Meet Me at Midnight - Jessica Pennington Page 0,13

halfway. That’s why I have to pack my bags for vacation like I’m going off to war.” I ramble on, to the open air. “You’re a worthy opponent, Sidney Walters. You’re neurotic, and have a stick up your ass the size of a small oak tree, but you’re worthy. No doubt.”

I raise my voice a little and imagine Sidney can hear me. I like the idea that she’s forced to listen to whatever I say, each of us captive to the other. “Did I ever tell you about the time I tried pranking my best friend Todd?” I laugh. “Of course I didn’t. Well, it was last year, a week after I got home, and I was still wired from the summer. From our … whatever this is. The crap we do to each other. Todd had come over to my house and stolen my favorite pair of headphones—he’d wanted them forever, and I forgot to bring them to the lake, so when they were gone, I knew who took them.” Just saying this out loud sounds like I’m completely unhinged. Saying it to someone’s back is a whole new level. “So I got into his car, and I put glitter in all of his air vents. I had to use a little dropper, to get the glitter to sit on the edge of the plastic vents. Todd’s air-conditioning has been broken since he got that car, but he always breaks down at some point and turns on the air. Like he thinks it’s magically going to fix itself at some point, or that the air coming in will somehow be cooler than the air outside. So he was good and sweaty by the time he got blasted.” I laugh just thinking about it again. “Man, he was pissed. Because it turns out he had texted me about grabbing the headphones for a trip he was going on. My mom gave them to him and everything. I missed the text. It took him a million showers to get the glitter off, and I swear it’s still in his car, wedged into all the little cracks.” When I shake my head I’m not sure if it’s at myself or at Sidney. Maybe it’s at what she does to me. “You mess my head up,” I say to the water.

Sidney

Asher goes on and on until we finally reach the little bay on the opposite side of the lake. Telling me about how his friend Todd didn’t talk to him for two days. Apparently it’s my fault that Asher was a jerk to his friend? If he’s trying to make me feel guilty, it isn’t working. But if he’s trying to annoy me, then he’s nailing it. Because him talking to me while I swim is a lot like when the dentist has your jaw jacked open and asks you how school’s going. Have you been flossing? Are you still swimming? If bus A leaves Cincinnati on Tuesday and bus B leaves Detroit on Wednesday, what is the square root of pi? It’s a special kind of torture, when you can’t respond. But acknowledging that I hear him would just help his cause, so instead I just push myself as hard as I possibly can, until my arms and legs feel like limp noodles.

When the water starts to lighten and I can make out the bottom—he can’t claim I didn’t make it to the other side, I’m clearly in the bay—I wave Asher over to me. He cuts the engine and lets the boat drift until it’s sidling up beside me. Even though it’s just one of the little rowboats, I know I can’t get in myself. Not unless we let the boat drift in another hundred feet to the really shallow water. And I’m too tired for that.

I try anyway. I put both hands on the edge and try to pull myself up, but I can’t get any traction when the boat dips. The metal digs against my palms. I haven’t done an open-water swim in ten months, and my entire body feels spent. If my dad had come, I would have swum a half today, just to ease myself into it. Asher scoots to the edge of his seat and reaches his arm out with a smirk. And as I grab it, all I can think of is how he called me neurotic, and said I had a stick up my ass. No, a tree up my ass. I brace myself