Dan had wanted to be a pumpkin that year, a costume that his parents couldn’t find in any store, so Carl had made him one.
“And to be fair,” Greta said, “it was a good costume! Very creative.”
“She’s being nice,” Carl said. “The wire frame collapsed halfway through trick-or-treating and everyone thought he was a carrot!”
Maya and Greta laughed. Dan had heard this one before. He seemed tense, she thought, like he was thinking about finals. Or maybe something else was bothering him.
Maybe she was tipsier than she thought.
Outside the wind picked up. The windows rattled in their frames.
“It’s a good thing you’re spending the night,” Greta said. “Sounds like a storm is coming.”
A hush fell and Maya looked down at her plate. Most of the food was still there. She speared a piece of lamb with her fork.
“The birdhouse,” Carl said suddenly.
Maya looked up, confused, to see them all staring out the window at her back, apprehensive. Her scalp tingled as she turned to look, and as she did （her head too heavy, moving way too fast）， she understood her mistake.
That last drink had been a terrible idea. Maya hadn’t realized how drunk she was until she was in motion, and now the full force of two glasses of pinot noir, the rum daiquiri, and a teacup and two shots of gin hit her like a tsunami. Her eyes struggled to focus on what everyone was looking at. The birdhouse. The wind had blown it off its branch, and now the tiny house rested in a tangle of twigs that had broken its fall. But the wind was going strong, the twigs shaking, and any second the birdhouse, with its carefully crafted windows and gabled roof, would fall and smash open on the frozen ground.
Maya felt like she was inside of it. The room tilted. The floor swayed and she curled her fingers around the edges of her seat to keep from falling.
“I’ll go see if I can save it,” Carl said.
He left, and then it was just her, Dan, and Greta with her excavating eyes. Two very smart people who could probably tell by her weaving that she had the spins.
“Hey,” Dan said softly. “You doing all right?”
Maya nodded, looking down at her plate. She could feel him beside her and Greta across from her, watching. （Judging.） Maya couldn’t look up. Nausea surged from her stomach through her chest to her throat.
“Can I get you a glass of water?” Greta asked without warmth.
Maya shook her head. She needed to get to the bathroom. “I’ll be right back,” she said as she got up. The thought of vomiting in front of Greta at her birthday dinner was so horrible that Maya broke into a clumsy run and was almost out of the room when her gag reflex kicked in and her mouth flooded.
She covered her mouth, but some of it seeped from between her fingers and splatted on the floor. No one said anything as she hurried away down the hall. The bathroom was at the bottom of the stairs. Closing the door behind her, Maya sank to her knees and heaved. It was all coming up. The wine, the lamb, the frosting, everything she wanted to keep down. Aubrey’s body falling on the steps. Cristina pitching forward on her face. Frank looking up into the camera. Their motions synced in Maya’s mind as she threw up. She had hidden Aubrey’s murder in a box inside her head, but Frank was still out there killing. Even as the wine burned its way back up her throat, Maya had never felt so sober.
She gargled cold water, then stood paralyzed at the sink, too mortified to return to the table. Her clammy face stared back at her, shivering as sweat poured from her body—different from the sweat of exercise. Thicker. Cold. The mirror confirmed that there would be no more pretending she was okay.
FIVE
Maya drives with the windows down, letting the summer air rush in and steal their voices as they sing along with Tender Wallpaper’s cover of the murder ballad “Two Sisters.” The air conditioner is broken, but the CD player works, and she and Aubrey hurl their voices as if auditioning for a musical. They wear bathing suits beneath their shorts. Sneakers and tank tops, towels in the back seat. Aubrey dabs sunscreen on her lightly freckled face, her cherry-black hair flying around her head while the world blurs by, leafy and many shades of green.
When they arrive at the shoulder in the road, Maya parks her mom’s car behind a Harley-Davidson. The air is cooler than in town. Maya and Aubrey follow a trail through the woods, slapping at mosquitoes.
Usually their silences are of the kind shared by good friends after many years—as easy as being alone. But today’s silence feels different. Chilly. Maya gets the sense that Aubrey is upset about something and has been for the past few weeks. She’s noticed a snippiness to Aubrey’s tone, an occasional meanness to her laughter. Maybe Maya’s imagining it, but she doesn’t think so, and it pisses her off that Aubrey won’t just say whatever’s on her mind.
“So,” Maya says, just to say something, “who’s the scarf for?”
Aubrey, ahead of her, doesn’t look back. “It’s a secret.”
Until half an hour ago, Maya hadn’t even known that Aubrey knew how to knit. But when she arrived to pick Aubrey up, Maya found her sitting on the porch of her duplex, knitting a scarf. Her hands moved with graceful, practiced ease, the lime green weaving unfurling from her needles.
Maya had thought they knew everything about each other.
They arrive at the waterfall a few minutes later. The deep, dark pool glitters like peacock feathers. Rainbows hover in the spray off the rocks. The place is usually crowded in summer, but today it’s just Maya, Aubrey, and a couple of middle-aged bikers. The woman, covered in tattoos, reclines on a boulder while the man wades in the shallows, his long gray ponytail dipping into the water as he leans down to wet his arms.
The girls step out of their sneakers and shorts, leave their belongings on the rocky shore, and go in up to their knees. The water’s so cold it feels sharp.
“One!” Aubrey says, challenging Maya to dive in with her.
“Oh, no way—”
“Two!”
Her whole body begs her not to do it, but Maya won’t be the last one in. “Three!” she shouts before plunging deep into the pool, where it’s even colder and darker and thunderous from the falls.
Her skin tingles as she bursts back up and looks back to see Aubrey, still standing, still dry. Laughing. Maya splashes her in outrage, and Aubrey shrieks, then drops silently down, disappearing with a faint ripple.
When she reappears, she’s in the middle of the pool. She’s the better swimmer, more comfortable in water. She floats on her back, looks up at the sky, the copper amulet she wears glinting on her chest. The amulet is etched with the supposedly magic words SIM SALA BIM, though Aubrey swears she doesn’t believe in magic. She just loves it. She just wishes it were real.
Maya will miss her, even with the way she’s been acting. Aubrey is staying in town after this summer, working as a waitress and taking classes at Berkshire Community College while Maya moves to Boston and attends BU. Reminded of what little time they have left, Maya sighs, paddles over to Aubrey, and floats beside her.
“You know what we never did?” Aubrey says.
“What?”
“We never jumped off the waterfall.”
“Why do you say it like that? Like we’ll never have another chance?”