That’s what I got for being her baby sister.
The more Ruby talked about me, the more the boys looked my way. She made me come alive when she said my name; her words gave me color, fluffed out my hair. You could tell by the way their flashlights fell on me, by where they fell, by how long they lingered, just what her words got them thinking.
“Right, Chlo?” she said. “Tell them you can do it. Go on, tell them.” I couldn’t see her face as she spoke, but I’d know the smile in her voice anywhere. The tease.
I shrugged, like maybe I could do what she said, maybe.
I was on the lowest rock, the one almost submerged in water. I was down below the waterline, where I could sink in my legs and kick. Here at the edge, we might catch a glimpse of the old stone foundations, some still standing in places. A wall, crumbling. A cellar doorway, left open. Maybe we’d spy a chimney poking up out of the water, a church steeple. From shore, the dark night made it seem like I could wade across, but that was only a trick, as the bottom dropped a few feet in. This reservoir was deep enough to bury whole towns—and it had. It had destroyed nine of them. Ruby knew this; she was the one who told me.
So I could stay on this rock, getting just my feet wet, then my legs up to my knees, no more. I could do nothing and she wouldn’t be mad tomorrow. But what would we have to talk about then?
I was fourteen, way younger than the boys poking at me with the beams of their flashlights. Hanging with Ruby’s friends meant I had to be careful of who was looking, whose bottle to steal a sip out of, who to let sit beside me in the dark where they knew Ruby couldn’t see. Less dangerous would be the reservoir itself, too large to keep track of in the night—an oil spill instead of a mapped and measured ocean.
That’s why, when she stood tall on the bed of rocks and pointed out into the night to say I could swim it right now, this dark minute, I didn’t protest. She meant the width of the reservoir, about two miles across, but it looked like she meant the night sky itself, that there was a universe of time unknown and I could cross it.
Most people weren’t aware of our reservoir’s history; they didn’t think about what had been here before. At night, it was just this indescribable thing without shape or color. This thing that could only be felt around you, when wading in, when you bent your knees and gulped air and let it swallow your head. Once under, all sound cut off. The water thickened the lower you sunk—with what, you didn’t think about, didn’t want to know. You had to watch your toes, because the jagged bottom could cut you, and hang tight to your clothes, if you were wearing any, because the reservoir was known to take what it wanted when it wanted it. Not just loose change and car keys but bikini tops and piercings come loose from decade-old holes. Ruby once lost a ring a boy gave her, a ring handcrafted by his father, given as a promise she never meant to keep. So for Ruby the reservoir took what she wanted, almost as if they shared an understanding. Everyone else had to be more careful.
This reservoir didn’t belong to us, though it lapped into our backyards. It cut through multiple towns across the Hudson Valley; it lined our roads. It was there past the trees, behind chains and No Trespassing signs, dammed up and shored in, but still sparkling in every kind of weather, calling us to drop our pants and jump in. It was part of the watershed that supplied New York City—just begging us to take advantage.