chapter thirteen #2
Through the water, I hear splashing. I raise my head, and my legs sink.
I tread water. The ocean floor, the desert, is close enough that my toes brush against it as I kick.
Peter is wading into the water. He’s shed his trench coat and is shirtless.
I stare at his tattoos, black feathers and swirls that curl over his chest muscles and around his biceps.
Someday I need to ask him what they mean.
He halts a few feet from me, the water halfway up his chest, just under his nipples.
He looks like an angel, lost from Heaven, fallen into the sea.
He thinks I’m beautiful, I think. I shake my head as if to clear that thought.
“You lost this ocean,” he says.
It’s a statement but I hear the question in it anyway. “Yes. I used to swim all the time as a kid.” There are memories upon
memories in that simple sentence, a lifetime of moments drenched in salt water, of dreams and daydreams that I dared imagine
while I floated on my back, of afternoons that didn’t end.
“Why did you stop?”
“I grew up.”
Peter quotes softly, “‘Why can’t you fly now, Mother?’ ‘Because I am grown up, dearest. When people grow up they forget the
way.’”
“I ran out of time. I had to work. You know, those kinds of reasons. Bad reasons. Real reasons. But I did miss it. I don’t
think I even knew I missed it. Do you think . . . it’s really here because of me?”
Instead of answering, he fills his lungs and then ducks underneath the water.
Mimicking him, I duck down, too, and open my eyes underwater.
The salt water stings my eyes, but I ignore it.
Underwater, the ocean teems with fish that shouldn’t be here: tropical fish of red, blue, and purple, iridescent deep sea fish that glisten with their own rainbow light, freshwater salmon, dozens of pet-size goldfish .
. . Suddenly, the fish part, startled, as Peter swims through the water toward me.
He catches my hand, and we burst out of the water together to breathe.
Water droplets bead on his chest and roll off his hair.
And he looks so perfect that I want to touch him, to know he’s real.
“Thank you for saving me,” I say. “In the void.”
He nods. He’s looking at me so intensely that I feel as if I’m stuck in the sand. The water crashes around me, and I am motionless.
“You know it’s possible that there are sharks here,” he says.
“You had to say that.”
“I didn’t have to.” He’s grinning. “I chose to.”
I roll my eyes at him. Only a little while ago, I was so close to despair that I nearly died, and yet this man has the power
to make me feel like laughing. “Luckily, I didn’t lose any sharks.”
“Have you ever seen one?”
“No.”
“Maybe you lost your chance to see one.”
“I’ve never seen a—”
Stepping closer, he puts his fingers on my lips. “Don’t tempt the void.” He’s dripping with water, seawater over his muscles.
I’m aware my clothes are clinging to me. It’s suddenly harder to breathe air than it was to hold my breath under water. My
eyes are drawn to his lips, and my body feels drawn to him as if my bones are metal and he is magnetic.
Abruptly, I step backward and look toward the void. It sits on top of the sea about a quarter mile away, plunging itself into
the water. “Can it hear me? Is it alive?”
“Maybe, and not exactly.”
“But it can grow.”
“See, knew you were clever.”
I splash water at him. He skips backward and splashes me back. I sweep my arm through the water and fling the wave toward
him. He retaliates by shoving water toward me. I skip back, trip, and fall into the water.
He holds out his hand like a gentleman. “I think that means I win.”
I kick his ankle in an attempt to sweep his feet out from under him. It doesn’t work. He doesn’t budge. Instead, he releases my hand, and I fall backward again, splashing into the water. When I come up to the surface, I’m laughing.
On the shore, in the desert, Claire is shouting, “Shark! Shark!” Victoria and Sean are shouting with her and pointing. Great, I think, everyone is mocking me and my ocean. Except that they couldn’t have heard Peter’s joke from shore . . .
I turn and see a dorsal fin. Waves push against my legs, and my feet sink into the sand. I feel the fish around my ankles,
brushing their scales against my skin, touching their puckered lips to my legs and then vanishing in a swirl of water. Shark. I didn’t mean to—
And then the dolphin blows water out of its spout.
I laugh again, and my laugh feels wild and free.
It’s surreal, all of this. All of this is an extended, supertrippy dream.
“I am going for a ride,” I announce. I push forward through the water toward the dolphin. The dolphin swims in lazy figure
eights. His fin breaks the waves. He’s silvery, sleek, and strong, as if he were a single streamlined muscle undulating in
the water. I’ve never been this close to a dolphin before, but I am not going to be afraid. It’s a dolphin. And it’s here
somehow, impossibly, miraculously, magically. I grab on to its fin, and the dolphin takes off.
Cutting through the waves, I feel as if I’m flying. Water streams around me, and my feet trail in our wake. The dolphin turns,
whipping me around with him, and he shoots through the ocean back toward shore. I see Peter closer, closer, closer, and I
release.
I sink down. My feet touch the bottom and I stand up, my toes in the sand. I feel light-headed and giddy. The dolphin leaps
out of the water and then swims away. Peter is looking at me with an unreadable expression. “What?” I ask.
“‘The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven.’ Still think this place is so terrible?” He sounds wistful.
“It has its moments,” I concede. And for an instant, I feel as if I can’t move. My eyes are locked on his, and I want to reach
for him and erase the hint of sadness that I see in his face. But then I hear Claire calling to us.
I wade toward shore. My wet clothes sag around me, and it’s like dragging weights on my legs to move forward as I emerge.
I feel the dry desert air picking at me. The sun blazes down, and I squint to see Claire hopping from one foot to the other
on shore. As soon as I reach her, she cries, “Teach me how to do that! I want to swim with dolphins!”
“You got it.” I ruffle her hair.
“Hey, you’re wet!” she protests.
I shake like a dog, spraying her with water from my clothes. Laughing, she skips out of the way. I turn to Victoria and Sean.
“Is our deal still on?” I ask Victoria.
Victoria smiles. She’s holding Sean’s hand with a grip that looks painful. “I can’t make promises for the rest of town, but
you have our friendship.”
It’s a start, I think. “I don’t know why he left, and I don’t know why he hasn’t come back. I’m just as trapped here as the rest of you,
and probably more clueless.”
“I already said I won’t shoot you.”
“I know, but . . .” I trail off and squint at her. It could be the light but . . . I look at Sean and then at Peter and then
back to Sean and Victoria. A soft white light crinkles around their silhouettes. It reminds me of the overfriendly woman from
the diner, Merry. “Is it me, or are they glowing?”
Sean and Victoria look at each other. Their eyes grow wide, and their mouths part in nearly identical expressions.
And then they laugh, joyously and loud, the sound traveling over the ocean waves and melding with the sound of waves breaking and then crashing on the desert shore.
It’s contagious. I find myself smiling, and then I notice that Peter isn’t looking at them.
He’s looking at me with so much raw hope in his eyes that I feel stripped bare.
Claire is clapping and jumping up and down. “You did this! You helped them find what they lost!” She leaps at me and wraps
her arms around my neck. She then jumps back. “Still wet!”
“I don’t . . .” I begin, pulling my gaze away from Peter. The two of them have tears in their eyes. Their hands are clasped,
and their smiles are tentative, sweet, and completely clichéd in their adoringness. “But . . .”
Peter points to the ring on Victoria’s finger. “Claire is right. You found what they needed. You did it, without the Missing Man. Congratulations, Little Red, you just became interesting.” He says this in such a dry tone
that I can’t tell if he’s serious or not. I wonder what it means that I’m Little Red again, not Lauren, and if he truly means
to imply I wasn’t interesting before. I can’t ask him, so I focus instead on Victoria and Sean.
“But . . .” I don’t see how what they lost could have been each other when they were here together long before I arrived.
Besides, Sean said the ring was intended for someone else, someone he didn’t marry. I don’t know how to frame the question
without opening an awkward conversation. They’re beaming at me with wonder and awe. I feel my face flush red.
Peter waves his hand in the air. “You filled their emptiness!”
Sean clasps my hands. He kisses them as if I’m a queen. I half expect him to bow. “I don’t know how we can ever repay you . . .”
“I didn’t do much.” Worming my hands out of his grasp, I point to Peter. “He brought us out of the void.”
“Twice,” Peter says to Sean with false modesty.
“I brought everyone here out of the void at least once. You, I saved twice. As I recall, you tried to fillet me for it.” He attacked Peter?
I look from Peter to Sean, and I see Sean lower his eyes.
I feel my hands curl into fists, and I want to step in front of Peter, even though he doesn’t need defending, not now and not by me.
“Even worse, you never even made me your famous meatloaf.”
Sean’s eyes light up. “Yes! Let me cook for you. Please. It’s the least I can do.”
Claire jumps up and down. “Sean’s special meatloaf!”
Victoria is shaking her head. “We can’t guarantee your safety at the diner—”