Karen and I spent the summer making fun of the beach selkies and the girls who mooned over them. I dunno, maybe we were jealous. Those guys had rippling muscles and oozed sex appeal, but they never looked at us, two gawky girls whose breasts hadn’t budded yet.

At the end of the summer there were a few who’d had their sealskin coats stolen by lovelorn women. They stood on the beach, unable to go home, looking haunted and broken. Searching.

Giggling with glee, Karen and I ran to the thrift store, buying every seal fur coat we could find. That night we hid them all over the beach.

We set up our beach towels for the day to watch the selkies find them and rush around with mistaken joy, only to be crushed when they discovered the truth.

It’s still the meanest thing I’ve ever done.

Karen laughed at me when I told her I felt bad. “They’re not even human!”

I gathered up the remaining coats and brought them back to the store. It made Karen furious. We never hung out much after that.

*this post was first written as a comment on a writer’s prompt at the Write Practice