If not me—Ruby would never, ever let it be me—then would London do? Had they changed their minds and would they take her back now? Would it work if I threw her in? If I did, then would someone I wanted to see more than anyone in the world come walking out in her place? Someone wearing a sundress in the night, drenched through and showing blue shaking knees, a braid of seaweed for a toe ring, hair longer than I’d ever seen it, a new freckle I’d get to know on her nose? Was it wrong to wonder these things? Could anyone blame me if I did?
But London had distanced herself from the water; she wasn’t even on the rocks anymore. She was on flat, dry ground, closer to the bank of trees, as if about to make a run for it. She whipped around, eyes skittering. She was hyperventilating and couldn’t speak.
“See something?” I asked her.
“I thought—I almost thought . . .” Then she was shaking her head, shaking it away. She wasn’t going to say it out loud, wouldn’t let me have it, not this one little thing.
A sound came from the woods—one of the boys she’d come here with, shouting her name.
She snapped out of it. There was a party to go to, Owen’s party. He could walk again; everyone who was anyone in town would be there.
“Gotta go,” she said. And she took off, stepping fast into a trot, a trot that turned into a full-out run, unapologetically running away from me, as if I’d spooked her.
I could hear her crashing through the woods. Tearing past trees, pitching herself up and over the fence. In the near distance an engine roared; tire skin got lost on asphalt as they hit highway, and I was left alone, here at the edge of Olive.
Alone with Ruby.
I took a step closer to the water. I was always hesitant at first, careful. There were the hands that might make a grab for me, and I knew how strong the people were down at the bottom, how their weight got doubled by the water, but how fast they still were, faster than you’d think.
All it took was one tug.
Then you’d fall.
Imagine tumbling through a dark tunnel, its walls made of mud and nothing to hold on to, nowhere to climb. Imagine distance was measured in cupfuls, and someone just poured in a whole lagoon. Imagine being so drenched, your bones got soggy. Imagine the cold.
It’d be wet like nothing I’d ever felt before, not even that time our mom left me too long in the bath and Ruby came home to find me pruned and greased up with soap, splashing a tidal wave over the bath mat.
Falling would last a day and a night and part of the day after that—the reservoir was deeper than anyone who dug it in 1914 even knew. And when I hit bottom, I’d look up and up, and there’d be muck in the way—leaves and scum and tire goo, and junk like old sneakers and bottles people threw in—and that’s all I’d see of sky from then on.
All that, Ruby used to tell me.
Now, I stood at the edge. I didn’t call her name; I wasn’t deranged, not like people said. She wouldn’t have been able to hear me if I did, not with all the water in the way.
I thought about what happened. She’d tried to save me—twice. The first time, when I almost drowned, she reached out to find someone to give instead and it only happened to be London. But the second time, the worst and final time, she jumped in herself to take my place. I would have gone instead, if only I’d known.
If she could hear me, that’s what I’d tell her.
I climbed out to a rock I often sat on, the one that jutted past the others, half-submerged. I felt like one of those kids with a relative in prison, counting off their sentence until the day they got out. A wall of glass separated them, and armed guards were always watching. No touching, not ever. They could bring gifts if allowed: magazines, and pictures to paste on cell walls, but everything would have to be searched first. And once they left, they couldn’t send texts.