Wanda did have one friend, Jules, and one was enough. But Jules’s family moved at the end of the last school year and now Wanda has zero friends. Which is not enough. She sits here at the Edge for a long time, missing Jules, whose face grows fuzzy in her memory, and watching the gulls who perch on the high-rise as they chatter to one another. There is so much to observe, so many things to skim her gaze across, so many smells, so many textures. Even in its monotony, the ocean can’t help but be mesmerizing. Wanda has never gotten to sit like this and just look for as long as she likes. This is her first real adventure, her first foray into the world beyond her house all alone. Without Kirby or Lucas she feels free, but also exposed. As it happens, she is both.
She doesn’t notice the other kids arrive. There are four of them, two boys and two girls, out wandering these nearly deserted streets in search of something to do, not unlike Wanda herself. There is a brief moment—Wanda’s back is still turned and the others are too far away to mark the distinct froth of her dark hair and the particular rattan basket attached to her bicycle—when these five children could be anyone to each other. They could be friends or they could be strangers. But then this moment passes. The newcomers recognize her and something shifts. They are not strangers. But they’re not friends, either.
“What are you doing here?” one of the boys calls. It’s more accusation than question.
“Yeah, this spot is private,” the other boy says. “No freaks allowed.”
Wanda turns. She recognizes this quartet as sixth graders, the grade just above hers. Older kids. They are often together, these four: a set of fraternal twins, Corey and Brie, and their respective best friends, Mick and Amanda. She isn’t sure how to respond at first. She’s naive enough to hope that what she says next matters, but old enough to know it probably won’t.
“I’m not a freak,” she says, and instantly knows it was the wrong thing. She plucks nervously at her T-shirt and hopes they move on. But they don’t. They approach, hemming her in against the ocean.
“Aren’t you?” Mick lunges forward and shoves her. It happens so fast she topples easily into the water. Her head goes under and as she plunges down to the bottom her arm scrapes up against the jagged pavement. It isn’t so deep; her feet touch and she kicks off to get back to the surface, but she had no time to prepare herself. Water gushes up into her nose. Her eyes smart. She comes to the surface, gasping, spitting, her arms flailing in the dull gray water. Above her, the sixth graders are a blur. The other boy, Corey, steps in front of her. He crouches, blocking her exit, his face closer than she’d like it to be. A wave thuds into the back of Wanda’s head and washes over his tennis shoes, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
“What’s the water like?” Corey asks. His voice is soft, almost gentle, but there is something hard underneath, something cruel. Calculating. Wanda paddles with her hands, her toes a few inches from the bottom.
“It’s cold,” she finally says. This is true; the water is cold, in a good way. The air is wet with humidity, like breathing steam, and the Atlantic, though warmer than it often is, feels chilly in comparison. She understands that this is not what he’s asking, but the answer to that other question, the one beneath the words, eludes her. She ventures closer to the pavement, planting her hands to hoist herself out of the water, but Corey pushes her backward, his palm up against her forehead. His hand is hot and sticky on her skin as he shoves her. He would like to hurt her. She knows that now. They all know. Mick smirks, intrigued. The girls look uncertain. They don’t want this. Wanda fastens her hopes on them. They are the audience, and the audience decides, don’t they? To admonish or to join; to boo or to clap. Wanda looks at them through stinging, watery eyes, a white haze of salt caught in her lashes, silently beseeching them to protect her. But they say nothing. Corey puts his hand on the top of Wanda’s head, his fingers digging into her wet hair, gripping it by the roots. “Why don’t you stay awhile?”
And then she is underwater in a much more forceful way. She thrashes up toward the surface but he holds her down. She can feel his fingernails scraping against her scalp, pinching the skin. Everything is dark; she can’t look up toward the sky, can’t see through the murk. She doesn’t fully understand what has just happened, why she is underwater, why she can’t get to the surface.
Above, a few eerily quiet seconds pass. The sound of splashing, the call of gulls, the slap of little waves kissing the Edge. Corey holds Wanda down easily. All it takes is one hand, leaning his body weight into her struggle.
“Corey,” Brie says, her voice sharp. “Enough.” She knows that if she doesn’t do something, no one will.
“Just playing.” He grins back at his twin, wanting to see how far he can push this.
“Yeah, we’re just messing,” Mick says.
“Stop, seriously.” Brie steps forward, as if to stop him herself, but then—the sixth graders are unable to explain what happens next. Below the ocean’s gray surface, something unusual is occurring. The struggling shadow that is Wanda’s flailing, submerged body brightens. It isn’t the sun, which is hidden behind a thick pile of cloud. It is…something else. In the moment that it takes the sixth graders to witness this change, to examine each of the possible explanations and discard them, the light spreads, consuming the waves in streaks, until it looks like the entire ocean is shining in a way these four children have never seen. It’s as though the water has swallowed a swirling, living galaxy: a trillion stars, burning cool blue or pale yellow or a hot, flickering violet. It’s hard to say what color it is because it’s every color and none at all.
Underwater, Wanda can’t see any of this. She can’t see anything—but she can feel something strange occurring in her body, a sensation she can’t name rising to the surface of her skin. Corey releases Wanda’s head in his surprise and she claws her way back up, spitting water, sucking air, grasping for the Edge so desperately it looks like she has four arms instead of two. He backs away from her and the light goes out. The water is the same gray it was before. It was only seconds, there and then gone. The older kids glance at each other, sheepish, unsure.
“Did you…” Mick begins.
“Yeah.” Amanda nods. “That was—”
“Freaky.” Corey’s shorts are wet where Wanda splashed them, but he doesn’t notice. “She’s a freak. I told you.”
Brie just stares: at Wanda, at the water. Trying to make sense of the two.
“Let’s go,” Amanda says, and the others nod, an unspoken consensus that they have crept too close to something they don’t understand. Brie pauses as they hurry away from the Edge. For a second Wanda thinks the older girl might ask if she’s all right, might help her up, but in the end she just looks at the ground, mutters, “Sorry,” and runs to catch up with the others. Wanda is left alone, clinging to the broken edge of Beachside Drive, coughing up water and mucus. Eventually, she hauls herself back onto the pavement and sprawls there on her stomach. Her chest heaves against the road and she contemplates the particles of sea salt that have been caught by the fine hair on her forearms, stars trapped in a sun-bleached, gossamer net. She lies there for longer than she intends. The water slips up over her legs like a blanket, then back down, again and again. She’s aware that something strange has happened, but doesn’t know what. All she knows is that she feels different, like something inside her that used to be closed is now open.