“But you are strong. Maybe that’s why Lucas wanted you to be my friend . . . he knew you were so tough, even I couldn’t fuck you up.” She untangles her hand—my head rocks painfully back without the support—and props herself up on her palms to inspect me from above. “He was right, wasn’t he?”
I can feel her sinking into one of her strange moods, but I don’t want to fight, or worry, or think of anything at all. I don’t want to talk about how scared I am, or how stuck. I don’t want to be that girl, not tonight. I just want Leigh, and to be the girl who belongs with Leigh.
The girl who has one good thing.
So I don’t wait for her to answer. Instead I reach up for her, my pruned fingers skimming her arms, and pull her down on top of me. She gives in easy, her chest on my chest, her sharp hips cushioned by mine. I run my hand across the tight skin of her back, the wet band of her bra, and down to her briefs, and with an “Unf,” she slides her tongue between my lips. I nip it with my teeth, and her fingers scrabble at the waistband of my underwear and below. I crawl backward down the basking rock, and do what Leigh taught me to do.
For a while it’s just breath and touch and body heat and the breeze.
We’re like that until we’re not. The next thing I know, Leigh’s pushing off of me, glancing back over her shoulder. I don’t know what noise caught her attention, but before I ask, she points to a spot of light dancing over the boulders by the mouth of the tourist’s path. A flashlight, its bearer coming this way.
So I guess Mike doesn’t just check the slides.
This time I’m the first to move. I grab for Leigh and slip as smoothly as I can back into the pool, newly freezing now that the night air has dried us. Leigh follows me in, and then under, where it’s so dark and there’s nothing but the water bubbling past my ears. I keep a death grip on her hand, my fingertips pressed into her knuckles. I’m trying to tell her not to surface, to follow me. I stroke one-armed, slower and smoother than usual so we won’t make a sound. It’s only ten meters or so till we’re below the bridge; I’ve swam the length of the Cove so many times, I’ve got it memorized. Ten meters isn’t far, and once we’re there we’ll never be seen. We can cling to the ropes for as long as it takes until the security guard moves on. Leigh’s backpack is still up above, but if he finds it, maybe he’ll think it was left behind by tourists. He might just drop it in the Lost and Found. I’m not excited to sneak back to the car barefoot and dripping wet in my underwear, but at least we left our phones and wallets and keys in the unlocked van, so it’s not that—
Leigh’s hand tugs out from mine only a meter or so from the bridge. When I turn and slit my eyes open, I can’t see her in the near-perfect dark. I feel for her, but can’t find her. Maybe she slipped, or got turned around, or maybe she panicked, unused to holding her breath. My own lungs are getting tight, so I surge forward until I think I’m in the shadow of the bridge. I rise as spashlessly as possible to shouting directly overhead—Mike, on the bridge. “Hey, let’s go, get out of there right now!”
That’s when I see Leigh, halfway out in the deep end of the pool.
From this distance and highlighted only by the guard’s wavering flashlight beam, I can’t see her face. I can’t tell what went wrong. I guess it doesn’t matter. She strokes toward the pool deck without glancing back, leaving me safely tucked away under the bridge.
But I can’t let her get caught alone while I hide. I can’t be Rose, floating on the only flotsam in the ocean while Jack Popsicle-izes. Without thinking—why start now?—I swim out and follow Leigh to our fate.
Water trickles from my ponytail and down my neck, along the rungs of my spine. I’m already soaked through—I tugged my clothes on right out of the pool, feeling tight and coarse and miserable, like a snake trying to slip back into its shed skin—so what’s a little more misery on top of that? But I concentrate on the slow, cold trail it leaves so I don’t have to feel my cheeks burning. I inspect my wrinkled fingertips, the goose-bumped brown skin on my legs, the stupid little pixies printed on my shorts. Anything so I don’t have to look up at my boss.
Eric sits at the little metal desk in the park security office while the guard hovers by the door, hands crossed behind his back, yielding command. “Savannah, I just—” Eric starts. “Do you understand how serious this is? What would’ve happened if Mike hadn’t called me?”
I stare at a loose hem thread curled along my thigh to avoid his eyes. And to avoid the half bottle of Largo Bay atop the desk, and the twisted sandwich baggie of buds, both pulled from the depths of Leigh’s backpack.
Though she sits beside me in her own expanding puddle on the seat of her plastic orange chair, I don’t look at Leigh, either.
We might’ve gotten away free if I hadn’t crammed our clothes inside her bag. When Mike ordered us out of the water, we crossed the deck reluctantly to the spot where the guard could help pull us up over the railing. He let us pause on the bridge to get dressed, cut his eyes to the side while we hurriedly yanked out shorts and shirts and sweatpants. I really think he would’ve shouted at us, told us we were being stupid kids and marched us out of the park, where we would’ve walked and then run to the car, flushed with cold and adrenaline and gasping with laughter by the time we reached it . . . if one of us hadn’t tipped over the backpack in our haste, spilling out the bottle and the baggie. Then we had to give him our names, tell him our story. When he herded us back to the office, I thought he might call the police.
Instead, he called my boss.
“I didn’t mean . . .” I try again. “I didn’t think . . .” Another drop slides down my shirt.
“Of course not.” Eric sighs. “Because if you had been thinking, it might’ve occurred to you that you’re not just a stupid kid.”
That startles me into glancing up at last.
“Jesus, Savannah.” He leans forward. He doesn’t even seem angry, just rumpled and weary beyond an unpleasant wake-up call from park security at midnight. It’s because he’s underdressed, I decide. Without his whistle and bullhorn and park badge, he doesn’t look like the crisp director of performing park personnel. Just like a nice, tired, middle-aged guy. “You’re legally an adult, you know?” he continues. “Do you understand that? And you trespassed on private property with illegal substances. And with a minor. That means municipal court, not juvenile. That’s an arrest and a fine—you could face jail time for this. You should’ve been thinking about your future, at least.”
“I’m sorry,” I mutter, cold through my sopping clothes, through my skin, to the bone. Suddenly I’m shivering so hard I worry I’ll rattle the screws loose in my cheapo seat. Leigh’s smart enough not to reach for my hand, so I wrap my fingers around the hard plastic ridge to keep from shaking.
“Well, I’m sorry too.” He leans back in the squeaking desk chair, scraping a hand over his abnormally furred jaw. “I truly am. You’ve been a great employee. A great performer. But I can’t have you back at the Cove. Not this summer, and not next.”
“You can’t have me back,” I repeat numbly as the words sink in.
I’m fired?
I’m fired?
I’m fired. . . .
Then his words touch bottom, unsettling silt and debris inside of me, and I realize I’m not a mermaid anymore.
SEVENTEEN
We don’t go home.
Nobody’s waiting up for either of us. Leigh’s dad thinks she’s sleeping over my place, and I called my parents on the way to the Lagoon and told them the opposite. “Buena idea, mija. Your father and I will be here for some time.” Mom sighed, resigned to the eternal time suck that accompanies a non-emergency visit to the ER (we know it well).
Instead, Leigh and I head for a place in between.
It feels like it should be light out by the time we reach Chris’s house, but it isn’t early enough. Or maybe it isn’t late enough, still a few hours from sunrise. Leigh parks the van and I climb out on tired legs. Suddenly I’m
tired all over. Leigh silent behind me, I let us inside and stagger through the narrow hallway to the hideous room, blinking when she flicks on the lights. The musty, ruffled bedspread with its milk shakes, music notes, and hearts has never looked so welcoming; maybe we can slip between the sheets and sleep until Chris Zepeda comes home from California in September. Maybe Leigh will sleep right through her eighteenth birthday.
A zombie in flip-flops, I lurch toward the bed and topple dramatically onto the covers without bothering to kick them off, or to peel off my cold, damp clothes. Letting my horrifically knotted hair tumble across my face, I close my eyes, then startle at the ripe fumf of Leigh’s backpack hitting the floor.
“So,” she rasps from across the room. Beyond asking if I’m okay, she hasn’t spoken since Mike kicked us out of the park.
“So what?” I mumble around a gross mouthful of hair.
The bed sinks beside me with the creak of mattress coils, and then her voice hovers just above me. “On a scale of one to ten, how pissed are you?”
“Dunno. Two. Not like Eric fired me to be a dick.”
“No, I meant pissed at me.”
From a sideways angle, I stare up at Leigh. Her hair dried in spikes across her forehead; it’s a little longer and blonder than when we met, bleached by the summer sun. I want to reach out and brush it back, but I’m just a sack of bones on the bed, and lifting my hand seems impossibly hard, as tough as anything. “Not your fault.”
“It was my idea.” She looks down at her hands, thumbing a long pink scrape I’ve just noticed across her tan knuckles. “Plus I brought the weed and stuff.”
“You always do.” I laugh hoarsely. Maybe I should be mad, but there’s a reason I asked Leigh to come for me instead of . . . okay, even if I’d had a more sensible person on speed dial, I’d still have chosen her. I always want to choose Leigh.
But for that to happen, Leigh has to be here to choose.
I had some time to think the problem through on the hushed ride back from the Lagoon. What would I do, if I wanted something from Jake? From Lance or Will or Max? I don’t think a thick pout and a little over-the-pants hand action will get it done. I need to be smarter if I want Leigh to jettison the thing she wants most, to get back home to Boston, and stick around Nowhere, New Mexico, to be with me. I know it’s not a small ask. I have to be subtler, enchanting yet elusive.
This seems as good a time as any to try.
“You could make it up to me,” I say, sliding myself upright against the wall. I let my head thump back against the plaster, pretending I’m chill, and my heart isn’t suddenly a heavy bass beat in my chest. “Let’s go to Boston.”
Her eyes flick up to meet mine, fiercely alight. She takes a breath. “You’re serious?”
I ease my legs straight out and thread them around Leigh, who sits in a tight, tense bundle with her knees to her chest. “You could show me the good places. Where would you take me first?”
She grins easily. “World’s End. It’s a hike on, like, a peninsula outside the city.”
“It’s a good trail?”
“Yeah, it’s okay. It’s hilly, but it’s not tough. But you can see the Boston skyline over the water.” She leans down to dig her phone out of the backpack and flips through her pictures, tilts the screen toward me. “Here.”
It’s a picture of her and Lucas on a hillside. Treetops feather the background, and above them, a strip of slate-blue water, the Atlantic. Beyond that and against the clouds, the distant outline of skyscrapers like choppy, geometric mountains. Flashing smiles for the camera, Leigh and Lucas wear matching black baseball caps with Mickey Mouse ears. I point and raise an eyebrow.
She shrugs. “Had to be there.”
“Where else would we go? Where would we eat?”
“Hmm . . . maybe the Boston Burger Company? They have this burger, the Porkasaurus.”
“Sold.” I smile and nod, but really I’m winding up to make my move. “And what about your mom, what’s she like?”
“She’s just . . . pretty much a mom.” Leigh folds her arms over her knees and rests her chin on them.
“You think she’d like me?”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
I wade in carefully, carefully. “How would you introduce me? I mean, what would you say?”
I feel the hum of her laughter where my legs rest against her hips. “Is this the Talk?”
“What talk?”
“The Are-You-My-Girlfriend Talk.”
“No. But if it was . . . we haven’t really said anything.” Not since Kristian’s party, anyway, but I pause before bringing that up, because I don’t want to remind her of the fight.
If she’s thinking about it, she doesn’t let on. “How do you want me to introduce you?”
“I don’t know. ‘Hi, Mom, this is Savannah Espinoza. She’s a really down chick. We really like each other and we’re really good at sex, and she bought you these awesome slipper socks for Christmas.’”
“Why Christmas?”
“Welllllll . . .” I breathe deep, smelling dust and the faint fresh tendrils of Febreze, and of course, Leigh. “We close the restaurant for a couple days over the holidays, and you’ll have winter break, so maybe we could fly up together. My parents wouldn’t mind, I don’t think. We’re not church people or anything. I bet your dad would let you, and then we can come back in time for New Year’s with our families here.”
I watch her hazel eyes as the light goes out. “That’s not happening.”
“You don’t want to visit Boston for Christmas?”
“Stop, Vanni.” She starts to shift.
I squeeze my legs in closer, trapping her between them. “Just, why do you have to go back right now? What specifically sucks so much about being here, if I’m here? You’re just gonna run off and leave me and your dad and Lucas? That’s crazy.”
Leigh’s whole body stiffens. With her feet, she pushes my legs away from her until we’re still close, but no part of us is touching. “I told you, Lucas won’t even be here in the fall. And I thought you didn’t care about my brother.”
“Shut up, you know I don’t. That’s not the point.”
This isn’t working out so well.
Abandoning subtlety, or seduction, or self-respect, or any kind of plan at all, I beg, “Come on, I don’t want to fight. I want you to stay in New Mexico. Please? Stay for me,” I speak the unspeakable. “You’re my good thing, you know?”
“What an honor for me,” she says drily.
I wilt into the wall. “Don’t be mean.”
“Who’s being mean?” she asks innocently, eyes round. “You’re stuck, and you want me to be stuck here too. Cool. I’m just so grateful for the chance to wait in the restaurant till your shift’s up. And wait in your driveway while you finish your chores. And wait at the Sunken Sub while you swim around in a—” She cuts herself off with a calculated frown. “Never mind that one, I guess.”
This terrible idea blossoms in me.
“Did you do it on purpose?”
Her dark eyebrows lift.
I’m trying to remember Leigh underwater. When we were so close to the bridge, nearly home free, and I lost hold of her. What did it feel like? An accident? Did she slip away, or did she pull away? “At the pool. Did you get us caught on purpose?”
With a dangerous grace I didn’t know Leigh had, she slides smoothly off the bed and backs away, only a few paces before she hits the opposite wall beside the little white desk. Leaning, she examines me the way you’d check an apple for color, for smell, for rot. “Why would I?”
Her body is loose, arms dangling, but I’m not fooled.
“So I’d get fired,” I say, my voice high and wavering. “So I’d have one less reason to hang around La Trampa.”
She sneers, her eyes like cold river water; I guess I don’t pass inspection. “First off, you’re gonna come up with as many reasons as you need, and I can do fuck-all about
that. Second, you’re the one who calls me up like I’m your manic pixie dream lesbian when you can’t handle your shit, so don’t play like you didn’t know what you were doing. I didn’t fireman-carry you into the park and throw you in the pool, guapa.”
This last word, she spits in a way I’ve just come to hate, and while I’ll always remember the first thing I loved about Leigh, I think I’ll always remember this moment, too.
My voice is stronger when I speak again, hot blood pulsing in my cheeks and the tips of my ears and twitching through my fingers. “Driving drunk and fighting and breaking and entering—that’s about my shit? That has nothing to do with the shit in your life?”
“You don’t know about my life, Savannah.” Still loose, she says my full name so easily, as if it costs her nothing. “Don’t act like all of a sudden you’re so fucking in love with me and you know everything about me, because you don’t.”
Through clenched teeth, I grind out, “Don’t you act like you’re so much more worldly than me. I get that you have problems, but you don’t know about my life. What my dad has? It could come for me at any time, and there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s in my blood and it’s fucking unstoppable. So why shouldn’t I be scared? I might be trapped forever, not just in this town but in my own fucking body. That’s a real problem. You’re just crazy.”
As soon as it’s out of me, I know I went too far, hit too hard. Leigh’s face crumbles briefly and violently, a stone cliff sliding into the sea.
Then it smooths over, and that’s even worse.
But she doesn’t say anything, just bends down and reaches for her backpack.
I draw in the stale air, as much as I can and not enough. “Leigh . . .”
My whole body flinches as she slams a foot into the leg of the desk and sends it skidding into the corner, everything stacked on top tumbling off. Cheap jewelry and watery nail polishes scatter across the floorboards. An ancient vial of body glitter flies across the room, silvery-blue dust streaking behind it in a comet’s tail, imploding against the baseboard on impact. The bottle of Red Door topples and cracks; a sickly strong wave of freesia and orange blossoms and honey rises up from it and I’m having a tough time breathing, though the perfume probably isn’t why.
Like Water Page 15