Sabine

“Ever wonder what’s down there?” asks Vera, on the first afternoon of their stay at the lake. Barefoot, she pads along the dock’s splintered silvery boards towards Sabine, who is seated in an old beach chair with a magazine in her lap. Sabine does not look up; Vera continues on, settling herself on the dock’s edge and letting her toes brush the water.

“Seaweed. Rotting timber. Muck,” says Sabine.

Vera shakes her head. “Besides that.”

“… Fish.”

“Sabine.”

“Vera.”

Though Vera is peering into the green-brown lakewater, she can hear the irritation in her old friend’s voice.

“There’s nothing,” Sabine says. “Just lake.”

Vera clicks her tongue in teasing censure at Sabine’s lack of imagination, but there is no response. She falls silent, laying her cheek upon her knee, and watches the play of light and shadow upon the water.

Beneath the dock, the waves slap against the posts. 

—

They were seven years old when they found each other. Tiny second graders with backpacks as big as their entire bodies bobbing along behind them, Sabine weighed down by reading and math primers, Vera by coloring books and toys. It was the first day of school. With wide eyes, they watched as their guardians waved goodbye and turned to leave.

Did Vera have friends before Sabine moved to town? If so, they must have not mattered very much to her; she has no distinct memories of them. Maybe a vague recollection of a birthday party, the kind where everyone in the class was invited. Not much else. She’d made her own fun, before Sabine. Been her own best friend.

But on that first day of school, from across the pastel-hued room, they saw each other. Already Sabine had an air of aloofness about her, thick honey-blonde hair neatly braided and brown eyes flashing warily. But underneath, Vera saw the slightest tremor of vulnerability. Of loneliness. Though they were tiny, though they were young and scared and not yet fully aware of who they were let alone who they might become, when they locked eyes, there was a glimmer of recognition. Something shared, an understanding: like recognizing like.

Vera had been the one to address it, as has always been her wont. “Can I sit here?” she asked. Without waiting for an answer, she had dropped herself into the empty chair beside Sabine’s.

In return, Sabine offered her a shy smile. “S’pose so,” she lisped.

That had been that.

— 

The place isn’t quite in the shambles Sabine had been expecting, considering she has not been back in a decade. It is smaller, though. In her recollections of the summers she and her mother spent here, she has built it up to something larger than life. The fishing cabin had been a monument to stability throughout her adolescence, as her mom rebounded from years of stability—she’d called it stagnation—by flinging them from town to town in dizzying succession. No matter how many times they’d moved, no matter how many jobs her mom quit or was fired from, no matter any of it, there was always summer. Even now, the memories shine like sunny days.

In reality, it’s just a sad, squat log cabin. It smells like mold and neglect. At the front, towards the lake, a combined dining and living room overlooks the cove through a wall of windows. There’s a poorly stocked kitchenette off to one side. At the back, a hallway leads off to two spartan bedrooms and a single bathroom. A circuit of the entire place can be done in under a minute.

When she thinks Vera isn’t looking—she doesn’t want the other woman to know how long it’s been—Sabine studies the place. She’s mortified by the prevalence of cobwebs, dust, and mice droppings everywhere.

Yet although outside the weeds stand waist-high and hide the path down to the dock, though the thrift store furniture sags and smells of mildew and has certainly seen better days, though the gutters and screened windows are choked with pine needles and moldering leaves from the copses of trees that overlay the property, Sabine cannot stem the earnest joy she feels at being back, after all this time.

Besides, the push-reel lawn mower is just where she remembers it being, in the little bunkie on one side of the cabin; the cleaning supplies under the bathroom sink make quick work of the insect and vermin trappings; there’s not much to be done about the sagging furniture, but she throws open all the windows and puts an old bottle of Febreze to good use. That seems to help with the smell.

Little by little, during those first days at the cabin, she sets things to right.

Still. On the night the women arrive, after hours of driving, Sabine locates two musty sets of sheets tucked away in the bathroom cupboard and makes the beds. She lets Vera have her pick of the rooms. Without discussion, and with no way of knowing she’s done so—as there are no decorations adorning either—Vera chooses the room where her mother always slept.

And Sabine finds she is relieved.

—

“Headed out for a walk?” Vera inquires from her deck chair the next morning, as Sabine breezes out through the screen door onto the porch. On the table sits a half-drunken cup of black tea.

“Mm,” she replies, a dismissive hum.

“Want some company?”

Sabine stares at the lake, squinting against the bright morning. The sky above is a perfect robin’s egg blue and the light seems to be reflected everywhere, from the rolling silver of the waves to the dew-studded grass on the lawn.

Something catches her eye. There, in the bright surface of the lake, she thinks she sees a shape, like the head of a swimmer rising out of the water. She blinks and it’s gone. An otter, maybe. Or a flying fish.

At last, she gives an apathetic shrug.

Vera sighs. “See you this afternoon?”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Sabine shoots back, already turning towards the gravel road that leads off into the woods.

“Enjoy, then,” mutters Vera.

Sabine spares only a fleeting glance backwards. Now Vera is staring out at the lake too, arms wrapped tightly around herself. She is frowning. Sabine hurries on.

—

“What’re you doing?” Sabine had asked her one day, all those years ago, eyes round with wonder at the panoply of colorful blocks and dolls arranged upon Vera’s desk. It had been free time, when they’d been allowed to play with the pastel classroom’s toys however they’d seen fit. At her desk, their teacher sat sipping her coffee, tendrils of hair escaping her bun and clothes wrinkled. She was resting her face in the palm of her hand.

The look Vera gave her had been one of barely-restrained fervor. Her dark hair dangled limply in her face and her sweater bore a streak of ketchup down the front, but she didn’t seem to notice or care. Her green-gold eyes were wild, her gap-toothed grin eager.

“She is the hero,” Vera said, pointing to the Power Ranger placed upon the carefully constructed heap of blocks. “She’s a princess. Her realm is mostly water. She’s in her castle right now because it’s daytime. At night she turns into a sea serpent and protects her country from invaders.”

Sabine scoffed. “A princess can’t be a sea serpent.”

“Sure she can,” Vera argued, “Long as she doesn’t tell anybody. Nobody can know.”

“Nobody knows?”

How solemnly Vera had nodded. “Yeah. It’s her secret. ‘Cept for me, of course. I know.”

Sabine reached out, just as careful, just as eager, and brushed her finger over the Power Ranger’s plastic pink cowl. “Cool,” she whispered.

“And now… you. You know, too.”

When she looked up at Vera, she had been beaming at her. And Sabine, feeling a wild surge of joy, had beamed right back. 

—

Sabine’s mother passed away two months ago. The funeral was arranged a few days after, with a burial in the morning and a memorial in the afternoon. Sabine spent money she didn’t have on a top-of-the-line casket and a rented banquet room at the back of a local Italian restaurant, like she could bribe the universe for a pass on mourning the woman she hasn’t spoken to in over a decade.

The only people in attendance were Vera and herself. Neither of them ate a single bite of the family-style feast. The leftovers monopolized her fridge for weeks, uneaten, until she tossed them out.

Sabine wakes up every morning and checks her phone for text messages. Because here is the thing: Sabine wasn’t there on the night her mother died.

Ever since she flew the coop and became a wanderer in her own right, her mother has sent daily text messages without fail: videos of the places she was driving through, silly memes, photos of her old Maine Coon, Alfred. Sabine has never replied. Not once.

What none of those messages had contained was any hint that Sabine’s mother was dying, that rogue cells were revolting against her as she gallivanted around the country clinging to her bohemian glory days with her cat and her boyfriend. The same boyfriend who hadn’t bothered to show for the funeral, Sabine recalls bitterly as she tromps up the steep trail, sweat rolling down her temples. Her toes burn, but she chalks it up to her feet swelling inside her new running shoes and pushes onward, upward.

Unconventional, she’d always told people, with a flippant roll of her eyes, whenever they asked about her upbringing. She’d leave it at that, laughing off further questions, changing the topic.

On the night her mother died, Sabine had been out at a bar on a boring Tinder date that had gone nowhere. In the morning there’d been just one text from the boyfriend, telling her news and passing along the name of the hospital morgue where her mother had been taken.

Nothing from mom.

Now, every morning, she checks her phone.

—

“This is my bedroom,” Sabine said shyly, on the night she’d invited Vera over for a slumber party. What she hadn’t said then, as Vera dropped the family-sized bag of popcorn, sleeping bag, and two backpacks worth of toys on the floor, then walked the perimeter of the windowless walk-in closet into which her bed and dresser had been crammed, was that it was her first bedroom.

In all the apartments that had come before, she and Mom had shared a room. Or her bed had been the living room couch.

We’re buds, Mom always said. We don’t mind tight quarters, do we? Who cares about rooms? We’re not squares.

But now Sabine had her own bedroom, sort of, and she was proud of it. She toed anxiously at the stained beige carpeting. Wire shelves and poles for hanging clothes lined the two long walls in the narrow room. Heart racing, she watched Vera study them.

Vera glanced over at her, assessing. “No window?”

Chagrined heat rushed to Sabine’s cheeks. She attempted a careless air, an indifferent shrug. Braced herself for whatever teasing was about to come her way.

“S’okay,” Vera said with a grin, dropping to her knees to unzip her backpack and pull out a stack of blank paper and a fistful of crayons. “We can make some. What should we see out the windows?”

The relief Sabine had felt as she collapsed besides Vera, accepting the offered pieces of paper, was immeasurable. A cool, calm tidal wave washing over her.

“The lake,” she said. “I wanna look at the lake.”

And Vera nodded at that with approval, like she understood completely. Though she’d never been to the lake, she nodded as though it made all the sense in the world. 

—

Sabine watches Vera swim her sluggish lap around the cove from the corners of her eyes, pretending she is not. She and her mother never swam in the lake, though when she tries to recall why, she comes up blank. A fear of the water? An excess of caution? Simply a skill never learned?

She couldn’t say.

By the time Vera reaches the cove’s far side, a distant speck, little more than a head and two flapping arms, Sabine thinks her stroke has improved somewhat. She should tell Vera as much, yet she knows she won’t.

The magazine in her lap is filled with make-up tricks and relationship tips.

Where, Sabine ponders, is the article on swallowing your pride and admitting that you are lost? Where is the top ten list for ways to tell someone you miss them even when they’re in the same room as you? Why do these magazines never offer advice on combating homesickness for the person you used to be?

She glances at the water again, just to check, then does a quick double take; there is a green tint to Vera’s arms as they rise out of the water, as though she has grown a gossamer, moss-hued membrane over her skin. Seaweed dangles in the dark hair that fans out in the water behind her.

Sabine closes her eyes and rubs them, muttering to herself.

When she opens them once more, nothing is amiss. Vera is making her way back towards the cabin, her flesh the normal color.

“A trick of the light,” she grumbles, and turns her attention back to the magazine. “Stupid lake.” 

—

It was a Tuesday in November, three months into fourth grade, when Vera and Sabine were sent to the principal’s office.

Perhaps the mistake had been their teacher’s; he’d been the one to ask the students to write their own original stories. He’d been the one to ask for a volunteer to read aloud. He’d been the one to call on Vera, who’d been flushed, groaning and wriggling as she strained to raise her hand higher than the others.

And that had led to Vera climbing onto her desk before she could be told not to.

“The night winds wail!” she began, with a prompting glance at her best friend; Sabine had stood as well, then accompanied the line with a mournful, “Oooh!”

“Lightning strikes! Thunder crashes!”

“Ksh! Boom!”

“Vera, Sabine, I think that is quite—”

“For his top secret experiment, the government scientist has collected a pile of hair and teeth and bone and brain and seaweed and barnacles and fish guts and shark fins and motor oil on the lab table! It’s arranged in the shape… of a little girl! She’s a monster! A creature of the deep!” Vera scanned the classroom, holding for dramatic emphasis. Contented by the sight of her classmates’ perturbed expressions, she read on, “The lightning strikes again, this time setting the pile of gross bits… on fire! The slimy body parts burn, oozing and bubbling! Finally, the charred skin melts together, and the little girl monster is born. The scientist’s mermaid has come to life!”

She’d cackled with mad delight as Sabine wriggled her fingers above her head, emulating flames.

“Enough!”

Several of the weaker-stomached children had gone a little green. One boy burst into tears. Even Teddy, usually supportive of their misadventures, was looking queasy. Their teacher was already marching towards Vera’s desk, shoulders tense and lips pressed into a thin line.

They were in so much trouble.

In the office of the principal’s secretary, they’d been ordered to sit silently. As they waited, Vera fiddled with the collar of her sweater. Sabine, too short to reach the floor with her feet, had kicked them out before her restlessly. Neither spoke.

Sabine knew that despite her bravado, despite the stories she loved to tell, Vera hated getting in trouble. She wanted to be seen as perfect and brave and good, always.

So she reached out and grabbed her best friend’s hand.

“It’ll be okay.”

Vera balked. “What if she calls my grandparents? It was just… just a story.”

“Um, no,” Sabine refuted, squeezing Vera’s hand tight in hers, “You are a superhuman sea monster created by the government. You’ll survive being grounded for a little bit.”

“What if they—” but she cut herself off, as though too fearful to give the words breath.

“What?”

“What if they…” Vera’s voice dropped to a whisper, “What if they don’t want me anymore. Because of… because I’m…” 

Sabine shook her head so hard her ears rang. “They’ll want you. They love you, Ver.” Vera’s face twisted with impending tears; Sabine could tell she didn’t believe her. “They do!”

“You won’t leave me, will you? Promise me you won’t leave, ever.”

Though she was still very young, Sabine knew herself better now. More importantly, she knew her mother. And she understood, just as Vera did, the searing wound of disappointment, of a promise broken.

So she merely said, “It’s gonna be okay. Don’t worry. It’ll all be okay.”

—

Sabine may have spent a few years of her childhood in Vera’s sleepy little hometown, but the real growing up, in her eyes, happened in cities. It happened while clinging to bus poles and subway doors, sharp braces on her teeth and a thick mass of dyed platinum hair her only defense from the adult world, the relentless push-pull of the rush hour crowd, the sharp jangle of nerves every time a stranger brushed against her, the airlessness of cement and steel breathing heat into deadened afternoons.

She was a latch-key kid. Rushing home to gorge herself on Pop Tarts and frozen pizza after school, she’d settle in to watch whatever she wanted on TV—usually a sordid assortment of soap operas and talk shows—knowing she had the hours ahead all to herself.

They were always moving, the two of them. There was a brief respite during those halcyon childhood years, but otherwise, it was always onwards, upwards. Never enough time to put down roots. After Vera, there were no more best friends. Never enough time, and maybe, never the inclination.

But that was Sabine’s mother: the next job. The next man. Next apartment. Next city, next state. Next, next, next.

Hustle and bustle is healthy, her mother used to say. Keeps the mind from going to seed.

Has Sabine ever sown a single seed in her entire life? No pets, no plants, no long-term partners, not even any recurring lovers.

Just Vera.

What does she have to show for the time she has spent on this earth?

A falling-down cabin she’s inherited from a mother with whom she hasn’t spoken to in years.

A childhood friend who barely knows her.

A cat that only emerges from beneath the sagging couch for dinner.

A resume strung with dead-end jobs she hated, jobs she lasted at for only a month or two, jobs she took merely to make enough money to move onto the next thing.

A sadness within herself she has cultivated like a well-loved plant. Her one and only seed sown to fruition.

You are pathetic, she tells herself in the mirror each night, as she brushes her teeth. Just like she was.

—

“What about Vera?” had been Sabine’s immediate response, on the last day of sixth grade, when her mother informed her they’d be moving that summer.

“Hm?” Her mother was only half-listening.

Sabine stomped her foot, dragging her mother’s attention away from the magazine in her lap. “Vera? My friend?”

“What about her, hon?”

“Well…” She waffled, not yet at a point in her life where she was confident in the arguments she started, “She’s… gonna miss me, if we move.”

Her mother fixed her with a sober, scolding look. “Sabine. Wherever we go, I promise you there will be sad, lonely people who aren’t brave enough to live the way we do. They’ll be drawn to you because you’re pretty and you’re smart. And they’ll all miss you when you go. But you can’t let it stop you from leaving. Know why?”

Sabine chewed her bottom lip for a moment, then shook her head.

Her mother’s eyes slipped down to the magazine. “‘Cause if you stay, they’ll bleed you dry. No matter how much you give, it won’t be enough.”

“Vera isn’t like that,” she argued. “She’s my friend. My best friend.”

A snort. “Honey. Trust me. They’re all like that, eventually. Even Vera.”

“Couldn’t we…”

“Hm?” Her mother spared an annoyed glance at her, then resumed her pretence of reading. “Don’t mutter, Sabine. Speak up.”

She cleared her throat. “We could invite her to the lake this summer.”

“No,” her mother said, coolly. “Absolutely not.”

“Why, though?”

“The lake isn’t about anyone else. The lake is for us. Only us.”

“But—”

The magazine snapped shut. Her mother stood and made to leave the room, throwing back over her shoulder, “It’s not up for discussion. Say your goodbyes. Pack your bags. Learn how to move on. Sooner you do, the better off you’ll be.”

—

Every woman carries her sadness differently.

Some women’s heads hang low. The sadness is present in the nape of their necks, each bony spur pressing against delicate skin like it is trying to break free. For others, it tugs on their faces, permanent furrowing of the brow and sagging jowls. There are those for whom it is carried in their thighs; their gait is a heavy stomp, weariness apparent in each step. Others carry it somewhere between, in their gut—soft vulnerable bellies and concave pits alike, all roiling with the memories of pain not-quite past.

Sabine carries it down in her feet. They are forever twitching, tingling, urging her to move, burning to carry her away.

Vera carries it in her throat. It aches. A stone, around which she can barely swallow.

Neither knows where the other carries it. They’ve gone too long without speaking, let alone asking each other these kinds of questions. Now the mere idea of it seems unconscionable.

Too personal, too raw.

The chasm between them too wide after so many years and so much time apart; no question or gesture a bridge long enough to cross it.

 

 

Vera

“This is my bedroom,” Vera told her as she bounded into the airy attic on the afternoon of their first sleepover at her house.

Tentatively, Sabine followed. Gleaming hardwood floors, angled walls and ceilings, stuffed animals and toys everywhere, the octagonal alcove of a turret at one end, and at the other, a massive four-poster bed draped in a royal blue canopy. It was, to Sabine, who’d spent her young life trailing her mother from one rundown apartment complex to the next, quarters fit for royalty.

Then she noticed: there was not an inch of free space on any of those slanted walls or ceilings. They were completely covered in drawings. Drawings of dragons and sea serpents, drawings of the lake and an old fishing cabin, drawings of mermaids and leviathans and sailboats.

“Whoa,” she managed.

Vera plucked gently at her sleeve, leading her to one drawing of hundreds. In it stood two girls, one fair-haired and the other brunette, both clad in silver armor. “That’s us,” Vera said. “We’re knights.”

But Sabine was still stuck on the opulence of it all. She could not understand the upswell of anger she felt, taking in that fine bedroom. “How come it’s so… so big?” Whirling on Vera, she added, “And where are your parents? How come you live with your grandma and grandpa?”

Vera blinked, lips twitching. Then, she reached once more for Sabine’s sleeve and tugged her towards another drawing. This one was of a woman and man in the black garb of cat burglars. Only their attractive faces were visible, eyes gleaming gold. “They were spies and they were desperately in love, but they were never supposed to marry or have any babies,” she whispered, glancing nervously between Sabine and the drawing. “You can’t tell anyone. Not even my grandparents—they don’t know. It’s a secret. Promise you won’t tell.”

Ashamed, Sabine had stared at that drawing for a long, long time. It was pretty good, she thought. The couple were smiling at each other, holding hands. There was a little girl with dark hair standing apart from them.

“Who would I tell?” she said, at last. It was as good as a promise, and as close as she could come to an apology.

—

Vera has never really left her hometown. She’s been on an airplane twice, but that was only because her grandparents signed the house over to her and bought a condo down south, too far away to reach easily by car. In the beginning, she’d missed them something awful. At night, after they’d moved, she would wander from room to room of their old Victorian, running her fingers over its furnishings. Porcelain tchotchkes, damask curtains, china cabinets, velvet-upholstered fainting couches. So many lovely things, all of them hers now.

A few months after, she found herself on a bargain airline’s website in the middle of the night. Two days and seven panic attacks later, she was on the balcony of their condo, eating orange slices and playing Monopoly. The journey had been a herculean endeavor for her and she’d cried in relief at the sight of them. They had, as always, smiled at her with something between bemusement and forbearance, returning her hugs stiffly and chiding her for her public display of emotion.

She hasn’t been back since. The thought of getting on another plane makes her palms sweat. Normally, when she’s home, she calls them every evening. They indulge her for precisely ten minutes, then make their excuses.

Cocktail hour, darling, they say. We’ve got to get to the golf course. We’re late for dinner. It’s our turn to host pinochle night.

They don’t really need her to call. Neither does Teddy, although he does tend to forget about feeding himself when she’s not around; he gets so wrapped up in his painting.

It’s strange not to be at work every day, seated at her desk with her ficus and her succulent at her side, answering emails, making phone calls. Placating angry customers with the best of them. She’s good at her job, and being good at it satisfies her, even if the job itself doesn’t.

She should have done this a long time ago. Left town, gone somewhere new, explored the world. She should’ve tracked Sabine down, maybe. Or struck out on her own. She should’ve pushed harder in life, reached for more than complacency, more than a high school sweetheart and a boring nine-to five. Regret is the perpetual stone in her craw; she hates the sentiment, and hates herself for succumbing to it.

The thought is quickly brushed aside. It hasn’t been all bad, has it? Her life is comfortable, steady. Teddy is a good man. He’d never leave her.

In any case, would Sabine have even answered her call? Her childhood friend seems like an echo of herself, only halfway here. That is, when she’s even around. She’s taken to going on long walks in the surrounding woods; she heads out mid-morning and does not come back until late afternoon. Vera has seen more of Alfred in the past few days than she has of Sabine.

She finds she likes it better that way. 

—

At the lake, time fades away into a blur of long, hot, sun-drenched days and still, humid nights.

Vera remembers stories about this place from when they were young: a little cabin up north that Sabine’s grandfather had bequeathed to her mother in his will, where they had spent their summers hiking and roasting marshmallows over campfires. It had sounded idyllic. She’d always wished to be invited, had hinted often that she’d like to go.

She never had. And then Sabine had moved away at the end of sixth grade, after her mother had gone through a bad breakup.

Now she is here, but Sabine is not. Not really. Her body is present, but it’s not the same.

Today, she decides she is going to swim. Dressed in an old bathing suit, she walks out onto the dock and peers across the water. Though up close it is murky and brown-green, when looked at it like this, from afar and through squinted eyes, it is alternately glittering silver and the deepest, darkest blue she has ever seen. Almost black. The lake looks, to Vera, as though it could hide an entire kingdom’s worth of secrets. At its edge, the looming evergreens and birches stand sentinel. Guardians. Or keepers, perhaps.

“Hey!” she hollers back at the cabin, where Sabine sits out on the porch, eyes closed, lounging in the morning sun. Not out walking, for a change.

“Hm?” she hears, faintly.

“I’m going for a swim around the cove,” Vera says.

“You want a medal?”

She shrugs, though she knows Sabine’s probably not looking her way. “Just thought I should tell you. For… safety, I guess.”

Sabine scoffs; even from the dock, she can hear it. “Very safe, good for you. You know how to swim?”

A little hurt by the question, she chooses not to answer, instead turning to dive neatly into the water. Some small part of her hopes Sabine is watching. The shock of the cold water steals her breath. Though it is June, the lake still has teeth; the bite of winter sinks into her summer-warmed skin. She comes back up howling.

From the porch, she hears a cynical chuckle. “Have fun with that.”

As she doggy paddles along the shoreline, she ponders the question of Sabine. Vera had jumped at the chance to come up here with her, thinking they might return to the close kinship they’d shared as children, but Sabine has remained as aloof as ever.

Why have they even bothered?

These are old wounds. She has been licking them for years, without avail. Once, when she was younger and braver, she might’ve pressed Sabine. Now she turns her thoughts to the lake. She wishes she had a snorkel mask, or even just goggles, so she might venture down to the lakebed and investigate. With just her eyes, she can barely see past her own hands. She makes a note to search for a pair at the general store in town next time she goes in.

The day’s weather is perfect. When she looks up at the lake surface from underneath the waves, she sees the blue sky dancing and fragmented, but as the waves roll over her, she also catches glimpses of her hands reflected in the silvery underside of the water’s surface. An imperfect mirror.

She glances down at her feet. They are blurry, tinted green through the water. Beneath them, she sees nothing. Just darkness and muck, as Sabine had said.

What’s down there? What could be down there?

In her mind, Sabine rebuts: Why are you being so weird about this?

I just want an answer, thinks Vera as she continues her sad, flailing lap towards the other end of the cove. Just one goddamn answer, to anything, for once in my life.

I deserve at least that much.

Don’t I?

—

It was on the night after the incident with the story and the trip to the principal’s, all those years ago, that Vera overheard the conversation she always wishes she hadn’t.

She couldn’t sleep, so out of her bed she’d crept, down the long hallway, to the top of the stairs. By the muted glow of the living room lamps, she’d seen her grandparents seated, sipping on cocktails.

“The principal’s office,” her grandmother murmured. “Again.”

Vera had halted, ears perked. On the top step, in the shadows, she noiselessly seated herself to watch her grandparents through the bars of the bannister.

A weary sigh: her grandfather’s. “She’ll grow out of it.”

“Her mother didn’t.”

“She won’t be like her,” he countered.

“How can you be so sure, dear?”

He shook his head. “We’re the ones raising her, aren’t we? It won’t happen.”

“That friend of hers—she’s a bad influence,” her grandmother said. “She enables Vera. Eggs her on.”

“You think we should separate them?”

There was a drawn-out pause, a moment of consideration. Finally, her grandmother let out an exasperated noise. “I don’t know! She hasn’t got any other friends.”

“She might make new ones if she didn’t spend so much time with Sabine.”

Her grandmother’s expression turned thoughtful. Vera’s heart was pounding. In all her life, she’d never heard them openly discuss either of her parents in front of her. And they were worried about Sabine? She failed to see the connection. Surely, the principal must have told them it was Vera’s fault, that she was the instigator.

“I don’t know,” said her grandmother, at last.

“Isn’t this how we lost him?” Her grandfather gestured to the fireplace, where a brass urn gleamed upon the mantle. “Then again, maybe we’ve already lost Vera. There’s… so much of her mother in her.”

Her grandmother frowned. “It’s hardly fair to compare a childhood friend to a wife. And she isn’t lost, she’s a little girl. She just… needs instruction.”

“Didn’t have any effect on our daughter-in-law.”

“She is not her mother. She will not be.” Her grandmother’s voice was insistent, bordering on panicked. “As you said, we are the ones raising her.”

That was enough for Vera. She crept away and tucked herself back into bed, mind racing.

All this time, she had been telling anyone who would listen to the stories she’d dreamed up about her parents. Spies, royalty, mermaids, monsters, whatever she could dream of—anything was better than the void her grandparents refused to fill, the answers they refused to give.

But they’d only been stories.

She was just a little girl. In that moment, she felt her smallness, her insignificance. The two people downstairs were her only connection to the past, and they held it locked away, refusing to share with her. If they chose never to share, what could she do about it? How could she wrest the truth from them?

She couldn’t.

But she could keep Sabine. Her best friend, who would cheer her on all the way to the principal’s office and end up there right alongside her, who always listened to her stories, who never bothered with the other children, who had chosen Vera.

Whatever happened, she knew she couldn’t let them take her best friend away from her. That much, she could control.

—

Vera tries not to dwell on the sad, lonely years following Sabine’s departure. How many countless letters had she written, with the promise from her grandparents that they’d been mailed? Had they ever reached Vera? Had they ever even been posted? She’d pestered them for weeks each time they dropped one in the mailbox, anxious for a response. And they’d seemed regretful each time they’d informed her there was nothing.

Always nothing. Until, of course, a few weeks ago.

Why has she come? Again and again, she comes back to this question as she and Sabine separately limp their way through the long, hot days. Is she still waiting? Is she expecting an apology? There is perhaps some small part of Vera that feels she is entitled to one, and Sabine seems as good a person to give it as any.

Where were you all those years? she finds herself on the verge of asking. Didn’t you miss me like I missed you? Or are you just one more person who moved on without me, who forgot about me?

If Sabine’s arrival in her life had allowed her to bloom into her true wild self, allowed her daydreams to flourish and thrive, then Sabine’s departure had clipped those buds, had cut Vera off at the knees. Of course, her grandparents had encouraged her to make other friends and she had tried. She had.

But she was a strange one. By sixth grade, then junior high, then high school, her classmates were learning to leave childish things in the past. The otherworldliness of childhood was being set aside in favor of gossip, and dating, and television, and thoughts of the future. But Vera had never wanted a future, any future; she’d never cared about that.

Instead, she grew a new sprig. This one was only inside herself, and she allowed no one else to access it. Within her mind, Vera sallied forth upon the seas and through the skies and on, and on, and on, to the farthest realms of what she could imagine. She was anyone she wanted to be. But only to herself.

No one understood, no one ever had since Sabine.

The past, the unreal, that realm of possibility just beyond the veil of here and now: that’s what Vera has always yearned for. When she thinks about the years she had a best friend, she yearns for those things anew. With Sabine, she’d had company in her seeking.

But this Sabine is not the Sabine who snuck a shopping bag’s worth of toads into their classroom in order to help Vera accurately reproduce a beloved fairytale, or dressed up as knights with her on Halloween, or terrorized their fourth-grade class with a Frankenstein-esque origin story. This Sabine is a stranger.

Vera, too, is not the Vera she once was. She has nurtured that tendril within herself, yes, and it has grown to a lush plant, but to the world outside? Vera is a mousy, quiet nobody. A stranger to everyone, even to Teddy; a stranger to Sabine.

A stranger to herself most of all.

—

Another day passes, then two. Or is it five? Clouds roll in and out again, offering no relief; the air grows hotter and stickier. The women barely interact; the most they see of each other is when they share the tiny kitchen to wordlessly cook their separate dinners, side-by-side. They eat together out on the porch as the sun sets behind the trees and the mosquitoes emerge. They do not speak.

On a morning so oppressive the trees reach up towards the heavy grey sky, beseeching, leaves trembling, Vera walks out onto the old dock. The faded silver wood feels sodden beneath the soles of her feet. It is the humidity gathering, as in the air. Even her dry skin feels damp.

Feed us, begs the world. After so much sun, we are thirsty. Give us the storm.

Vera scowls.

What do they know? There is as much suffering in the deluge as there is in the drought.

So far, it’s been a dry, hot summer. There will be relief; Vera is just feeling ornery because the storm rolling in has the barometric pressure dropping and as a result, her head throbs. She turns to go back inside, vision swimming from the pain. On the Formica kitchenette counter sits a glass of fresh lemonade and two ibuprofen, plus a note written in Sabine’s rough scrawl.

Went to town for groceries, back in a few.

“You might’ve asked me if I wanted anything,” Vera huffs to herself, before taking a sip of the offering. It’s good. Cold. Tart but refreshing. Grabbing the ibuprofen and lemonade and moving towards the bedroom, she smiles despite herself. How has Sabine remembered about Vera’s headaches, after all these years? A random thoughtful gesture amidst a sea of carelessness—that’s Sabine to a tee.

Vera takes the ibuprofen and lies down on the lumpy mattress. She closes her eyes. Just for a few minutes, she tells herself. Until the drugs kick in.

That’s the last thought she remembers before sleep claims her.

—

They are little girls again, seated on the very edge of the dock, seeing who can drag their toes through the surface of the water and flick droplets of water further out into the bay.

This never happened.

Sabine leans in, her shoulder bumping against Vera’s. “He’s an old man,” she says, “And he lives in the apartment next to ours. He smells like cigarettes and cabbage and there are holes in his shoes.”

Vera remembers Sabine telling her this, but she knows they weren’t at the lake. Where had they been? On the playground, maybe, or walking home from school. Somewhere mundane, doing something forgettable.

“He’s got crazy hair that sticks out in all directions. And it grows on his fingers, and out of his ears, out of his nostrils. Even on the top of his nose!”

“You know what he is, don’t you?” asks Vera.

It is so strange, how her lips and tongue and throat work together to form the words and then they leave her mouth, all without having ever passed through her mind. She spoke these words years ago but somehow, they have been dredged up from the past and they are being repurposed now.

She looks out at the shimmering lake with her child’s eyes and her woman’s mind and she is afraid. This is a dream, but she does not understand it.

“No. What is he?”

Sabine appears young, heartbreakingly so. Seemingly untroubled, although even now, her brows are knitted with all-too-familiar skepticism. Vera can recognize the faintest trace of this girl in the Sabine of today: her frizz of blond hair, the strong line of her Roman nose, her long, dark eyelashes.

“A troll,” she says calmly.

Sabine scoffs. “Oh, come on.”

“I’m serious. Didn’t you say he leaves every evening and you don’t see him come home until morning?”

“Well…”

“He spends his nights under the Clover Bridge. He stops travelers and demands they answer his riddles.” The words pour forth from the past; Vera remembers this story well, remembers making it up on the spot just to see if Sabine would play along.

Sabine shrieks with scandalized glee. Vera grins. She’s got her.

Something glints in her peripheral vision. At first, she thinks it is just the reflection of the lake, but it’s growing brighter; when she turns to find its source, she has to shield her eyes from the searing blaze.

It’s coming from the water, she realizes. The water is dazzling, its own source of light, like a sun shining up from below. Even now, it is brighter than it was seconds ago. She squints, then gasps.

Something is watching them. A slick, shadowy form; a pair of eyes staring up at her. Eyes gleaming and tawny, like an owl’s.

“Look,” says Sabine. “Look!”

“So you can see it,” she says, trying and failing to mask her hurt.

“‘Course I can.” Sabine shrugs. “Always could.”

“Why didn’t you say something? Say anything?”

Young Sabine gives a careless toss of her hair. “‘Dunno. Never really thought about it much.”

That’s the problem, she wants to scream, but just like that, she’s jolted awake. The vision of the lake, of the two of them, the blinding light, the golden eyes—in an instant, all of it has begun to dissipate. She’s drenched in sweat and nauseous. Furious, with nowhere to direct her fury.

Clenching her teeth together, she swallows against the pain in her throat.

—

Tonight, Vera is assembling a chicken salad sandwich using leftovers from yesterday; Sabine stirs a pot of radioactively orange mac ‘n cheese. Sandwich in one hand and glass of soda in the other, Vera drifts over to the card table situated in front of the lakeside windows. She eats slowly, thoughtfully. A few minutes later, Sabine joins her. Alfred slinks out from under their couch and weaves between their legs.

Both women stare out at the lake, its waves shot through with coral and cobalt as the sun sets. The only cracks in the tension between them is the sound of their eating, Alfred’s hopeful chirping, and the nighttime songbirds emerging from their slumber.

“Had kind of a weird dream earlier,” says Vera.

“Hm.”

“Dreamed we were kids, but we were up here. We were talking about that old neighbor of yours, remember him? What was his name? Henderson? Hendricks? Heinz?”

Sabine shakes her head, eyes straight ahead. Vera waits, but she continues eating as though Vera had never spoken.

“He was friends with your mom, I think,” Vera tries.

“I don’t remember.” Sabine’s face is a stone wall; her gaze is shuttered.

“Don’t think your mom ever really liked me.”

“We’re not discussing this.”

Vera sighs. “Right, sorry. It’s just—after the funeral, we never talked about… any of it. I just…”

Through clenched teeth, Sabine says, “It’s not up for discussion.”

“I just wanted to offer—”

“What about your mom and dad, huh? You want to talk about trauma, about the past?”

Vera presses her lips together and blows a hard breath out through her nostrils. She blinks down at her sandwich crusts, trying to collect herself. “Why did you ask me to come here?”

“I don’t know.” Sabine pushes her folding chair back from the table and stands. “You don’t have to stay. Nobody’s making you.” With that, she turns and passes out of the room towards the bedroom, closing her door softly behind her. Steam still rises from her bowl.

Vera remains rooted to her chair. Outside, the sun continues setting. The shadows in the cabin lengthen. The world dims. Sabine’s dinner congeals. Vera’s crusts harden.

Never in her life has she felt so tired.

—

Vera cannot sleep. She lies akimbo, staring at the water stained ceiling, dressed in only a pair of underwear and an old oversized t-shirt. Crickets and locusts harmonize outside her window. Faintly, she can hear the lake lapping at the shore.

She tries her belly. Her side. Her back. Her head dangling off the foot of the bed. The floor, even. There is no reprieve. The night swelters, long lightless hours passing slowly, like dripping rivulets of sweat.

Sometime around three, she gives up. Peeling herself off the sodden sheets, she heads outside. The air is so hot it clings to the inside of her lungs, sticky, dense. It feels like she’s swimming before she’s even in the lake. Down she goes, stumbling over rocks and weeds in the dark, to the end of the dock. Not bothering to undress, she lowers herself into the cool, still water.

It is a shock to the system, but a good one. Vera submerges herself completely, swimming a few meters out while blowing bubbles, then emerges. The stars overhead cut through the feathery grey of nighttime clouds, winking like living, breathing beings. For a while, she floats, ears submerged so she can listen to the muffled, burbling song of the lake. She sees a few shooting stars, a few satellites. It’s calming. Eventually, she grows cold and pruny.

When she turns back towards the dock, a shape sits at its edge, face hidden in shadow. Vera shrieks.

“Shh, shut up,” hisses Sabine. “You’ll wake the neighbors.”

With a roll of her eyes, she swims closer. “You scared me! I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me neither.”

Vera nods, dips below the water again. When she comes back up, she says, “Water’s nice. If you want to swim.”

“I’m good.”

“Okay,” she murmurs. She pulls herself up enough to rest her elbows on the dock beside Sabine. There is a part of her that wants to push her former best friend, wants to urge her into continuing the conversation she shut down so abruptly before. But the moment is swathed in the night’s serenity and Vera is enjoying the peace.

Sabine extends her hand in offering; she is holding a glowing object. It is a phone, its white light harsh on her eyes. Frowning, Vera takes it. The screen is unlocked and opened to a series of text messages. At the top, where the sender ID should be, there is merely the formless grey bust of the default photo and a phone number Vera does not recognize. She scrolls up a few times, then begins to read aloud: “Hey honey at the grand canyon saw some donkeys thought of you, LOL. Good morning sunshine, look at Alfred’s face! He hates the desert! Morning burgers with the hubby, wish you were here.” Vera pauses. “What is this?”

“Every morning since I left,” says Sabine, hushed, “Since I turned eighteen, my mother has been sending me these.”

Vera looks back at the screen. She scrolls up for a few more minutes. There are only received messages, not a single response sent. She swallows. “Why didn’t you call me when you moved back home, Sabine?”

“Wasn’t home to me.”

Wordlessly, Vera hands Sabine her phone back. She does not dignify that answer with a response.

Sabine sighs. “It had been so long, I… I didn’t know where to begin.”

“Hello might’ve been a good start,” she says.

“I’m sorry. For… all of it. I’m sorry all the time about everything, okay?”

“Sab—” In the cold depths beneath her, Vera feels something cold grasp at her toe and tug, interrupting her thought. She looks down but she cannot see a thing. “What was that?”

“What?” asks Sabine, brows furrowed.

Vera pushes herself off the dock, casting about wildly, but there is only dark water. “Something just… something touched me!”

Again: an icy grip, this time around her ankle. Again, it tugs. This time it pulls her off the dock, out into the bay. Vera flails, hollering, kicking blindly but finding no purchase. It tugs again. She can barely contain her hysteria; fearful sobs wrack her body as she tries to swim towards the ladder. Back on the dock, Sabine scowls down at her.

“What?” says Sabine. “What’s—Vera, enough with the theatrics, I don’t want to play games—”

Before she can answer, there is another tug, much harder this time. Vera is dragged under, into the eerie world of the lake at night. It is so quiet here. The hand, she realizes, is still holding her ankle, still pulling, pulling, pulling, down, down, down…

It is getting very cold.

Vera opens her eyes, desperate to see, but in the dark, especially after looking at the phone, she is blind. She kicks hard at the icy hand and screams, a great bubble of air escaping her mouth and water rushing in. Her bare heel hits something bony; pain explodes across her nerves, making her whimper, but the grip slackens and she feels herself rising, rising, rising…

She surfaces. She is in the middle of the cove. Sabine is standing at the dock’s edge, hands on her hips. Upon spotting her, she calls out, “Vera?”

“Some—something grabbed my foot!” she shouts back. Her voice echoes around the sleepy cove; ripples from her thrashing are traveling away from her, across the mirror-like lake.

Sabine shakes her head in disgust, then turns and heads for the cabin.

By the time Vera drags herself, panting, up the dock ladder, she has already begun to reason with herself. Deep breaths, it was nothing, just some kind of overactive imagination thing. She follows Sabine’s path of retreat across the lawn. A weird current, an overgrown fish. She has every intention of offering these excuses to Sabine, apologizing, and resuming their conversation.

But when she goes inside, Sabine’s bedroom door is shut. No sound emerges from behind it and no light shines from underneath.

—

“So you’re like, an orphan?” asked Teddy.

They’d been in sixth grade, their last year together. Teddy, an oafish classmate who’d recently hit a growth spurt, was leaning over the support bar of the swingset, watching as Vera and Sabine pushed themselves higher, and higher still. Sabine was on the verge of going all the way around the top bar, but Vera was lagging behind.

They were supposed to be having a competition, but she was distracted by the boy and his question. She could tell Sabine was feeling disgruntled, offended by Teddy’s interruption; but outside of Sabine, their classmates rarely spoke to Vera and she was intrigued by his sudden interest.

So she stuck her tongue out at him and kept on swinging.

“Do you like living with your grandparents?” he pressed, shy and curious and brave.

“Yeah, it’s okay,” she said.

Sabine’s frustration had boiled over. “Vera, swing!”

“I am, chill out!”

“You’re falling behind!”

“I’ve got this.” She laughed, once again focused on pulling the chains of the swing back with her arms, then propelling herself forward with a great flinging of her legs. “See?”

Teddy, much to Sabine’s visible displeasure, was waiting patiently to recapture Vera’s attention. “What happened to ‘em? Your parents?”

“You wouldn’t—believe me—if I told you,” she teased, between kicks.

“C’mon, try me!”

“You ever—hear of—Bratislava?”

Teddy shook his head.

“It’s a country in Europe,” said Vera, letting her momentum wane now that she had a story to tell. “My mom… she was a princess. But she fell in love with my dad, who was only a common fisherman.”

Sabine rolled her eyes but did not interrupt. Vera knew she’d heard this one before, but her friend was still listening, as she always did. It made her smile.

“So she got pregnant with me and they ran off together. And they sailed out onto the Aegean Sea to escape the king and queen, my grandparents.” Her voice was thin, breathless from exertion, but she was getting into it now, enjoying the weaving of the story. “There was a storm one night, and they were tossed overboard. When the ship was found months later, I was the only one on it! It was a miracle I survived. Everyone said so.”

Sabine had begun to pump her legs harder, determined on winning.

Poor Teddy looked so confused. “But… your grandparents aren’t royalty? I see them at my dad’s hardware store on Sundays.”

Vera rolled her eyes. “They’re my dad’s parents, dummy!”

“I… oh…”

“I’m a princess, Teddy, but don’t tell anyone, ‘kay?”

“I thought you were a sea monster experiment?” he said.

She laughed that off. “Just a cover story. But I mean it about the princess thing. Do not tell anyone.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“It has to stay a secret or they’ll take me away and make me live in a castle in Bratislava!”

Teddy blanched. “Oh.”

“You won’t tell?”

“C’mon, Ver, swing!”

“I am!”

“I won’t tell,” he said, painfully earnest. “Cross my heart.”

—

“You have a missed call,” Sabine informs her stiffly when Vera comes in from her swim the following afternoon.

They have not discussed the events of last night. This morning, Vera had gotten the impression Sabine was somehow offended by what had happened and she herself had felt hurt by Vera’s indifference to her fear, her near-drowning.

So. It is back to square one.

“Thanks.” She picks up her phone and sees Teddy’s name on the lock screen. It fills with a quiet warmth; they only just spoke this morning, but he’d confessed that he missed her, and had asked if they could talk again later in the day. It feels nice to be needed like that. “Good old Tedders.”

“He and you…” Sabine trails off, with a face like she’s bracing herself before she leaps into a pile of horse manure, “You two…?”

Vera exhales sharply. “Yeah. Us two.”

“He always seemed kind of—”

“Kind of what?” Her sharp tone makes Sabine flinch. She regrets it immediately.

Sabine shakes her head, tossing her platinum blonde hair over her shoulder. “Never mind.”

“Say it.”

“No, no. Sorr—forget it. Nothing. Forget I said anything.” Pivoting, Sabine heads for the door. “Going for a walk.”

Vera is standing in the middle of the cabin, once again left behind. Speechless, she watches Sabine leave. Furious, without understanding why. No, that’s not true. She does understand why, but it is a thorny emotion to articulate.

Teddy has no problem saying he misses her, needs her, cares about her. It’s what she appreciates most about him.

If only her former best friend could do the same.

— 

It was on a Tuesday afternoon her sophomore year of high school, sixth period art, as Vera was attempting to sketch a mutiny aboard a pirate ship, that she really saw Teddy for the first time. Her drawing was giving her the beginnings of a headache; she couldn’t quite capture the expressions of the crew. Not the way they looked in her mind. She was pretty satisfied with the ship itself, the deck and the mast and the elaborate sails. And she liked the stormy sea and dark skies in the background.

It was just the damn faces. Their eyes. Something about their eyes wasn’t right.

Annoyed, she sighed and looked around the long table at the projects of the other students. Drawings, sculptures, collages. Some students were chatting in whispers. No one spoke to her, but that was normal enough. Beside her, Teddy was carefully molding two lumps of clay into human figures. She studied his work. Was that a crown on the head of one? And was the other holding a blanket?

“What are they gonna be?” she said under her breath, with a glance up at the front of the room, where their art teacher was busy playing a game on his phone.

He didn’t look up, hands continuing to work the clay. “A fisherman and a princess.”

Not a blanket, then. A net. “Ah.”

“It’s just… I still think about them sometimes. That story.”

Vera felt her cheeks go warm. “Cool.”

“Yeah?” Teddy’s cheeks were pink, maybe even pinker than hers. His blue eyes were magnified by the thick glasses he’d started wearing back in seventh grade.

That sounded, to Vera, like a request for permission. And maybe a tentative overture, although what she knew about boys and their overtures back then, she could have put in the plastic cup of water she’d been using to clean her paintbrushes and still had room left over.

She gave a firm nod, a half smile. “Yeah. It is.”

Teddy looked back at his work. “Cool,” he said, as much to himself as to her.

— 

Vera swims farther today than she did yesterday, and yesterday she’d swum farther than the day before. Her stroke is more consistent, one arm up over her head, the other pushing through the water, moving as two parts of a whole.

It doesn’t take long before the worries that have been choking her begin to drain away. Her mind clears. She thinks of logistical things for a bit, and then of nothing at all. Just the water. Just her feet kicking behind her. Just her arms windmilling her forward.

Today she gets to the jutting point of land that defines the northern point of the cove and she does not stop. There is some small danger, she supposes, in swimming out into the rougher open waters of the lake outside Sabine’s little bay. It’s a risk worth taking. She has not seen what Sabine has seen; she has not ventured beyond the limits of her hometown. But she is not afraid of the water like Sabine is, and that has become a petty point of pride for Vera. So despite the events of the other night, she swims.

The water is colder here. She moves more slowly, but is invigorated by it. Her thoughts sharpen; her resolve clears. When she gets back, she’ll leave. She’d thought that Sabine’s invitation had been the opening of a road back to their friendship, but out here in the open water, she sees it for the foundering, empty gesture it was.

They are never again going to be friends. Not like they were.

The sun shines down on the world. Under the waves, minnows swim through bars of light and shadow. Above, the air is hazy, but still clear enough that Vera can see clear to the other shore, a few miles away. The pines and birches sway. The sky is unmarred, cerulean and bright; yet as she treads water, she spies a dark stormcloud piling upon itself on the horizon to the west. Would that it would bring the relief of rain. She’s not hopeful, though. Not anymore.

Within minutes, the waters have gotten rougher, the wind cooler.

And in the distance, between the waves, she thinks she spies the billowing white sails of a sailing ship.

Vera blinks. A wave washes up on her, pushing her under. When she re-surfaces, there is nothing.

A trick of the light—that’s what Sabine would say, she thinks, and turns herself towards home.

—

“Hello?”

When Vera had picked up the phone, confused by the out-of-state number she hadn’t recognized, there had been a long moment of wet, hitched breathing on the other end of the line. A frisson of dread had skittered down her spine and pebbled her skin with gooseflesh.

Another wet inhale, another wet exhale. A soft weak sound, like a wounded animal.

Vera cleared her throat. “Hell-o?” she tried again, stronger.

“It’s me,” gasped the caller, at last. A woman’s voice, clogged by tears and snot.

She frowned at Teddy, who was lost in the work on his drafting table across the room. “I’m sorry, who is this?”

“Sabine,” the woman said. “It’s Sabine.”

Vera could not think of a single thing to say. She made a slight clicking sound in the back of her throat as she struggled to draw breath.

“Sabine?” Her voice wobbled nervously. “From… well, you know.”

In the time it took her to pull the phone away from her ear and glance at the number again, trying to identify what state it belonged to, a hundred replies filtered through Vera’s mind. None of them were kind.

“Hi,” she settled on.

Who is it? Teddy mouthed at her. She shook her head and turned, passing out of the living room and down the hall towards their bedroom.

“What’s… uh, what’s wrong, Sabine?” she asked, once the door was shut behind her.

“It’s my mom.”

“Oh.” Vera stared at the wall, chewing the inside of her cheek. “She’s—what—did she—”

“Yeah. Last night.”

“Oh,” she repeated dumbly, “I’m… so sorry. For your, uh, loss.”

“Ver. I can not be the only person at this funeral. Please.”

“I—”

“I found a really nice parlor on the highway. You know that place with the rose bushes out front? And I reserved the banquet room at that Italian restaurant downtown, the one with the lasagna—”

“Mama’s,” Vera said, cringing at the word.

Sabine let out a sob. A fraught moment passed, and still Vera found she could not collect her thoughts enough to speak. It had been over a decade. No phone calls, no emails, no text messages. For all intents and purposes, it was as though Sabine had stepped off the edge of the world, leaving a void behind that had long since closed. Not healed, but closed.

“I can’t be the only there,” Sabine repeated, filling Vera’s silence. “I can’t do this by myself.”

When did you get back in town? Where are you staying? Would you have called me if you weren’t in crisis, if you didn’t need my help? Where have you been for the past decade? Why didn’t you ever call?

Who are you?

Why did you leave? Why did you stay gone?

Vera toyed with the collar of her blouse as she studied herself in the mirror over her and Teddy’s dresser.

“It’s okay,” she said at last, furrowing her brows at her reflection. “I’ll be there.” 

—

Bags packed, Vera lets the screen door slam behind her as she stomps across the porch and down the lawn towards Sabine, who shows no sign of noticing. She has laid a towel on the dock; clad in only a bikini and cat-eye sunglasses, she basks in the slanted afternoon sunlight. Vera darts a look to the west; the dark clouds loom high, closer. The waves are big enough to roar as they roll into the bay, a roiling beast with foaming white teeth.

In a bid to get Sabine’s attention, Vera stands directly over her, casting a shadow.

“It’s pretty obvious you don’t want me here,” she says, calm tone belying her frustration, her disappointment. “I don’t know why you invited me—I don’t know why you do anything you do. And I don’t think you’re going to tell me. So I’m going home to my boyfriend and my job and my life.”

“Not gonna stay? Thought that was your thing.”

Her shoulders tense. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“You stayed,” says Sabine, impassive behind her sunglasses, “All these years, you just stayed put in that shitty little town.”

Vera can not contain herself, at that. “Of course I stayed! My life is there! Why shouldn’t I stay? What’s wrong with that?”

“What’s wrong with leaving?” asks Sabine, still infuriatingly calm.

“I never said there was—”

“You’ve been treating me like a wounded bird. I’m not. There’s nothing wrong with me. There’s nothing wrong with going out into the world and having a real life.”

“I never said there was!” The words burst forth before Vera can temper or second guess them. “You don’t actually listen to what I’m saying, Sabine. I’ve been trying to talk to you. I can’t even fucking remember the last time we had a conversation that felt like an actual exchange. When we were kids, maybe? You used to talk to me. You used to listen.”

Sabine scoffs. “I was a lonely kid.”

“What does that mean?” Her voice quavers slightly.

“Nothing.”

“Is that why I never heard from you?”

Sabine looks away, out towards the water. The clouds have crept closer; the sunlight is dappled now, nearly blocked out by their grey mass.

“‘Cause I never actually mattered,” Vera says. “Just a convenient placeholder until you moved on to the next town.”

“You mattered.”

“Sure as shit doesn’t feel like it!” She pulls in a breath, but it doesn’t help. “Nobody treats me like I matter. Nobody ever has!” Another breath. On the exhale, the tears come, burning her eyes. “Except Teddy.”

“Oh, god, I don’t even want to talk about—”

“Don’t,” Vera bites out.

“Of all the dipshit milquetoast losers you could’ve chosen—”

“Fuck—just—fuck you! Fuck you.” She turns to leave, then spins back towards Sabine. “He loves me. He’s good to me. He’s always been good to me. We’re good together. How dare you blow back into town without calling until you need something and then dare to judge the state of my relationship?” Again, she makes to leave, and again, she wheels back around. “Fuck you,” she repeats, just because it feels good to say. “You’re an asshole, just like your mom.”

The words land: Vera watches the hurt detonate across Sabine’s face. Trembling lips, furrowed brows. She jumps to her feet, pulling off her sunglasses; her hands are clenched into fists. “At least I have the guts to look the world in the eyes. At least I don’t hide away in my fantasies for my whole life. Something in the lake, huh, Ver? God, I used to think you were so cool.”

“How would you know who I am or what I do now? You don’t know me, you’ve made no effort to get to know me since we got here,” says Vera, choking; she may have hurt Sabine with the jab at her mother, but Sabine has repaid the insult, with interest.

Sabine curls her lip. “I know you.”

“You don’t.” This time, when she turns to go, she gets as far as the end of the dock before whirling on Sabine. “And for the record? There is something fucked up about this lake.”

“Oh my god, do you even hear yourself? How did you never grow out of this bullshit?”

“Go out on the water, then, if you don’t believe me,” she says.

Sabine’s face falls, a shadow of fear passing over it. “I don’t like swimming.”

Vera tilts her head. “Go out on a canoe.”

“I thought you were leaving?” Sabine snarls, taking a step back.

“Fine, whatever. Screw this.” She marches off through the grass towards her car.

“Y’know what? It really matters to you?” The words are shouted after her; she turns to find Sabine at the shoreline of the lake, where two long-disused canoes lay upended. “I’ll go out on the fucking lake!”

“It actually doesn’t,” she says, louder than normal so she can be heard over the rising wind. “I just wanted…”

Sabine’s expression turns sardonic. “For everything to be play pretend?” With a vicious swipe, she clears the thick carpet of pine needles from the canoe’s broad hull, then rolls it over. The inside is full of life jackets and spider webs; Sabine tosses the jackets onto the grass. A few displaced critters crawl out of them and skitter away. Grabbing the nylon boat line at the bow of the canoe, she tugs it into the marshy shallows.

“It’s just a fucking lake!” she says, red-faced from the effort. “There’s nothing deep, nothing secret, nothing fantastical. Never was.”

“Fine!” She should go, but she cannot. She stands in the tall grass, transfixed, watching as Sabine gingerly places one foot in the canoe. It wobbles from side to side. “Do you… know how to use that?”

“Ohh, shut up!”

Vera huffs in exasperation. “Oh my god, how old are you?”

“Me? How old are you!”

“Sabine,” she tries to reason, “You don’t have to do this. Get out of the boat.”

But Sabine has already seated herself on the woven wicker seat at the back of the canoe. Oar in hand, she rolls her shoulders back, nose in the air. “If it means for once in your life you get a grip on reality, it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”

The storm hovers overhead now. All the world is a washed out grey. The wind is a howling whistle, making the leaves shiver silver-green. Around the cove, the boats tied to other docks dance on the water like drunken sailors. A tempest has fallen upon them, yet Sabine ignores all this, steering the canoe out towards the lake’s seething center.

“Come back, Sab, this is a bad idea!” Vera calls to her.

“You’re a bad idea!”

Resolved not to let Sabine make this mistake alone, Vera heads towards the second overturned canoe in the grass. “That doesn’t even make any sense.”

“Okay,” says Sabine, over her shoulder “I’m on the lake! What am I supposed to be seeing? Where’s the dragon or mermaids or whatever?”

Vera drags the second canoe down into the shallows. “Just come back already!”

Sabine’s form is terrible. It’s clear she has never stepped foot in a canoe before: the weight in the boat is not well balanced. Its bow hovers a few inches above the water. Sabine slaps at the water with her oar ineffectively, and only on one side; even as the current rushes her out towards the mouth of the cove, she is rowing herself in circles.

“Sabine!”

“Waiting to see something cra-a-azy out here, Vera! A magic elf, a troll, a wizard? What’s it gonna be?”

“Come! Back!”

Her terror rises with each swell of the frothing waves, ever higher, ever wilder. She plants herself in the center of her canoe, cross-legged. Desperately, she paddles herself forward, though again and again, she is pushed back. It is as if the lake is fighting her, as if she and Sabine are meant to be separated.

“Don’t see much of anything!”

“It’s too rough!” It has become a struggle to project her voice over the wind; she’s uncertain if Sabine can even hear her.

But then Sabine tosses a scornful look back at her. “I grew up on this lake, I think I know—ah!” A wave kicks up in front of her canoe, looming so high that it raises the bow up, not stopping, lifting, pushing, until the boat is nearly vertical. Vera watches in frozen horror. Higher and higher still, and then… it keeps pushing. In what feels like slow motion, it flips over backwards, Sabine disappearing underneath its cheerful blue hull.

“Oh god, oh shit,” Vera mutters. Like her life depends on it—like Sabine’s does, she has never once seen her friend dip so much of a toe in the water—she propels herself towards the overturned canoe. “Shit, fuck, shit.”

There is a terrible, agonizing moment when she reaches the canoe and there is no sign of Sabine in the dark waters. “Sabine!” she sobs over the screaming wind. “Sabine!”

“Vera!” comes a weak voice.

She turns toward it. There, rising up from the waves: a lone hand. Vera does not hesitate; she grabs hold of it and yanks upwards. Sabine’s blonde hair appears, then her terror-struck face, then her shoulders. She sputters, coughing out a mouthful of lakewater.

“Come on,” says Vera, tossing the oar aside and reaching out with her other hand, “Let’s get you up.”

Together, groaning, Vera half working to keep the canoe steady, half working to help Sabine pull herself into it, they get her in the boat. Vera relocates to the aft-most wicker seat, and points Sabine to the one at the bow.

They stare at each other, winded; the waves continue to rock them but the canoe is steadier now, with two in it.

“I’m sorry,” Sabine says, after a minute. “I know I’m fucked up and I’m sorry.”

“Everyone’s fucked up, Sab.”

Sabine’s face contorts into a pained grimace. “I hurt you.”

“Yeah.”

“I just…”

“What?”

Sabine blinks at her. “I never figured it out. I thought I would leave her behind—”

“Your mom.”

“Yeah. And that I would teach myself how to be a person. And I just… I didn’t. I couldn’t. And you did. And I… I…”

“That’s what you were mad at me for?” Vera gasps. “Seriously, Sabine?”

She shrugs. “You made it look easy. It’s not. Not for me.”

Vera leans forward, catching Sabine’s eye. The storm rages on around them but she finds that she is calm. “I resented you for being able to leave. There were so many times I wished I could.”

“I know it wasn’t all play pretend. You were always telling the truth, in your own way,” says Sabine, in return.

“So were you.”

“I did miss you, Ver.” Sabine’s lips wobble; her face is wet from the lake, but maybe not only the lake.

“Oh, Sab.” Vera feels a drop on her arm. Then another. A few on her face. The rain begins all at once then, a spigot opened, each drop stinging and icy.

“I thought about calling you and asking you to help me all the time but I just… I felt so stupid, and then I came back and you were busy and had this great life and I thought… it was too late,” Sabine says in a breathless rush.

The wind shrieks its rage; raindrops fall heavier, faster. Now they are punishing against her bare arms and legs. “I missed you, too,” Vera says, shielding her eyes with her hand.

“So what, do we hug now?”

Vera gives a sniffling laugh. “I wouldn’t mind.”

They reach for each other, the first time they have touched since children. Vera wants to weep, and sees no reason not to. So she does. With relief, with regret, she does. She feels Sabine shuddering in her arms.

“Eventually, we’re gonna have to figure out how to row back to shore,” says Sabine, at last.

Vera starts to laugh but falters; the wind has died, and the waves with it. She pulls back and looks around. Only light drizzle remains, draping itself over them like a veil. A murmuring hush has fallen; it is almost as though they have been pushed below the waves, it is so quiet.

“Huh,” she says.

Sabine nods. “Weird.”

“Let’s get off this goddamned lake.”

Again, a nod from Sabine. They row. Awkwardly at first, until they get the hang of working from different sides. In what seems like mere moments, the storm-tossed sea sinks down into gentle, rolling waves, and then further still, to a flat, mirrored surface.

It is beautiful. Sabine turns back, perhaps intending to comment, but her gaze flicks past Vera to something in the distance. “What,” she says, quietly, “the everloving fuck is that?”

Twisting, Vera spies it: from the mirrored water, something is surfacing. A vertical beam of wood, now, but it rises as they watch, and there emerges under the beam a drenched stretch of once-white fabric, torn and fluttering. Up, up it comes, until Sabine gasps, “It’s a sail.”

So it is. Not just one, but three, and now, the massive open deck of a ship, water draining off its sides.

“What the fuck,” says Sabine again, under her breath.

Spellbound, unable to look away, Vera shakes her head. The ship is rising still; it is nearly out of the water and now she can make sense of its form. It’s an old wooden schooner. Water pours from the sails; freed from the water, they billow in a wind she does not feel.

And then it is afloat. Ready to sail, pointed towards them. A tawny-eyed mermaid affixed to its keel stares them down, her face frozen in a fierce snarl.

The ship draws near. With impossible speed, she bears down on them, until the mermaid is close enough they can count the barnacles on her tail.

Upon the deck, a cluster of beings—slick, algae-colored skin with tawny owl’s eyes like their mermaid, webbed hands—they stare down at Sabine and Vera. Implacable, unknowable. Looming.

“What… are they?” says Sabine.

Vera swallows. “I don’t know.”

“What do they want?”

Again, she shakes her head. “I…”

“Vera, I think they’re looking at you.”

Vera stares up into their golden eyes, knowing Sabine is right. They are looking at her; they have been looking for her. No story Vera has ever told could have prepared her for the otherworldliness of the beings—of their strange ship. Or the sense of rightness she feels.

“I’m… afraid,” she says softly, so only Sabine can hear. “I’ve always been afraid.” She cannot take her eyes off the creatures and they do not take their eyes off her.

Like recognizes like.

“It’s okay,” Sabine tells her, taking her hand. “We’ll figure it out. Together.”