Imaginary Girls(2)

So I could stay on this rock, getting just my feet wet, then my legs up to my knees, no more. I could do nothing and she wouldn’t be mad tomorrow. But what would we have to talk about then?

I was fourteen, way younger than the boys poking at me with the beams of their flashlights. Hanging with Ruby’s friends meant I had to be careful of who was looking, whose bottle to steal a sip out of, who to let sit beside me in the dark where they knew Ruby couldn’t see. Less dangerous would be the reservoir itself, too large to keep track of in the night—an oil spill instead of a mapped and measured ocean.

That’s why, when she stood tall on the bed of rocks and pointed out into the night to say I could swim it right now, this dark minute, I didn’t protest. She meant the width of the reservoir, about two miles across, but it looked like she meant the night sky itself, that there was a universe of time unknown and I could cross it.

Most people weren’t aware of our reservoir’s history; they didn’t think about what had been here before. At night, it was just this indescribable thing without shape or color. This thing that could only be felt around you, when wading in, when you bent your knees and gulped air and let it swallow your head. Once under, all sound cut off. The water thickened the lower you sunk—with what, you didn’t think about, didn’t want to know. You had to watch your toes, because the jagged bottom could cut you, and hang tight to your clothes, if you were wearing any, because the reservoir was known to take what it wanted when it wanted it. Not just loose change and car keys but bikini tops and piercings come loose from decade-old holes. Ruby once lost a ring a boy gave her, a ring handcrafted by his father, given as a promise she never meant to keep. So for Ruby the reservoir took what she wanted, almost as if they shared an understanding. Everyone else had to be more careful.

This reservoir didn’t belong to us, though it lapped into our backyards. It cut through multiple towns across the Hudson Valley; it lined our roads. It was there past the trees, behind chains and No Trespassing signs, dammed up and shored in, but still sparkling in every kind of weather, calling us to drop our pants and jump in. It was part of the watershed that supplied New York City—just begging us to take advantage.

I loved swimming it, Ruby knew. We liked to think of them, the city people who assumed they had lives so much better than ours even though they lived stacked up tight in their gray city, locked in their boxes, breathing their canned air, taking their baths in the pool we just swam in.

It was illegal to swim in the reservoir, but I did it anyway—we all did, and more. It was the water we puked into, when we were too drunk to keep standing; water we pissed in, secretly, in darkness; water in which some girls gave it up, thinking they didn’t need a condom; water where stupid girls did stupid things.

I’d been coming here since I was a baby. Besides, I knew I wouldn’t drown if I tried to cross—Ruby said.

So there I was, standing up, and clawing out of my shirt, and then I lost my shorts, and then I was wading into the water past my knees.

I knew what she wanted: a show, for the rest of them. Ruby said I could do an impossible thing and all I had to do was act like I was about to do it, make them wonder enough to think it real. Her friends sure weren’t sober; they’d remember it however she wanted them to tomorrow.

I pushed forward, plunging in up to my waist. She wound them up for me, saying, “Chloe’ll make it across, no problem. Chloe’ll bring us back something from Olive, just watch. Right, Chlo?” And some boys yelled, “Yeah, Chloe, think you can do it?” And other boys yelled, “No way!” and “Let’s see her try!” Flashlights dancing circles around me. My name on their lips, coasting across the water. My name.

Everyone was watching, it felt like. The night was mine now, as if my sister had handed it over to me, simply curious to see what could happen.

It had all started because Ruby had invited some boys to the reservoir, and then word had gotten out, as it always did, news of a party passed along from car to car at the Village Green, phones buzzing, messages flying, girls and boys we didn’t even bother talking to in daylight saying, “Ruby wants to go swimming. Did you hear?”

I was only aware of how many kids had come when I looked back to shore. Then my eyes went to him, the one boy on the rocks who wasn’t yelling. I could see him up on the tallest rock, a shaggy silhouette showing how his mohawk had grown out, the hard angle of his chin turned away. A pulse of light as he sucked in on one of his brother’s smokes, then dark, when he ground it out, then no light. He was the one not watching. His brother was up there, and so was some girl in a white shirt, so white it was the brightest thing I could see from out in the water, and they were watching. Their heads were turned my way. Only his wasn’t.