“You know what I want?” Carly says. “I want to jump in that lake.”
I look around like someone might be watching.
“It’s fine,” Carly says. “I swear.”
And it’s what I want too.
We strip to our underwear. The tentacles on Carly’s neck belong to a giant octopus that stretches to the small of her back. In the flicker of firelight, with the movement of her body, he’s alive. One of his wavy tentacles is wrapped around her ribcage, under the band of her bra, curling up over her heart.
“It’s to remind me,” Carly says when she catches me staring. “Don’t let it pull you under, you know?”
“Yeah.” I study the lines, the way it makes her body into something otherworldly. And maybe I don’t know what it really is, but I feel like I do.
“Ready?” she asks, and I nod.
We make a mad dash for the lake. When the water hits my ankles it is so cold I want to scream, but I run harder, faster. Carly’s wake crashes into mine. We dive in at the same time, plunging into the blackness. I kick my legs and fight to stay under, to feel the cold seep in. To feel every inch of my body. I will be warm again, by the fire, in Carly’s car, in Adam’s bed. Cold isn’t my enemy anymore. I open my eyes and look to the surface. The moon is split to pieces by the water. I hold my breath until I feel like I’ll burst.
Carly comes up sputtering moments after I do. We laugh and shout and it echoes across the surface. It doesn’t matter if anyone hears us. We are part of this wild.
We dive and surface and dive again, until our teeth chatter, and then we walk from the water like creatures of the deep. Carly has a string of pondweed wrapped around her ankle, a tattoo come to life.
“It likes me,” she says, unwinding the weed from her leg. She has rings under her eyes from her makeup and I’m sure I do too. We are becoming raccoons.
We keep the fire going so we can dry off, jumping around in a crazy dance to get our blood flowing. Carly twists the pondweed into a crown and drops it on my head. It smells like mud in early spring. I howl at the moon.
Carly laughs. “If someone saw you,” she says, “they’d think you were raised by wolves.”
“I wish,” I say, and she laughs even harder.
“Me too. Wolves take care of their own.”
I place the crown on her head. Her howl is a low, mournful song.
Eventually, we’re dry enough for tights, then shirts, then the rest of it. Then the fire fades enough that we need our jackets. Carly kicks dirt at the embers with the side of her boot. I copy her. Soon the glow is completely gone. And then it’s us in the moonlight, cold wind against our faces, and the sound of our boots on the road as we walk to the car. Instead of singing, I tell Carly about the motorhome and the spread of land and the house that never happened, and how my dad left me for Irene.
“Do you think,” she asks, “you were better off alone in the woods than with the wrong people?”
“I don’t know,” I say, and then we’re quiet. Our footsteps don’t sound like Cecilia this time.
“I guess,” Carly says, “what matters most is that they were the wrong people and we should have had the right ones.” She puts her arm around my waist. It makes us both walk slower, but I don’t mind.
* * *
Carly parks in front of Adam’s house. We have the heat cranked. My hair is still damp, and the back of my neck feels like a muggy afternoon in August. I don’t want to leave our warm bubble. I don’t want our night to end.
“You want to stay?” I ask. I know Adam wouldn’t mind.
She shakes her head. “I’m going to crash so hard in my own bed. I’m going to take up the whole damn thing. And then when I wake up, I’m going to eat cereal in my underwear and watch cartoons and laugh with my mouth full.”
I picture Carly and her octopus sleeping large and happy.
“The question is,” Carly says as I collect my bag from under the seat, “are we tough enough to do this in January?”
I laugh. “I will if you will.” My cheeks are dry and hot, my eyelids heavy.
“If there isn’t ice,” Carly says, “I think we’ll have to.”
She hugs me before I get out of the car, and waits for me to unlock the front door, flashing her lights before she drives away.
I climb the stairs, avoiding the squeaky spots, and open the door to Adam’s apartment, pulling the handle up as I push in to keep it from creaking. I shed my clothes in the bathroom and wrap my hair in a towel so I won’t get Adam’s pillows wet.