much faster than his fingers can move.
And still, there’s time to kill behind my bedroom door. Time to breathe. Time to read. I lie between the cool sheets at night and let the words form, whispered, in the hollows of my mouth. I trace the lines in my mother’s book—the old one, its pages untouched by water but marked with the initials of strangers. The one she left for me to find, the one for the ones who are left behind.
I wonder if other girls, when they close their eyes and curl in for a catnap, can hear the sound of rushing water in the ear pressed against the pillow.
Water sucking the hollow ledges, tons of water striking the shore.
When I push the long, damp rope of my hair back over my shoulder, I can smell the dark, wild scent of the river underneath the cover of shampoo.
These days, I don’t even feel guilty anymore.
—
In the end, it was easier than I’d dared to hope: the first, furtive lessons in the river, my hair draping over Nessa’s wrists as she held me on the surface. First with her hands pressed firmly on my back, then only her fingertips, and then nothing at all but the coolness of the water as it broke over my shoulders and against my feet, the sense of her palms floating somewhere just below my shoulder blades.
“Before you learn to swim, you have to learn that you can float,” she’d said. “Even when you’re tired, weak, when you get a cramp, you’re still safe in the water. Lie back and breathe, and it will hold you.”
It took me by surprise: the rhythm of floating. The way that my hips grow heavy on the exhale, hinging backward below the curve of my back, the bottoms of my feet slowly dangling toward the deep. And then the air, filling my throat and breast and belly, calling my body back to the surface. My hip bones pop briefly, buoyant; my sternum rises up to touch the world above the water. In the sun, the droplets glisten and glide on my long, white body like little living things. I have never felt so alive.
“You’re a good teacher,” I say.
“It’s easy, here. Usually I’m doing this with someone half your age, in between waves rolling in,” says Nessa, and stretched out beside me on the river’s surface. She has been teaching me to stroke, slowly, scissoring my legs with a rubber-band snap and breathing in the hollow of my armpit; now, we rest side by side, fingertips touching. Her long hair fans out and drifts down, tickling my wrist. “Did you know that your body floats better in salt water?”
“That’s what we should do, we should go to the ocean,” I say, and suddenly, there’s nothing I want more than exactly that. To drive at full speed down the county road, flanked on each side by its stiff forest of stick-straight pines; run across the sand, casting my shoes off with a kick; dive through the breaking waves and lie breathing on the undulating sea. Or, better yet, to skip the drive entirely—to plunge forward into the barely there current, slip beneath the river’s surface, let myself be carried away. Down the narrow alley, beneath the cypress trees, through the marshy watershed and into the open gulf.
My pulse throbs in my wrists and ears, beating with insistent invitation. Urgent.
The sea is waiting for me.
Yearning.
Calling.
I’ve never wanted anything more badly in my life.
—
Nessa just gazes toward the sky, nodding in a faraway way, and then gives me a smile full of clueless patience. “We’d better not, baby. The ocean has undertow, rip currents. We’ll go one day, but you’re not a strong enough swimmer yet.”
—
NO.
—
I don’t say it out loud; the word snaps out of a dark place inside my head, with so much ferocity and anger that it takes my breath away. Nessa, of all people—my mother’s sister, the one who lives for wild surf, who sent me seashells in the mail—she should understand that I don’t want condescending platitudes and vague promises. She should understand that I’ve waited long enough, that I’ve
And still, there’s time to kill behind my bedroom door. Time to breathe. Time to read. I lie between the cool sheets at night and let the words form, whispered, in the hollows of my mouth. I trace the lines in my mother’s book—the old one, its pages untouched by water but marked with the initials of strangers. The one she left for me to find, the one for the ones who are left behind.
I wonder if other girls, when they close their eyes and curl in for a catnap, can hear the sound of rushing water in the ear pressed against the pillow.
Water sucking the hollow ledges, tons of water striking the shore.
When I push the long, damp rope of my hair back over my shoulder, I can smell the dark, wild scent of the river underneath the cover of shampoo.
These days, I don’t even feel guilty anymore.
—
In the end, it was easier than I’d dared to hope: the first, furtive lessons in the river, my hair draping over Nessa’s wrists as she held me on the surface. First with her hands pressed firmly on my back, then only her fingertips, and then nothing at all but the coolness of the water as it broke over my shoulders and against my feet, the sense of her palms floating somewhere just below my shoulder blades.
“Before you learn to swim, you have to learn that you can float,” she’d said. “Even when you’re tired, weak, when you get a cramp, you’re still safe in the water. Lie back and breathe, and it will hold you.”
It took me by surprise: the rhythm of floating. The way that my hips grow heavy on the exhale, hinging backward below the curve of my back, the bottoms of my feet slowly dangling toward the deep. And then the air, filling my throat and breast and belly, calling my body back to the surface. My hip bones pop briefly, buoyant; my sternum rises up to touch the world above the water. In the sun, the droplets glisten and glide on my long, white body like little living things. I have never felt so alive.
“You’re a good teacher,” I say.
“It’s easy, here. Usually I’m doing this with someone half your age, in between waves rolling in,” says Nessa, and stretched out beside me on the river’s surface. She has been teaching me to stroke, slowly, scissoring my legs with a rubber-band snap and breathing in the hollow of my armpit; now, we rest side by side, fingertips touching. Her long hair fans out and drifts down, tickling my wrist. “Did you know that your body floats better in salt water?”
“That’s what we should do, we should go to the ocean,” I say, and suddenly, there’s nothing I want more than exactly that. To drive at full speed down the county road, flanked on each side by its stiff forest of stick-straight pines; run across the sand, casting my shoes off with a kick; dive through the breaking waves and lie breathing on the undulating sea. Or, better yet, to skip the drive entirely—to plunge forward into the barely there current, slip beneath the river’s surface, let myself be carried away. Down the narrow alley, beneath the cypress trees, through the marshy watershed and into the open gulf.
My pulse throbs in my wrists and ears, beating with insistent invitation. Urgent.
The sea is waiting for me.
Yearning.
Calling.
I’ve never wanted anything more badly in my life.
—
Nessa just gazes toward the sky, nodding in a faraway way, and then gives me a smile full of clueless patience. “We’d better not, baby. The ocean has undertow, rip currents. We’ll go one day, but you’re not a strong enough swimmer yet.”
—
NO.
—
I don’t say it out loud; the word snaps out of a dark place inside my head, with so much ferocity and anger that it takes my breath away. Nessa, of all people—my mother’s sister, the one who lives for wild surf, who sent me seashells in the mail—she should understand that I don’t want condescending platitudes and vague promises. She should understand that I’ve waited long enough, that I’ve
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