I slam my head back but there are only mounds of pillows beneath it. Attempting to bash out my rage is futile. Instead I scrunch my hands into my hair, grit my teeth, and yell wordlessly.
Sounds fun. You like to swim?
I get no reply for a while. In a moment of madness, I sit up and sort through my gym bag. I pull out my gear and throw that straight in the laundry basket. I empty the water bottle in the sink. When I’m back in my room I clean the empty wrappers and bits of random garbage out of the bottom of the bag and fold my bag away in the closet.
I can’t remember the last time I emptied the bag within a day. That’s why I have three sets.
Finally, I let myself check my phone. She must have replied by now. Surely.
Um, it’s fun—sometimes. I used to be in national comps. Mostly it’s routine now and keeps me busy. You should come ‘round and I can teach you. That’s my job, swim teaching. I teach little kiddies. But yeah, I’d love to show you. :)
I gulp down a feeling that burns my lungs and I exhale slowly through my nose. It doesn’t do much by way of calming me because I still have an image of her arm around my waist, her mouth near my ear as she holds me to one side, and her hard nipples poking into my back.
But another feeling overcomes me and I hate myself as I reply, Sure, one day. Sounds good.
I hope she thinks I like her, but also that I don’t because I’m not sure what I really mean.
The reply says, Okay, I really don’t mind. I mean, it’d be MUCH more fun than screaming kiddies. I’d like to hang.
I’ve liked you since you were fifteen is what I want to say. I’ll be there in ten minutes is what I almost type.
What I actually send is, I’d really like to be alone in a pool with you but I can’t do that in my right mind. This shit is getting blurry. Us, I mean. Sorry.
She doesn’t miss a beat. While I watch my phone, in that same minute, me counting seconds with dread, she replies.
I don’t know why you think things are “blurry”, or why it matters. Do you feel weird about our history and stuff? I do too, but I’m getting past it. Don’t let your past stand in your way.
I stare at my cell, swiping at the screen until smudges of my fingerprints cover every corner of it. Finger hovering over her contact in the delete screen, I shut the phone off and throw it to the other side of the room.
Somewhere I can find it if I want to but too far to mess anything up further right now.
It’s settled: I need her to be my Charz but it’s my guilt that I will not forget. I was brought up to struggle in life. I’ve lost friends from a dozen schools, and I grew up for years with my dad sleeping in a jail cell, leaving me without a father figure.
Only seems fair since I killed Charz’s mom and almost killed her dad that I watch the girl I like slip away. That feels right.
Because with her? That’s the best Goddamn reward.
8. Spilled Milk
Charlee
Looking up at the clock, I see it’s one minute past midday. The kids are lined up along the edge of the pool. All four have their toes curled over the edge.
“You ready?” I call.
“Yes,” the twins answer at once.
“Yeah, miss!” another says.
The last claps her hands, which causes her to wobble over the edge. I kick back and thrust forward. I catch her falling waist and push her up in line again.
The girl blows me an air kiss as thanks, relief radiating from her huge grin.
“Okay, M, O, A, then P,” I call out their initials. “On three.”
They clasp their hands in a steeple above their heads, squishing their ears between their upper arms and head, just as I taught them, 101-percent perfect. When I call out their names in order they dive off the wall one after another like fans making the wave in a stadium, plopping into the pool and then blindly splashing to the lane rope and out.
I hop out, too. The clock now reads three minutes past midday and the balding, middle-aged teacher for the next shift also looks three minutes past happy. As usual, I smile anyway but he ignores me—no shock—and demands his kids jump in and do two laps.
In the change rooms, two of the mothers of my kids are ruffing up the shivering, little ones with towels. My kids rave about how they can tread water and do freestyle and I commend them each time they repeat it in that high-pitched voice that keeps them happy.
As I sweep my hair in a bun before leaving the change rooms, a mother, Joan, taps my shoulder. She flicks her head to the corner and we duck away for a moment.
“Did I tell you she almost drowned when she was four?”
Automatically, I look at my kid and imagine her flailing for the surface of the water, breathing water in her panic, all that whiteness above the surface, sinking, slowly dying before her mom pulled her out.
“Never forget, Joan,” I say. “I’ve had my eye on her every second, during every thought when I plan my classes, and every time she lets go of my arm.”
Joan turns and nods, hiding her face perhaps out of embarrassment. It’s not the first time we’ve had this chat. “Miss Charlee, you have given my daughter back her happiness. I thank you, truly.”
“I really don’t think I did.”
Joan thrusts a stern finger inches from my face. “Now you may not believe me, but sometimes you have to see all your hard work from the outside to notice the difference you’ve made, how you’ve given her life back. Your little difference to my daughter and I is a life-changing gift. Think about that.”
Her face is flushed, inches from mine. I hate to stress her further, and I don’t know why she continuously does this, but I thank her until she’s out of earshot and I’m saying “thank you” to another random kid.
Darcy pops up in my mind for some reason. It somehow makes me laugh. I stumble out of the change room, get in my car, and drive. I only stop laughing when my tummy hurts too much to sit straight in the driver’s seat.
And tears. The moment there’s silence, I miss my voice and how cheery the sound was, but the tears are immediate, as if they were waiting for my laughter to stop. By the time I pull up at my house, I can’t make out where my driveway starts and ends everything’s so blurry.
Darcy. Darcy.
I can teach a girl to swim unaided after she’s almost drowned, but I don’t know how to do this “being mom to my little brother” thing. I don’t want to.
Mom? Ugh, Mom! “Mom!” I call. But white noise deafens the car. I drop my head against the steering wheel and it honks, jolting me back up.
“That’s it. Dad? Mom? You should be picking up Darcy from school in,” and I look to my radio, “in three hours. You hear me?” I grab my swimming bag, slam the door, and crank my neck back so the bright sky makes me see silverfish for a moment. “You better come back and pick up your son.”
I’m too young to be a parent; my soul too old to be a parent.
Mom should not be gone. Dad can’t die.
I want to be a kid, is what I message Rosa.
Oookay, cool, but um, how’s it going? she replies.
Go to sleep. You’re meant to be sleeping at—what?—5.30 am!
I throw my bag in the closest room and drag my feet to the kitchen, flip on the kettle.
I will never sleep so long as I’m surrounded by hot guys, white beaches and all-night parties filled with lots of tequila. Anyway, what did you find out about Dexter?
I stare at his name. Dexter. I pull out a mug, dump a spoonful of instant coffee in it. Think. Add a lump of sugar. Dexter. My fingers lose feeling after holding the milk for some time. Why did he plan this? Why would he kill a little boy’s mom? Why would he make me wanting him so wrong? Dexter.
You didn’t. You did not!! Rosa says.
It’s five minutes later. Five minutes of holding the milk carton in my hand?
I can’t do this Ro, I can’t do…anything.
Methodically, I pour the boiling water, stir, and only tear my glare from some wispy trees in the
backyard to pour in the milk.
Don’t make me haul my ass thousands of miles back to you Charlee May!!! Corner him in a shopping center or someplace public like that mechanics he works at, drop your I’m Sweet And Dumb act and get the scoop!
I can’t face him. I’d either melt in his arms or stalk him from afar and both are creepy in different ways.
Dexter? Why did you do this? How, I think. It…
It makes no sense, Ro, I type, finishing my thought.
I burn my fingers when I register the hot mug is still in my grasp. I yelp and pull my fingers back to my chest, watching the mug turn, the coffee spill, the mug fall, the coffee explode. When the warp catches back up to real time, the mug shatters on the tiles and the coffee explodes on the floor, drowning a radius of several feet with brown pools and splatters.
A second, thirty seconds. Two minutes.
At that point I throw my hands in the air and turn. I turn just like that, leaving the coffee drowning the tiles. My body is light as I float to my car, satisfied. My grin begins to ache once I slip into my seat again.
I haven’t been this satisfied since before my mother left me and my father left me and Darcy needed everything from me and I lost me.
The radio is so quiet as I drive. Randomly, voices will mumble something, sounding like fuzz, but that quickly disappears too and the mess of coffee, the shards of the ceramic mug splayed on the floor fill my vision and the roasted bean smell fills my lungs, touched by the sweet hint of sugar.
I made that mess. I left that mess right where it was.
I feel liberated, Ro. I type, navigating the wheel with my knee and typing by my thigh so no one will see. I’m driving there now, to see Dexter and I’ll go get him!
When my message pops on the screen as sent, my jaw drops. What am I doing? And wow, I’m actually pulling up at the mechanic’s around the corner from me.
I trip getting out of my car because I’m gaping at the huge warehouse where some guys wear overalls, some guys wear jeans or sweat pants, smears of grease dulling the colors. Where there are shiny, smashed up cars, and a vending machine loaded with drinks and potato chips and candy.
And Dexter, legs spread under a car, his foot twisting as he stretches farther under.
For a moment I catch his abs, which either a Hollywood makeup artist has sprayed to perfection, or is just all-natural Dexter. His knees are bent, making for thick thighs tight through his pants, and a V-shaped chest.
Okay, so I’m imagining most of the chest bit because that’s hidden by the car.
I rip my eyes away. Shaking my mind back into the empty space of my brain cavity, I duck behind a pickup truck undergoing repair, because I’ve somehow left my car parked too far away while I was drooling and being drawn toward him.
What’s wrong with me? What was I doing?
I check my phone. A Facebook message from Rosa says, I’ll be checking in with you. You have a couple of hours and then I’ll never speak to you again if you don’t talk to him. Shit, Charlee, at least see if the rumors are true. This is killing me!
I don’t want Rosa to hate me. She’ll be coming back to Melbourne in a few weeks and I can’t lose the only friend who loves me. I step out in front of the shop and take determined strides forward.
Dexter’s gone, though. My feet are parallel to the entrance, and a man with a protruding belly lugs himself over. “You okay, ma’am?”
“Yeah, um. Fine.”
“Need—” he sweeps his hand over his forehead. It’s less shiny when he sighs and says, “Need anything?”
I shake my head so little that he can’t have seen but he shrugs and walks off.
I’m so silly! Why didn’t I ask where Dexter is? I take in these big cars, and these greasy guys with rough fingers and piles of heavy tools everywhere. I can’t ask now. I feel silly here. I am silly.
I swivel, then stop myself. I can’t leave or else Rosa will hate me. Once, I promised her I’d kiss a guy at a school party and she spent the whole night ignoring me until I kissed him. It was a pitiful peck of a thing, barely on the lips, but after I told her she clapped her hands and whispered, “I read you liked him in your diary so I was not going to let you get away with not doing this.”
She was right. We dated a few times, though things didn’t work out for reasons I can’t remember.
The garage shrinks as I walk around it. The corrugated roof is shorter, smaller and I’m speeding up, clearing another corner when—
I see Dexter.
This girl—is her name Raych? Why do I remember that name?—is in his lap. He’s sitting on a ledge and she’s mounted him, legs dangling over each side. When his hands grab her waist and pull her closer, my heart fla-flomps. The feeling is a sharp pain, as if it skipped a beat. So cliché, but my head is pulsing and my stomach is churning seeing him. Seeing him want her. His lips at her ear.
She slaps his chest with the heel of her palm and his face twists. Guess in my jealousy I misread the signals. This isn’t an intimate moment at all. A moment later—even from here I can hear him—he shouts, “What the fuck was that!” and shrugs her off when she tries to pull him in, his bright eyes now on me, me, me.
She tugs at his T-shirt, exposing crafted muscles, flat, hard, and a line of script above his waistband. He pulls down his shirt and tells her to “fuck off” again.
She stomps behind him but pulls up short. She’s seen me. Wow, I’m dead. Her lips are pressed in a thin line, her tread louder than I thought possible. She seems like the type to prove a lot of my beliefs wrong. She’s screaming her head off, but Dexter doesn’t flinch. His arms are tensed and as he stops by my side, those arms focus in my vision, his skin tightly wrapped over taut muscles. Oh, wow, he’s tall.
She stares me up. Down. Turns to Dexter, saying, “Who’s this slut, huh? You fuck her last night? That why you didn’t come to my place?” She juts her head out, in his space. It’s awkward to be in this; this confrontation is the last place I should be.
She throws me a disgusted look, mutters something I’m glad I didn’t hear and storms off. Finger up, hair blowing in the wind, she doesn’t turn as she calls, “You’ll pay for this, you asshole!”
Dexter stares at the ground for a moment and then we both look up at the same time. His jaw is rigid, his hair messed up, his eyes big and demanding.
He breaks away, elbows forming triangles when he clasps the back of his head. “Charz…”
What do I say? Why’s he still calling me by a nickname? We’re not that close.
He doesn’t know what to say, either. He stands in front of me, hands behind his head for a while, perhaps saying something, but it’s too low to hear.
“Can we…?” He leaves the question hanging there. Giving me the power to take this conversation away. So I can make the decision to say no thanks, I’d rather not get involved in this mess. But he steps in and catches my breath before I suck it in.
How do I turn off my feelings after all these years? I’ve seen him at school, at the store, at parties. Everywhere but lying with me and now that I know I can’t do this, I want him more.
You’re sick, Charlee. Sick.
He licks his lips, all the while staring at mine. A rush plays over my skin.
I think no, and almost say no, almost pump up my willpower to cuss at him, but then I sigh, my breath escaping, my body deflating.
He sees this. For a moment I think he can read my mind.
“Hey,” he has my elbows resting in his palms. We lock stares for the umpteenth time. He asks, “Is it okay if I talk to you, Charz?”
I nod.
This isn’t the type of thing I do, confronting a guy I’ve been in love with, confronting rumors of how my mom died and how my father was critically injured.
This isn’t the type of thing I do, finding out if the guy I’m in love with is a murderer.
9. Reservoir Revelations
Charlee
Dexter asks me if I’d prefer somewhere quieter to talk. We s
nake down a path that leads us from the mechanic’s, the garage shrinking into my imagination when I turn around not long after. Or maybe it is long after. Walking with Dexter has a way of clouding what’s real and what’s in my mind.
The houses are far in the distance, making me wonder if my neighborhood has vanished, never having been established in the first place. Somehow, this oasis has existed behind my estate all these years, and I’d never thought to check. The path ends at a block of concrete and continues with gravel. Dexter turns, looking me over as if to see I’m still here.
We walk in step for the remainder, as grassy hills flood the parkland. Trees are few and far between. It’s just Dexter’s and my breaths picking up as we walk deeper into our paradise, moving in sync no matter whether I slow down or speed up.
“I’m not, you know, with her. Raych.” Dexter says randomly as we plateau on a hill.
Below—well, there isn’t a below. For a moment I’m nothing, not human, just a piece in this Earth’s plan. The reservoir is a blanket of deep blue-gray water disappearing beyond my vision, surrounded by a wall of trees on the horizon to my right.
“Feeds everyone in the south area of Melbourne,” Dexter says, nodding ahead.
“Oh,” I hear myself say. This makes my brain kick into gear. My arms are plastered by my sides, my body like a pole jammed in the ground. “It’s…”
“Amazing?”
“Yes.”
We turn, catch each other’s looks and then he shoves his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels. With my gaze, I sweep the endless water again, wondering how I’ve never known something this beautiful has been so close to me all my life. Guess Dad was too busy flying around the world for conferences, and Mom always too busy scrubbing dirty dishes, crouching on her knees collecting mine and Darcy’s toys, badgering us to at least finish our homework.
Drowning in You Page 6