“Hi, Emmy,” she chirps.
“Hello, Ryleigh. Back from camp?”
“Yep. And I think I got Zika from all the mosquitoes. I was like their pincushion.”
“I don’t think you can get Zika from a summer camp in New Hampshire.”
“Then I definitely got something from all the mosquito repellant they sprayed on us. All organic, my butt. Anything that repels those suckers has to be toxic. I’ll probably be dead by morning.”
“Probably.”
She waits.
“Well, if you’re in your suit, come on over,” I say. “Where’s your mom? It’s late.”
She hoists a leg over the wall, slides down. Her swimsuit is pink and green. “Asleep, like always. Like yours. Do all moms go to bed early?”
“Yes. It’s to get away from rotten kids like us.” I walk around inside the pool, testing my knee.
Ryleigh stands by the pool steps, the lights from under the water casting a milky glow over her body.
“You got really tan,” I tell her.
“All that sunscreen is probably toxic, too. I stopped wearing it and then I thought about skin cancer, but by that time it was too late and here I am. Brown as a nut, my dad said. He’s working late at the paper again, in case you were wondering where he was.”
“Well, the news never stops, I guess.”
She looks around the pool. “What happened to the swan floatie? I liked that one.”
“I don’t know. But it was some sort of plastic, so it was probably toxic, too, and you’re better off.”
She plops into the water. “I was watching earlier. Joey’s home?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s good. I like him. I was worried. Did you know that nearly twenty-one million people in the country struggle with drug addiction? That’s more than the number of people with cancers combi—”
I hold up a hand. “Stop.”
“Okay.” She dips under the water. Her body swivels past the underwater pool light, like a skinny mermaid. She pops back up in the deep end. “I’m going to be in sixth grade.”
“I know! Very exciting. Did you get your school clothes?”
“Yes. I did my research and had Mom order ethically made clothes, but then I thought about the environmental cost of shipping and was that really ethical or just more environmental damage and maybe I didn’t do the right thing. Maybe I should make my own clothes. Maybe that would be better, like in olden times. The air was better then.” She sniffs the humid evening air. “Heliotrope smells nice.”
“It’s a hard choice to make. That might be fun, to learn to sew. Probably come in handy for the future apocalypse,” I say, letting water drizzle through my fingertips. Ryleigh dives back down and shimmies up next to me.
“Look.” She uses her fingers to spread her mouth wide.
“Oh my gosh! No more braces! Cool you! Someone will definitely fall in love with you this year, for sure. Sixth grade is middle school. You’ll have dances now.”
She takes her fingers out of her mouth.
“No,” she says. “That won’t happen. I’m too difficult. That’s what Mom says, anyway. She says I talk too much and tire people out and I should probably see a doctor. I don’t know why I need to see a doctor for talking.”
When I was in the sixth grade, I asked my mother if she thought I was pretty and she put down her phone and took off her glasses and said, “That’s not something you need to worry about, Emory. There are far more important things to be worried about than looks.”
I still think about how she just didn’t say Yes. How it shouldn’t be hard for a mom to just say Yes, you’re pretty. They tell us plenty of critical things, how hard is it to throw some positives in there? A B is always “Well, if you’d applied yourself” and never “That was a hard class for you, good job.” It’s like they’re constantly paring us down, whittling us away so the only part that remains is the one they think is most acceptable.
“Well, Ryleigh, you know what?”
She bounces up and down. “What?”
“There’s somebody out there in this big old world who’s very quiet, and you know what?”
“What?”
“You’re going to meet them, and they are going to love every single thing you have to say.”
She smiles and does a handstand. I tickle her water-wrinkled feet.
Upstairs, the light in Maddie’s room switches on and then off again.
* * *
—
Ryleigh has gone home, pushing a lounge chair to the wall to climb back over. I hoisted her as best I could, made sure to listen to the click of her back door, that she got in safe.
I float for a little bit longer, staring at my stars, before I decide to get out. I’m toweling off when my phone flashes.
Hey
My heart starts pounding so hard my ears swim. Maybe if I’d listened closer in Biology and Anatomy last spring I’d know what this particular sensation is called.
My fingers tremble a little as I type back, Hey.
I’m about to pull up in the drive. You outside?
Yes
See you in 15
Ok
I wait in the pool house. It’s like a tiny house, with a simple shower and some long built-in benches with cushions. Extra towels, sunscreen. Silly signs like beach this way with an arrow pointing outside, toward the pool. I shake out my hair.
The door opens. Moonlight floods the small room.
“Hey, you,” says Gage.
He closes the door, encasing us in darkness. It takes a few minutes for my eyes to adjust, but then there he is, finally home, here in front of me.
“Hey,” I say lightly. I can’t act too excited to see him; he gets weirded out by that. I did that in the spring once and he didn’t text me back for a week.
“Stand up,” he says.
Gage is so much taller than me, I barely clear his chest. Standing so close to him feels electrical, bolts of heat and light that erase the pain in my knee, my thoughts about Joey, everything, because I know in a few minutes I am going to feel better.
“I missed you,” he says. He snaps the strap on my swimsuit. “I like this. Did you miss me, too?”
But he doesn’t wait for me to answer.
11
IT STARTED WITH ANNE Sexton. Or maybe Arthur Miller. Possibly Henry James. All I know is, three dead writers led to me hooking up with the boy next door. Not the most romantic start, but as Joey would say, it is what it is.
I was waiting up for Joey last spring, in my room, reading at my desk in front of the window, when the light in Gage’s bedroom suddenly came on and startled me. It was late; I thought he’d be asleep. He’s always training and then sleeping and then getting up early to run. In a weird way, he’s like an extremely hot-looking hamster stuck inside a wheel.
I looked up, blinking.
There he was, staring at me. He gave me a little wave and then sat down at his own desk. Pulled out some notebooks, his iPad, lowered his head. Frowned. Chewed on a pencil. Sighed. Fiddled with his phone.
My phone vibrated on the desk. I picked it up. I didn’t recognize the number, but I looked at the message anyway.
U should be sleeping
How did you get my number? I typed back.
I have my ways what are u doing