Chapter 7 You Can Survive Anything
YOU CAN SURVIVE ANYTHING
All The Good Girls Go To Hell - Billie Eilish
Kookaburra
Water.
Always water.
It comes to me first as cold: a blade drawn across the skin of the world.
The shock of it steals the breath from my lungs before the fear can even form.
Hands push against my shoulders – firm, unrelenting – and the surface breaks above my head with a soft, final sound.
The world goes blue and soundless. Bubbles climb past my face like small ghosts trying to escape.
I open my mouth to scream and the river pours in, cold and endless, filling me until all that’s left is the drumbeat of my own heart somewhere far away.
“Stay still. Stop fighting, little bird.”
The voice isn’t cruel. It’s calm, certain, as though the drowning is a lesson I’ve forgotten. I learn to count instead of struggle – one, two, three – until the counting itself becomes a rhythm, a kind of lullaby. When I finally stop resisting, the current carries me down into quiet.
Then the water warms. The colour of light changes; gold replaces blue, softening the edges of everything.
The river becomes a bath, or maybe a dream of one.
Another pair of hands steadies me, not forcing but holding, guiding.
The pressure on my shoulders is the same, yet it means something different.
My body remembers both kinds of touch at once and can’t decide which one to trust. The fear that had once kept me alive uncoils, reshaping itself into something heavier, slower, almost tender.
I surface just long enough to breathe, gasping, eyes wide against the light that spills across the room. Warm water slides over my skin, over the hands that keep me steady. A voice murmurs something close to my ear, too low to make out, but the cadence is the same as the one from the river.
The sound pulls at me, equal parts comfort and command.
I should know which memory is real. Which hands meant to kill me, and which tried to keep me. But the edges blur. The river, the bath, the scent of skin and steam – they collapse into one another until all that’s left is the pull downward.
“You like this,” one of them whispers. “You always have.”
I don’t know which one speaks. Maybe both. The boy on the bank watching bubbles break. The man above me, silent, eyes bright with something I can’t name.
The water closes in again, claiming what it always meant to take.
And I do like this. My body is responding.
Uncoiling. Pain and calm trade places like dancers switching leads.
My lungs ache, but I stay still. Somewhere inside the drowning there’s a strange peace, and inside that peace a truth I’ve carried ever since: if you can survive without air, you can survive anything.
When I break the surface again, it’s to the sound of my own gasp echoing against tile. Water – or sweat – slides down my throat. A heartbeat, close but not mine, thuds steady beside my ear. The world ripples once, twice, then fades back into darkness.
Only a voice remains, drifting through the black like a current pulling me home.
“Good girl.”
“Well done, little bird.”