My hands are shaking and my knees feel funny when I step into the water. It’s so cold it stings my skin, like when I fell off my sled last winter and snow went up my pants leg. I couldn’t get it out fast enough. It was so cold it almost burned. But this time, I keep going no matter how much it hurts.
When the water is up to my chin and my teeth are chattering so hard I bite my lip, I think about turning back. Jeremy is so far away, I can barely see him and I can’t catch my breath enough to holler for him.
“J-J-Jer–” I try again.
I paddle out farther. My arms and legs weigh so much I can hardly move them through the water. It’s like trying to run in cold, thick soup. I fight to keep my chin up, gulping down the water that laps into my mouth.
I swim and swim and swim, watching the back of Jeremy’s head until he’s close enough for me to touch. It’s raining harder now. Big, fat drops are splattering on the back of my brother’s neck, and it’s running down my forehead and into my eyes.
I grab a handful of his dark hair and raise Jeremy’s face out of the water. His eyes are open, but they aren’t looking at me. They’re looking at something else, something I can’t see. I take his arm. It’s cold and feels kind of like that fish Dad brought home and made Jeremy skin.
My stomach hurts and my eyes burn. I feel like somebody’s squeezing me around the middle, squeezing me so hard I can’t even cry.
I take my big brother’s hand and I pull him toward me, toward shore. He floats pretty easy, so I swim a little and tug, swim a little and tug.
After a while, it gets harder and harder to move, harder and harder to keep my face above the water. The shore, the grass, the back door of my house…they’re all getting farther away, not closer. I’m scareder than I’ve ever been before. Even scareder than that time Jeremy made me watch The Evil Dead.
Jeremy seems heavy now, like he’s trying to drag me down every time I pull on him. “Swim, Jer, swim,” I mumble through a mouthful of water. “Please.”
I go under. When I try to scream for help I know won’t come, water goes down my throat. I try to cough, but I can’t. There’s no air.
I can see light above me and I use my heavy arms and legs to crawl toward it. When I finally get my face out of the water, I grab for my brother’s hand. I hold onto it tighter than I’ve ever held onto anything before, even my favorite G.I. Joe soldier.
I paddle as fast and as hard as I can, pulling Jeremy behind me until I can touch the squishy bottom of the lake. I pull and tug and drag me and Jeremy to the shallowest part of the water and I roll him over.
His lips are blue and his face is still so white. But it’s his eyes that scare me the most. They don’t look like he’s awake. But they don’t look like he’s asleep either. They sorta look like mine feel–scared. Like he saw something that made him want to hide, but he didn’t get away fast enough and now he’s just…froze.
I shake his shoulders. I scream my brother’s name. I cry even though I don’t want to.
I give in and pound on his chest. I know that if he gets up, he’ll punch me in the back of the leg until I say “uncle,” but I don’t care. I just want him to get up. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t get up. He doesn’t move at all. He just slides in the mud until he’s back in the water.
I try to reach for him, but my feet slip and I almost fall in. That scares me so bad, I scream my head off. I can’t go back in. I won’t come back out if I go in the water again. I just know it.
Don’t make me go back in! Don’t make me go!
But what about Jeremy? What about my brother?
I cry as quiet as I can as he floats away from me again. I watch his white ghost face until the only thing I can see is black. And nothing else.
ONE
Muse
I SHAKE OUT the three hundred dollar sweater I just folded for the third time and I start over. Somehow keeping my fingers busy seems to calm my brain. It gives me something to think about other than the man I’m waiting on and how worried I am about taking this step.
When the icy blue cashmere is folded perfectly–for the fourth time–I lay it on top of the others in the stack and check the time on my phone again.
“It’s almost noon, dammit!” I mutter, as if my friend, Tracey Garris, can hear me all the way across town. She’s the one who knows this guy. I should’ve gotten more information from her, but she was in a rush this morning and she’s in a meeting now, so I’m stuck waiting. Information-less. I only know what she muttered so briefly before she hung up, something about a guy coming by and his name being Jasper King.
I let out a growl of aggravation and grab another sweater, flicking it open with enough force to cause one sleeve to snap against the table like a soft crack of thunder. For some reason, I feel a little better for having taken out a bit of my frustration on something, even if that something is an innocent piece of very pricey material.
Rather than climbing right back onto a ledge of frustration, I purposely tune out everything except the words of the song playing overhead, If I Loved You. It always reminds me of Matt, the guy I left behind. The guy who should’ve hated seeing me leave. The guy who would’ve hated seeing me leave if he’d loved me like I wanted him to. But he didn’t. He let me go. Easily. And now, even after eight long months, it still makes my heart ache to think of him.
I don’t shy away from the pain. In some twisted way, I bask in it. Like most artists, I welcome all kinds of emotions. Good or bad, they inspire me. They color my life and my work like strokes of tinted oil on pristine white canvas. They make me feel alive. Sometimes broken, but still alive.
After I finish the sweater, I move through the store, lost in thoughts of my ex and how much it hurt to say goodbye. I’m straightening a rack of ties when the chime over the door signals the arrival of a customer. I catch movement in my peripheral vision and absently throw a polite greeting in that direction. “Welcome to Mode: Chic,” I say, feeling both resentful and relieved at the interruption.
I get no response, so with a deep sigh I even up the last row of ties and smooth my vest before turning to find my visitor. When my eyes settle on the interloper, all thoughts of Matt and the past and every trouble in the world melt away for the time it takes me to regain my breath.
A man is standing behind me. I didn’t hear him approach, didn’t smell cologne or soap, didn’t sense the stir of the air. He was just coming through the door one second and looming right behind me the next.