Wish You Were Here(19)

I read the sign diligently, thinking of poisoned apples, but there is nothing warning me off. The walkway ends in a small, enclosed dock that looks out over the water. Two sea lions are sprawled on the boards, the wood still wet around their bodies, like a crime scene outline. They do not even twitch as I pass to lean over the railing and peer at the water: green-tinted but clear, with a family of sea turtles swimming just below me.

Well. If I’m the last person in the world, there are worse places to be.

I toe off my sneakers and peel off my socks, hiding them under the bench of the dock. It feels exhibitionistic to undress, but there’s no one else here, and I have too limited a supply of clothing to get it wet. When I’m down to my athletic bra and panties, I start descending the staircase into the water. I let it lap at my shins, and then do a shallow dive into the lagoon.

The water is cool on my skin, and when I stand, I can almost brush the sandy bottom with my toes. There are mangrove trees at the edge of the pool, and through the ripple of the water are black shadows of lava. Some of them are large enough to rise from the surface, jagged as teeth. I tread water for a few moments and then start to swim in the direction of the lava outcroppings. The sun is so strong that it feels like a coronation. I lean back, floating, blinking up at the clouds that drift across the sky.

When I feel myself being poked, I startle violently, swallow water, and come up sputtering. Two penguins bob in front of me, seemingly as surprised to see me as I am to see them.

“Hey there,” I whisper, grinning. They are the size of my forearm, tuxedoed formally, their pupils yellow dots. I stretch out my hand gently, inviting them to swim closer. One of the penguins dives under the water and reappears to my left.

The other one pecks me hard enough to draw blood.

“Jesus Christ!” I cry out, kicking away from the penguin, clapping a hand over my shoulder. It’s barely a scrape, but it hurts.

I think of all the children’s stories about penguins, which are clearly doing a disservice by making them seem friendly and cuddly. Maybe in real life they’re territorial; maybe I’ve committed an infraction by swimming into their part of the lagoon. I distance myself from them, moving a little further out of reach of the dock toward the tangled roots of the mangroves.

I paddle around lazily, wary of penguins. I also have the sensation again that I’m being watched.

I’m wearing my underwear, which is basically equivalent to a bikini, but it’s still not the way I’d like to be discovered unawares. Twice, I glance over my shoulder, but even from this distance I can see there’s no one on the dock.

Splash.

The sound comes from behind me and when I whip around, the spray of water keeps me from seeing anything.

I turn away and it happens again.

But this time when I turn, I’m a foot away from the curious stare of a sea lion.

His eyes are black and soulful, his whiskers bob. Under the water his body looks like one compact, undulating muscle, the tail sweeping powerfully to keep him upright.

One flat platter of a fin breaks the water and he splashes me again.

So I splash him back.

For a moment we just stare at each other. His nose twitches. He slaps his fin on the surface again and sends a shear of water into my face.

I burst out laughing and he does a backward dive, reappearing a few feet away from me. With a grin, I fling myself backward underwater, too. When I come up, pushing the hair out of my face, the sea lion is a foot away. This time, I hold my breath and somersault underwater, opening my eyes beneath the surface to watch him do the same thing.

It’s almost like we’re having a conversation.

Delighted, we play together, mimicking motions. Worn out, I start swimming back to the dock. For a while, the sea lion follows me. We surface underneath the raised wooden dock, breathing hard. He smells of fish.

I slowly stretch out my hand, thinking that maybe he will let me pet him, now that we have established a friendship of sorts. But before I can reach the silk of his wet fur, a drop of blood materializes in the center of my palm.

Shocked, I pull my hand back—Did I cut it on lava? Was it the penguin?—just as a second drop splats into the water, diffusing like dye.

I glance up and realize it’s coming from above the dock.

Scrambling up the slippery steps I see a girl sitting with her back to the post that forms a corner of the dock. She is young, on the cusp of being a teenager. She seems just as surprised to see me as I am to see her, and she immediately yanks down the sleeve of her sweatshirt, but not before I get a glimpse of the ladder rungs of cuts, one still bleeding.

“Are you okay?” I ask, moving toward her, but she hunches up her knees and slips her hands in the pockets of her sweatshirt.

I never self-harmed, but I remember a girl from my high school who did. Her mother was dying of ovarian cancer and once, we were both waiting for the guidance counselor on a bench outside her office. I looked over and saw the girl picking at scars on her forearm that reminded me of the height marks my father made on my bedroom doorframe every year on my birthday to chart my growth. She stopped when she saw me staring. What? she said.

This girl has black hair in a messy braid, and she isn’t crying. In fact, she looks pissed off to have had her hiding spot trespassed upon. “What are you doing here?” she accuses.

“Swimming,” I say, and my cheeks burn as I remember what I’m wearing, and what I’m not. I grab my borrowed T-shirt from where it sits, under the bench, and pull it over my head.