I Found a Girl in the Water

3.

And the next morning, I woke up to the sound of seagulls that I knew from experience were flying around by the tiny dock where my parents' boat was moored. And in my parents' bed of my parents' house, I woke also to the sounds of splashing. I thought it was the seagulls coming in for a water landing. I did not think it was my houseguest until later.

I wrapped my parents' sheet around me like a cape, my hand the broach, and swept down the creaky stairs. In the kitchen, I made the girl another mug of hot cocoa from the powdery mix that would make me sneeze if I inhaled. I put the stirring spoon in the dirty mug from last night, which now sat cold and congealed in the white sink.

With one hand holding the cocoa mug and the other keeping my sheet pressed to my body, I ascended the stairs again and took a right at the top to reach my old bedroom. The blankets were rumpled, but there wasn't anyone wrapped in them. On the wrinkled pillow was a note that read, Thank you for being so kind to me, but I know what I need to—

I didn't read the rest. I dropped my sheet and mug to fall on the floor with a swoosh and a crash, respectively, and hurried to the bathroom. I tugged at the medicine cabinet, which was still locked. I checked the shower, which still had its usual razors. I pulled open the drawers under the sink, which still held their bleaches and cleaners. Then how?

My eyes widened. The water.

My bare feet swung me around and hit the floor made splinterproof by years of wear, and I ran out of the bathroom in nothing but my comfortable underwear, and ran down the stairs with my hair getting in my mouth, and I ran past the empty bottle of Tylenol on the outdated living room rug with my heart beating fast. I ran out the front door wondering if this was how my parents had felt.

My feet hit the fine, rocky sand and set it flying up behind me as I ran to our small dock. My matted hair, still in its tangled braid from the night before, thumped on my back as my feet drummed on the soft dock wood a hollow sound. I reached the end, and, in the same apprehensive way I had peered over the side of my parents' boat, looked over the edge.

The girl was floating on her stomach again, hair fanning out around her head like a halo, dress weighing her down and looking like albino seaweed in the greenish gloom of the water. She was too far down to reach, so I jumped in. The water got in my mouth, and it tasted like ice from an old freezer and how your hands smell after you go digging in your wallet for change.

No, I said as I pulled her over. Her head lolled back in my crisscrossed arms. No, I said to her slack face.

And turning my face to the white morning sun, I shouted, Help! I kicked hard in the water as I dragged her to shore, shouting for help between mouthfuls of the water that was more sweet than salty and more bitter than sweet. Help us!

No one did. I rolled the girl sideways on the sand so the water could dribble out of her mouth and ran inside, not worrying that my wet feet were tracking stuck-on sand onto the wooden floors. I pressed the buttons that would help me reach people in trucks with flashing lights and wondered if the girl was going to wake up. I wondered what my parents would have said about all this.

I found a girl in the water.

And I found her there again.