26 MARK THE SPOT WHERE WE BURIED IT
26
M ARK THE S POT W HERE W E B URIED I T
We spent our days of break on that short stretch of beach, taking turns reading from a book about Ana Mendieta’s life. Saz wanted to be topless, so she lay between us and we read over her bare belly. The pages cast shadows where the sun couldn’t reach. It wasn’t quite warm enough to tan, but the ice had finally given way to true spring weather, and the sun made everything freshly pleasant. Faint goose bumps peppered over Saz’s stomach. I kept my shorts on and threw a bandaged arm over my eyes, tattoo obscured beneath it. Amrita read the most often out of all of us, her voice a gentle lull, fingers leaving wet circles on the pages. Caroline produced beers and shandies and endives in hummus, sandwiches Finch had made slick with mustard and cold from the cooler, strawberries halved and red in our sandy fingers. Sometimes I’d bite down, and that sand would crunch between my teeth. It made everything a little more delicious.
Our isolation made escapism easier. Caroline’s parents had a whole segment of steep sand dunes sloping down into private beach, and March was hardly peak season in Michigan, typically still cold and impenetrable. But we were lucky. The sun was warm overhead. The house itself was a dream, all pale blues and whites in a cottage-meets-craftsman style that was likely meant to emulate the other shoddy cabins along the shore but had far too much money invested in it to come across as anything other than opulent.
Despite all the comforts of staying in a nice house, I still awoke from nightmares most nights. But we didn’t sleep enough for it to be much of a problem. We drank all the time, or smoked Finch’s pre-rolls. We built bonfires on the beach. Skinny-dipped in the frigid water to the point of near hypothermia, raced each other down the dunes, drank coffee on the porch before the sun could rise past the conifers. We played bastardized croquet in the yard and read tarot in the sand. Slept in each other’s clothes. Brushed our teeth in one scrabbling cluster, spitting into the sink, foaming together there in the basin. There was only one rule—no Solo talk, no Rotham reminders. I was being so good. I’d almost forgotten I could paint at all.
Now Caroline had her hair up in a claw clip, sun bleaching it white. The thin straps of her bikini top slipped down her shoulders. Her skin glowed gold all the way down to her unbuttoned jean shorts. I shivered when the breeze picked up again.
“You’re missing an earring,” I said, gesturing to Caroline’s head.
She felt around her ears with a frown. “Fuck, really? It’s probably at the bottom of the lake by now.”
I grimaced. “You should embrace it. It’s very Moody-esque.”
“Dear diary,” Caroline said around the mouth of her beer bottle. “Today, Jo told me I looked like Moody. Maybe I should tie cinder blocks to my ankles and Virginia Woolf myself in Lake Michigan.”
“Oh, come on, that is not what I said.” My cheeks were hot, and I crossed both arms over my head to hide the color. Past the X of my forearms, I saw Saz fix her sunglasses and clear her throat. Amrita held her spot in the book with a thumb. Beneath her baseball cap, Finch’s eyes were flat and shadowed as she rummaged in the cooler beside her.
I regretted saying anything. We hadn’t spoken of any topics beyond immediate desires: swimming, drinking, eating. I’d been content to erase the moment shared with Caroline in the studio, my skin still whole and connected and my hyacinth resuming its typical itching, and she had been doing well the past few days now that we were away from Rotham—no strange disappearances or bouts of anger, no cryptic claims or fights provoked with Finch. They even had a few civil conversations about what to cook for dinner. Need outweighed their anger and fit us all into a comfortable rhythm. Everyone seemed to be happy to pretend the events of the last few months hadn’t happened. We were perfectly fine without a reminder of Solo, even one as innocent as Moody’s earring.
But still, in the echo of lake water lapping at stones and sand, all I could think about was Moody’s roster and the status of our names at the top of that list—what kind of notes she had made, where we stood as Soloists, which of us would be venerated above the rest by this time in two weeks.
Caroline pressed her head to my shoulder. I closed my eyes. Everything was soft and grainy—the sand under my back and sifting through the blanket, the sun’s white beam overhead, the brush of Caroline’s hair against my cheek. Her scalp was warm as I ran my fingers over it and twisted a lock around a knuckle. She hummed. I breathed her in, lotion smelling of grass and honeysuckle, the promising summer of her. For a beat, I let myself imagine the years to come. A line of houses on a street with our names on the doors. Five apartments in a high-rise, taking the elevator to coffee at their dining tables, falling asleep in the same beds, a movie playing on a projector. Nights on a beach like this one. A home where we each had a room.
The thought almost made me sick. I was so afraid of a timeline where it did not exist. I would have to take this moment—I would have to hold it and be happy with it.
“I want to be high,” Caroline said. She gave her thighs a perfunctory swipe with her palms as she pulled away from me and stood, sand scattering in her wake. “Let’s drink some tea.”
“Hear! Hear!” Saz said, raising a hand in triumph.
Inside, we found that the “tea” was a little jar of mushrooms that Caroline produced from her bag, steeped in hot water and squeezed with lemon to disguise most of the earthy taste. We stood around her in the kitchen as she tipped the fungi out into her palm, and I was immediately apprehensive. Behind my eyes I kept seeing the wide black of her pupils at the Manor party, the feral snarl of her mouth, her hands scrambling for a violent grasp on Finch.
Saz boiled water in a kettle until it screamed. Caroline weighed the mushrooms and dropped them into mugs.
“None for me, thanks,” Amrita said. I wondered if she was thinking about the same thing—how Caroline had been so unlike herself, how we wished she would stop pushing her own limits and putting the rest of us in the path of her destruction. I supposed, if I stepped outside of myself, I could see them all saying the same about me. I hadn’t exactly given anyone a reason to believe that I was fine.
Afternoon light turned the kitchen that burnt-gold kind of color that never failed to make me want to paint. The smell of coffee lingered. Crumbs littered the counter where we’d crafted our sandwiches. The recycling bin was full of bottles, yeasty and sour. Half of a severed and sweating watermelon sat on the table, not yet right for the season, a product of the bougie supermarkets Caroline’s parents frequented. Caroline drained her tea and set the mug down beside it. Saz followed suit, smacking her lips thoughtfully with each sip. We were a divide all over again.
Caroline smiled. “You sure you don’t want any, Amrita? Jo?”
She didn’t ask Finch, and Finch didn’t move or look at any of us, anxiously adolescent in her cuffed sweatshirt and basketball shorts, her feet bare on the rug before the kitchen sink, hair loose around her face.
Amrita shook her head no. I hesitated, and Caroline’s smile widened. She started to fix another cup without prompting me again. Finch made a sound under her breath, something disapproving.
The liquid in the mug Caroline handed me was the pale brown of lake water. I tipped it back until about half of the tea was gone—then turned and handed the rest to Finch. The look she gave me from beneath her eyelids was doubtful, but she put her lips where mine had just been and drank until the mug was empty. Caroline sighed.
“Well, you might have just fucked your trip. With the amount we added, you’ll barely experience more than a microdose,” she said, slinging an arm around my shoulders. “But I guess it’s a good place to start.”
Caroline wanted to walk up the dunes. Amrita said it was foolish to do so when we were already high, but Saz just ruffled her hair and laughed, told her not to be a stick-in-the-mud. Amrita went quiet for a while, and I could tell she was fretting in silence.
By the time we reached the foot of the dune, craggy with driftwood and half-concealed rocks, I was a little lightheaded, unsure what percentage of my deep breathing and loud heartbeat could be contributed to the drugs as opposed to paranoia. Sun beat off the water like a mirror, wind whipping sand around our legs. Caroline jogged ahead of us and spun in a circle with her arms outstretched as she whooped with delight. The dune rose eternal as she pushed forward, climbing the slope with Saz close behind her, sand slipping away from every foothold.
“Wait up!” Saz called, her dress blowing and tangling around her. “Your legs are too fucking long.”
We reached the summit, out of breath from the climb. The lapping sound of water amplified as I closed my eyes and let the glow cook my cheeks. Light pushed past my eyelids in pale shades of red. We were so close to the sky. It felt possible to reach out and touch it.
“Is it working?” Saz asked.
“I feel fucking fantastic,” Caroline sighed. “I haven’t felt this good since the sacrifice.”
My eyes slit open. Finch and Amrita were quiet. Caroline stared at the water, a pensive look on her face as she watched the water toil.
“Thought we were leaving that at Rotham?” Finch asked wryly.
Caroline ignored her in favor of turning to me. The look on Saz’s face was distant—she was smiling, but it felt like a defense, like trying to imbue the rest of us with an easy happiness, hoping the moment would pass without incident.
“Acting like we didn’t do what we did will never let us move forward. I’m not finished growing yet. I think we deserve the world.” Caroline turned to me and smiled, lazy and catlike. “Jo knows. Don’t you?”
I thought about Caroline’s arms around me, her mouth against my hair, her low voice saying, “I’m going to make it all better.” My bicep still throbbing with imagined pain. The misalignment between what I saw and what was true and what I was capable of believing.
“What do I know?” I asked.
But she lurched forward and took off without answering me. We watched her run, then throw herself to the sand and slide the rest of the way down the dune.
“Caroline!” Amrita called. “Wait!”
Finch started after her, sliding downward along the slope. Jagged pieces of old fencing and sharp brush marked their path. Then it was Saz, dress seized in her fists, steps unsteady along the decline. Caroline’s shrieks of joy continued as she got to her feet again and hit the ground running. She darted forward, stumbling, screaming, the water stretching out before her. Distant sailboats speckled the surface. Birds swooped past swollen white clouds.
“Fuck,” Amrita sighed, and then she picked her way down. I started to follow and lost my footing, debris cutting up the bare skin along my calves. I hissed with pain.
Caroline refused to slow. Sand flew up around her steps. She crashed forward into the water, spray rising like a storm.
“You shouldn’t swim like that!” Saz called, the desperate rise of her voice caught by the breeze and tossed away. At the bottom of the dune, I staggered to my feet beside her. One hand shielded her eyes. “The ground is moving,” she whispered. “It’s not safe. Can you see the colors rippling with the water?”
“Stay here,” I commanded. Finch waded into the lake. I couldn’t see Caroline anywhere. It was hard to drag air into my chest, each breath short and shallow, my lungs refusing to properly expand.
Waves crested and crashed. I watched for the rise of her head. Finch pushed through the lake and screamed Caroline’s name.
“I don’t see her,” Amrita panted beside me. “Can you see her?”
Saz splashed forward. Finch went under. She disappeared for a beat and then surfaced again.
Finally, Caroline bobbed back above the water, yards away from the rest of us. Finch called for her to come back. Caroline’s head was a blip among all the blue. I kicked off my shoes and plunged in, the water so fucking cold, the kind of chill that sank immediately down to the core.
In a flash she was under again. Finch was deep enough to swim, her arms cutting hard lines through the water. Coins of light refracted along the surface of the lake. Numbness crept from my waist down to my feet, shivering hard enough for my teeth to chatter, clothes wet and heavy enough to make it feel as if I were walking in a dream. I could see Saz’s colors now—tendrils of gold and green, just the faintest lines in the distance.
Finally, Caroline surfaced again, even farther. Finch pushed closer and snatched her arm. I stopped and watched them, Caroline lifted by Finch’s grasp like a siren come to devour, her laughter swelling and taking flight. She barely acknowledged Finch. Just threw her arms up in the air and tipped her head back. The two of them blue silhouettes against the white sky. Opposing duplicates, too alike in their differences. A reluctant pair.
Amrita swam past me. Her hair fanned around her, red shirt bright in the water. Together, she and Finch ferried Caroline back to the shore. We gathered on the sand again. Caroline was still laughing though she shook with cold, her lips a dead periwinkle and her skin a colorless white like Laura Palmer come back to life.
“That was amazing,” she sighed, her voice somewhere far and dreamy. “I could breathe under that water if you’d given me the chance.”
“You could have killed yourself,” Amrita said sharply.
“I could think of worse ways to die,” Caroline answered. Saz turned away. Finch stayed silent as she wrung water out of her shirt. Amrita led us down the beach with her eyes on the white house and never turned back. To our left, the sun began to set over the water. With its absence came a more brutal chill.
We took turns showering. Saz brushed and braided Caroline’s wet hair silently on the couch, frowning all the while. Amrita instructed everyone to sleep their trips off before retreating to the room she shared with Saz. I lay awake in mine and Finch’s, staring at the ceiling fan. She turned her back to me and drew the quilt up to her chin. I watched the fan turn until I could no longer keep my eyes open.
In the morning, I woke to find most of the house already empty. Barefoot and half-dressed, I poked around in the kitchen for sustenance—someone had already made coffee, and I found a bowl of washed raspberries in the fridge. Tomorrow we’d go back to campus. Back to bland Banemast food, the Manor, and the promise of Solo.
Finch sat in the living room with her sketchbook in her lap. I brought the raspberries to her and perched on the arm of the couch, looking over her shoulder at the open page. I listened to her pencil scratch the paper as she sketched Caroline through the gauzy kitchen curtains. Caroline stood past the glass with her eyes on the water again.
“How is she?” I asked.
“Fucking unhinged, as per usual. It was a bad idea to drink that tea.”
Shame made me shiver. The bowl of berries was cold against my thigh. Outside it was overcast, all the warmth of yesterday sapped away, spring banished once again.
“Thanks for getting her,” I said under my breath. We weren’t touching, but I could feel how warm Finch was through her clothes. She wouldn’t meet my eyes—just looked at my thigh, and the bowl resting on it, and the place where my thumb cupped blue-and-white china. She ate a berry. When she touched the paper again, it left a red smear.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said.
I worried. Now she looked up at me through her lashes, like she could feel it. “I don’t know what you assume, but I don’t want her to be unhappy either. I think she’s selfish and cruel and violent and smart and I love her to a fault. But you let her think she can get away with shit like this. You let her believe that it’s always going to be this way, that nothing can ever go wrong, that it’s all going to work out in her favor no matter how awful she acts. And I can’t let her do that. She doesn’t see the toll it takes on the rest of us.”
Finch was right—Caroline always got away with everything. Everything meaning the inevitable. She was so impossible to criticize. She made a joke out of every jab, and when she was wrong, she had you halfway convinced her answer was the better option. I loved that about her. I was so afraid of the lengths I would go to if I needed to explain away her actions.
A distant flutter behind my ear, thumping against the glass of the French doors that led to the porch. There were no bugs in sight. I swiped at the hair curling against the nape of my neck, as if that might make it better.
Finally, I whispered, “You can love someone and still wish them dead.”
“Don’t say that,” Finch snapped. “You know it’s not like that. I went out in that fucking water for her. I could have let her drown.”
The screen door banged in the breeze. My bare feet were numb against the floorboards; I kept looking at the beach and forgetting it wasn’t yet summer. The cold found us, no matter where we hid.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “What if she really does something awful to herself?”
Finch’s hands stilled against the paper. Her shoulder finally pressed against my thigh. Just that simple heat and I wanted her to drop it, to pull me into her lap, to kiss me on the corner of my mouth. But the dip in her voice paired perfectly with the plunge of my stomach. “You can’t love her back to life.”
I would only ever try.
For our last night, we made a bonfire down the shore. The sky awoke with stars, and the fire at our feet made its bed in the sand. We sat in a circle around it. The glow turned their faces into lively coals. Saz slid her knees forward and propped her chin atop them, looking at the flames.
“I don’t want to go back,” she said, pulling the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her exposed hands.
Music played from a speaker. Finch held a beer between her knees. Amrita toyed with the frayed hem of her sweatshirt, a string coiled around her finger. Caroline had barely spoken all day. She just stared into the fire and dug her toes down into the sand, shoes abandoned somewhere closer to the path that led back to the house. I wondered if she regretted yesterday’s swim—if she was crashing, or if she felt guilty for scaring us. The woods loomed against my back, but near the fire everything felt safe and warm. If I never turned around, I had nothing to fear.
“We could stay here forever?” Amrita tried.
“I wouldn’t mind that,” I answered.
The warm, delusional image of the five of us in that eternal house. The light in the kitchen left on all night. Snowy winters with firewood stacked by the back door and hot summers spent exactly like this—sitting around the fire, swimming naked and unashamed, shrieking at the sand spiders and eating dinner on the porch and letting the sun burn me just enough to remind me it had the power to.
We’d come to Rotham in search of more. But I liked good and simple. I couldn’t trust my eyes, but I could trust theirs. Now I was trying my hardest not to waste time, but it seemed impossible. Where was the delineation between wasted and treasured? Wasn’t time spent with the people you loved worth it enough?
I loved them. And it was a huge word, one my mom might have laughed at, one that plenty of people would tell me wouldn’t last. But if I said it was true love between the five of us, would anyone believe me? We had a marriage of minds—a selection made by dedicated time, by remembrance, by experiencing our hurts and hopes and honest delight in the same room. Love on purpose and love beyond kiss. Their hands on my shoulders or their heads in my lap and comfort in silence, in booming sound, in the rocking of waves against Caroline’s childhood home where we watched the sun go down.
If I told you it was forever love between the five of us, would you believe me? Finch’s eternal drive and passion, Saz’s belief in the unreality of magic, Amrita’s authoritative comfort, Caroline’s Midas touch and all the gold she gave us, the Manor and the way it held us as one.
If I told you it was a hurting love between the five of us, would you believe me?
I don’t know. I hardly believed myself.
That night, I woke to the sensation of the bed dipping beneath weight. I smelled her before I saw her hand on the pillow—smoke from the bonfire, her expensive shampoo, the faintest cling of salt.
“Are you asleep?” Caroline asked, beside my ear.
“Yes,” I said into the pillow. I shut my eyes again, so I wouldn’t lie to her.
“Good,” she answered. Her hand came up and held the back of my skull, stroking patterns against my scalp. “Stay like that.”
I remained still, the scent of her continuing to wash over me, mixing with the day’s sunscreen and something earthy and cool. Her nails gently raked over the skin at the nape of my neck.
“You’re so tense,” she whispered. “You’re scared of something. You wear it all over you, Jo. What’s got you so terrified? It’s not me, is it? Would you tell me if it was me?”
The way she spoke—languidly, thoughtfully, a ragged drag to her words—made me think that she wasn’t looking for an answer. She hooked an ankle over mine and settled closer, an exhale fluttering across my ear. One arm rested in the dip of my waist and pulled me back into her until we were two slotted spoons. Finch shifted in the bed on the other side of the room.
I considered pretending to be asleep again as she sighed against my shoulder. Finally, heart pounding like a drum in my ears, I said, “I’ve been seeing something. It follows me.”
Caroline nodded immediately. Her hair swished against the pillow as she tightened her hold on me. “Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”
It should have terrified me, to hear her say it. But the comfort that came over me was a rush of relief. My voice was muffled in the pillowcase as I said, “I think that ritual fucked us all up.”
She laughed a little, cloying. “Don’t be so negative,” she murmured. “I told you I was going to fix it, didn’t I?”
She had. And I liked to trust her, even when I thought she was keeping something from me, even when I was afraid of where she would go next.
“Keep sleeping,” she said. “I won’t go.”
I buried my cheek in the pillow. She held me for a long time, but in the end, her promise fell flat.
I felt her roll off the bed. Through the narrow slits of my eyes, I watched her pad across the room to the dresser where Finch and I spread our things—necklaces and rings, bottles of perfume and sunscreen, hair ties and brushes. Caroline picked up Finch’s brush. Her fingers worked through the bristles until they plucked a clump of hair free. She kept it there, balled in her fist. And when she finally left the room, turning the doorknob so its click wouldn’t alert me, I listened to her leave, her footsteps growing quieter and quieter until the house was nothing but a silent tomb.