Blood Sugar by Sascha Rothchild
For Matt.
I knew when you first walked into the room, and I still know.
CHAPTER 1
OCEAN
The waves weren’t that big. But he was only seven, so even the smallest of chop towered over his drenched head. “Never turn your back on the ocean” was advice he would never hear. Instead he faced the shore, proudly gesticulating. His father was busy, drinking a sweating can of domestic beer and complaining to his group of friends about the lack of waterfront-zoning laws. His mother was busy looking at the stretch marks drifting across her once flat, smooth stomach. So neither noticed their son waving and smiling at them in the Atlantic Ocean, just thirty feet ahead.
At the moment he was going to give up on making eye contact with his parents and turn toward the blue-on-blue horizon, a crest crumbled and slapped him in the back, pitching him forward, facedown, forcing him to take a big gulp of warm salty water. He coughed. A new wave jostled him before he could regain his natural rhythm of breath, and then another. So panic started to set in. A panic with flailing arms, jerking legs, and lungs fighting against themselves, taking turns both hyperventilating and coughing. Soon, all his composure was lost. It seemed like the ocean knew he was in trouble, and was happy to take advantage. Toying with his fifty-four-pound frame.
The rest was easy. Too easy, really. I was a breaker away, watching it all, holding my head high above the water, my neck straining a little so I could see him struggle in the undulating foam. My first instinct was to help him. I was a strong swimmer. I could paddle over and prop him up and call out to an adult to get him safely to shore. Then a second instinct kicked in, if there can be such a thing as a second instinct. A calm resolve filled my chest, followed by a burst of gold-glitter excitement that traveled to the tip of every limb. I dove under the water, eyes open. The sting felt good, a reminder that I was alive.
The ocean was murky, so it was hard to make out details, but I was able to see enough to grab on to one of the boy’s slick, thrashing ankles. My hand was too small to get a good hold. He was only seven years old, yes. But I was only five.
Using both my tiny hands, I had just enough grip to pull him down. And hold him down. A calmer boy might have held his breath and kicked free. He was only inches from oxygen. But he wasn’t calm. He was sucking in more and more water. Until he wasn’t.
When I felt his leg go slack, I held on for ten more seconds. Just to make sure. Counting slowly backward. Like I learned in school. Like I did when I couldn’t fall asleep at night because my brain was swirling with too many high-voltage thoughts to power down for the day. When I reached the count of one, I let go of his ankle and swam away. Flipping my back legs together in unison, like a mermaid tail. I wasn’t so different from other five-year-old girls; I too loved mermaids.
When my own need for air became unbearable, I finally popped my head up a good distance from him. I searched the water until I saw his lifeless form being pushed closer to the shore, gently swaying with the seaweed. The ocean delivered him onto the sand, not wanting to play with a dead toy.
I didn’t even need to scream. His mother was already doing that. Adults raced to him, rushed and frantic, unwilling to accept that time was no longer a factor.
My mother started shrieking for me to come back in, worried that drowning was somehow contagious. As I splashed to shore, I thought about how primitive adults were sometimes. And predictable. All the swimming kids were plucked back to land, held tightly in oversized once-bright tropical-patterned towels, now faded from years of use in the sun. For a brief moment, parents and children alike were not taking anything for granted. We all noticed details like the scratchy, hard corner edges of the towels, the grace of a seagull gliding past the billowing clouds that hinted at the afternoon rain that would be coming, the beauty of the peeling pink and green pastel buildings lining the bright-sanded beach. The warmth of the air was only trumped by the warmth of skin hugging skin and the rise and fall of chests that housed healthy beating, living hearts.
As my mother held me, I waited for guilt to set in. But it never did.
CHAPTER 2
PHOTOGRAPH
Twenty-five years later I sat in a small interrogation room inside the Washington Avenue branch of the Miami Beach Police Department. A cup of water was placed on my side of the table. The chair I was told to sit in was metal and flimsy. Light enough to pick up and swing around and throw at someone, but also light enough to not do much damage to property or person, if thrown. The table was also metal, but thicker and heavier and bolted to the concrete floor. There were some long scratches in it, of varying degrees of depth and age. Decades of frenetic doodles and cuts made by the people who had been trusted enough to hold sharp objects while sitting there.
I had my purse with me, which I hung on the back of the tin chair. A nice bag to show I was a professional working woman. But not so nice as to be flashy. And inside it, I had a few pointy items. A purple pen. A house key. Tweezers. A nail file. I also had my wallet in there, with identification confirming I was Ruby Simon. Miami Beach resident. Thirty years old. Five five. Organ donor. My weight a lie. Brown eyes. Brown hair, because auburn was not an option at the DMV. My hair was a deep pecan color dappled with copper. And so were my eyes. The reddish flecks in my nut-brown irises matched my mane perfectly. And this color coordination was the most striking thing about me, physically, and pulled my otherwise unremarkable face together. I thought about taking out my nail file and idly smoothing a few edges, to show how unconcerned I was about this whole thing. But it felt like it might read as too performative, so I kept my would-be weapons in my purse.