Nova Ren Suma - Imaginary Girls

Table of Contents

Ruby said Id never drownnot in deep ocean, not by shipwreck, not even by falling drunk into someones bottomless backyard pool. She said shed seen me hold my breath underwater for minutes at a time, but to hear her tell it youd think she meant days. Long enough to live down there if needed, to skim the seafloor collecting shells and shiny soda caps, looking up every so often for the rescue lights, even if they took forever to come.

It sounded impossible, something no one would believe if anyone other than Ruby were the one to tell it. But Ruby was right: The body found that night wouldnt be, couldnt be mine.

We had no ideathis was before the blue-flashing strobe through the pines; the spotlit glare on water; the skidding over rocks; the grabbing of shoes, any shoes, of clothes, any clothes. Before we went running through the brush and the sharp sticks cut our bare feet. Before the heart in my chest went pounding, all the while wondering, Is this really happening? when it was, most definitely it was. Before all thatall we wanted was to go swimming.

The boys surrounded Ruby at the edge of the reservoir, some closer than others, some with flashlights that they let dance far lower than her face, though Ruby didnt smack them away when they did ittonight, she didnt feel like doing any smacking.

In the distance were more boys, and a few girls, the group straggling along the edge of the reservoir and into the night, but this here was the beating center. This was where to find Ruby. She stood and stretched out the length of her foot to dangle one browned, pearl-painted toe in the water. She let the boys watch her do it. Let them watch her splash.

I was there, too, watching, but no one paid me much attention until she said my name.

Chloe could swim this whole thing, there and back, Ruby told the boys. She was talking me up, as she liked to. She was saying I could swim all the way across the reservoirfrom our shore to the hazy shape of the one just visible in the distanceand she dared any of them to say I couldnt. Id swim it, she said, and more: Id bring back a souvenir.

The waterline was lower than usual that summer, since we hadnt seen a drop of rain in weeks. If you knew where to look, the towns that had their homes in this valley were peeking through. Here where we stood was the edge of what had once been a village called Olive, and now Ruby was saying I could pay a visit while crossing the reservoir, that Id plunge down to the bottom where the remains of Olive still stand, dig around in their abandoned dressers, and come back to shore draped in their jewels. If anyone could do it, Ruby said, her sister could.

The boys laughed, but they should have known Ruby wasnt making a joke of it.

I swear, she said, dunk her in and she turns half fish. She doesnt need air like the rest of us. Ive seen it. Who do you think was the one giving her baths when she was three?

Shes five-and-a-half years older than me, so she has memories I dont, can put me in places Id swear Ive never been (Lollapalooza, Niagara Falls, the Ulster County Jail that one time, to visit our mother). If Ruby said I could swim all the way across, if she said I could dive down to the bottom no ones ever put a hand to, find whats left of Olive, touch the floorboards of the houses flooded in 1914, and come up kicking, a splinter of proof in one finger, then maybe I can. Maybe I have. Ruby could turn me from an ordinary girl you wouldnt look at twice into someone worth watching. Someone special, mythical even.

Thats what I got for being her baby sister.

The more Ruby talked about me, the more the boys looked my way. She made me come alive when she said my name; her words gave me color, fluffed out my hair. You could tell by the way their flashlights fell on me, by where they fell, by how long they lingered, just what her words got them thinking.

Right, Chlo? she said. Tell them you can do it. Go on, tell them. I couldnt see her face as she spoke, but Id know the smile in her voice anywhere. The tease.

I shrugged, like maybe I could do what she said, maybe.

I was on the lowest rock, the one almost submerged in water. I was down below the waterline, where I could sink in my legs and kick. Here at the edge, we might catch a glimpse of the old stone foundations, some still standing in places. A wall, crumbling. A cellar doorway, left open. Maybe wed spy a chimney poking up out of the water, a church steeple. From shore, the dark night made it seem like I could wade across, but that was only a trick, as the bottom dropped a few feet in. This reservoir was deep enough to bury whole townsand it had. It had destroyed nine of them. Ruby knew this; she was the one who told me.

So I could stay on this rock, getting just my feet wet, then my legs up to my knees, no more. I could do nothing and she wouldnt be mad tomorrow. But what would we have to talk about then?

I was fourteen, way younger than the boys poking at me with the beams of their flashlights. Hanging with Rubys friends meant I had to be careful of who was looking, whose bottle to steal a sip out of, who to let sit beside me in the dark where they knew Ruby couldnt see. Less dangerous would be the reservoir itself, too large to keep track of in the nightan oil spill instead of a mapped and measured ocean.

Thats why, when she stood tall on the bed of rocks and pointed out into the night to say I could swim it right now, this dark minute, I didnt protest. She meant the width of the reservoir, about two miles across, but it looked like she meant the night sky itself, that there was a universe of time unknown and I could cross it.

Most people werent aware of our reservoirs history; they didnt think about what had been here before. At night, it was just this indescribable thing without shape or color. This thing that could only be felt around you, when wading in, when you bent your knees and gulped air and let it swallow your head. Once under, all sound cut off. The water thickened the lower you sunkwith what, you didnt think about, didnt want to know. You had to watch your toes, because the jagged bottom could cut you, and hang tight to your clothes, if you were wearing any, because the reservoir was known to take what it wanted when it wanted it. Not just loose change and car keys but bikini tops and piercings come loose from decade-old holes. Ruby once lost a ring a boy gave her, a ring handcrafted by his father, given as a promise she never meant to keep. So for Ruby the reservoir took what she wanted, almost as if they shared an understanding. Everyone else had to be more careful.

This reservoir didnt belong to us, though it lapped into our backyards. It cut through multiple towns across the Hudson Valley; it lined our roads. It was there past the trees, behind chains and No Trespassing signs, dammed up and shored in, but still sparkling in every kind of weather, calling us to drop our pants and jump in. It was part of the watershed that supplied New York Cityjust begging us to take advantage.

I loved swimming it, Ruby knew. We liked to think of them, the city people who assumed they had lives so much better than ours even though they lived stacked up tight in their gray city, locked in their boxes, breathing their canned air, taking their baths in the pool we just swam in.