating Joy’s intentions before she could act on them. She felt annoyed by this, like

she couldn’t have privacy or autonomy even in her own thoughts. One step ahead of her, always. 

Joy put her hands on the steering wheel at ten and two, her elbows locked. She leaned her

head against the headrest and closed her eyes. 

Why? he continued after her non-verbal confirmation. 

She didn’t know how to explain to him the feeling of losing feelings. Once she was

endlessly entertained by the sound of his voice as he rattled off useless trivia and now every

unprompted thought spoken left a pang of annoyance in her chest. Once she would trace the lines

on his back like roads on a map travelling from city to city. Now his touch made her recoil the

same way one might when accidentally touching the leftover sludge in the bottom of the sink

after doing dishes. This wasn’t his fault. None of it was. 

There’s nothing left, she said. Does that make sense?

He didn’t look at her. Instead, he watched their breath work together to make fog that

crept up the windshield. Slowly and methodically, like a painter building a base colour on a

canvas, it obstructed their view of the sun rising over the water. 

Is it my fault? 

Joy could have spilled all of her thoughts onto the floor of her car in response. The

thoughts would have risen past both of their feet, up over their knees, leaking out of the seals in

the doors, and drowned the two. She could have given him every explanation he didn’t want for

why it wasn’t his fault or was his fault or it was her fault or it was his mother’s fault or his

friends’ fault or her friends’ fault. Maybe she could have given him some long-winded,

improvised performance to convince him that it was nobody’s fault. 

She felt the gates opening where her chest met her throat, and just as she had for the last

few months of their partnership, she wrenched them closed. 

No, it just happened. Things just happen. 

After he’d left, Joy sat on a concrete block that divided the pavement and the sand. She

watched the tide leave jellyfish behind as it retreated in on itself.

It’s been a week since she left the boy in the parking lot behind the beach. Every morning since,

she has been returning just as the sun rises. There are jellyfish scattered all over the sand,

stranded by the low tide. Their bells feel tacky and stick to Joy’s fingers when she picks them up

and returns them to the water, but every morning there are more stuck to the beach. Her bare feet

leave prints in the sand that well with water as she approaches the ocean, returning the jellies to

their home. She goes back and forth, over and over, one sticky jelly in each hand as the sun rises.

Seagulls and sandpipers pick at the ones she doesn’t make it to in time. She can’t save them all,

but trying makes her feel better, like she’s restoring the balance. 

Joy hasn’t spoken to her ex since their conversation. She hasn’t as much as seen him in

passing. Joy wonders how he didn’t pick up on her growing resentment for him earlier, or why

she let their relationship go on for as long as it did. Maybe she was holding onto the hope that

she might regain her feelings for him. She comes to the conclusion that holding on for so long is

what bred the disdain for him instead of the indifference she started out with.

Jellyfish are something like ninety-five percent water, so when they get stuck on the beach and

the sand lets the morning sun suck the moisture out of them, they evaporate into almost nothing.

What’s left is little more than a shadow of the former cnidarians. Joy has always heard that

humans are around sixty percent water, so she’s not that far from the jellies she has been working

to save. She thinks of the approximate thirty percent difference between her and the jellyfish. If

she sat down on the beach and watched the sun rise and the tide leave her like the jellies would if

they had the eyes to do so, how long would it take her to shrivel up and become tacky? How long

to evaporate completely and become a shadow like the jellies that don’t make it back to the water

or into the bellies of seabirds? 

If she became a dehydrated shadow, she would have so much time to explain to the

jellyfish why coming to the beach in the first place was a mistake. She could ask them why they

keep re-entering the danger zone, catching onto the sand while the water pulls away without

remorse to let them shrivel and die. Maybe they would explain to her that they’re doing it on

purpose. Maybe they would ask her, why do you keep putting us back in the water every

morning? Can’t you just lay down with us and let us become a shadow together? Can’t you let

the tide wash us all away like we intended from the beginning?