What's Not Mine by Nora Decter

Author:Nora Decter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2024-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

What’s up? Ains asks when I get back to the blanket. She and the kids have moved a few feet away from Rick, who’s laid out on a towel, hat covering his eyes, one hand circling the beer can nestled in the sand beside him. Since I’ve been gone, they’ve expanded Doug’s hole and connected it to the lake by way of a complex irrigation system, which Emily tells me about breathlessly before dumping a pail of water in to demonstrate. The water splashes into the sand, but there’s not enough to flow down to the lake—it just soaks in and disappears. Doug bounces in excitement anyway, and Emily runs back to the lake to refill the bucket and try again.

I cut my foot, I tell Ains.

Oh no! she exclaims, seeing the bandage.

It’s fine, I say. It was just hard to walk on without a shoe. I ran into Cole, and he got the first aid kit from his car, cleaned it up for me.

Oh, she says.

I think I’m gonna go for a swim to the point, I say.

What about your foot? Ains asks, her face hasn’t recovered from my mention of Cole.

It’s fine, I say again. Doesn’t really hurt.

Which is true. After Cole left, I took another pill.

I’ll change the bandage after, I tell her, feeling much better now, unbothered almost, even by Rick over there.

Okay, she says. Watch out for boats.

I can watch the kids when I’m done, if you want to go for a swim, I say.

She waves me away. It’s fine, she says.

It’s not fine. But I don’t let that stop me. We both love swimming to the point, usually do it together, resting on the warm rocks when we get there before swimming back. The knife is still in my top, between my breasts, the spandex of my suit holding it close while I walk to the water. No hesitation, like a warrior woman, I submerge myself.

The cold catches my breath for a second, but I kick forward under the surface for as long as I can keep myself from rising. When I do, I put my head back down and swim out into the deep water.

Soon I’m far enough out that the voices are faint and unthreatening. I flip over onto my back and float.

Imagine all the water disappeared and we ended up on bottom of the lake, Dad said to me once when we came here for a swim. It was so deep, he explained, because the lake formed when a meteor smashed into the Laurentian Plateau, blasting a crater in the rock. If all the water vanished, we’d be in a valley filled with strange rock formations and crevasses.

On his command I’d pictured it, imagining the fall, or imagining no fall but just appearing at the bottom of the empty lake, transported by a genie or a witch’s spell. If it was meant to spook me, it didn’t, or I trained it not to. Instead, it made the fact of the water feel more miraculous, holding me there.

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