Girl at the Edge

by Karen Dietrich

  “So do you like me and my sister?” I ask Oliver.

  He grins because of course the answer is so obvious. He says it without words, just a low sound, nearly a grunt. “Mmmm-hmmm.”

  “Do you want to touch us?”

  “Mmmm-hmmm.” A little louder now as if the director has appeared from thin air to lead the actors, reminding them of their motivation, of what’s at stake. Try it with more longing this time, more desperate wanting.

  I put one finger up to Oliver’s mouth, and say “Shhhhh. We don’t want anyone to hear us.” I grab his hand, the one closest to me, and slide it under my bathing suit top to feel my bare skin. “Do you want to touch me here?” I ask. Then I guide his hand down between my legs. “Or here?”

  “Uh, um, everywhere,” he says. I notice his toes are curling and relaxing in rhythm with his breathing.

  I let his hand remain between my legs, hoping he can feel me pulsing through my bathing suit bottom.

  “Now, do you want my sister to touch you?”

  “Oh hell, yes,” he says.

  “Go ahead, Heidi,” I say to Clarisse. “Touch him anywhere you like.” I am the director now, placing the characters where I want them within the scene.

  Clarisse runs one finger up Oliver’s leg, grazing him gently through his board shorts. She pulls her hand away, looking uncertain for a moment. I reach over and place my hand on top of hers, guiding now, our skin joined and melting, blurring where I begin and she ends, as if we truly do come from the same place. Our one hand is not uncertain now, and we slide our fingertips under the waistband of Oliver’s shorts. We feel his skin damp, slick with sweat. We slide farther and farther until we reach him. Then Clarisse lets go, and it’s just my hand, and I’m not sure what to do exactly, but I have an idea, and the boy’s legs squirm in the sand, as I go on and on.

  Clarisse lies on her back and wriggles her T-shirt off over her head. She folds it a few times lengthwise, making the thin blue cotton a bit thicker. “Now, let’s make this more fun,” she says. “Lift your head,” she tells Oliver, and she wraps the T-shirt around his eyes, a cotton blindfold that smells like Clarisse. Oliver laughs softly. “There we go,” Clarisse says when she’s finished securing the T-shirt with a thick knot, and Oliver puts his head back on the sand.

  She starts kissing him, and I watch her mouth moving upon his, their lips and tongues moving in rhythm, Clarisse’s eyes closed. Can she feel me staring at them? They are so close, their bodies so real—I can smell skin and sweat and salt and sand. I can feel Oliver in my hand, smooth and hard. It feels like an illusion, a figment of my imagination as though I am some kind of inventor, creating this experience, all these feelings. Clarisse opens her eyes to look at me and then pulls away from Oliver.

  “Your turn,” she says, and the boy turns his eyeless face toward me, his mouth open, his lips plumper than I remember, slightly swollen from Clarisse’s kisses. At first, I keep my eyes open and my lips closed, letting him reach for me with his tongue, licking my lips, my chin, searching for my open mouth.

  Then Clarisse unties her bathing suit top, and lets the thin straps fall into the sand. She puts Oliver’s hand on one of her bare breasts, and I see him squeezing it and rubbing it before I close my eyes, falling into the kissing, into Oliver’s mouth that is so warm and wet. I’m losing myself in him, can feel some hidden rhythm unlock inside me, and now I know exactly what to do, know what will come next. His other hand is inside my bathing suit bottom now, his fingers inside me.

  As we kiss, I lose all sense of time and being. I feel as though my body might lift up at any moment and drift into the sky, a feather on the wind, soft and weightless as a cloud. I feel a breaking, an overwhelming urge to cry out. Just as I think I might float away, I hear Clarisse’s soft voice in my ear, bringing me closer to the ground. “Now, now,” she says. “Don’t keep him all to yourself.”

  I pull away from Oliver’s mouth, and he laughs, saying, “It’s okay. I have enough for both of you. I promise.” He takes his hands back—one from Clarisse’s naked breast, one from between my legs. He unties the drawstring of his shorts, sliding them down so we can see all of him now. “Who wants to go first this time?” he asks.

  The boy’s entire body is muscle—I can sense it rippling and writhing even though I see him lying perfectly still—his eyeless face, the blood in his veins glowing blue-black in the slivers of moonlight, coursing, coursing. It hits me that there is something sacred about this, about him offering himself, an animal rendering up its soft underbelly to strangers, vulnerable, only looking for comfort, for pleasure. But to render can also mean to melt down, as in rendering the fat of an animal killed for its food, for the comfort and pleasure flesh provides when devoured.

  Clarisse leans down slowly, putting him in her mouth as he stifles a moan, trying to be quiet. I can hear the water slapping the sand in the distance and an unknown insect chorus singing in broken rhythm. Clarisse’s eyes are pinched shut. She’s not quite sure of herself, I can tell. In spite of that, she moves like a dancer, her body making time with Oliver’s body. I feel wetness between my legs—my insides sticky, a kind of priming. Each cell within me is swelling, swelling. I feel a sudden hot breeze blow through our tiny space, the humidity so high you swear you can reach out and grab the air, feeling it in your hand like a fistful of hair.

  I watch Clarisse’s mouth on Oliver and enjoy the throbbing sensation building inside me. I drag my fingers across the cool sand, a way to release some of the pressure. I dig in, feeling the coarseness of the sand against my sticky skin. I dig deeper until something stops me—something hard, a jagged piece of rock. I free it from the sand, cupping it in my palm. It’s dark and heavy in my hand, the surface bumpy, covered in tiny holes. My toes curl, and I feel a pulsing between my legs.

  Oliver’s eyes are closed. He runs his hands through Clarisse’s hair. He breathes faster and faster, grabs on to her shoulders, and releases a low moan. I smash the rock against the top of Oliver’s head. Bright blood splashes on the sand, a constellation of red appearing before me. The strike makes Oliver shudder, which knocks Clarisse from his body. She hits the back of her head on the boardwalk above us and winces from the pain.

  “Evelyn, what the fuck are you doing?” Clarisse hisses and then she looks over and sees the rock in my hand, the blood fanned around Oliver’s head like a halo. She starts to cry.

  I feel language rise up from somewhere deep within me, knowledge pulled from my very soul. I can see it all clearly now, my focus sharp as the scalpel’s edge. There is nothing to block my view of the light of reality, the shining sun of this world I’ve created. I look into Clarisse’s face, as though I’m looking into the infinite, into everything that is at once knowable and unknowable.

  “I’m taking the test.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I examine the top of Oliver’s head. I touch him gently, careful not to come in contact with the blood. “He’s bleeding, but it doesn’t look like much,” I tell Clarisse. I hold my hand up to his nose and feel his faint breath, warm on my palm. “He’s out cold,” I say.

  Clarisse watches me, in silence, tears staining her cheeks. She looks at me, then Oliver, then back to me, but she doesn’t say a word.

  I peek out through the beach grass on one side and then the other. This stretch of the beach is deserted, for now. I see hotels in the distance, some of their rectangular windows lit up, others dark, some tourists awake and watching the water dance under moonlight, some already asleep in anticipation of tomorrow’s scene—beach umbrellas snapping open for the day, towels and blankets unfurling themselves in the sun, children running to the shoreline in inflatable arm bands. Water wings we used to call them, a phrase that brings to mind flying fish, those nearly impossible creatures that fly in and out of the water, living in two worlds at once. I see the empty playground—the swings swaying like ghosts in the breeze, the tubular slide twisted like a large varicose vein.

  I grab Oliver’s feet and drag
him until I hit the concrete of the concession stand. This is the easy part. His body glides over the cool sand, making a heavy brushing sound. Now I need Clarisse’s help.

  “You grab his ankles,” I tell her, my voice quiet but firm. She does as she’s told. I walk to the other end of Oliver’s body and clench my arms tight under his armpits and we lift him up, barely able to keep him from grazing the cement. Our steps are shaky in the beginning but become steadier with adrenaline as we approach the public restroom at the concession stand.

  At first, I worry it will be locked after dark. I push the silver plate on the door expecting to be met with resistance, but instead I feel the sweet release of motion and hear the high-pitched squeak of the rusty hinge as the door opens, scraping the cement floor. Now we’re inside, the three of us.

  I prop Oliver up in a sitting position in the corner of one of the two stalls. He is a life-size doll, a mannequin with bendable limbs, his legs placed in a V to keep him upright, a sturdy base for his limp body. He probably weighs as much as all of me plus half of Clarisse, and we’re sweaty and sticky from the exertion of moving him.

  There is no electricity inside the beachside restroom, just a skylight to illuminate the space, our slick skin cast in bluish white, like milk. The floor is dirty, scattered with scraps of brown paper towels, a few flattened cigarette butts, an empty soda can that has been crushed by someone’s hand.

  I kneel down, untie Clarisse’s T-shirt from the back of Oliver’s head, and instead tie it around his open mouth. I don’t want him to scream when I wake him up. Still kneeling, I start patting his cheek with my hand, lightly at first, working up my nerve to slap him hard. The sound of my palm on his cheek makes an echo against the hard walls, punctuated by the drip from the faucet. Smack, ping, smack, ping. Everything sounds wet in here, even Clarisse’s breathing. Quick and open-mouthed, I can feel her working to slow down her heaving lungs until she’s in sync with the sound of the water droplets that disappear down the drain.

  I whisper-scream into Oliver’s ear as loudly as I think I can without anyone outside the room hearing me. “Wake up! Wake up!” I slap his face on both sides now, alternating each time. Ten slaps, fifteen slaps, and his eyelids begin to flutter. He tries to move his mouth for a second but then realizes he’s been gagged. His eyelids open, then close, then open again, and each time I can see his eyes are rolled back into his head, the light picking up the whites of his eyes, the absence of iris and pupil.

  I grab one of Oliver’s hands and make him slap himself with it. His hand is heavy in my hand at first but gets lighter and lighter as he regains consciousness, his muscles slowly taking control. He tries to stand up, but his legs fumble and collapse beneath the weight of his body, a newborn foal trying to walk. He whimpers through the T-shirt, tears pooling at the edges of his eyes—wide eyes, as though his eyelids are suspended from invisible wire or fishing line so fine it looks like nothing at all. I wish I could remember what color his eyes are, but there isn’t enough light, and I can’t recall what it was like earlier, at sunset, when I looked into his face and I smiled up at him and he smiled down at me, the horizon full of color, streaks of pink and red and orange in the sky.

  “What the fuck, Evelyn? Why are you doing this?” Clarisse asks, finally finding a way to make sound. I stand up, turning around to face her. She looks small, a little girl shivering in the night. She hugs her arms to her chest. She doesn’t look me in the eye.

  I walk toward her slowly, my movements delicate, as if I’m approaching a frightened animal in the wild.

  “Evelyn, tell me what the fuck is going on right now,” Clarisse says. Her voice is ragged with sobs. She inches away from me until her back is against the wall. She puts her hand on the door handle.

  I smile at her but she doesn’t smile back. I reach for her, grazing her shoulder with my fingertips. She grips the door handle tighter. “Oh, don’t leave now, honey,” I say. “You’ll miss all the fun.” The door scrapes the cement floor as she flings it open and runs out into the darkness.

  I add to The Catalog of Everything I’ve Done Wrong: made Clarisse run away from me.

  I sit down on top of Oliver, straddling him, my face so close to his our noses are almost touching. I place my hands on his shoulders and I look into his terrified eyes, but I see nothing but myself. He cries a small sniffling cry. “There, there,” I say, smoothing his hair with my fingers and then embracing him, my arms around his neck, which is drenched in sweat and streaked with blood.

  “This will be easy, if you want it to be,” I tell Oliver. “I promise.” It feels so natural now, this way of thinking, this way of speaking. It’s familiar.

  I don’t have to consider consequences because nothing matters anymore, and it feels so right. The world is a black hole. It’s been this way all along, but I’m finally realizing it now. Someone once tricked me into thinking that there’s both darkness and light in this world, but I can see clearly now, can make out the horizon for what it truly is—pitch black and swallowing me whole. I’ve been melted and poured into a mold. My father is the maker, and he has cast me in his shape.

  I bite Oliver’s earlobe, gently at first, tasting the sweat and sand, and then as hard as I can, tasting his blood, warm and metallic. He screams, but it’s muffled. “Oh, you have something to say?” I ask. I untie the T-shirt and let it fall away.

  Oliver tries to speak, his mouth opening and closing silently like a fish, his shallow breath piercing the air with sound. He tries to keep his eyes open, but it’s becoming more difficult. His head falls toward his shoulder; he’s losing consciousness again.

  Then I feel it inside—the switch flipped, the machinery engaged, the blood coursing and coursing through me like a pulse. I close my eyes.

  What comes next is primal. I’m split open and raw. I think for a moment that I should run away and never come back, but then I realize that that’s impossible, for I already know my fortune. It’s written in stardust, in prison logs, in letters I’ll never send, in sediment patterns on the ocean floor, in lines on the warm flesh of my palms.

  I open my eyes. Now comes the fire, flames fanned and devouring all the oxygen in the room. It’s getting difficult to breathe, but don’t worry—it’s almost over now. I promise.

  Chapter Thirty

  I hold the bathroom door open as I stand in the threshold, watching Oliver’s body for signs of movement. He’s lying on his back on the filthy floor, his arms and legs splayed. I stare at him until I see the smallest rise of his chest and then release the door, letting the weight of gravity close it.

  Gravity has an infinite range—it goes on forever and forever. It cannot be absorbed, transformed, or shielded against. On Earth, gravity gives weight to physical objects and causes the tides. In space, gravitational forces act as a kind of time travel, slowing things down so that, instead of walking on the moon, you’re bouncing, taking leaps and bounds with each step.

  Water makes you weightless too, but not because of gravity. When your body enters water, the water makes space for you. We don’t see it because it can’t be perceived with the eyes; it has to be felt with the body. The water accepts your weight, lets you displace it with your own mass. As long as the water weighs more than you do, you float. Your weight presses down into the water, and the water presses back, pushing you up. And because your lungs are full of air, they act like balloons, lifting you to the surface naturally.

  I walk into the warm gulf, my body suspended in dark water on this dark night. I propel myself forward with one hand and carry the rock in the other. While still on land, I had wrapped Clarisse’s T-shirt tightly around the rock and tied it in the best knot I could manage, stretching the fabric until I was sure it would stay in place.

  I swim past the orange-and-white-striped buoys that float in place to warn the tourists. They create a boundary between the safe waters and the open waters. Out here you can’t be sure of the depth, which I’m hoping is miles and miles. I drop the rock and let it sink, i
ts weight making it fall hard and fast, although I won’t be able to hear it when it finally lands at the bottom of the gulf, fathoms below, the sound muffled by the weight of water.

  I float on my back and then paddle quietly toward shore, making my body as silent as possible, leaving nothing in my wake. I stop to rest for a moment, my arms stretched out to my sides, showing my wingspan as if I were a bird, my body making a T shape. From above, it must look like a kind of surrender.

  I break my float and tuck myself into a ball, only my head bobbing above the surface of the dark water, disembodied. I look up at the sky, trying to remember that trick to find the little dipper—I know the North Star is a part of it—Polaris it’s called, because it’s the star closest to the North Pole, used in celestial navigation a long time ago. Can you imagine figuring out where you’re going on Earth by looking up at the sky? These days, we don’t look up much at all, and if we’re trying to find our way, we usually keep our eyes rooted on the ground, scanning for landmarks, for clues of the familiar. I wish I could find Clarisse by looking up into the endless night, wish the sky could somehow point me in her direction—straight toward the girl whose name means shining and bright.

  I make it back to the shore and walk out of the water, back to the beach, sand between my toes as I eventually begin to run back to the hotel. I work up speed, now running as fast as I can toward the Thunderbird. I’m pumping my arms, hoping my balled fists can cut through the atmosphere, get me there faster. After a few minutes, I come to a halt, digging my heels into the sand to put on the brakes. The momentum flings me forward, and I land on my elbows and knees in the sand.

  I look at the hotels in the distance once more, the small jagged skyline they create, the soft yellow lights in rows and rows of windows stacked up on top of each other. If a building is a body, the windows are the eyes.

  “I’m going the wrong way,” I say, and I turn and take off running. I can hear blood pumping in my ears. It drowns out the lapping of the breakers against the shoreline. I can feel the cool air turning the skin of my bare arms into gooseflesh. I can taste the sweat on my lip.