Page 26 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

CHAPTER 25

August 23 rd

3:43 AM

S UNGILA L AKE IS quiet and dark. I will jump into its unknowable water. I will sink down until my feet touch the bottom, and then I will spring up and haul myself back onto the dock, safe as houses.

My clothes are folded on a dock piling. I’ve texted Sara that I’ll be coming back to the trailer in a little while to sleep. Should I overestimate my innate swimming prowess and drown, at least someone will come looking for me. Regardless, a watery death seems unlikely. The dock reaches only twenty or so feet out from the shore. Even if I can’t pull myself back onto the dock, I’m sure I can drag myself to dry land.

I run down the dock and jump. I am suspended in the air for a small eternity before I plunge into the water. The cold chokes out all the air in my lungs. My first instinct is to breathe. I have to clamp a hand over my mouth to keep from inhaling water. Once the panic subsides, I lift my arms upward and allow myself to sink. The water moves around me in a delicate embrace, a dangerous slow dance in the blackness.

Mother, I wish you had taught me how to swim.

Mother, I wish it could have all been different.

Mother, I failed you and you failed me too.

Mother, I hate you, yet I would sacrifice anything to run into your arms one last time.

And Mother, Mother, I am sorry. I have never said it before, but I am sorry for what I did to you. I’m sorry it was you and not him.

My feet touch the bottom, and I realize, with immense relief, that the water is not as deep as I feared it would be.

Only the dogs welcome me when I come back to the trailer. I reward their loyalty with treats. Sara’s bedroom door is shut, but if the graveyard of fresh cigarette butts in her ashtray is any indication, she hasn’t been in bed long. I want to wake her, to sit at the foot of her bed and cry in her arms, comforted by the friend I love most in this world, but that is what ghouls do. It feeds our misery to share it with others.

My sorrows are my own.

I count my breaths in the pitch black. Zenobia paws at the door and joins me on the air mattress, stretching her legs as far as she can before going limp with exhaustion. Occasionally she smacks her lips to reassure me she is still alive, and I twitch my foot to return the favor.

Sleep comes to me in fits and starts. When the dog shifts, I jolt awake because, for a split second, I can trick myself into thinking it is my mother on the bed, come to sing me to sleep.