Muttering to myself, I rub the lotion into my burning arms. Over the small bumps on the back of my arms and the sore skin on my elbows. I think about how happy Lianna must be with herself. She might not have been obvious about her enjoyment with that kid—with his perfect face and his perfect body—but I wasn't blind to the fact that they just might be the perfect couple.
It's exactly like they say. Pretty people get with pretty people. That's just how the world works.
I don't have a lot of time to let myself wallow in my self-pity for long before Mom comes over and sits on the edge of the lawn chair. She has a drink in her hand, sipping on the soda through a plastic straw that she really doesn't need. The hat shields her face from the sun.
I narrow my eyes on it.
"Where did you get that?"
She touches the rim. "This? Carol let me borrow it."
I purse my lips and then rub the lotion in harder. The initial sting on my sun burnt skin fades. As I look out into the pool, I imagine that I'm not here, but in a far away place where no one else exists.
My eyes still drift toward the place where Lianna and that boy are standing. They're just talking to one another with drinks in their hands. Their smiles shine out everyone else. By their body language, it's evident they don't want anyone else interrupting them.
I let out a rough sigh and slide further down in the chair.
"Go for a swim, Maya," Mom says as she offers me her drink.
I take it with a light hand. The cold condensation runs down my hand. I force myself to look away from the two love birds and to look at the center of the pool.
"I don't want to." I take a long drink. It's coke mixed with something else. Maybe alcohol, but I don't feel the need to ask.
“Please.”
I curl up in the chair, the drink resting on the edge. We’re going in circles. If we keep going on like this, we’re never going to get to the root of our problems. She knows it. I know it. It’s all about who is going to be the first one to point it out.
“You can’t just beg.”
“Please. For me.”
My body protests as I stand up. I shove the drink into her hand. She holds it close to her chest and stares at me with a worried look. I glare down at her and cross my arms.
“Fine. You win.” I stomp off toward the ladder. “It’s just a fucking swim.”
I say it over my shoulder loud enough for her to catch. A few people send us curious glances, but I’m past the point of caring what anyone thinks.
I pinch the bridge of my nose.
The water is inviting. It laps against the edge as if it’s calling for me. I look at the ladder, contemplating whether I should take the safer route.
But it’s as if I feel someone’s hand on upper back.
My feet stumble.
I’m airborne, falling face first into the pool with my hand over my nose.
I close my eyes. The water hits my face and the initial impact feels like I’m burning with acid. The sting fades into something more tolerable. I open my mouth for a breath. The moment I part my lips I regret it.
The water scorches down my throat. Invisible weights appear on my legs and my arms. They pull me down until I feel the bottom of the pool meet my feet. I don’t know how I got here. The minutes leading up to this point drift away from my mine. Through the fleeting thoughts, I can only think this must be the most beautiful way to die.
The air parts from my lungs. When my eyes open, I see the sun shining through the water. The rays are like sparks cutting through crystal. The colors flicker over my face and down my body. I’m lighting up with glee which in turn turns my body into jelly. I let my body fall back into the foreign sensation, letting the gentle waves raise me up to the surface.
A hand wraps around mine. I don’t know how it got there or who it belongs to. I just know it feels familiar.
The surface breaks around me. I feel the pressure change. The hand pulling me up burns into my skin and I hold onto that feeling for as long as I can. My concentration is broken by the yelling of voices around me. I gasp. Water drips down my face, into my mouth, and over my fluttering eyelids.
It takes only a minutes for my rough breathing to settle to a normal pace. A figure stands beside me in the pool.
Lianna laughs. “I didn’t think you were such a klutz.”
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “Me neither.”
I didn’t know I needed to see her smile until now. She’s an entirely different person when she does.
“You’re cute.”
“You’re annoying.”
She blinks, eyes widening.
I gulp and twist my hand in her grip. The wiggling catches her attention.
She steps toward me and leans down. Her lips brush against my ear.
“If we weren’t in public, you would have regretted that.”
We’re treading into dangerous waters. I can feel her breath fanning over my cheek. The touch of her skin against mine makes my body burn with an unknown need. It feels horrifying. The same feeling takes me back to when he would press against. His horrid breath and rough touch makes my stomach churn. Bile pushes at the back of my throat.
She squeezes my hand. Blinking away the water droplets on my lashes, I meet her eyes.
“Are you scared to do it here?” I don’t know who I am at the moment. My lips turn up. I try to mimic her smirk.
Her eyes widen. Her witty come-back is lost on the tip of her tongue. She rocks forward and then back like she’s unsure if she really wants to taunt me.
That only makes it harder to not giggle.
The water is warm. The small waves from the moving swimmers pushes me to and fro.
Then, I snap out of whatever is happening between us. The boy is on the other side of the pool. His stupid hair still looks as perfect as his face. His own grip on his drink looks like he’s about to drop it.
My laugh dies off. I force the smirk to stay on my face. Let him think we’re together. I suppose that’s what she wants if she isn’t trying to get into his pants.
“Your friend wants you,” I say. It still doesn’t sound anything like me.
I slide away from Lianna. She’s still, unmoving, in the water.
It feels like I’ve been here before. I don’t know why. All I know is that I love the look on her face. The confusion, shock, and the hint of something else.
Anger, maybe.
I leave her there, wanting more from me. And though I know I’ve left her with something to think about, I still don’t feel like I’ve done enough. I feel the need to stay by her side and make sure she’s okay.
Instead of glee in her pain, I’ve only hurt myself more.
***
“I forgot my towel.” Mom slaps her hand on her forehead. She tosses me the keys to the car. “Let Carol in and I’ll make sure Lianna knows we’re leaving.”
I barely catch the keys with both of my hands. I hold them to my chest, wondering for a second if I want to comply with the command or if I want to make Mom suffer for no apparent reason.
I bite my tongue. The fight goes out of me and I walk toward the car. It’s easy enough to press the button on the keys. The locks on the car click open.
Carol leans against the hood. She’s busy typing away on her phone.
I climb into the back, watching her with a nervous eye.
This is the first time I’ve been left alone with her. It’s also the first time I’ve had the moment to take in her features. She’s dressed in more flamboyant clothes than I’ve ever seen on an older woman. She doesn’t let her age dictate what she should wear. Neither did she left it affect how she conducted herself. It isn’t hard to see that she likes to be out there. She likes bright colors and revealing clothing. Her bikini shows off her thick curvy body while concealing most of her stretch marks. The large hat adorned on her head covers most of her face with the assistance of her sunglasses.
Her bikini bottoms are covered by jean booty shorts which she’s left undone.
I’ve seen girls closer to my age wear them like that.
Should she be wearing them?
The front passenger door opens. She sits her bag between the driver and passenger seats.
While she messes with her bag, it’s then that I realize why I felt uncomfortable with her.
She’s an older version of Lianna.
But where Lianna rubs her body in people’s faces, Carol is just being.
I hear sniffling only a few seconds after she’s slammed the door shut.
My breath hitches. I force myself to be quiet.
She pays no attention to me, too focused on the screen of her phone to even look up from it.
The crying intensifies. Her shoulders shake with a force I know all too well. Years of doing it alone in my room made it evidence to me when someone else was doing it. The problem lied in the person who is crying.
I can’t even console Mom when she gets like this—if she would ever let me see. I have no idea what to do when it’s someone I barely know.
Carol turns her body toward the window. I can see a stray tear sliding down her cheek. She wipes it away with an almost dramatic gesture.
“Have you ever been in love?”
I think she’s talking to herself at first.
The silence drags. The questions is too strange for me to think of an answer to, but I don’t want her to become more upset.
“No,” I say. I want it to be the end of the conversation.
But apparently, my clipped answer is an open invitation.
“It’s giving your heart to someone and expecting them to stab it full of needles.” She shakes her head in an almost shameful way. She slams her phone onto the dashboard. “He might say he loves you, cares about you, or even that you’re the one.”
She turns fully to face me. Her eyes are blazing when they meet mine.
“He really means that he wants to use you. Any man that says he doesn’t wan to just fuck you is a fucking liar.”
Her eyes glisten. She tilts her head up and crosses her arms as if in defiance. The tears don’t spill, but they’re still there.
“They’re all the same. From when they’re boys in high school who want to take you on dates, to men that want to marry you. They just want one thing. And if they don’t get it, they use your love to get it.”
The scar absorbs all the silent cries I can see bubbling inside of her. I twist my fingers, digging my nails into the soft pads of my arms. I want to make my skin bleed, feel the skin give way to the soft tissue underneath.
And most of all, I don’t want to be here.
Her words. They feel like a soft echo of my thoughts.
Summer hadn’t felt right that entire year. I was younger, not old enough to shave my legs or put makeup on.
He’d come to visit. And it was one time. Just one time and he’d ruined everything.
He stood above me and before I could process what was about to happen to me, he pulled his pants down.
Tears break the spell. They fall down my cheeks and I swipe them away before she can say something about them. She’s noticed.
“I see,” she says and turns away in her seat. “You know what it feels like too.”
The anger in me fizzles. The pooping tears through my bones.
She’s wrong. I want to scream it in her face. She doesn’t know a dann thing about me or what it means to be hurt by a man.
But telling her the truth would be the equivalent of opening my wounds and saying “Here, take a look.”
It would be more disgusting than what he’d done.
Her blond hair falls across the corner of the seat. It’s almost the same shade as Lianna’s. There’s something missing in it. Life, maybe. Essence.
She’s nothing like her daughter. Lianna would have seen what was in my head like she was reading my thoughts.
The dissonance made it hard to think about anything else. I can’t take my mind off the past and what’s happening right now. Lianna made her mark on my mind once more. I hate that it kept happening.
But the more she took up my thoughts, the less I thought about other more vile things.
She causes pain that drives away the rest.
And it’s that pain that makes it possible for me to live another day.
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