Isabella crossed herself ironically. “And at least we’re free to leave.”
I stared at her. “I think she’s lucky,” I said. “I wish we never had to leave.”
11.
September
The first signs of fall appeared in late September—yellow grass, crumpled mushrooms unfurling in mossy clefts along the hillside path. And so our sunbathing took on a frantic quality—Sylvia even complained she couldn’t wear her bikini in the courtyard. On weekend afternoons, Isabella and I followed the orchard path down and then north along the border of the lake, where we had discovered a stream that bubbled over a jutting outcrop. It wasn’t a waterfall exactly, but a thin trickle that shattered onto the rocks by the shoreline, prompting a cloud of condensation that caught the sunlight in rainbows.
Isabella and I went there as often as we could and spread our towels in the haze of smashed droplets. We were close enough to the lake that pulses of coolness from the water mitigated the heat of the day still burning on our backs. The air smelled sharply of ozone, like a faraway thunderstorm.
Isabella perched happily, swinging her legs over the rocks. Water from the falls beaded on her skin.
“This is heavenly,” she sighed, tipping her head back.
I made a murmur of agreement, although I couldn’t get my words straight. The afternoon heat spun in my brain and made me dozy and stupid. I was dimly aware that the pebbles under my towel were sharp and uncomfortable, but I was loath to move.
Standing up with difficulty, I hopped over to the shoreline rocks, which were furry with lichen. I stepped onto the unsteady, slimy stones just under the lake’s edge and launched myself in the rest of the way. The water was warmer at the surface and icy at the bottom. It smelled dank and green, like crushed plants, and as I treaded water my feet kicked through the mulchy softness of underwater weeds.
I swam backward toward the center of the lake and looked up at the tufty birds’ nests huddled into cracks in the rock, the fruit trees at the top of the hill, and between the boughs, the cloaked figures of the sisters, startlingly white.
There was a loud splash, and Isabella’s face bobbed toward me, the tips of her ears parting her wet hair.
“It’s so cold at the bottom,” she said. “I keep thinking something might reach up and grab me.”
I shuddered. “Don’t say that.” I looked down into the depths of the water, and although it was clear, the weeds and silt at the bottom made it impossible to see much farther than my own kicking feet.
Isabella took a deep breath, dove under the water, then clasped the arch of my right foot and yanked it downward. I yelped.
She broke the surface spluttering and laughing. I kicked out at her. “You beast,” I said.
“I think you mean the beast of the lake.” She paddled around me in a circle to face the spa. “This would make a super flick. The Beast of the Lake, with the creepy old hospital and all us innocent young girls.”
I had a sudden moment of daring.
“I hear the beast of the lake needs a virgin sacrifice,” I said, and I allowed myself to sink lower into the water. I popped the catch of my bikini top and pulled the halter over my head, then kicked up toward the surface. I held it aloft, spitting water. “But what will tempt him from his slumber?”
Isabella shrieked with laughter; she could barely keep her head above the water. Bobbing down as she concentrated, she wriggled out of her own halter and we both peeled off our shorts. She was laughing so much she was gargling water.
“You’re no use,” I said, flicking the straps in her direction. “I said a virgin sacrifice.”
She squealed, swimming toward me with wide eyes and trying to kick me under the water, blowing froth from her lips. “I think you’re the beast of the lake,” she cried between giggles, gripping my arm. Her fingertips were already wrinkled on my wrist. I thought of how if our bodies were to touch, they would slip over each other, like seals.
Isabella sighed and, in one motion, pushed back toward the rocks. With a groan, she levered herself out of the water onto her elbows and threw her wet bikini toward her bag. Her hair was sticking to her back, her buttocks tan as the rest of her. She hadn’t been bluffing about nude bathing. There were no marks on her skin from her swimsuit, and her skin was a chestnut color, darker on her forearms and her shins. She folded her arms over her breasts and shook her hair so drops of water scattered and fell upon the hot stones.
I watched her from the lake, suddenly vertiginous. As if I were seeing her from a terrible distance, or her image was a miniature projection from a movie reel. She turned to the side, and I saw the faint lines of stretch marks on the top of her thighs and the black hair between her legs. She leaned over and threw her towel over her head, rubbing so vigorously her skin trembled.
I was immediately aware of my own nakedness. Compared to her, I was one of those pale grubs that worms to the surface of the soil to find rain. I tried to scramble back into my shorts, but they had loosened in the water and become so voluminous it was even more difficult to wriggle into them. The halter I merely hung around my neck. I kicked over to the rocks and pulled myself up with a great deal of difficulty. I was so weightless in the water that the heaviness of my limbs was a disappointing hindrance. I dragged myself backward over a sharp rock, scraping my thighs. I tried to attach the hooks of my top, although my fingers were numb and clumsy with cold. Finally they caught. I scraped the suit around and pulled the wet fabric over my breasts and around my neck.
Isabella was lying out on her back, naked in the sun, with the towel over her face. I glanced quickly at the curve of her body and the water still glistening on the line of her belly. Turning away, I unpinned my hair from the bun and combed through it with my fingers.
“You look nice with your hair like that.” Isabella’s voice. She evidently was still able to see me from the shade of the towel.
My cheeks prickled. “Thank you,” I said. “You look nice too.” After a moment, my pulse jousting into my throat, I said, “You’re always beautiful, though. To me.”
Isabella laughed. “Darling Briddie,” she said, blowing me a wet kiss. “Thank God we’re here together.”
12.
September
The following Saturday, I was sitting at the chair under the window in my room trying to write a letter to Rhona. I kept pausing, as if there was something clogged in the nib of my pen. It felt poisonous to write to her when I had tossed her aside so easily. But I forced myself to continue as a kind of penance. After all, she would never find out I had sidestepped the finer details of my background. I had already taken pains to briefly reference my absentminded cousin Rhona, outfitting her with a pet Dalmatian and an interest in rowing, so there was no danger in leaving a letter for her in Donna Maria’s tray.