the water is deeper than it looks; and we’re not the worst swimmers, but it’s dark; we tend not to swim at night; no, we tend not to swim at night with guys; we all knew of the girl who drowned; she sank like a stone, they said; she was showing off that night, they said; the guys all said;
tonight, it’s guys we meet at the boathouse; they’re here for the end of summer; they’re beautiful in a polished way; but we’re beautiful in that polished way; we look out across the water; we whisper nothing and pretend it’s more; so the guys look over or don’t look over; either way, it means the same thing;
at some point, they’ll be done with us; we’ll have wasted their time, they’ll say; so they’ll threaten us; they’ll terrorize us; So kill us, we’ll say and laugh too hard like fuck these guys; like who the fuck are these guys;
this summer, we learn we’re part of a demographic; we’re girls who go to private schools; girls at the tops of our classes; girls who stay at the shore all summer and become the stars of the shore;
so this summer, we learn we’re split into two; I learn we’re split into more than two; I wouldn’t say we’re shattered; we’re not in pieces across your floor; it’s more, I would say, like fractured; I would say, like cracked;
the ride to the shore this summer was long, and no one talked; I lay across the back seat watching clouds; I slept and dreamed my parents were singing loudly in the front; but when I woke, my mother was sleeping, her head drooped to her chest; my father was staring straight ahead; the radio was playing the song from my dream; it wasn’t the song I would have played, were I in charge; that song would have been good and loud; the windows would have been all the way down; my parents wouldn’t have been there;
mornings, my father sits with me at the table; he’s mad at me, he says; I’ve been coming home too late, he says; I’ve been coming home too drunk; but I can barely listen to my father; something is going on with him; I can’t say, exactly, what it is; so I’ll say there’s something like a ghost; something at the table, sitting next to my father, sitting on top of my father;
we’re the stars, this summer, of the shore; we open up our throats to drink; we drink whatever is poured in our cups; we don’t care if things get mixed; like brown drinks mixed with clear; like clear drinks mixed with wine; we don’t care whose shirt we’re wearing; whose car we’re in; whose boat; we’re the girls, this summer, everyone wants; and we dance up on the guys; we dance up on the chairs; we tie cherry stems into knots with our tongues; we open our mouths to show you the perfectly knotted stems;
the girl who drowned was a local girl; she was no one we knew well; we knew her tan lines when she wore a dress; we knew what they said about her; she was a knockout, they said; the guys all said; even my father said she was a knockout; but she wasn’t that bright, my father said; so there was no one to blame, he said, for her drowning, but her;
but I often wonder about that night; I often think about that girl; I save the word killers under my tongue;
some nights, I lie back and close my eyes; I can feel their weight above me; I can feel, in the good way, like a girl; and then I can feel in the bad way; I send my brain to other thoughts, while my body lies there, pretending; I think about light and the speed of light; I think about black holes; and how there’s no right-side up or upside down in outer space; there’s no sound on the moon;
near the end of the ride to the shore was the water; and from then on, it was only the water; my father was silent; my mother slept through it; but I was impressed, I now can admit; it was something to do with its size, or its depth; by depth I only mean physical; though one might make a case for another kind, a holy kind;
they’re polished, these guys, so we followed them, like dogs, to the dock; now we dangle our legs off the edge; they throw their cigarettes into the water; they throw crushed cans, and I think some things; like how we’re not the kind to throw shit in; but we’re not the kind to say, Don’t throw that shit; when the cans hit the water, the guys say, What; we say, What, and look to the other side; the other side is the poor side; it’s a strip of dirty beach; it’s weathered motels tilted into a road; it’s beaten up houses and couches on the lawns; it’s the jetty the locals hang out on; we’re not supposed to go to that side; but we’re not supposed to do so many things; our demographic is confusing; all the expectations, all their opposites;
there are mountains on the moon tall as the ones on earth; but they’re terrible, treeless; gray and dust; thinking of them, I can scare myself; I can see myself floating there;
at the ends of nights, we’re under a tree or in a boat or in a bed and taken home; our makeup isn’t what it was; our clothes are twisted; our shoes are somewhere; there are girls who walk us to find our shoes; these are younger girls who want to be us; they’re our shadows and we hate them;
mornings, my father slams his fork to the table; he pounds the table so that everything shakes; he tries his best to stare me down; but I’ve perfected a better stare; I practice it, nights, on the younger girls; I can make my eyes go completely flat; it’s terrifying how I look;
the guys have ways to make us give them what they want; they look directly at our mouths; they touch our hair and say it feels so soft; You smell like something I want to eat, they say; You smell like strawberries, they say; they ask us things to make us feel smart; they say, What would you do for a thousand dollars; they say, Would you steal a boat; they say, Would you kill someone; they say, Would you sleep with us; their mouths are at our ears; we’re like a thousand dollars; we try not to laugh; they’re becoming disappointing; at the boathouse, we wanted to be with these guys; now, with these guys, we want to be at the boathouse; this is a grass-is-greener situation; it has to do with perspective; like how the water from afar is one thing; the water up close is another; like how a body from afar is something; and a body from inside that body is something else;
the younger girls would sense the potential danger; they would run back to their houses before things got too wild; their parents would wake and make them tea; but my parents are sleeping their deep drugged sleep; my parents are sleeping each at his or her edge of the bed;
the younger girls still think about love as arrows through hearts; and please, girls; I know about love; I know what it is; just tiny motors whirring in one’s saddest, darkest parts;
we often drink what’s left in cans; we smoke what’s left on the ground; we don’t care if we look like trash; if our shirts come off; our shorts come off; when we dance like this, it means more than dancing; when we tie cherry stems into knots with our tongues; when we’re found in a boat and crying and can’t tell you why;
we say, We would sleep with you for a million dollars; But not for a thousand, we say; I realize how fucked up we sound; like what are we, total whores; then it’s one thing to another fast; we only want the one thing; we only want some of that thing; we’re willing to let them kiss us; we’ll let them go up our shirts; but that’s not good enough for them; because it hurts, they say, not to get off; it can go right to their brains, they say; it can fuck them up for good;
so they must have forgotten who we are; that we’re the tops of our classes; that we know how the body works; and the moment they know this was all a waste; and the moment we know they know; they make a sound to represent agony; the sound reminds me of an animal from a show I saw as a child; they say, What the fuck is your problem; where do we start;
we know the universe is still expanding; we know we’re shooting farther and farther out into what;
we know the sun will, at some point, collapse; that the earth will be burned to dust;
I tried, once, to explain these things in detail to my parents; my mother said, What’s she talking about; my father: Hell if I know;
we stand to leave these guys on the dock; Just kill me, I say, as we walk; Just kill me, we say, and they’re running to us; for a second, I think love; but now we’re whipping through the air like trash; we’re over their shoulders and spinning; they say they’re going to throw us in; we’re screaming, Put us down; I’m screaming, Fucking killers; and it’s the world through speed, all split, all blurred; and it’s all our fault for being such stars; for being such whores;
one night, we were on the dock, and there she was, holding a shoe in each hand; my father says she wasn’t bright; and she wasn’t, if you think of bright as top of your class; but if you think of bright, instead, as light; she was laughing out her words; something about some guys acting wild on the jetty; I could see her remember how wild they were; I could see her through the guys’ eyes, my father’s eyes; that night I became her shadow, and she never even knew;
at the table, I stare my father down; I’m terrifying with my stare; it’s like I’m stuck in some kind of trance; then everything is fractured; and it’s a hundred forks; a hundred fathers; a hundred mothers saying, What’s her problem; a hundred fathers saying, Go to hell;
we’re spinning, and all I can think is water; I think of how cold it’ll be; I think of how hard we’ll hit; I think of how far it is to the bottom; and what I would miss above; not my mother and father’s fucked up shit; not the younger girls who wish so bad they were us; not these beautiful, agonized guys;
I would miss the feeling of everyone looking at us; of everyone laughing at us; the feeling, after, of sleeping it off;
I would miss the next-day feeling of starting again; of barefoot, getting something to eat;
and don’t think we’re just teases; I also think about getting them off; I think about putting my hand on them; I think about putting my mouth on them; I think about lying under them; I don’t even need to be good at it; I don’t even need to look;
the ride back to the city will take me farther and farther from what I am; I’ll lie across the back seat thinking, God;
were I in charge, the summer would go backward; we would start out split and end up not;
were I in charge, I would lie alone on the dock and feel the tiny motors whir while staring out at stars;
there’s a moment, spinning, when spinning feels like being still; and I remember how I spun on the lawn, summers, when I was younger; I remember the how hard the earth pulled me down; how when I finally stood, the grass stayed flat in the shape of me; and the grass would rise as I walked away; and I would grow too old for this game;
so do they throw us in; do we slowly sink; does light stop; does sound change; is it suddenly cold; do we feel the fish; the plants and trash; the sharp edge of a crushed can;
does the girl who drowned swim back to us; is she a knockout still; do we love her still; do we love her enough to stay;
or do we push to the top; do we burst face first; are we a miracle; or the opposite; predictable; do we lie under them on the dock;
because there’s no sound on the moon, I often think about screaming on the moon; I think about what it would be to open my mouth and push out a scream I can feel but not hear;
because there’s no right-side up or upside down in outer space, I often, when looking at the sky, feel I’m dangling above it;
what I mean is, girls, there is no love the way you think of love;
what I mean is, girls, I’m sorry;
in the show I saw when I was a child, an animal was running on dirt; I was supposed to be watching something else; I wasn’t supposed to be watching; I was supposed to be doing my homework; there were things to learn; the beginnings and ends of worlds to understand;
but someone had turned on this show; and I couldn’t look away; a guy’s voice was saying things; his voice was getting louder; there was a giant orange sun; a leafless tree; the animal running fast on the dirt; the animal running faster; this animal on that animal;
Susan Steinberg is the author of four books of fiction, including Spectacle and Machine from Graywolf Press.