T
hey yell in choruses, in rounds, the same way they sing
around the campfire at night.
“Come on! (Come on!) Get in already! (Get in,
come on!)”
Tilly, the youngest, splashes and echoes her older cousins
treading a few feet away. Shelby sees the light sing through her
sister’s frizzy blonde halo, while she grips the hot metal rungs
and dips only one foot into the water. The meniscus measures
her ankle: one whole extremity, 5 toes, tendons, ligaments,
metatarsals, all susceptible to the fishes. She pulls it back and
does the same with her left, then sits on the first rung, the seat of
her string bikini bottom wet. Small waves break on her kneecaps,
like they’re boulders intercepting a mission to shore. She extends
her legs and sees how luminous they look in the lake water, how
they do not appear to belong to her. The other kids—her sister,
her cousins—bob on noodles so their shoulders slice the surface
and sink below.
“You’re hogging the ladder! We wanna cannonball!” Liam calls.
She ignores him and closes her eyes to forget the water’s cold
touch: she tunes into the heartbeats of boats tapping the dock,
desiccated leaves bristling in the hot breeze, newspaper crinkling
in the hands of her parents and aunts and uncles behind her, the
motorboats purring in the bay. She longs for the same bravery as
the others, who don’t think twice about plunging into the water
with their knees pointed and feet flexed. Even Tilly, who is still
scared of thunder and climbs into bed with her in the middle of
the night, jumps freely and slides in all at once, so her skin has no
time to scream. Shelby always holds onto the consequences.
Turning, she slowly lowers her body into the water so she’s
hanging from the ladder’s rungs, her feet lulled towards the deep.
The waterline reaches her shoulder blades and waves lick her
back. It should be easy to let go and allow the lake to carry her
weight. Shelby knows she is buoyant. But she hangs between air