Without Felix, I am not myself.
Shaken, I walk over to the sink, splash some water on my face. I avoid looking at my reflection, just keep my eyes down and try to convince myself that it’s all okay. When I manage to take a deep breath without it hurting, I leave the bathroom.
Right by the exit, in the little corridor between the bathrooms, I see Emma leaning against the wall. She’s in her work shirt, her hair in a bun. “Hey,” she says when she sees me. “You okay? I saw you rushing in there looking like you were about to pass out. Wanted to make sure we hadn’t poisoned you or something.” She looks over her shoulder toward the kitchen. “I probably shouldn’t say that so loud.”
I somehow manage a laugh. “Yeah, I’m okay.” Not sure I even believe that, but what the hell else should I say?
I’m expecting her to nod, lead me back to my table, say good-bye.
Instead, she pulls her phone out of her pocket and checks the time. Then she says, “Are you done eating?” I nod. “Can you give me, like, five minutes? Then wait for me outside?”
“Um,” I say. “Why?”
“I have this weird thing where if I only see someone in one location I can’t ever be sure that they’re a real person.” She readjusts her glasses so that they’re not on the bridge of her nose but out of the way, up above her forehead. Two tiny indents mark the spot where they’ve rested all day. “Plus, you’re new to town. I like showing people around. You’re free, right?”
I manage a smile. “Yeah,” I say.
“Five minutes,” she says. “Don’t bail on me.” She turns the corner. Outside, tourists walk by holding dripping ice-cream cones, changed out of their beachwear into pleated shorts and sundresses. I’m constantly on the lookout for that rising feeling of dread in my chest again, but everything seems calm within me.
Emma appears in front of me, her work shirt unbuttoned to the tank top beneath it, her bag slung over her shoulder, glasses still resting on her head.
“So, am I a real person now?” I ask, getting up.
“Yet to be determined,” she says. “We’re still too close to the restaurant. Ghosts have some range.”
“Ah, of course. I knew that.” I smirk at the irony.
Emma asks if I’ve seen the lake yet, and I admit that I haven’t even really thought about visiting it. “I saw the beach,” I offer.
“Ugh to the beach.” She looks at her phone for a second and then drops it into her bag. “Do you have any shattered dreams?”
“What does that mean?”
“Any huge disappointments? Life stomping down on you? Hope flittering away from you like sand spilling from the cracks between your fingers?”
I blink at her.
“Good,” she says. “This lake can unshatter dreams. Guaranteed. Dip a single toe in and your hopes are restored.”
She leads us away from downtown, up a street that turns into a hill. It’s a full moon, and I’m amazed by how much light it provides. There’s no real sidewalk, just the side of the road, grassy banks next to the shoulder. Few cars pass by us, and I’m constantly shocked by how quiet things are here.
“How does it do that?”
She gives me this excited look, eyebrows cartoonishly raised, goofy smile. “I want to keep it a secret but suck at keeping secrets, so we have to change the subject while we walk or I’m gonna ruin it.”
“Okay,” I say. “What about...um...” I ransack my thoughts for anything funny to say, anything that’ll make her want to keep this walk going. I look around for clues, see that it’s all moonlit shadows and trees. I finally land, somehow, on: “My brother died.”
Emma meets my eyes, and I realize what a colossally poor conversation subject this is. Emma doesn’t say anything, because I just held a pillow over this conversation’s face and watched the breath drain out of it.
“When you said ‘change the subject,’ you meant to the most depressing thing I could think of, right?”
I’m not sure if I’m digging myself into a deeper hole, but Emma laughs and says, “Yeah, that was rough. But at least now I know taking you to the lake is a good call.” We walk quietly for a while. “Is that why you had that little moment in the restaurant? Because he’s dead?”
I turn to look at her, taken aback. “Basically,” I say.
“I never had any siblings,” Emma says. “I always wanted them, though. I usually pretended friends were sisters or just made them up inside my head. They’d only show up at night, when I was waiting for my parents to get home and relieve the babysitter. I’d pretend they were taking care of me instead of whichever neighbor’s teen daughter was watching me.
“My parents are both chefs so they were always working a lot,” she says, grabbing at a long stalk of grass and twisting it in her hands. “This was back when they were still together and we lived in New York. But they could barely handle being parents and cooks at the same time, and they sure as shit couldn’t handle a marriage on top of it. Anyway, it’s probably why I always have a book on me now. I need something to keep me company.”
In the silence that follows, I glance over at Emma, seeing her face in the moonlight. “That’s also why I’m constantly inviting people to do things with me,” she jokes, not meeting my eye.
“Including near-strangers-slash-possible-ghosts that hang around your place of work.”
“Exactly.” Emma finds another nearly invisible break in the woods, leads us back out to the street. I can see the lights from downtown, and I’m surprised to see how high we’ve gone up the hill. “Wait for it,” Emma says, reading my expression. “It gets so much better.”
Near the top of the hill there’s a scenic overlook on the side of the road, but Emma leads me across the street and into the woods again. We have to fight through brambles to reach the peak, me and this girl I don’t really know.
On one side, the moon reflects off the crystalline lake that’s at the near end of the island and gives the place its name. It really does look like a needle’s eye. The moon looks like some fantastical orb that lives in the lake, only visible from this one spot. It’s as if we’re witnessing something in another dimension. To the other side there’s the town, a spattering of lights that would pale in comparison to any neighborhood in Mexico City, even its most remote suburbs.
All around us, the ocean does a weak impersonation of the lake’s reflection of the moon, the waves too disruptive for the water to be a mirror but still stained beautifully by the silver glow. And to the east, just beyond the silhouette of another island, the lights of Seattle are a haze on the horizon.
“How do you know about all these amazing spots?” I ask.