Angie stood on the dock in the hazy dawn, blinking down at a fissure in the bottom, a jagged gash the length and width of a body. The muddy surface glistened with bloated sucker fish and soggy weeds, pockmarked with once-buried things—what looked like a broken fishing pole, a beer can, a tarp or maybe a deflated raft, the heaving back of a boulder. Around the lip, the mud was cracking, the water already soaked into the thirsty earth.
She squatted on her heels, her toes over the end of the dock, and wrapped her arms around her knees, fighting a shiver. She knew about sinkholes; in Earth Science, they’d learned about deep-down aquifers and the porous, fragile rock of the Verde Valley, but she also had grown up hearing stories about kids falling into them during hikes and bike rides, the legends of childhood. Devil’s Kitchen in Sedona was hundreds of feet down, and everyone knew there was more than one banana-seat bike down there. Bones rotted, metal rusted. The earth could eat you. Now it had eaten the lake.
The sun crept higher, the sky no longer gray but not yet blue. A non-color, something like the inside of a tin can. Crouched close, she could see more things in the lake mud. Cigarette butts, gum tinfoil, a condom wrapper—condoms, something she hadn’t ever needed. She swatted the gnats around her face, and her nostrils flared at the rotting smells. The images of Papa and Jess flicked and fluttered. She wanted to scream into all that ragged space. She couldn’t remember the last time she had screamed, had let fly until her throat burned. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
Her thighs cramped, so she stood up, grimacing, shaking out her muscles. Her right foot was numb, and she stamped it, hopping on it. As she did, perhaps because of the dimness and the lack of sleep, she lost her balance. She whirled her arms, trying to throw her weight backward, but it was too late.
The scream trapped inside came out now as Angie fell into the empty lake.
She landed on her side with a hard thump, the mud certainly not as yielding as the old lake water. She tumbled and skidded down the slope toward the gaping hole until the mud slowed her. She stopped a few feet from the sinkhole, in a seated position, as her rear end and legs sank down into the mud.
She swam her arms in the air, trying to wade forward, but the sucking mud held her legs fast. “Fuck,” she said, “Fuck,” her voice piercing the hushed morning. She began to cry a little, hiccupping, grit in her nostrils and mouth. A little girl stuck in the mud. A stupid skinny little girl. No wonder Jess didn’t—no wonder.
The mud was rough with sand and rocks. She pawed at it, scooping up a lump, and chucked it with all her strength at the sinkhole. It landed several feet shy of it, which made her so furious she punched the mud with both fists, the rocks scraping her knuckles. She got another good handful, but instead of throwing it, she rubbed it into her mouth. She shoved in another mouthful, lungs burning, before retching it up.
A siren wailed somewhere in the distance. Then someone called her name.
She craned her neck. Her father stood at the top of the lake, his white hair wild. At the sight of him, despite everything, the first thing she felt was a spurt of relief.
“Angela Juarez,” Papa called. “Jesuchristo. Get the hell up out of there.”
She shook her head.
“What do you mean, no? Ahora. Venga.”
“Stuck,” she whispered.
“Mi’ja. Please. Come up out of there. Let’s talk about this.”
She shook her head again.
“Maybe I misunderstood—”
“You saw,” she said, louder now. “You saw.”
“Talk to me. You can tell me, verdad? You can tell me anything.”
She thought about how he had seemed like a stranger in the hallway, and she started to say, “I can’t,” when the lake let out a ripping groan. A mammoth wedge of mud alongside her fell away, exposing a slash of blackness. She stared at the menacing hole in the earth, and the reality of where she was struck her hard. She screamed again. Hot adrenaline rushed into her limbs, and she tried to lunge upward. Her arms were sucked into the unforgiving mud until she was stuck up to her chest.
Papa yelled, “Don’t move. Dios. Mierda. Don’t move. Hold real still.”
She held as still as she could, breathing in shallow spurts. Sweat poured down her face, dripped on her lips. She thought she heard a splash.
Papa was sliding down the lake on his backside and hands, crablike, inch by inch. He said, “No, no. Angela. Ya voy. Ya voy.”
She was up to her neck. Her feet dangled beneath her, pulled by the dark gravity below. Mud pushed up around her ears and chin, and her mouth, until she was only eyes, eyes taking in her father. Papa, white-haired and wide-eyed, nostrils flared, plastered with mud. Papa, digging down and grabbing her shirt. Papa, his mouth moving fast—Por favor, he seemed to be saying, por favor—and pulling and pulling, all muscles and veins and tendons, making her think, again, about how much weight he could carry.
He got a hand, then two hands, under her arms, and he pulled her to him. Breathing hard, she pressed her face against his chest, let the thud of his heart echo into her. The glass rose higher. This time it shook loose. She let it roll on her tongue and then spit it into the air. “Love,” she said, but it was unintelligible, more like a grunt, against his body. Her voice was froggy, the deep croak of a stranger. It burned, that new voice, and she touched her throat.
“Ay. More than you know,” Papa said. He locked his arms around her.