probably try to run me down with the boat, so I need to be awake when I get out there, in case I need to go all action-movie mode and swim under the boat or something.
Head limp against the cream-colored tiles, I push the clear plastic knob up and to the right, mentally preparing for the onslaught. The strange smell hits me almost as quickly as the cold. It’s familiar, but so out of place—tangy, maybe. Almost citrus, but not quite. It smells like my childhood, somehow. Everything in this house has its own unique smell, but this one is a first, and it doesn’t fit. The cold sharpness against my skin distracts me, but as the pelting water numbs me and loses its bite, I relax and let my eyes slowly crack open.
What the hell?
Red streams everywhere. My first thought is that I’m bleeding, that I somehow, unconsciously, sliced my foot open. It looks like something out of a horror movie. Like there should be a bloody red handprint on the shower wall next to me. I’m tired, but I would have remembered severing my toe, I think. My eyes travel from the swirling red drain up my stained legs, and to my blotchy red stomach. Red. I’m red all over. My brain is still foggy and I feel a little like I’m in the last dregs of a nightmare.
I look up toward the showerhead, the water lightening in color now, and tentatively stick out my tongue as the smell finally registers. Cherry. It smells like my favorite Kool-Aid, the stuff I used to live off of every summer, back before I cared about how much sugar I drank.
“Asher.” I say his name like a mumbled curse, deep in my throat, my teeth clenched so tight they squeak a little under the pressure.
When I head out, my towel is stained from rubbing, but I still couldn’t get all of the red off of my skin. It’s concentrated around my knees and elbows, and in patches across my stomach—thankfully covered by my swimsuit—and my face. My face, which is turned toward the dock, where my new safety buddy is now standing, waiting to trail me across the lake. He’s lucky I’m too claustrophobic—and easily bored—to go to prison, or he’d need to be worried about being out on the open water with me.
“Mornin’,” he says, his face focused on the can of gas he’s dumping into the tank as I approach the little silver boat. My dad brings a small fishing boat to the lake every year, but for lake swims we always use the little silver rowboat that belongs to Five Pines, and ditch the oars for an outboard motor on the back. Asher reaches forward and I can see his suit sticking out from the waistband of his shorts. His phone is in a plastic bag sitting on the floor of the boat. Clearly he doesn’t trust me, either. Good. He shouldn’t.
I sit on the little bench that stretches across the front of the boat, my eyes fixed on the back of his head as he pours the gas. When he turns, he looks me right in the eyes. His travel from my face down to my splotchy wrists and linger on my knees, which are the reddest parts of my body. Note to self: moisturize your knees once in a while. I lift my little canteen to my mouth and take a casual sip. “Morning.”
The corner of his mouth twitches and I wait for the smile, but it doesn’t come. “You smell nice today,” he says, still on the brink of that smile. I’m not sure if I remember what Asher looks like smiling anymore. Smirking, yes. But smiling is as good as admitting guilt. And that is one of the three unspoken rules of this war we wage each summer.
1. Never admit guilt
2. No serious injuries
3. No snitching
Rule number one means we don’t smile, or laugh, or implicitly gloat. I’m not sure why—maybe because saying out loud that you filled someone’s drink with soy sauce or left earthworms in their bed just sounds mean. Rule number two ensures we never have to break rule number three. We haven’t snitched on each other since we were fifteen and Asher put marbles on the floor beside my bed. I’m not sure if he was actively trying to kill me, or just wasn’t thinking, but I lost my balance and cracked my head on the nightstand. I wouldn’t have ratted him out