The House in the Pines(11)

She gargled cold water, then stood paralyzed at the sink, too mortified to return to the table. Her clammy face stared back at her, shivering as sweat poured from her body—different from the sweat of exercise. Thicker. Cold. The mirror confirmed that there would be no more pretending she was okay.





FIVE




Maya drives with the windows down, letting the summer air rush in and steal their voices as they sing along with Tender Wallpaper’s cover of the murder ballad “Two Sisters.” The air conditioner is broken, but the CD player works, and she and Aubrey hurl their voices as if auditioning for a musical. They wear bathing suits beneath their shorts. Sneakers and tank tops, towels in the back seat. Aubrey dabs sunscreen on her lightly freckled face, her cherry-black hair flying around her head while the world blurs by, leafy and many shades of green.

When they arrive at the shoulder in the road, Maya parks her mom’s car behind a Harley-Davidson. The air is cooler than in town. Maya and Aubrey follow a trail through the woods, slapping at mosquitoes.

Usually their silences are of the kind shared by good friends after many years—as easy as being alone. But today’s silence feels different. Chilly. Maya gets the sense that Aubrey is upset about something and has been for the past few weeks. She’s noticed a snippiness to Aubrey’s tone, an occasional meanness to her laughter. Maybe Maya’s imagining it, but she doesn’t think so, and it pisses her off that Aubrey won’t just say whatever’s on her mind.

“So,” Maya says, just to say something, “who’s the scarf for?”

Aubrey, ahead of her, doesn’t look back. “It’s a secret.”

Until half an hour ago, Maya hadn’t even known that Aubrey knew how to knit. But when she arrived to pick Aubrey up, Maya found her sitting on the porch of her duplex, knitting a scarf. Her hands moved with graceful, practiced ease, the lime green weaving unfurling from her needles.

Maya had thought they knew everything about each other.

They arrive at the waterfall a few minutes later. The deep, dark pool glitters like peacock feathers. Rainbows hover in the spray off the rocks. The place is usually crowded in summer, but today it’s just Maya, Aubrey, and a couple of middle-aged bikers. The woman, covered in tattoos, reclines on a boulder while the man wades in the shallows, his long gray ponytail dipping into the water as he leans down to wet his arms.

The girls step out of their sneakers and shorts, leave their belongings on the rocky shore, and go in up to their knees. The water’s so cold it feels sharp.

“One!” Aubrey says, challenging Maya to dive in with her.

“Oh, no way—”

“Two!”

Her whole body begs her not to do it, but Maya won’t be the last one in. “Three!” she shouts before plunging deep into the pool, where it’s even colder and darker and thunderous from the falls.

Her skin tingles as she bursts back up and looks back to see Aubrey, still standing, still dry. Laughing. Maya splashes her in outrage, and Aubrey shrieks, then drops silently down, disappearing with a faint ripple.

When she reappears, she’s in the middle of the pool. She’s the better swimmer, more comfortable in water. She floats on her back, looks up at the sky, the copper amulet she wears glinting on her chest. The amulet is etched with the supposedly magic words SIM SALA BIM, though Aubrey swears she doesn’t believe in magic. She just loves it. She just wishes it were real.

Maya will miss her, even with the way she’s been acting. Aubrey is staying in town after this summer, working as a waitress and taking classes at Berkshire Community College while Maya moves to Boston and attends BU. Reminded of what little time they have left, Maya sighs, paddles over to Aubrey, and floats beside her.

“You know what we never did?” Aubrey says.

“What?”

“We never jumped off the waterfall.”

“Why do you say it like that? Like we’ll never have another chance?”

“Who knows?” Aubrey shrugs. “Maybe we won’t.”

“Boston is, like, three hours away. I’ll be home all the time.”

Aubrey turns to Maya, treading water, and Maya sees that Aubrey’s mood has shifted. Her smile is lively and mischievous. She points with her eyes at the high rocks at the top of the waterfall. “Let’s do it now.”

“You’re crazy.”

“People do it all the time. Little kids even.”

Maya can’t argue with this: last time they were here, all the children of a large family had jumped off, one after another, and the littlest one couldn’t have been more than eight. “But what if—”

“We’ll be careful.”

Maya’s mom works as an EMT, so she’s heard horror stories of people killed or paralyzed doing things like jumping off waterfalls.

“What are you scared of?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Fine. I’ll do it myself.”

Aubrey turns and glides away.

Maya glances back at the shore. The biker couple has left. The sunbaked rocks are inviting, but Aubrey’s excitement is contagious, and suddenly it seems like maybe Maya was only imagining that something was wrong. She’s often been accused of being sensitive. She turns and paddles after her friend.

Cold spray from the waterfall strikes her face as she gets closer. Aubrey says something to her, but her voice is lost beneath the drum of water on water. “I can’t hear you!” Maya shouts back. Aubrey shakes her head—Never mind—but Maya doesn’t need to hear the words to hear the supportive tone. Here at the base of the waterfall, she sees the natural path around the side of it, reinforced by all the people who have come this way. Her nervousness turns to exhilaration as she climbs, the white cascade at her side like some breathtaking deadly beast. She doesn’t feel cold anymore. She grips the wet stones with her hands.