Freshwater(28)

“—and shrug—” added Ada.

“—and say, ‘You know what? Fair enough.’” They laughed as they crossed a road and cut through a parking lot. “Can you imagine what our kid would look like?”

“What, brown skinned with freckles?” said Ada, giggling.

“And a ginger afro.” Ewan bent over laughing, and I watched them both from inside her head, amused. It was cute. They talked about how their families would receive them—they talked as if things weren’t impossible, as if choices hadn’t already been made. I didn’t interfere, not yet. When they got to his room and got into bed, Ada hesitated.

“We don’t have to do anything,” she said. “Things have changed, you know, we can step back and just be friends. Nothing would get broken.”

Ewan smiled. “You’re beautiful and you’re lying next to me.”

He reached out to her and I entered his arms. I can only be what I was born to be.

Trust me, I wanted things to go back to the way they were, free and easy, but Ada couldn’t do it. It was too late, now that she loved him. She started feeling guilty all the time, imagining how it would feel for his girlfriend if she knew about their affair. It was easy to imagine the pain of betrayal—after all, Ada loved him too now. She and the girl were basically on the same side. He and I were, for all purposes, the villains in this.

Also, Ada had gotten the Depo-Provera shot, a load of hormones that made her bleed for eight weeks nonstop. It threw off the fragile balance she and I kept in her mind, and there were terrible mood swings, a gutting depression. Ada owned a bokken, a wooden Japanese sword, and one night she used it to smash the mirror in her dorm room, screaming tears as glass flew across the hardwood floor. The shards glinted in her fingers as she drew them down the inside of her arm, watching the bright red bubble through brown skin. I moaned inside her, greedy for the mother color she was feeding me. We were pulling apart. Ada sat on the floor surrounded by a hundred mirror pieces and cried.

Her friend Catia, a military brat who hung out with her and Malena, came by to get Ada for lunch. She saw the mess and the blood and sighed.

“Oh, Ada,” she said. “Let’s clean this up.”

I liked her for that, for how she never made Ada feel damaged. Ada loved her. Catia was quiet but forceful, a pastor’s daughter. On a night run to Taco Bell once, when Catia was driving and Malena was sitting in the back with Ada, they stopped at a liquor store and Malena bought her usual bottle of Johnnie Walker, tipping some of it to the ground before getting back in the car. She offered some to Ada, but Ada refused. Now that she drank, I preferred her to stick to tequila. Malena looked at Ada and knew she was thinking about Ewan.

“He loves you, Ada. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

Ada made a face. “Yeah, whatever,” she said.

Malena shrugged with half-lidded eyes. “You’ll see, mi hermana. You’ll see.”

Catia smiled slightly at us through the rearview mirror, and Ada looked out the window, her heart hurting. Ewan had started cleaning up his life after a bad Salvia trip he had one night, when he said Ada came to him in a vision, sent by the devil. He said it was her, but if there was anyone a devil would send, we all know by now—it would be me. Ewan just couldn’t tell the difference.

“Clearly, we’re both way too Catholic,” I joked, but he was serious. He stopped smoking weed; he cut back on the drinking and focused on his classes. Ada was so proud of him. I was alarmed.

“I’ve given up all my vices,” he said. “Except you.”

“You’re going to give me up?” Ada whispered. I could taste the grief in the back of her throat. She didn’t want to be just another drug polluting his life, and she wasn’t, she really wasn’t. It was me, but we were one, so I didn’t know what to tell her.

Ewan looked at her sadly. “I don’t know if I can,” he admitted.

The whole thing became a loop, as these things often do. Ada stopped sleeping with Ewan, so I stopped fucking him, and instead they cooked together at his new place, making nasi goreng in a smooth dance across the kitchen floor, with knife and cutting board, onions and meat, oil and spices. He tossed the wok and washed the dishes, and Ada was so happy. I left her alone that night—it had been so long since she could be this happy. She made him watch Sarafina! and they ate Cadbury chocolates and fell asleep and nothing happened. But then, eventually, I fell back into bed with him and the cycle started again and the guilt was everywhere, greasy and thick, and Ada couldn’t get away.

Eventually, Ewan was the one who ended it.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he said. “I can’t be with you anymore. She makes me happy.”

For the first time, I let Ada cry in front of him. I watched her sob into his shoulder, into the soft cotton of his T-shirt. She didn’t beg him; she didn’t ask for anything. Ewan held her and touched her face gently.

“Why do you have to be so beautiful?” he whispered.

Ada cried herself to sleep, her face pressed into his chest. She woke up briefly to see Ewan watching her sleep, his hand playing in the curls of her hair, his eyes soft.



Ada graduated college a few weeks later with Catia and Malena and Luka and most of her friends. Saachi flew up for it with A?uli and Chima, and the whole time, Ada was unsettled and shaking. I had to keep her face smooth so that her human family wouldn’t see any of the storm within. Saachi was demanding her time, too much of it, considering that Ada was about to lose all her friends and there was barely any time to say good-bye.