Nightswimming

The oddly therapeutic smell of propane wafts past me as I find my place in the shadows. Between the black metal bars, I find some kind of thrill in seeing what I’m not meant to see.

I shake my head. God, what’s wrong with me? I clench my fist around the handles of the black trash bag. It’s lighter than I expected. One of Fiona’s friends cackles on the back porch, but the glow of the firelight doesn’t reveal anything. I lift my head to find solace in the clear night sky. I never see stars in the sky when I’m in the city, but at home, they’re abundant. The velvety sky is reminiscent of the night Charlie scammed me and brought me to the ATM. After tossing the trash bag over my shoulder, a distant howl makes me freeze in my tracks. I expect to hear rustling in the woods next, but the ringing silence that follows is worse. My attention rests on our pool briefly. I can’t tell if it’s the aluminum fence enclosing it or the stillness of the water that makes it seem eerie at night.

I let go of the bag and turn my back on the pool, leaning my spine against the bars for a moment. My eyes cling to the silhouettes of Fiona and her friends by the fireplace on our back porch. The night breeze carries the smell of chocolate from their s’mores over. I tune out their laughter and obnoxiously joyful shouting, replaying the update Mrs. Sanchez delivered to my dad about seven hours ago when she arrived at the graduation party.

She didn’t acknowledge my presence for the whole twenty minutes she attended Fiona’s party. I’m not sure if it was out of obliviousness, sadness, or spite. The scrape I got from Felix is almost healed. I heard something I wasn’t meant to hear as I lingered by the food table, grabbing seconds with my older cousins. Nearly everybody who was in attendance has left and gone to bed. But not me. I’m awake, cleaning up to earn back my parents’ trust, dissecting Mrs. Sanchez’s words to the bone, and wishing I was doing none of this.

After I left that unreal scene on their lawn, Charlie went back to jail and Felix went to a psychiatric facility. Shit, maybe it was the other way around. I don’t remember anymore. The important part is she said that Charlie is getting released soon, even though he has a few pending charges, and he’s searching for a treatment program to go to. I roll this information around in my head like a pebble while begging myself to stop caring about someone who stopped caring about me.

I sigh before resigning to fold up the emptied food table and slipping it back into our pool shed. When the table’s weight grows burdensome, I remind myself what this hard work is for as the clock approaches midnight. I shine my phone flashlight over the pool area, scrutinizing the concrete for more garbage. My ribs tighten in a strange kind of disappointment. The end of cleaning up the grad party means the end of my attempts at penance. It’s not going to be enough.

Slipping my phone in the pocket of my hoodie, I relinquish my efforts for the night. I slip in the back porch door, hanging my head as I pass Fiona’s friends at the firepit. Instead of wood, the flames rest on shiny gems. Their laughter fades as I try to make myself invisible, hiding the way my face reddens with envy behind my sweatshirt hood. I pretend I don’t feel Fiona’s resentful glare at my back as I shut the door behind me, staggering through the dark kitchen.

Knowing my parents are asleep, I creep down the hallway. Well, my mom is probably awake, worrying—about Fiona and her friends, about work on Monday, about if I’m a good person.

I’m so focused on tiptoeing that I don’t notice whatever it is that my skull collides with. I flail my hand around until I find the hallway light switch. Someone sighs as I press my hand to the impacted area.

“Jesus,” Callie murmurs. “Ow.”

She’s a mirror of me for just a moment, cradling her head in the same position. I smirk a little at the observation that we literally butted heads.

“No, it’s just me,” I try, cracking a tentative grin.

I know she probably doesn’t want to talk to me, but I don’t put up a fight against my hopes rising up.

She forces a light chuckle before pressing her tongue against her cheek. “Hey.”

I can’t read her. I used to know her so well, but now I don’t know what to say to her.

“Hey,” I say, half-smiling. “Good party, huh?”

She looks like she just got a haircut. She wears a Celtics sweatshirt Fiona stole from me years ago and jean shorts.

Callie clears her throat. “Oh, yeah.”

I find myself holding my breath. “But what?” I ask, a teasing lilt in my voice.

“Nothing.” She rolls her eyes.

That’s not the reaction I was aiming for. I wanted her to joke that it wasn’t as good as my party.

The way she rolled her eyes reminds me of Fiona, which triggers a chain of thoughts. I had a writing professor last year who went off on a lot of tangents. I learned a lot from her, but I learned as much about her wild life story as I did about writing. One time she went off on a digression about how friends influence each other, absorbing each other’s language choices and mannerisms. It’s common sense, but it feels revolutionary when I pause to apply it to my life. It’s more innocent with Callie adopting Fiona’s habits and some vocal intonations than it is when I think about the last friend I have left, if I could call him that still. Psychic dread lurks way off in the distance. I don’t want to end up on that roof, too. I push those thoughts away.

I fold my arms over my chest and avoid her eyes. I can sense that she’s about to go back outside and I don’t want her to, not at all.

“I am sorry,” I say. I instantly regret how much emphasis I put on the word am. I resist the urge to spiral out about how she perceives me.

“Alright,” says Callie, her tone tight and controlled.

I swallow the lump in my throat. I deduce that her gaze beyond me leads to the fire pit. She wants to be outside with her friends, having s’mores and enjoying the warm night like a normal person our age. It’s not her responsibility to make me feel better about something that I need to accept.

“I don’t remember any of it, but—I’m not excusing it,” I continue. There’s an unusual warmth in my throat resembling courage. “I’m sure I was disruptive to you and your family. I’m sorry for that.”

Accountability can be so embarrassing.

Callie just looks at me in response. It makes me feel like a stranger to her. I can’t ignore the tingling in my fingertips, but I hide my hands in the front pocket of my hoodie, wishing this familiar feeling away.

“I’m sure you’ll make it up to me,” she finally says, the corners of her mouth turning up into a soft smile.

She leans one hand on the doorway to my room.

I bend into the easing tension between us. It feels natural to tell her what I’m feeling. I swear we’ve been here before.

“I don’t know. I was pretty awful to everyone, or so I’ve been told,” I say.

My inner critic points out that it’s a self-pitying thing to say. I run a hand through my hair, knowing I should let it go.

Callie nods. “Fiona told me.” She tilts her head in the direction of my room. “Let’s sit down. I’m sore.”

She leads the way. I don’t want to go into my room, but the words to tell her get stuck in a lump in my throat. It’s never got to the levels of the standard “depression room” with dirty dishes left to rot on my desktop and papers strewn all over the floor, but I’ve never been the neatest person either. I cleaned it up a bit after I got fired the other day, actually.

“Really? She won’t talk to me. No one really will,” I say, my mind elsewhere.
            Callie takes the seat at my desk. Relief rises at the sound of the chair scraping against the floor, undoing tension I didn’t even know I was holding onto. I take a seat on the edge of my bed.

“Yeah, I don’t know. It would be hard for me to not talk to my sister,” she says, “even if she did that.”

Caught up in my thoughts, I’m not listening as much as I need to be. It’s not the lack of cleanliness that troubles me about having Callie in here; it’s what Fiona will think. I can’t have her hating me more than she does right now. At the same time, she already thinks the worst of me. How much more do I stand to lose with her? As much as I want to enjoy reconnecting with an old friend, I worry that each minute passing by equates to another month of Fiona not speaking to me. I decide that keeping my door wide open is a way to protect myself from being indicted by Fiona.

Callie toys with the empty ceramic succulent pot on my desk. Her brows furrow together. “Wait, did I paint this for you?” She smiles, holding it up for me.

“Yeah.” I find myself smiling too.

            She examines the bottom of the pot for the date written in permanent pencil. There’s a pottery place a town over that Fiona and I went to a lot as kids—where anyone who grows up here goes. Everyone around here knows they make customers write the date and their initials at the bottom of their work in a special kind of pencil that not even the heat of the kiln can destroy. I briefly wonder what the science behind that is.

            “2017.”

            “Feels like a lifetime ago,” I say.

            “Yeah,” she says, “I guess.”

She holds the pot close to her heart, eyes lowered to the floor. My mind goes into overdrive trying to think up what to say to fill the silence. I have so many things to say to her; I don’t know where to begin.

Callie surprises me when she speaks up. “Don’t tell Fiona, but…” She tilts her head back and glimpses at the ceiling, like the words she’s about to say are coming from somewhere mystical.

I try to anticipate where her sentence is going. I inadvertently clench the muscles in my legs.

“What I meant is I think it’s harder for Fiona to not talk to you than you think,” says Callie.

I nod slowly, repeating the words in my head until they make sense. “So what should I do?”

As soon as I say it, I regret being so vulnerable with her—I’m supposed to know what to do. When I remember that I was crying on her lawn just a few nights ago, I don’t feel so bad about it. She’s seen worse from me.

“Just give it time,” she says, offering up a soft, encouraging half-smile. “I think that’s all you can do.”

“Yeah,” I sigh. I suppress a complaint about how it sucks to wait it out. “Thanks.”

Callie looks around at my posters. I lie back on a stack of pillows with my hands in my hair, fighting off my sleepiness because I want to spend time with her.

“You know how you can make it up to me?” she says, a lift in her voice.

            I observe the colors I see with my eyes shut—a blur of orange, yellow, and brown with faint magenta dashes across it. “Hmm, get new posters?”

            “Ummm,” she says, dragging out the m sound. “No. I was thinking night swimming.”

            “I’ll fall asleep and drown,” I groan. I open my heavy eyes and roll over to rest my head on my pillow.

Hugging it close provides comfort I didn’t know I needed.

            “Dick,” she says playfully. “Are you forgetting what an accomplished lifeguard I was?”

            I jokingly stammer to cover up my forgetfulness.

            “I’m borrowing a bathing suit from Fiona,” she says before I can agree. She darts off to Fiona’s room and shuts the door.

            I sit up and shrug to myself. I want to go to bed, but when’s the last time I really hung out with anybody?

            “Race you,” I say before shutting my door.

            As I change into swim trunks and slip on my sandals, my body feels lighter than before. I snag two towels from the bathroom before stepping back out into the quiet night made loud by half a dozen recent high school graduates huddled up on my back porch and maybe a few liters of tequila. Their cans of hard seltzer seem to glisten in the moonlight, but I don’t bother to stop my bouncing footsteps, especially when Fiona is occupied by not one but two phones, blue light reflecting on her face.

            The grass against my skin and their laughter at my back fills me with a desire to run, but my body still won’t let that happen. I unlock the pool gate, slamming it shut behind me because I’m afraid of a pack of coyotes or the odd black bear news story. My intuition, or maybe it’s just common sense, tells me that humans as a species must be doing something wrong that’s indirectly hurting these bears, misleading them to suburbia, somewhere foreign to them, but I don’t what exactly that would be—besides our general ignorance and self-preservation as a species.

            The porch clicks in the distance, and someone says my name with a bitterness in their inflection, yet their tone implies that they’re a little too tipsy to hold onto it. The footsteps that follow, pounding against the porch, have a haste to them. My heart picks up in anticipation of something coming at me in the dark cloak of nighttime. I half-heartedly assure myself that it’s Callie and fumble around in search of my phone.

            As the gate hitches open, every muscle in my body stiffens. Callie shines her phone flashlight in my eyes, scoffing at my fright probably.

            “Can I borrow your light?” I ask, extending my arm.

            She gives me her phone. I shine its light over the fenced-in area in search of the remote that activates the pool light.

            “You beat me to it,” says Callie.

            I click on the light when I find it on the table underneath the pavilion. She ties her hair up in a bun.

            “You know, this is, like, the top five suburban activities combined,” she says.

            Callie descends the steps into the shallow end. I place the remote with our pile of belongings on the lounge chair before following in her footsteps.

            The water against my skin is warm, warmer than the air. I press my hand on the surface of the pool, observing its clearness and calmness.

Of course it’s calm. It’s manmade.

Callie glides toward the deep end. Her motions appear more graceful than they actually are in this light. My expectations of how light should fall are flipped. Once again, I get that feeling that I know nothing, but for the first time in a while, I’m not hurt by it. I’m in awe of the water’s neon appearance, hoping this isn’t the closest to bioluminescence that I’ll ever get.

“Say more,” I reply late. My voice seems to have a blur to it.

Night swimming reminds me of childhood yet there’s a layer of surrealism to it that seems too uncanny for a kid.

“Stargazing and swimming,” Callie says cheerfully. She flops on her back to look at the sky.

I try to mimic her position, floating with my palms upturned to the sky.

She notices my clumsy attempts. “Can you even swim?” She punctuates her question with a light chuckle.

When I tell her to fuck off, it’s said with only affection.

I swim over to the poolside to grab a float in the shape of a donut, sitting in the center so I can gaze up at the same stars.

We linger in that moment even when it has passed us by, our heads in the sky. I don’t bother moving until the cold air forces me back into the water. The float drifts away. I dunk under with my eyes open, observing the unreal bright blue backdrop behind my friend’s dangling limbs.

I pop up from the underwater with a smile that reaches my eyes.

“So how’s life?” I ask, trying to ignore the mild awkwardness.

Callie smoothes it over with her energy. “Oh my God, it sucks,” she grins.

“Yeah, why’s that?” I play along.

“Well,” she huffs out an exaggerated sigh, “I ran into the biggest bitch from high school. One of the worst people I know.”

Already knowing her answer, I ask, “Who’s that?”

She pretends to scratch her head uncomfortably, pressing her smile into a tight line. “Um, well, this is awkward, but,” she pauses to let out a giggle, “it’s you.”

I’m not bold enough to splash her, so I simply pretend to fall backwards into the water with a look of dramatized rejection on my face, disappearing in the mellow, safe blue. I hold my breath for as long as I can just to mess with her.

I’ve never been good at breathing—an allergist told me so last year. The walls of my nose were some of the thinnest she had seen. That added up; I’ve always had a weak sense of smell. Ever since, I’ve wondered how much of my anxiety might be rooted in my biology.

Whatever. The point is, I don’t last long underwater.

“I’m really sorry,” Callie says, fake-brooding. She hangs onto the diving board and laughs.

“Are you mocking me?” I laugh.

I can’t stop smiling, and neither can she. I forgot that we used to talk to each other like that, but we both slip into old patterns with ease. I forgot what it was like to be so close to someone that we had our own secret language. We used to say anything to each other.

I need that in my life again. Who doesn’t need that?

Callie bobs underwater and swims to meet me in the shallow end. I sit on my knees, looking up at her.

“Do you remember what we talked about the other night?” she asks.

I’m grateful for the veil of night, disguising the embarrassment on my face when I shake my head. “Tell me,” I say, feeling a lump form in my throat, “please.”

Callie sinks to my level, her knees touching the floor of the pool. Her chin hovers just above the water.

“You said the grass smelled beautiful. I thought that was sort of funny,” she says, swinging her hands around under the water.

“Well,” I shrug, “I like the smell of fresh-cut grass.”

My patience is worn down to a stub like some of my fingernails I’ve been biting and my teeth in the near future if I don’t stop grinding them in my sleep. Another awkward silence befalls us. I need to buy a mouthguard after my therapy appointment tomorrow. I add it to the list. My fingers are getting pruney.

“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” Callie says, standing back up.

“What did I say?” I get on my feet, too.

Maybe it’s just the lack of light, but we seem so far away from each other.

“The story about Charlie and your money and the roof. You were very upset. No one could get you to talk about anything else.” She’s frowning. “It was hard to see you in a bad way.”

The only thing I can think of saying is another apology, so I say nothing. I sit on my knees again.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” says Callie, reaching for her hair, “if you don’t want.”
            “I do.”

She sits on her knees too. We’re face to face. I can’t remember the last time I was so close to someone physically.

“I want to,” I reiterate.

“That’s all there is, really.” Callie tilts her head back to steal another glimpse at the stars.

My eyelids are heavy, and my muscles twitch for sleep.

“I should get to bed, anyway,” I murmur.

I head up the stairs, waiting to hear the splash of her footsteps behind me. Drying myself off with a towel, I take a seat on the lounge chair stripped of its cushions. I check my phone to find I have zero notifications. A yawn originates from somewhere inside of me, the kind that somehow brings tears to my eyes. Goosebumps rise on my forearms from the crisp air. I hug the American flag themed towel closer around my torso.

“I can’t leave you out here alone,” I say, suppressing my impatience.

Cal climbs out of the pool wordlessly, her bathing suit noisily dripping water against the concrete. I lengthen my arm to hand her a towel.

“Thanks.”

“Yup,” I say. “It’s so cold.”

“Yup.”

I bite down on my self-resentment. I should have never brought it up, but I ruin everything by being too sensitive.

Callie sits down on the lounge chair next to me, pulling the towel tight around her, a mirror of me for a moment.

She looks at me like she’s contemplating something. When I catch her staring, she turns away. This cycle repeats three times. I’m really cold.

“What?” I ask eventually. I can’t sit there in silence any longer.

She shifts her position in the seat. “I’m not sure how to say this, but.” She stops, stroking her bottom lip with two fingers.

My anxious mind anticipates every outcome, trying to fill in the blank before she can—she’s pregnant, she killed someone, I killed someone, she’s in love with Ethan.

“It’s not your fault.”

I let out a sullen chuckle. “A lot of things are my fault.”

Her shift in posture seems like she’s annoyed. I try to lighten it up with a joking suggestion that she needs to be more specific. She doesn’t laugh.

“Nick. Charlie,” she says. Her words have an unfinished edge to them. “None of that is your fault.”

I exhale sharply while oscillating between responses. She turns her head to look at me. I press my tongue against my cheek, feeling the weight of each second pass where I don’t answer her. With my elbows resting on my knees, I fold inward by hiding my head in my hands. I stare at the grooves in the concrete, zeroing in on the fine details of each line, the ways they bend and fade.

After a while, I thank her. It seems like the best thing to say. Her words echo in my head, though, and I can’t think clearly.

“You know that, right?” she asks. A glimmer passes over her face that suggests she’s being too easy on me.

I reemphasize how cold the air feels, hoping to abandon the subject.

“I just want to make sure you know that.”

I feel my innate wisdom—the spot above my navel, the centerpoint of my solar plexus—untwisting. I guess I know it, but I can’t make myself believe it. Not yet. There are tinges of what it’d be like to be free of it in my thoughts sometimes, but every time I think I’m over it, I’m wrong. On paper it makes sense, too. No one is responsible for someone else’s actions; that’s a Philosophy 101 discussion. I’d never blame Callie if she were in my position. I’d never even blame a stranger for the things I blame myself for.

I can’t accept it, though. I can’t integrate it into my thoughts and behavior. My body rejects it. My body knows better, afflicted with some greater wisdom I can’t perceive with any of my senses. I fear this guilt has been woven into the fibers of my being, that it happened at an impressionable age and left a lasting mark on my brain, a dent. I don’t want to accept that either. Things have to get better.

“Yeah,” I say.

I shove back the onset of tears. Callie stands up, the sound of her flip-flops shuffling a little comical to me.

“I’m sorry,” says Callie.

I shake my head. “You’re a good friend.”

I can’t process my gratitude on top of everything else. I’ve been awake for eighteen hours now, and I can feel it in every part of my body.

I’m too tired to attempt to hide from Fiona and her friends, still at the fire, their faces painted golden by the billowing flames.

After changing into my pajamas inside, I say goodnight to Callie. I make sure to thank her again too.

“We should hang out again sometime,” she says.

“I’d love that.” I grin. I mean it.

I like having her in my life. I always have.

Even though I smile while brushing my teeth and climbing into bed, I’m not at peace. I lay there, staring at the ceiling that doesn’t even look like it’s there. It looks like nothing. I’m hung up on that one thought—it has to get better. Maybe I’m naive, entitled, or stupid to think that.

It’s written in all the cycles of nature, though. The moon enters a new phase every three or four days. The tides change probably every six hours. Trees are starkly different from season to season—skeletal in the winter, abundant in the summer. The sky is always changing. Change is everywhere. It’s the only constant. Things have to change.

I cling to my pillow like I cling to the word “better,” waiting for my epiphanic energy to pass.

I have to get better.