Confused, a little irritated, I followed her. “I—I saw you, and I thought you needed help, you looked dead. Did you slip?”
“You shouldn’t be sticking your nose in other people’s business.”
“Yeah, well, you shouldn’t be drowning yourself.” Isabelle must’ve been twenty years old already, but she looked younger. Unformed and delicate, a plant grown in the dark. Her baggy denim jumper had a plain T-shirt beneath it: first-day-of-junior-high clothes, chosen by a too-strict mother. Everything was clinging to her body now, revealing the curve of her back.
Back on land, the air felt twice as cold as before I’d entered the creek, my sneakers damp and heavy. Isabelle marched ahead of me, back toward the house. “You’re Josephine.”
“You got me.”
She turned, examining me quickly. “You look just like her photograph. The one that always makes my mother cry.”
Before I could react to this, there were footsteps, a shout, and Isabelle stopped. She adjusted her posture, back straight, expression wiped clean. Patricia and Cate came hurrying down the hill toward us, Patricia frantic, Cate trailing behind, her concern turning into bemusement when she saw me standing there half-soaked. I shrugged, mouthing, Don’t ask.
“Izzy,” Patricia said. “Where have you been? What have you been doing?”
“Nothing much.” She gave me a quick, furtive look, like she was worried I’d tattle. Like we were little again, hiding in the dark corners of the forest just to cause mischief, shushing each other as our mothers drew close. I gave what I hoped was a convincing smile.
Patricia looked back and forth between us, and I realized she was seeing her younger self and my mother. Roommates, lying on their narrow beds, absorbed in their reading, inventing a future together. Two girls with nothing, no loving families, no certainty, who dared to design a world for themselves. I smiled, and Patricia softened, briefly, before turning away.
* * *
“Catherine, surely you have some advice for our Izzy? Something that will illuminate her own powers.”
We’d been invited to stay for dinner. I’d recognized right away that this invitation was less an act of hospitality and more an attempt to wring some useful knowledge out of Cate. I didn’t even care; Patricia was a good cook, and I craved anything that didn’t come in a greasy wrapper. Isabelle stared at her plate, rearranging bites of her steak, barely eating. There was a little color to her lips and cheeks, her hair drying slowly. Frizzy on the top layer, darkly damp beneath. I tried to make eye contact to telegraph comfort or solidarity. Isabelle had come to terms with her own perceived failure. Known its boundaries. Now, I could tell, her awareness of herself had changed—her lack brought into contrast by Cate’s powers. The sting was fresh again.
I remembered being that little girl on the garage roof, genuinely believing I’d rise into the air and soar when I dropped my body toward the oil-stained stretch of driveway.
“Advice?” Cate repeated, doubtful, pausing with a forkful of salad halfway to her mouth. “What kinds of things have you been doing so far?”
Cate addressed Isabelle, but it was Patricia who spoke up again: “Part of Izzy’s process has been reminding herself of Fiona’s abilities, certainly. As she’s grown older, Izzy has become only more devoted to bringing any nascent abilities to the surface. We’ve also been careful not to let her become too corrupted with outside ideas. Not to see herself as ‘ordinary.’ Izzy has been educated right here at home with me.” Patricia severed a bite of steak, bringing a surgical grace to the knife cut. “Same with relationships. Izzy doesn’t have time for all that groping and fumbling.”
“Eh, groping and fumbling can be fun with the right person,” Cate said.
A bare flicker of a smile over Isabelle’s face. I caught Cate’s eye, and she winked, joking and conspiratorial. Heat flushed along my spine and I coughed, cleared my throat.
Patricia ignored all this. “Izzy has done some studies that lead her to believe they may arise from pushing oneself. Finding a certain level of perseverance and endurance.”
“What do you mean?” Cate had stopped eating, her lips shiny with oil, and I realized that I had stopped chewing too. We both looked at Isabelle, who wouldn’t look at us.
“Well, abstaining from meals,” Patricia said, matter-of-fact. “Abstaining from sleep. Very hot or very cold showers. Methods like that.”
At this, Isabelle lifted her eyes to mine, defiant. Her body in the cold water, half-drowned, half-dead, and the way she’d been surprised—angry—that I’d interrupted her private ritual. I got it. That leaden desire to manipulate your body and brain into extraordinariness. I felt a sudden ache for my mother. Patricia and Izzy were so aloof, like they’d grown up on a remote island, isolation closing over them. Patricia talking so casually about their methods, violence transformed into an ordinary litany. My mother’s crustless sandwiches and late-night reruns, her suburban normalcy, were generous in comparison.