Day 3
Sidney
I slink into the bathroom, opting for the dim light above the vanity, rather than the fluorescent box that hangs over the little shower stall.
Stripping off my tank and shorts, I step into the shower, ready to be blasted awake by the cold.
I could just wait to jump into the frigid lake, but I’d rather shake off the sleepiness before I start training.
Especially for my first morning swim with Asher.
Gah, even just thinking about it is miserable.
He’ll probably try to run me down with the boat, so I need to be awake when I get out there, in case I need to go all action-movie mode and swim under the boat or something.
Head limp against the cream-colored tiles, I push the clear plastic knob up and to the right, mentally preparing for the onslaught.
The strange smell hits me almost as quickly as the cold.
It’s familiar, but so out of place—tangy, maybe.
Almost citrus, but not quite. It smells like my childhood, somehow.
Everything in this house has its own unique smell, but this one is a first, and it doesn’t fit.
The cold sharpness against my skin distracts me, but as the pelting water numbs me and loses its bite, I relax and let my eyes slowly crack open.
What the hell?
Red streams everywhere. My first thought is that I’m bleeding, that I somehow, unconsciously, sliced my foot open.
It looks like something out of a horror movie.
Like there should be a bloody red handprint on the shower wall next to me.
I’m tired, but I would have remembered severing my toe, I think.
My eyes travel from the swirling red drain up my stained legs, and to my blotchy red stomach.
Red. I’m red all over. My brain is still foggy and I feel a little like I’m in the last dregs of a nightmare.
I look up toward the showerhead, the water lightening in color now, and tentatively stick out my tongue as the smell finally registers. Cherry. It smells like my favorite Kool-Aid, the stuff I used to live off of every summer, back before I cared about how much sugar I drank.
“Asher.” I say his name like a mumbled curse, deep in my throat, my teeth clenched so tight they squeak a little under the pressure.
When I head out, my towel is stained from rubbing, but I still couldn’t get all of the red off of my skin.
It’s concentrated around my knees and elbows, and in patches across my stomach—thankfully covered by my swimsuit—and my face.
My face, which is turned toward the dock, where my new safety buddy is now standing, waiting to trail me across the lake.
He’s lucky I’m too claustrophobic—and easily bored—to go to prison, or he’d need to be worried about being out on the open water with me.
“Mornin’,” he says, his face focused on the can of gas he’s dumping into the tank as I approach the little silver boat.
My dad brings a small fishing boat to the lake every year, but for lake swims we always use the little silver rowboat that belongs to Five Pines, and ditch the oars for an outboard motor on the back.
Asher reaches forward and I can see his suit sticking out from the waistband of his shorts.
His phone is in a plastic bag sitting on the floor of the boat.
Clearly he doesn’t trust me, either. Good. He shouldn’t.
I sit on the little bench that stretches across the front of the boat, my eyes fixed on the back of his head as he pours the gas.
When he turns, he looks me right in the eyes.
His travel from my face down to my splotchy wrists and linger on my knees, which are the reddest parts of my body.
Note to self: moisturize your knees once in a while.
I lift my little canteen to my mouth and take a casual sip. “Morning.”
The corner of his mouth twitches and I wait for the smile, but it doesn’t come.
“You smell nice today,” he says, still on the brink of that smile.
I’m not sure if I remember what Asher looks like smiling anymore.
Smirking, yes. But smiling is as good as admitting guilt.
And that is one of the three unspoken rules of this war we wage each summer.
Never admit guilt
No serious injuries
No snitching
Rule number one means we don’t smile, or laugh, or implicitly gloat.
I’m not sure why—maybe because saying out loud that you filled someone’s drink with soy sauce or left earthworms in their bed just sounds mean.
Rule number two ensures we never have to break rule number three.
We haven’t snitched on each other since we were fifteen and Asher put marbles on the floor beside my bed.
I’m not sure if he was actively trying to kill me, or just wasn’t thinking, but I lost my balance and cracked my head on the nightstand.
I wouldn’t have ratted him out to my parents, but it was bleeding so much I was sure I was going to die, and I had to get six stitches.
All in all it was only a one-inch cut. Asher apologized profusely—the only time either of us has—and maybe the whole thing would have stopped at that point, if I hadn’t retaliated a few days later.
Head wound or not, I wasn’t going to literally let him land the winning blow.
Asher starts up the engine and takes a seat across from me. We’re not ten feet from the dock when he reaches his silver mug toward me. “Coffee?”
I shake my canteen in front of me. “I’m good.”
“Right.” I can see that smirk about to break through. “You probably filled up on Kool-Aid this morning, huh?”
Asher
Sidney stands up so quickly, I have to cut the engine so she doesn’t topple over the side. Before it has even quieted, she’s climbing over, lowering herself into the water.
“What are you doing?”
“Swimming,” she says, walking through the shallow water that’s just up to her thighs.
“Arms. Legs. Water.” She pulls her T-shirt over her head and tosses it in a crumpled pile into the boat in front of me.
“An obnoxious boy following you in a boat. Sound familiar?” She keeps walking, and I keep the boat far enough to the side that I won’t bump into her accidentally.
She’s wearing a plain suit—dark navy—but tight and shiny and cut high on her leg, like a team suit.
As the water reaches her chest, she dips down into the water and pushes herself forward, a billowy cloud pluming up around her as her feet leave the sand.
Sidney disappears under the water and comes up about fifteen feet ahead.
Her cheek dips down into the water, and then up, and down, as she swims steadily into the light chop of the lake.
I start the motor back up and idle the boat to the side of her, giving her a few feet and keeping pace.
I have the air horn Tom gave me in one hand, though a quick scan of the lake tells me there’s not a boat to be seen anywhere near us.
The fishing boats are already settled into their spots for the morning, and the speedboats pulling skiers and tubers won’t hit the lake for hours, after the morning chill burns off.
The only ones cutting across the lake at this hour are neurotic swimmers and the guys hell-bent enough on annoying them to ruin their own mornings.
I look at the other side of the lake, imagining the little bay I know dips inland there, but it’s still too far to make out.
This is going to take a while—Sid isn’t going for speed, she’s building endurance.
Open-water swimming is so much harder than in the pool, where there aren’t waves and frigid temps and currents to deal with.
I can’t remember the last time Sidney and I spent an hour straight alone together, unless you count the time we spend lying on the deck chairs in silence every morning, after we vie for that stupid padded lounge chair.
The unicorn. I know she calls it that, though she never says it in front of me anymore.
I laugh, because her head’s underwater and I can.
I shake as I think about her diving toward that chair, and standing under a stream of cherry Kool-Aid. Thank you, family dinners.
Sidney’s head bobs up, and down, and up, and down.
It’s quiet out here. The motor is barely running; the lake is only slightly choppy, yet to be churned up by a day’s worth of skiers, tubers, and Jet Skis.
And Tom was right, I’m already bored. I glance at my phone, sitting on the bench next to me.
It’s been ten whole minutes. Swimming in open water is so much slower than in a pool, even in a lake as calm as this one.
And Sidney doesn’t seem to be in any rush—maybe this is all part of her plan.
“I’m bored,” I say toward Sidney’s bobbing head, but of course she doesn’t respond. She doesn’t even pause to tell me I’m being a baby. She can’t hear you. The thought frees something inside me.
“I can’t believe you do this every other day.
” That’s a lie, though, because it’s totally something she would do.
“Scratch that. I can totally believe you’d do this every other day.
Because you’re the most obsessive person I’ve ever met.
You can’t do anything halfway. That’s why I have to pack my bags for vacation like I’m going off to war.
” I ramble on, to the open air. “You’re a worthy opponent, Sidney Walters.
You’re neurotic, and have a stick up your ass the size of a small oak tree, but you’re worthy. No doubt.”