I Knew You'd Be Lovely by Alethea Black Page A

long whistle from the bow. “Are you high?” asked his disembodied voice.
    James turned to me. “There are so many stars, but at the same time, it’s all so … precise. You know? As if each star is necessary. As if everything happens the way it’s supposed to happen,” he said.
    That’s not true
, I thought.
My mother isn’t supposed to be so unhappy, and everything isn’t meant to be so broken
. I kept quiet, though, because I wanted him to say more. But James was silent. Then I remembered his other silence, the one on the island, and I was about to ask him what he was going to tell me that day, before Zack came bounding out of the woods, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t ask him anything, because a second later the silhouette of his head blocked the stars, and I could feel him breathe, and then he kissed me—a real kiss. It wasn’t like spin the bottle at all. It was different—sad or something. Sad but great.
    After he lay back down I turned to him, but he kept his eyes pinned to the sky. He reached over and took my hand. To this day, I can’t explain what made that night seem so magical, or why I felt such a stab of affection when James Zimmerman took my hand. Maybe if I could, I’d be able to explain why on the way home, once Sarah and I were alone on the dirt road, I began to cry. I wept softly, wiping my nose with the sleeve of his sweatshirt.
    â€œEverything’s going to be okay,” Sarah said, whichonly made me cry more. We walked the rest of the way without speaking. When we got back to the tent, Lindsay was gone.
    We ran into the house, checked the bunk beds, the bathroom, the kitchen, the porch. Panic rose in our throats. It was 2:30 A.M. I hovered outside the door to our parents’ bedroom, feeling sick to my stomach, finally nerving myself to go in.
    â€œMom,” I said, rocking her shoulder. “Wake up. We can’t find Lindsay.”
    She didn’t understand at first, but once she did, she didn’t linger long enough to get mad. Immediately she began searching through rooms, halting in doorways, flipping on lights. When had we last seen her? How had this happened? She called our father’s name, and he appeared.
    â€œLindsay’s gone missing,” she said.
    â€œWhat? How?”
    She ignored him. While she looked under the beds, I told Dad what had happened. Then she headed outside.
    â€œElizabeth. Wait,” he said. He grabbed her arm, but she yanked it away. He turned to me. “Call the Beckers; ask if they’ve seen her.” But I couldn’t move. My limbs were lead; my mind was stupefied. Instead, I watched as my mother headed into the lake.
    This was the shape of my mother’s courage: a zigzag path, cut through deeper and deeper water, as she walked in lines parallel with the shore, waiting for the blunt feel of flesh that would be the body of her youngest child. I stood in the doorway and stared; there was nothing I could do. Sarah was in the woods behind the house, calling Lindsay’s name—now a hollow, ghostly sound. Dadwas on the dirt road in his slippers, shining a flashlight into the trees.
    Two hours passed. Or maybe it was twenty minutes. Mrs. Becker had appeared and was standing on the beach, hugging her ribs. “Liz, be careful,” she kept saying. The water was up to my mother’s collarbones. Mrs. Becker took me aside. “Go inside and call the police,” she said, adding: “What in the name of God were you girls thinking?”
    I couldn’t breathe. What would I possibly say to the police? “I did it, officer. I lost her, I drowned her, I hit her with a car. And all she ever wanted—” Wait a minute.
    â€œMom!” I said, running for the dock, dizzy from the sudden rush of hope. I got to the boat, pulled back the tarp, and there, asleep, with her thumb in her mouth, was Lindsay—
alive
—with her life jacket on.