Imaginary Girls(82)

“I saw,” Jonah said. “She took all her shit from the living room. And who knows what she got from upstairs.”

“The water’s down,” Pete said. “Guess she didn’t need any help getting out.”

“Guess not,” Jonah said.

They both stared as I stepped all the way in but didn’t utter a good morning.

“She left Chloe here,” Pete said, as if I wasn’t digging out some sugar cereal from the cabinet two feet away.

“All I know is she’s not taking off and sticking me with a fifteen-year-old kid,” Jonah said.

“Sixteen,” I said, eating cereal out of the box.

“Sixteen-year-old kid,” Jonah corrected himself.

“Don’t look at me, dude,” Pete said. “She can’t stay at my place. I live with my parents.”

“Well, she can’t stay here,” Jonah said.

“Stop it,” I said. “She’ll be back for me. She told me.”

And she would; it was only that I didn’t know when.




The day deepened and she didn’t answer her texts. The night swept closer and she didn’t pick up when I called. The white Buick didn’t roar back down the driveway. When Pete got his car out of the mud and said I could get a ride with him, I went into town looking for her. No one had seen her all day.

Coincidentally, no one had seen London, either.

It was on the Green, standing there with some of London’s friends, that I realized I needed to go back. I needed someone to drive me. Now.

I made an excuse. “It’s so hot out,” I said, sounding so innocent. “I feel like swimming. Let’s go to the reservoir.”

Cate, Damien, Asha, and Vanessa liked the idea and said sure.

“So, you gonna swim across this time? Like you did that one summer?” Cate said to me, oblivious or stoned or both.

“I thought you asked if she was going to swim across time,” Asha said.

“Wow,” Cate said. “That would be impossible.”

“Yeah like completely impossible.”

And they didn’t wait for an answer—if I’d swim it this time, if I ever even had. We went for the car, but everyone had stops to make first, and at each stop someone new was told and the group got larger. Soon there were snacks and smokes gathered and flashlights and cheap beer from the place in town that didn’t card. Word had gotten out and the handful of kids wanting to swim had expanded. There were more kids going than I could count. Some, I didn’t even know. I’d accidentally instigated a party.

When we hit the rocks on shore, I could barely look at first—at the water. I kept my back to it, took the first beer handed to me, though it was warm and shook-up from the walk in the woods, tried to go for a sip, and sprayed myself with foam instead. Behind me, voices in the water seemed to whisper imperceptible mumbles of things, hardly words at all. I saw how the water was edging closer to the trees than I’d ever seen it, and it seemed somehow darker in the night, if that were possible, and so deep there wouldn’t be just a lost town down at the bottom but a long highway leading down and down, until someone who didn’t need lungs to breathe could find herself emerging with a splash in another lake on the other side of the world.

I didn’t go in. The last time I’d stepped all the way into this reservoir, I’d found a dead girl floating in it.

Tonight, so far, there was no trace of her. Or of my sister.

“Don’t!” Cate shrieked from a pool of darkness, startling me. But she was only goofing off with her friends, saving herself from being thrown in at the last second. She was talking to her friend, not me.

Damien dove in first. Asha made a splash like she weighed three hundred pounds, though she weighed a third of that and no one could figure out how such a big splash had come from her. Vanessa fussed with her bra strap. Some girl I’d never seen before stepped out of her clothes and jumped, and then I couldn’t see her anymore. There was a boat being pushed in; there was a jumble of shoes on shore.

So many people were there—too many.

I got caught up in it. My shoes came off, then my shorts and my shirt. I could cannonball down from the high rocks into the water below; the plunge would have more force that way—I’d hit and sink fast toward bottom. Once under, I’d stay down as long as I could stand it. I’d hold my mouth closed and hope the air lasted. I’d open my eyes and hope to see someone. Maybe a person from Olive would tell me where my sister was.