Danielle nodded, apparently satisfied with this. I loved that I could make things better for her so easily.
My mother came back in, holding out some cash like it was the most brilliant idea she’d ever had, and said, “Here’s something for ice cream. A special treat to celebrate summer.” Her face got suddenly serious again. “Promise me you won’t get the kind with artificial colors.”
Dani rolled her eyes. I sat up, swung my feet to the floor, and took the money from my mother.
The Possible, I chanted to myself.
Everything is Possible.
Maybe I would continue to believe it. Maybe it would even be true.
Every summer, Danielle created a rock collection that she arranged in meticulous groups along the edges of our front porch. To most people, they looked random and unremarkable, easy to dismiss as a little kid’s Accumulation of Crap. But I’d learned to see what was special about each one.
As soon as Danielle and I stepped from the car across the lake’s parking lot, she bent to pick up the first member of the new crop.
“Look,” she said. “It’s a perfect oval. And so smooth.” She held the rock and stroked it with one finger as if it were alive.
“Mmmm,” I said in not-faked admiration. “Good for drawing a face on.”
Dani nodded, then clutched it to her chest as we walked over to the admission kiosk. The kiosk was actually a tall, narrow wooden house, and years ago Kendall and I decided it looked like a latrine so we called it the Crapper. A kid from school named Julian was working the Crapper today, perched on the metal folding chair, reading a book.
Kendall. God, I wished she were here and not camping with her older brothers, that she’d chosen me over them this weekend.
“Hi, Julian,” I said as we stepped up to the Crapper window. “One adult, one kid, please.”
“Hey, Ari,” said Julian, taking my money. He swished his eyes toward my arms. It had been over a year, but the buzz about my scars was still humming, because people could see them now. I’d stopped covering them up. I wasn’t trying to show them off or anything. At some point, they’d become a part of me. I woke up one day okay with them, the same way you’re okay with a birthmark or a white spot on your skin from a long-ago mosquito bite you never stopped picking at.
It was like a physical reminder of my depression, a way for me to accept that even though I had fought and won, it would always be there with me. And also that I had power to fight again.
“Ready for the season?” I asked Julian, who was still fixated on my arms. What do you think? Were they what you imagined?
Julian glanced back up. “There’s carpeting on the dock this year. Splinter-proof.”
“Fancy.” I smiled. No worries, you’re not the first person I’ve caught looking. The lookers used to bother me until my therapist, Cynthia, suggested that maybe people saw a little of themselves in those lines on my skin.
I’d recently asked Cynthia if I could take a break from our sessions for the summer. I was tired of talking about feeling okay and thinking about feeling okay. I wanted a chance to just, you know, feel okay. She’d said yes, but she’d also made me set an appointment for the first week in September to make clear this was a trial run. It felt like a challenge, and one I wanted to win.
It was early, the opening day crowd beginning to trickle in. I led Danielle to a nice spot under a tree far from last year’s. As far as I could possibly get from last year’s. Then I did a quick casing of the joint to confirm that nobody I knew was here yet, and that nobody else of particular interest—oh, for instance, nobody I’d had boring-devastating dreams about—had shown up either.
I prayed for him to come. I prayed for him not to come.
Danielle was ankle-deep in the water before I could even get the blanket spread out. “It’s so freezing ice-cold I’m gonna die!” she yelled. “Come in with me!”
“Wow, you really know how to sell it.”
“We’ll play whatever you want. Mermaids, dolphins. Sea monkeys!”
“Tempting. But I didn’t wear my suit today.”
Dani scanned my regulation tank top and black jersey skirt with distaste. Maybe that’s really when you become one of the grown-ups. You come to the lake and don’t even bring a damn suit.
“You’re not leaving those on, are you?” Danielle asked, pointing at my feet.
Oh. I’d forgotten about my boots. I’d worn them every day of the two months since I’d bought them and they didn’t even feel like footwear anymore. They were just soft purple leather perfectly molded around all the stuff at the bottom of my legs. Like I was a doll and someone had painted them on. Actually, that doll existed. I had two versions of it at home, one of them mint in box.
“They’re my Satina Galt boots,” I said. “You know I wear them everywhere.”