Just lie here.
Drift.
Dream.
Fade away on the current.
She thought of Seattle. She thought of Goose Island and the Sound. Of her father and looking west through the yellow of seven p.m. She thought of “Into Dust,” that song by Mazzy Star that her mom liked.
The moments ticked slowly past.
So easy…
Too easy.
Your body is a longbow carved from hickory, her father said.
Your body is a blade sharpened by tears, her mother said.
Heather sat up.
She stood and brushed the sand off her jeans.
She righted the chair and steadied it in the sand and, after achieving equipoise, she put her left foot on the right arm. So far, so good. She put her right foot on the back of the chair. The chair began to list, so she jumped and grabbed one of the iron railings of the second-floor balcony. The chair fell from under her. She pulled hard on the railing. Her arms felt impossibly weak. This wasn’t going to work. If she could hook a leg up, take some weight off her— She swung her torso to the left and right; on a final leftward swing, she managed to lift and land her foot on the lip of the balcony. She hung there precariously for a second or two.
“Come on,” she growled and pushed off on her foot. She rose almost vertically, like the vampire in Nosferatu, and somehow found herself standing on the narrow part of the veranda on the other side of the railing. She stepped over the rail, and there she was on the second-floor balcony. Just like that.
“Oh God,” she said and caught her breath.
She walked to the door and pulled the handle, but it was locked. There were no windows open.
Heather had no idea if this building had a caretaker or not. There was definitely space for a couple of bedrooms up here but there were no signs of occupation. No hum of an air conditioner, no creaking boards, no snoring, no noises of any kind.
She stood there considering for a moment and then shoved her elbow into the glass panel above the door handle. It broke and fell out in two big pieces that shattered inside the house.
She went back to the rail, ready to jump and run.
She waited.
And waited.
Nothing stirred.
She put her hands gingerly through the broken glass and turned the handle.
The door opened and she went inside what was clearly a bedroom. There was a bed and a closet and a dresser. Everything covered with dust.
She hesitated for a moment and wondered if she could perhaps lie down on the bed.
She shook her head. Maybe up here there might be a…
She walked into the hall and—yes! There at the end of the landing was a bathroom. She ran to the sink and turned on the tap. Without any fuss at all, water came pouring out of the faucet. She looked at it in amazement.
All that water just pouring down the drain.
She touched it with her finger and then she cupped her hands, filled them with water, brought it to her lips, and drank.
It was like drinking the waters of heaven.
She cupped her hands and drank again and again.
Heather held her mouth under the faucet and let the water gush down her throat.
“Oh my God,” she said. “Oh, dear God.”
She splashed the water on her face and let it drip down. She put in the drain plug, filled the sink, and shoved her head under the fresh water. She blinked her eyes a couple of times to clear them of dust and dirt. After thirty seconds, Heather pulled her head out and sat on the toilet.
She unplugged the drain and let the water run out, fascinated by it, as if it were some exotic substance she had never seen before.
Heather didn’t want to stop drinking. She turned the faucet back on again and let it run directly into her mouth.
As her brain started to revive, from somewhere in its deep recesses, she remembered that drinking too much water too quickly could kill you, so, reluctantly, she removed her face from the sink and took a couple of final big sips.
Oh God, that was good.
She edged out of the bathroom and found a rickety wooden staircase that led down into a kind of parlor. A table, a sofa, an ancient-looking television set, a mantelpiece covered with framed photographs. She picked one of them up. It appeared to be a police officer—or, more likely, given the surroundings, a corrections officer.
She put the photograph back and went through a door into a hall that had been converted into a kind of reception area and ticket booth. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust. Pamphlets about the old prison were piled up on a table next to an old-fashioned till. She put a couple of them in her back pocket to maybe use for kindling. In a fridge that wasn’t plugged in, there were a dozen small bottles of water.