Swimming with Ghosts by Michelle Brafman

Author:Michelle Brafman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company

As Justin walks home, a memory sideswipes him out of nowhere. He was seven and Sebby was ten. Mom was cleaning out the swim-team shelves in the shed, and Dad was reading the Sunday New York Times. It was late August, and everyone was out of town. Justin was waiting for a turn on the diving board, holding the ladder, the metal almost too hot to touch. Mom emerged from the shed while Sebby was midair, arms outstretched, his chin tilted toward the sky. Justin assumed that Mom would send him to the car to retrieve a throwaway camera she kept in case life presented her with a moment like this one. She’d ask Sebby to repeat the dive for sure. Instead, she turned her back on Sebby, and when Justin caught a glimpse of her face, it revealed a grief so raw that he buried the image deep inside himself. Would Sebby remember the dive? Mom’s face?

He dials his brother, but the call goes straight to voicemail. On impulse, he scrolls through Sebby’s text messages and finds the one he sent with Uncle Patrick’s number. Maybe Uncle Patrick stayed away from the pool because he encountered that force Justin had just felt pressing on his feet. Justin isn’t ready to find out.

He walks to the 7-Eleven. When he opens the familiar door, the fluorescent lights and shriveled breakfast sausages, lonely in their glass case, comfort him. He helps himself to a large cup and plastic cover and walks over to milk the Slurpee cow, as Tiff used to say. He palms the black udder and pushes down, enthralled with the torrent of purple slush gushing through the plastic hole. He pays for the drink with the last three dollars in his wallet.

He sits on the bike rack to drink his Slurpee in peace, unwrapping the straw and stuffing the flimsy paper in his pocket. The red plastic feels smooth against his lips, and he chews on it for a second before taking a big sip of the drink. He’s so thirsty that he gulps down the soupy ice, chugging it like Liam chugged the vodka. This is no way to drink a Slurpee, Tiff told him the first time she saw him attack the ice like a rookie. He stops. Too late. The cold freezes his brain, and there’s nothing he can do but wait for it to thaw.

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