“I didn’t know you still had that,” I say, and she looks over her shoulder with a shrug.
“My mom found it in the garage the other day,” she says. It hangs oddly, and I realize what must be inside it a moment before she turns and walks back toward me. She crouches in front of me.
“I’m gonna put it in the reservoir,” she murmurs.
“But—”
“It’ll sink,” she adds. “I put a cinderblock inside. By the time the fabric rots away, the arm will have rotted too.”
I look around, but no one is close enough to hear us. “Is the leg in there too?”
“Nah,” she says, “it wouldn’t fit. Besides, Marcelina said something about doing the pieces separately and I think she’s right.”
“She told me that too,” I whisper, nodding. “I get it. But what about—people will notice you dropping a bag into the water, won’t they?”
She gives me a smile and a wink. “I’m not gonna drop it in,” she says. “I’m gonna leave it in.”
And then she stands up and runs off the edge of the rock. I hear her high whoop, followed by a huge splash. I peer over the edge of the rock, into the water. When Roya surfaces, her hair is draped over her face.
“You look like a sea monster!” I yell down to her, and she parts the hair over her mouth so I can see her beaming.
“Jump in!” she yells back.
I shake my head even though I know she won’t see me. I could yell down a million excuses—I’m not wearing a suit, I have to watch our stuff, the water is cold, I don’t have a towel. But none of them would matter. Roya would yell at me to jump in, and I would listen, and our stuff would get stolen and I’d catch a cold and I wouldn’t regret a second of it.
Instead, I watch her. She swims over to the kid who she told to jump in, and she gives him a high five. I look around at everyone else in the water, watching for anyone who might have seen the backpack, anyone who might have noticed her dropping it. There are a lot of eyes on Roya—but not a soul is looking for the backpack she ditched. They’re watching her, watching the way she cuts through the water like a shark, watching the way her hair fans out behind her. Watching her legs, her arms, her back, her smile.
I look down at my own legs and frown. They’re fine, as far as legs go. I’m not insecure about them or anything. But every now and then I wonder if I’m supposed to be insecure about them. My thighs spread out when I sit down, and I don’t really know if that’s normal or not. There are some girls at my school who brag about the gaps between their thighs. I don’t have a gap, but then, I don’t really want one either. A long stripe of dark hair runs up the side of one of my calves, where I missed a whole section of my leg when I was shaving. I don’t have the huge defined quads that Roya and Iris do. Just like in everything else, I’m ordinary. Just plain old Alexis. Nothing to see here.
As I inspect myself, I notice a dark spot on my knee. At first, I think it’s a shadow, but I look up and there’s nothing between me and the sun. When I look back down, my breath catches because it’s spreading. It’s deepening. It goes from brownish to blue-black, with a green corona around the outside of it. I watch the bruise grow with increasing horror—and then I realize that my hands are tingling.
“Gah!” I clench my fists and try to stop, even though I don’t know what it is that I’m doing. It works, although I’m not sure if it’s my startled reaction or my attempt at control that does the trick. What the hell just happened?
What did I just do?
I peer over the edge of the reservoir and spot Roya. She lifts a hand to me, then heads toward the ladder from there and starts climbing. I can’t see her goose bumps from where I am, but her shoulders are hunched and she’s shivering a little. I aim a small thread of magic at her. It’s tiny enough that anyone looking could mistake it for a sunbeam, or a butterfly maybe, or a leaf on the wind. It reaches her and she looks up at me. She’s only halfway up the ladder, but because of my magic, she’s warm and dry. I give her a thumbs-up.
“Thanks for that,” she says when she’s up the ladder and back to me.
“Least I can do,” I answer, and she shrugs. “Hey, can you look at something for me?”
She lifts an eyebrow. “What’s up?” I point at my knee, which is mottled with purple and green bruising that wraps almost all the way around my leg. “Oh shit,” Roya breathes. She crouches to look closer. “What did you do?”
“I’m, uh. I’m not sure,” I say. It’s hard to come up with words when I can feel her breath on the soft skin at the inside of my leg. “It kind of just happened?”
She lets out a low whistle, then rubs her hands together fast to heat them. “This thing’s so ugly it’s almost pretty,” she says. She presses her palms to my leg, and immediately, a deep, bright heat spreads through the joint. My breath catches in my throat as her fingertips graze the hem of my shorts.
“Does it hurt?” she asks.
“Not too much.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” I swallow hard.
“How’s that?”
When she lifts her hands away, the bruise is gone.
“Thank you. You’re amazing,” I say, grinning up at her.
“Aw, shucks,” she says in a goofy voice, bracing her hands on her thighs to push herself upright.
“No, seriously. Thank you. For everything.” I say. “It’s … it means a lot to me that you’re helping with this.” I gesture at the water so she knows that I don’t just mean her help with my crazy, sudden bruise.
“That’s what friends do for each other,” she says. Something inside my stomach drops. Right. Friends.
“You’re a good friend,” I say, looking out over the water.
Roya doesn’t answer. We’re quiet for a while, and then, without either of us having to say we’re ready to go, we grab our stuff. Roya slides her shorts back on, jams her shirt into her bag. She eases into the driver’s seat, and it’s cooled down enough outside that she doesn’t turn the air-conditioning on. She doesn’t even start the car right away. She twists in her seat to look at me.
“You okay?” she asks.
I don’t answer immediately. I don’t want to lie to her. “I don’t know,” I finally say. She grabs my hand and gives it a squeeze.
“I don’t just mean since prom. I mean … are you okay?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say, even though I do.
“It’s just not like you,” she says. “To go with somebody to their room at a party. You’ve never done that before, not even people you were in relationships with. You don’t have to tell me about it, but …”
I can’t look at her. I can’t. “I’m okay,” I say, and I squeeze her hand back so she knows I’m sorry for lying.
“Okay,” she says. “If you want to talk about it—”
“I’m okay,” I repeat, a little harder this time. A little louder.
“… Okay. Sure.” Roya turns the car on, and when I look up at her, her face is closed off. A muscle in her jaw is clenching and unclenching, a sure sign that she’s hurt and angry. Her eyes are shining, so I know she’s furious. Roya pretty much only cries when she’s mad.