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“Who’s gonna call the cops?” Linds asked. She was topless, wearing cutoff jean shorts and a pair of sunglasses, even though it was fully twilight. “The seagulls? That guy we passed drinking beer on the boat launch?”

“Said the privileged white woman.” James rubbed his arms and stomped his water-shoe-clad feet in the sand. “You don’t even have to have a who to call the cops anymore. They have cop-calling robots, and anything can be a robot.”

Tressa Fay looked out at the bay, the water meeting the blue-and-pink horizon, stretching way, way out. Lake Michigan touched four whole states.

She hoped it was big enough.

“It’s shallow here for a long ways, and even if we go out past the end of that jetty, we’ll only be up to our shoulders,” Meryl said. She was in a different serviceable suit, this one black, with tiny cap sleeves and a zipper up the front. She also wore new water shoes. Unlike James’s, which were lime green and looked like something you’d buy at the pool concession, Meryl’s had deep treads and cinched, bulletproof-looking mesh, probably so some kind of Lake Michigan barracuda couldn’t eat her toes.

She was so beautiful.

“Explain this to me again.” Gayle tugged at the board shorts she’d paired with a red bikini top. “Like I’m five. Without any references to fantasy books or Dungeons & Dragons campaigns.”

Linds and Brooklynn laughed. Brooklynn was the only one who could look at Linds full-on. Of course Linds had asked everyone for permission to swim topless, but there was agreeing, and then there was the reality of a topless Linds canoodling with Brooklynn in a swimsuit that had made Tressa Fay’s eyes cross but also made her ask where she’d bought it.

“That’s my line,” Guy said. They and Michael had matching Speedos, which had introduced a number of questions on their short hike from the parking lot to the shoreline. The Speedos had something to do with San Diego and a Pride event and their owning literally no other swimwear because they were lawyers. “And maybe we could get one more explanation before we all succumb to hypothermia.”

“The water has memories,” Tressa Fay said. “It knows where it’s supposed to go and where it’s supposed to be. It’s here now, and it was here a long time ago, and it will be here for a long time. It’s bigger than us, and it knows about what’s been happening to us, because there isn’t anything it hasn’t seen.”

There was part of her that knew this plan was maybe a little bit, or a lot, corny. Or cringe. But Tressa Fay genuinely did not care. She had done a lot, a lot, a lot of things in her thirty-one years that other people called corny and cringe and even ridiculous, and yet she was still here, living her life the best way she knew how, with her friends. With Meryl.

If that wasn’t good enough, Tressa Fay couldn’t do anything about it.

“And also I want to,” Meryl said. “This is where I want to be more than I want to be anywhere else, and you guys are who I want to be with.”

When Tressa Fay had told Meryl her idea, she’d worried Meryl wouldn’t get it, or that it was too mystical a take on what Meryl had taught her about water, or that she’d have a lot of practical objections related to breaking into Bay Beach Amusement Park after the season was over to gain access to the swimming beach near dark.

But instead, Meryl had listened. She’d told her it was a good idea. She’d made Tressa Fay feel right. More confident than she should on this night.

Meryl always made her feel right.

Before they left, Meryl had typed a text, then set her phone down on the kitchen table. Before Tressa Fay could ask, Meryl had kissed her and told her that she had everything she needed. Everything she’d always wanted.

“I’ve walked the whole swimming beach area,” Michael said. “I checked the changing hut and used my flashlight in the trees. I don’t think anyone’s here.” He leaned down and picked up a shopping bag. Michael had put himself in charge of monitoring the area for bad guys and had in fact walked up to talk to the man who was drinking on the boat launch, obtaining his name and contact information. The man ended up asking Michael for his card in order to help him with a legal issue related to late property taxes. “And I have these.”

Michael passed around what looked like a car’s electronic key fob attached to a lanyard to each person. “It’s a personal alarm. Push the button, it makes an unholy noise, and we know one of us needs help. It’s waterproof. I had to go to that weird trail cam and gun shop by the chicken wing place that gave Mary food poisoning last year to get these, so you have to wear them.”

“Strong swimmers should fill in around the weaker ones,” Meryl said. “It’s going to get darker fast, but the security lights in the park are on all the time. They’ll seem brighter when we’re out in the water.”

Mary adjusted her lanyard. Tressa Fay knew she was nervous. Mary hated swimming. Her retro swimsuit hadn’t even seen the water. It was for sunning only.

“You okay?” Tressa Fay asked her.

“Yeah,” Mary said. “I am. I’m okay. I can do this.” She looked out over the water. “I don’t want a fish to touch me, but Meryl said it wasn’t deep, and it’s easy to walk, and probably there’s not a lot of fish in the sandy swimming part. But this feels too much like we’re Navy SEALs getting ready for some kind of drill. Or Meryl’s water-testing interns. I feel like there should be a metaphysical vibe? Or some words.”

“Like at a funeral?” James asked.

“ James ,” Mary chided. “But yes, something real like that.”

Something real , Tressa Fay thought. What was more real than nine people who loved each other who had come to the edge of the water to keep everyone together?

“We should just be us,” Tressa Fay said.

She reached over and took Mary’s hand, and that got everyone moving toward where the lake water sloshed against the wet, dark sand, frothing as it receded. The lake smelled cold and stony and a little fishy, and their group started laughing and whooping as the near-icy water slapped against their shins, then their knees. It was hard to walk in the soft mixture of fine sand and lake mud in her old Converse, the ones she had worn in the creek, but they were moving slowly, getting loud, then shushing each other, pushing forward, the lake bed giving way to a firm matrix of coarse sand and pebbles.

Then they were up to their waists, and the light from Bay Beach broke over them where it had been touching the water farther out.

“Oh,” Mary said. “You can see better.” Her hand slipped from Tressa Fay’s, and she moved toward James in the outer circle. Meryl was laughing and splashing Gayle. Michael looked like he was counting all of them, over and over, while Guy slipped along, trudging awkwardly toward where Linds and Brooklynn were experimenting with floating on their backs.

Tressa Fay turned to see behind them where the park sat on the shore, the wooden roller coaster huge and dark, the paths lit by the security lights. She skimmed her hand over the surface of the water, white blue with reflected light. Her legs had moved from numb to almost warm feeling, but everywhere else she was cold in the wind over the lake, so she bent her knees and knelt down into the water until it hit her chin.

Then she held her nose with two fingers and took a sharp breath and dunked all the way under.

The sounds of her friends immediately dropped away, replaced with watery silence and her heart racing from the cold.

When her lungs started to burn, she stood up, water sheeting off her hair. She looked down to check her suit, surprised by how dark the navy fabric had gotten in the water. When she’d taken it out of a little tote bag she’d found in the bottom of a box of her mother’s things, the spandex suit was starting to gray, and the green stripes over the straps and sides had sun-bleached to mint from what must have once been a bright kelly green. But she’d wanted to wear it because it was the only item of clothing she could remember her mom wearing. She had a memory of being at the pool, her arms wrapped around her mom’s leg, her hand stretching up to touch her belly, feeling this smooth navy spandex.

Then she looked up, waving at Phil on the shore with Tressa Fay, who was so cute in her tiny red suit and sun hat, smacking her dad’s thigh. From here, she couldn’t hear if Tressa Fay was squealing, but she bet she was. Phil noticed her waving and waved back, grinning. She should’ve worn her sunglasses. The sunlight was glaring on the water and giving her a bit of a headache, but it was so good to get out of the house like this. Tressa Fay was a handful. Even the teachers at the church’s nursery school thought so.

She lifted up her feet and kicked out, floating on her back, listening to the families on the shore and the noise from Bay Beach, hit with a sudden rush of love for her husband and daughter.

She stood up again, squeezing out the water from her hair, feeling clumps of it turn to ice in the cold as snowflakes melted on her sun-hot skin and then stayed as she chilled. The water was thick with icy slush. She waved at her dad on the beach, wrapped up in a coat, but he didn’t see her. He was flinging snow into the water. When it sailed over the wind and clung to Tressa Fay’s skin, though, it wasn’t snow, but ashes.

She turned to show Linds, who held on to a pool noodle, her lashes dripping with water, a stripe of the white sunscreen her mother made her wear on her nose.

“Look,” Tressa Fay said. “It’s my mom.”

Linds kicked over, splashing water everywhere. “Yeah,” she agreed. “She’s waving at you with my mom.”

Tressa Fay turned her attention back to the shore, where her mom and Linds’s mom were sitting on the blanket together. Guy’s mom was putting sunscreen on them while nursing Guy’s little sister with her swimsuit pulled down, which was so embarrassing.

“Wanna race?” Linds asked.

“Yeah. Where’s Mary?”

“On the Viking swing with James and everybody else.” When Linds pointed, Tressa Fay saw the ride, lit up bright against the darkness, already tipped high into the sky. Mary, James, Gayle, Linds, Guy, and Michael had their hands in the air, and they were screaming, shouting, falling.

“I wish I could’ve been there,” Meryl said, nudging Tressa Fay with her shoulder, wet and warm from the water and sun. “It looks like fun.”

Meryl’s hair was in two long braids, dark with lake water, dripping onto her light blue suit. “You were there,” Tressa Fay said. “Remember? You were the one who made us go.”

But Meryl shook her head. “That couldn’t have been me. I always disappear.”

“Not this time.”

“It’s the one thing that never changes. I’m talking and talking to the future, but no matter what I do different, I never make it to where you are.”

“You can’t keep telling yourself that story, honey.” Tressa Fay’s chest was hot, her lungs overfull, her whole self brimming over with how much she loved this woman. “It’s breaking your heart.”

Meryl shook her head. When Tressa Fay tried to touch her, she retreated beyond her reach. “You know, I really hurt Kaley when I walked away from the wedding. I don’t want to hurt you like that. I love you so much.”

“Then stay with me. Choose me.”

Meryl looked devastated. “I’m sorry I won’t be there to meet you at Canyon Tacos,” she said. “I love how they do the limeade in mini pitchers.”

Tressa Fay could barely hear Meryl now, she was so far out in the water, and it was hard to tell, but it looked like there might be a dark shadow around her, moving with her, out past where it was safe to be. Tressa Fay tried to get closer, but the water was hard to walk in, dragging against her legs. She wasn’t strong enough. When she lifted her head again, there was nothing but black water.

“Meryl!” she shouted.

No one answered.

“Meryl, don’t you dare! Don’t you dare!” She planted her feet and turned in a circle, looking everywhere. There was nothing to see. No lights on the shore, no people. Just Tressa Fay, alone in the water.

The shore had gone. The waves lapped gently against the tops of her thighs.

She’d lost her. She’d lost them all.

“Meryl!” she yelled again. “Gayle! Mary!” She drew out Mary’s name, heard her hoarse voice crack, heard the grief in it. “Linds! Guy! Michael! James! Where did you go?”

Tressa Fay spun around, and every time she turned, the light and the water changed. There were people on the shore, families crowding the beach. The Ferris wheel was huge and bright, a thousand colors, then smaller like it had been when she was a kid, then gone. The beach disappeared. The trees crowded in.

“Mom!” she shouted. “Dad?”

She tipped her head back, her tears hot against the side of her face, on the cool skin of her birthmark, and she watched the stars blink on and off, the clouds skate over the moon.

There was no such thing as time.

The world filled up with her beating pulse and her body spinning and her restless, insistent self. Her heart. Her.

Her.

She knew who she was. In every universe, she was Tressa Fay Catherine Louise Robeson. She was a beloved child for no other reason than she existed. She had so much love to give, it ached in her chest.

She’d spent so much of herself thinking all she wanted to do was eat soup and take lingerie selfies and hang out with her cat, listening to old records, soaking in nostalgia, pushing off her friends’ attempts to drag her out into the world, then musing about the kind of love she wanted but had never been able to find.

She should have remembered she had already found love. She’d figured out how to love herself. She’d learned to give herself everything she needed.

That was when she found Meryl, and Meryl found her.

It didn’t matter how or why it happened. In every time, every different way, the number Meryl misdialed was Tressa Fay’s.

So she was taking Meryl Whit with her, no matter what.

She stopped spinning. “Meryl,” she said. Conjuring her up. Summoning her from the water.

There she was. Not with dripping braids, but with shorter hair, different hair, because Tressa Fay had made her different.

Loving Tressa Fay had changed her.

“It’s you,” Meryl said. “My Tressa Fay.”

She took hold of Tressa Fay’s elbow as their feet left the lake bed, and they heaved up in water that was freezing, marine, rushing. Tressa Fay couldn’t find the beach. There were only wide, shining fields of land crisscrossed with running water and huge pools. There were birds everywhere, all kinds, all sizes, and they were incredibly loud, diving in and out of the water and resting on the patches of land and rock. The water she floated in carried stones and dirt that abraded her skin.

“Oh, wow.” Meryl wrapped her arms around Tressa Fay, holding her up in the strong current. “That’s the Laurentide ice sheet.” She turned them away from the land to look at the horizon, which was drawn with a thick blue-white line that Tressa Fay couldn’t make sense of. “A glacier. We’re swimming in a lobe of what will be the bay of Green Bay! When there is a Wisconsin.” Meryl had to shout over the sounds of the birds, grinning. Tressa Fay felt something brush against her Converse and looked down to watch a dark, smooth shape, bigger than a car, glide under the water flashing with rocks and mica.

“A sturgeon!” Meryl laughed. “And see here?” She lifted her hand up from just underneath the surface. A heavy and dripping membrane of slick greenish-brown slime slid over her wrist, then back into the water. “A healthy microbial mat. Maybe it will be a stromatolite someday.”

Tressa Fay reached out, trying to touch the mat before it could float down into the depths. She caught the corner of it and lifted it out of the water, pink with the coming sunset. The fossil had smooth edges where the water had worn it away, and the rows and rows of tiny circles stacked up on each other were easy to see in the wet stone. She lifted it up to show her friends on the beach, but no one was there. The Ferris wheel was turning, though. It looked orange in the light of the late-fall sunset. Her dad waved and nudged Tressa Fay, who sat next to him and waved back at Tressa Fay. They wore coats in their swinging seat, and autumn leaves swirled around the paths.

She could still hear the birds screaming. Couldn’t she? Or the sound of the ice breaking away from the glacier.

The security lights scattered white streaks on the surface of the dark water around Meryl’s black swimsuit. She was still smiling, her new haircut messier than even Tressa Fay had made it, her glasses spotted with water. Tressa Fay let go of the fossil, and as it sank in the water, she cradled Meryl’s face with her hands. “Meryl Whit. I thought you’d left me.”

“Tressa Fay Robeson,” Meryl answered. Their friends were nearby, making ripples everywhere. Their splashing seemed loud in what was now full dark. “Never. Never, never.” Meryl reached up and put her hands around Tressa Fay’s wrists. “You were right. I was doubting myself into a bad ending, driving my own bus right off the cliff. I’m so sorry I ever made you doubt, because here’s the thing—I was so certain I didn’t have faith that I totally missed all the faith. Maybe I was too distracted by your hotness.”

“ You were right,” Tressa Fay corrected. “I shouldn’t have ever believed you didn’t think I was up to it. That I wasn’t enough. Of course I am.”

“Of course you are. You’re everything.” Meryl pulled Tressa Fay in and kissed her, their lips cold and their mouths warm, the air sweet and mossy and too cold to be swimming in September.

There was a loud, piercing noise, the same noise Tressa Fay had been hearing, the calls of the birds, the screams of her friends on the Viking swing, the crack of the ice, but now it was Michael and Guy. The personal alarms.

They were right there in their matching Speedos, shoving their bodies through water up to their chests, calling out her name.

“September fifth!” Gayle screamed out. She had her arm up in the air, pointing at her black watch. “It’s September fifth!”

And just then, Tressa Fay felt the shift. A little hitch, like a tug on a tablecloth, it smoothed out the fabric of everything.