Sitting beside her at the kitchen table, I couldn’t help but see myself in her: the long straight brown hair, same liquid blue eyes and tragically pale skin that rarely sees the sun in this dreary place. But while she is polished and graceful with ballerina arms and gazelle legs, I have always felt knock-kneed and awkward. When I was younger, I used to walk bent forward, trying to appear shorter than the boys in my class. Even now, I often feel like a puppet whose master keeps pulling all the wrong strings so that I fumble and trip and hold my hands clumsily out in front of me.
“I don’t think cake is going to fix her,” I tell Rose as we walk single file down the path lined with dry grass and thorny bushes. “The memory of my dad’s disappearance is so solidified in her mind that no amount of local remedies will strip it out.”
“Well, I don’t think my mom has given up yet. Today she was talking about a new mixture of bee pollen and primrose that she thinks might help unsnag the worst of memories.” We finally reach the beach and Rose hooks her arm through mine, our feet kicking up sand as we make our way to the bonfire.
Most of the girls are wearing long, layered dresses with low necklines and ribbons tied in their hair. Even Rose has on a pale green gown made of lace and chiffon that sweeps across the sand when she moves, dragging bits of driftwood and shells along with her.
Olivia Greene and Lola Arthurs, best friends and the rulers of Sparrow’s social elite, are dancing on the other side of the bonfire when we enter the crowd, obviously already intoxicated, which is no surprise to anyone. Their hair is an identical shade of gothic black with short, severe bangs, dyed and trimmed just two weeks ago for the Swan season. Normally, their locks are bleached white—long and beachy. Which will probably return in a month, when the Swan season is over and they aren’t feeling the need to dress like death. But Olivia and Lola love the dramatic, love dressing up, love being the center of attention at any social gathering.
Last year they pierced each other’s noses in defiance of their parents—Olivia’s is a silver stud in her left nostril, Lola’s is a hoop through the right. And their nails are painted a matching macabre black, a perfect complement to the hair. They spin in circles beside the bonfire, waving their arms in the air and lolling their heads from side to side as if to mimic the embodiment of a Swam sister. Although I doubt the Swan sisters ever did anything so idiotic-looking two hundred years ago.
Someone hands Rose a beer and she in turn hands it to me to take the first sip. On weekends, sometimes we’ll sneak beers or a half-finished bottle of white wine from her parents’ fridge then get buzzed while stretched out on her bedroom floor listening to music—lately it’s been country hits, our most recent obsession—and flipping through last year’s yearbook, speculating about who’s going to hook up this year and who might be inhabited by a Swan sister come summer.
I take a swig and look through the crowd at all the faces I recognize, at people who I’ve gone to school with since grade school, and I have the sharp thought that I hardly know any of them. Not really. I’ve had passing conversations with a few: Did you write down the chapters we’re supposed to read tonight in Mr. Sullivan’s third-period history? Can I borrow a pen? Do you have a cell phone charger I can use? But to call any of them friends wouldn’t just be a stretch, it would be an all-out lie. Maybe it’s partly because I know most of them will leave this town eventually—they will go off to college and have lives far more interesting than mine. We’re all just passing ships; no point forming friendships that won’t last.
And while Rose is not exactly climbing the social hierarchy at Sparrow High, she at least makes an effort to be friendly. She smiles at people in the halls, starts chatty conversations with her locker neighbors, and this year Gigi Kline, cheerleading captain for our struggling basketball team, even invited her to try out for the squad. They were friends once—Gigi and Rose—in elementary school. Best friends, in fact. But friendships are more fluid in grade school; nothing feels as permanent. And though they aren’t exactly close anymore, Rose and Gigi have remained friendly. A tribute to Rose’s kind nature.
“To the Swan sisters!” someone shouts. “And to another fucking year of high school!” Arms rise into the air, holding cans of beer and red cups, and a chorus of hoots and whistles carries across the beach.
Music thumps from a stereo balanced on one of the logs near the bonfire. Rose takes the beer from me and shoves a larger bottle into my hand. Whiskey—it’s being passed through the crowd. “It’s awful,” she confesses, her face still puckered. But then she smiles, wagging an eyebrow at me. I chug back a quick slog of the dark booze, and it burns my throat, sending goose bumps down my arms. I hand it off to my right, to Gigi Kline. She grins, not at me—she doesn’t even seem to notice me—but down at the bottle as she takes it from my hands, tips it to her mouth, swallows down way more than I could ever manage, and then wipes at her perfect coral lips before passing the bottle to the girl on her right.
“Two hours until midnight,” a boy across the bonfire announces, and another wave of whoops and hollers rolls through the group. And those next two hours pass in a fog of bonfire smoke and more beers and swigs of whiskey that burn less and less with each sip. I hadn’t planned on drinking—or getting drunk—but the warmth radiating throughout my entire body makes me feel loose and floaty. Rose and I find ourselves swaying happily with people who we might normally never talk to. Who might normally never talk to us.
But when it’s less than thirty minutes to midnight, the group begins to stagger down the beach to the water’s edge. A few people, either too drunk or deep in conversation to leave the bonfire, stay behind, but the rest of us gather together as if forming a procession.
“Who’s brave enough to go in first?” Davis McArthurs asks aloud so everyone can hear, his spiky blond hair pushed up from his forehead and his eyelids sagging lazily like he’s about to take a nap.
A rumble of low furtive voices passes through the mob, and a few of the girls are pushed playfully forward, their feet splashing into the water only ankle deep before they scurry back out. As if a few inches of water were enough for the Swan sisters to steal their human bodies.
“I’ll do it,” a singsong, slurring voice announces. Everyone cranes their head to see who it is, and Olivia Greene steps forward, twirling in a circle so that her pastel yellow dress fans out around her like a parasol. She’s obviously drunk, but the group cheers her on, and she bows forward as if greeting her adoring fans before turning to face the black, motionless harbor. Without any coaxing, she begins to wade out into the salty sea, arms outstretched. When she’s waist deep, she does a very ungraceful dive forward, which looks more like a belly flop. She disappears from view for half a second before reappearing at the surface, laughing wildly with her tragic-black hair draped over her face like seaweed.
The crowd cheers and Lola steps into the water up to her knees, urging Olivia back to the shallows. Davis McArthurs calls again for volunteers, and this time there is only a half beat before a voice shouts, “I’ll go in!”
I snap my gaze to the left where Rose has stepped out of the crowd, moving toward the water.
“Rose,” I bark, reaching out and grabbing her arm. “What are you doing?”