His breaths were short. They sounded like the fast, hard winds that pulled through the trees on fall nights. He felt like he should have been taking in the whole sky’s worth of air, but he was still gasping.
“Sam.” She yelled at him, held on to his arm even when he broke away from her.
He treaded water to keep himself up. He reached out for her, worrying that as soon as she settled she’d panic and stop swimming. But she kept her grip on him and dragged him toward the bank, scrambling like the water had fingers that would draw them both down.
She clawed her way up onto the bank, pulling him with her.
He knelt with his back to the river, forearms pressed into his thighs. Water from his hair dripped down the back of his neck, and his jeans stuck to his body.
“Sam,” she said, her voice quieter, wavering.
His shoulders hunched forward, curving around the pain that flared through his sternum.
She knelt in front of him. Her wet hair splayed out over her shoulders. Ribbons of water fell down her body. “Sam.” She grabbed his upper arms.
In that moment of her skin touching his, her looking into his face, he saw it. The spark of recognition, like the static off a doorknob shocking through her.
Her lips parted. Her eyes opened so much that even in the dark, he could see every shade of brown and gold. A small gasp matched the rhythm of his next breath.
She understood. She’d caught the defiance and the rage in him.
Each drop of water off his hair drummed against his skin like a needle.
He hadn’t slipped, or fallen in, or been dragged in by hands that hated him. He’d gone in on purpose, and she knew it.
At first, he did not register the shape of her hand. It flew quickly, a brown-winged bird with an underside covered in tiny, pale feathers.
He didn’t recognize that flash of lighter and darker brown as part of her until it struck his cheek. It pulled from his lungs what little air he had left, enough for a blunted sound at the back of his throat. And the force of her, the weight of how badly he’d wanted her to touch him even if it was this, to slap him, made the rain feel as distant as the stars.
bay of billows
They had never hit each other before, not once. Miel hadn’t hit him when he reached out to touch a baby rattlesnake they found twirling through the grasses. The sun turned it into a ribbon of pale bronze, and Sam had seemed like he wanted to pet it, like it was an animal in one of his mother’s stories.
And Sam had never hit her, never even come close. Not even when a boy at school called him the worst word Miel could think of anyone calling Sam, a word his mother had once, in their old town, found painted on the side of their house. Sam went at him, the closest she’d ever seen him to getting into a fight. But Miel grabbed him, hooking her arms through his, holding him, and she’d felt the rage in him. How he could have overpowered her, but didn’t because he wasn’t willing to hurt her.
Now Miel had reached across the space between them, breaking that seal on the years they’d known each other. Years of nights together, a few times fighting enough to stop talking to each other, and they’d never struck each other. And now she’d hit her best friend, the boy who came near her when to everyone else she was strange and made of water.
But she had gone into the river after him, thinking he needed her to save him, watching him and worrying with each second he stayed under. She’d hesitated by the edge only long enough to see his shape, the light flash of his shirt, the dark blur of his hair, his arms slack near his body. Then she’d let the water take her.
There was no joy in having covered herself in the water she was so afraid of. Its current called to her, reminding her that it had taken her brother, and her mother, and now it had almost taken her best friend. Its beads covered her skin, like fingers needling her. If she had stayed in that water a second longer, she would have felt the film of her mother’s dress brushing her shins, or her brother’s fingers grasping at her wrist, trying to save her.
Then Miel had seen Sam’s face, the lack of panic, the reckless edge in his expression. And she knew. The water hadn’t tried to steal him.
He’d let it have him.
Now they knelt facing each other, his hands on his knees, her arms crossed and held tight against her.
He hadn’t broken eye contact with her, even when she slapped him. It frightened her. And it made her want to brush his wet hair out of his face with her fingers, put her mouth on his hard enough that she couldn’t tell if she was kissing him or biting him.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He didn’t answer. He didn’t look away either.
“Why did you…” She could not say the words. She could not speak the truth that Sam had gone into the water, in all his clothes, in weather cold enough that he couldn’t pretend he was swimming.
“Sam,” she said, making the syllable sharp enough that he’d have to look at her.
A sheen of water made his eyes look like hot glass.
“Where are you?” she asked. “Where did you go?”
Sam’s breathing deepened but didn’t even. One inhale was slow and paused, the next sharp and broken.