Dark Water by Laura McNeal Read Free Book Online Page A

Greenie urged me. Her perfectly brown, perfectly smooth legs were pressed together underneath her denim miniskirt, which, like most things that Greenie wore nowadays, was millimeters from a dress code violation.
    “Ohm,” I said.
    “Now you’re not even saying names. Four wrong, noneright.” She paused theatrically, then couldn’t wait anymore. “It’s
Ormand,
” Greenie said, dragging it out for full appreciation. “Isn’t that the closest you’ve ever come, in the flesh, to that guy who’s maybe a man, maybe a woman—Orlando?”
    Ms. Grant was a big Virginia Woolf fan.
    “Watch the comparisons to the half-women types,” Hickey said, though he didn’t sound that annoyed. He was flying into the dirt parking lot, sending up beige plumes and sprays of white gravel. A big middle-aged guy in a baseball cap was removing the harness from his horse beside a dust-streaked trailer, and I could tell he was making a mental note of the rules we were breaking. When Hickey and Greenie got out of the car, they didn’t walk toward the trail I always took with Robby, which was through a yellow stile about twenty yards from the car. Instead, Hickey pushed his burrito into a little white cooler that had been sitting beside my feet the whole time and headed with Greenie toward the road, which they then started to cross.
    “Where’re you going?” I called.
    “There’s a swimming hole over on this side,” she yelled back. “Hickey showed me.”
    Except for the horse owner we were alone out there. The hills were covered with purple wildflowers and the green shrubs I didn’t know the names of then but can now rattle off like a rosary. The willows in the riverbed were doing that thing I loved, releasing their downy seeds like sideways floating snow. Greenie didn’t slow down but kept right on crossing the street, one hand entwined with Ormand Hickey’s.
    I didn’t have a plan, so I followed. I slogged after them through deep sand and powdery dust and oak shade to a steep, crumbling bank where a creek joined the river and made a near U-turn. The water was deep but opaque and khaki-colored in the shade, sky blue in the sun. Reeds clogged the currents that flowed away from us and disappeared around another sharp bend. I felt like I’d reached a foreign river, one where I wouldn’t be able to find my way.
    Greenie and Hickey kicked their shoes off and sat down in the warm sunshine, and that’s when I learned that what Hickey was carrying in his square white cooler was not just his Pedro’s burrito but a six-pack of Budweiser. Cold. Pre-purchased. Ready for the not-spontaneous spontaneous outing. I tried to get Greenie’s eyes on mine when he snapped a beer out of its plastic bracelet and handed it to her, but Greenie didn’t meet my eyes as she casually popped the metal tab. She took a sip, screwed the bottom of the can into the sand so it wouldn’t tip over, and began to unwrap her taco like we were all still in Normal World.
    I heard the swish of a car on the road. The breeze was soft and sweet-smelling, neither too hot nor too cold. I took out my burrito and though I’m not proud of it, I ate with my usual gusto. The sauce dripped like it always did into the folds of my hands, and like always I didn’t have quite enough napkins to get clean. I sucked down in a few gulps the cold, sweet horchata. It was like if I finished the food, I could go back and nothing bad would happen. No one would know.
    But I finished, and we were still there. My shoes sank into white sand by the khaki water. I balled up the foil wrapping and stuffed it into the paper bag, which I then shoved into my backpack. I tried walking in the direction of the current, and for a minute the glittery water had its old charm. Nubby tadpoles flitted away from my shadow and bright green moss trailed like hair from a piece of driftwood, but when I tried to follow the river around the next curve, I could go barely fifty yards. There was no trail on this