MGS My Backyard - Chapter 3: Swan or Warrior (2024)

Hey folks, pardon the delay. I warned it would be a long one. Next chapter Friday!

I watch my parents’ SUV turn out of the driveway. When they get back in three days, they will sign the final documents for the disownment. Till then, they’d rather not bear the sight of me, so I have the beach house to myself!

The name Svanhilde means Swan or Warrior. I wonder how either would celebrate my situation. Only one answer is right: taking one of the last chocolate éclairs in the box and munching it down while I leave the kitchen and stroll down the wooden boardwalk to the beach.

I’m eager to go beachcombing in the dark, so the turtleneck was a wise move. I step from the wood out onto the loose sand, slightly damp from today’s weather. The sunset looks like a fire too weak to warm you up. The beach starts very steep before leveling pretty harshly at the part that is packed, ocean sand bow-tied pools. Churning wounds where land and water collide.

I walk toward the edge of a tide pool as if lured by the repetitive swell and crash of the Gulf. A strand of hair gets in my eye, and I’m suddenly five again, showing my mother a shell I found while we play together in the pool. But she isn’t here, she just left, and I’m technically an adult.

But, I really am standing in that churning, Moebius strip of a tide pool. The sand cakes my bare feet when I leave. The ocean is huge, stuck in place. And yet, it moves all the time. I’ve never felt more disconnected from that state. It feels cliché, but I now relate much better to the birds. I want to fly.

After a few minutes avoiding seaweed piles and watching the pools, the sight of a figure breaks my nostalgic drifting. There stands the most beautifully pear-shaped, broad-shouldered beauty in semisweet chocolate skin, the literal opposite of a girl like me. I haven’t seen her face, and yet I get this sad impression from her askew profile.

She has a red and white candy stripe two-piece bathing suit and a braided rope of matching, long hair, a split dye job. It kind of reminds me of Dee from that one cartoon that’s popular with tweens these days, only all grown up and having a beach episode.

“Excuse me. Pardon the intrusion, but aren’t you...?” She turns and locks eyes with me as if expecting something unpleasant. “Cold?”

“Huh?” As if I nearly said something bad, but didn’t, she exhales and rotates back toward the little valley of sea oats and firewheel blossoms. No, she’s looking up, at the gray wooden gate to the backyard for the house next door to mine.

“Well it’s just, aren’t you cold, in only a bathing suit? It’s like 50 degrees.” I wave my turtleneck-ensconced forearms and hands. I don’t go out to the beach this season without enough coverage to let myself enjoy bikini bottoms.

“That’s very nice of you, but don’t worry. The cold can’t affect me.”

“Can’t affect you? Are you a superhero?”

“Not really. I do like to help people, and that can take resilience.” This girl appeared to be older than me, but now that I get a closer study of her features and attitude, she’s clearly fresh out of high school.

“Are you a student around here?”

“I am always learning.”

“Right...but do you go to Mallard Gardens High? I graduated there this month.”

“I’ve had run-ins with students, but no.”

“What’s your name?” I walk up the sand until we’re on the same level. “And is something wrong? You acted like you thought you were invisible, and if you’ll pardon my saying, you’re not.”

I’m not into girls, but I’m used to friendly flirting. Maybe I shouldn’t try saying things like that around a girl so quiet and composed. Still, it’s just the contrast, between how she looks and how she’s acting.

“Nothing’s wrong. You can call me Lynn. And I was taking a moment because I found your actions interesting.”

Good thing she didn’t say Dee Lightful-whatever the hell it was. That would’ve freaked me out. “Nice to meet you, Lynn. You can call me Sev.” Might as well throw a little mystery back. “Why am I interesting?”

The brown-skinned girl turns to face me properly. “It’s quite natural for you to approach someone.”

“If that’s a compliment, then thank you. But the truth is I don’t know what inspired me to come over and chat with a stranger passing the time, especially with how my life has been going.”

She chuckles and kicks a piece of boat insulation foam, weathered into a kind of super-lightweight rock. “You’re blunt compared to most girls, even though you’re more innocent looking. Not the churchgoing, cookie-baking, camo-jacket girl?”

“Why lump those together? I like cookies.” And she wants to act like she didn’t go to school here. “If I’m bugging you, you can tell me, Lynn. It’s just that I’m in kind of a mood.” I look where she was, up at the house to the right of what used to be considered mine. I used to find every beach house fascinating. Now they all look like sand castles by grown-up children.

“Do you like this house?” Lynn asks.

“Yeah!” Every nerve stands up. The left side neighbor’s house, sure. That’s an exception. “Is this one yours?”

“No. I just ‘moved in,’ but not there.” She nods vaguely northeast of the house, to the north end islets before exiting Mallard Gardens.

“So your parents make you move all the time. Am I hitting paydirt, anywhere?”

She puts a finger to her chin. “The house isn’t mine.”

I knew that much, girl! Well, she doesn’t speak as if I said something wrong, at least. Not from her expression, and that slightly creepy, distant sense of understanding. Admittedly, it is a little patronizing, but I’m the one who came up to her. I just wonder if this is her way to attract or repel me.

“Can I ask you a question?”

It takes me a moment to reply. I get the sense that if I yelled at her to go home, she wouldn’t know what direction to walk. And yet, she doesn’t move, there’s no sense of needing to go somewhere, like away from this awkward conversation. She stands there as if to say ‘Literally right here, this spot in the sand, is where I live now.’ And that makes me nervous, like she’s got major ties to this place. Hopefully, she doesn’t ask about Sonny. “Sure, ask away.”

“Do you know who lives here?” She points at the neighboring place again.

“Not these days. Sorry.”

“Ah. Well, thanks.” And she moves! Oh my god, she’s moving! That’s not surprising. Why am I being so spastic?

Lynn walks as if her legs are very strong, a grace over the sand as she tracks her way north, up toward the public part of the beach. Is she a middle-class or poor girl trying to play-act the compelling new rich girl? If so, as a freshly ex-rich girl, I’d love to get to know her better.

“I didn’t get to ask about your hair,” I call out. She keeps walking.

What am I doing? What’s the goal, the mark of success, that tells me following this girl like a freak is a good idea? Relentless, with a kind of intent I don’t think I’ve ever known, I catch up and stand in front of her. Again, she doesn’t seem surprised, and it’s beginning to annoy me. “Can you tell me what your connection is to that house? Please? I won’t tell anyone, I’m not even going to be here ever again, in a couple of days.”

She still has to consider it, but by her one-sided smile, rules in favor. “Were you friends with someone who lived there, years ago?”

I feel suddenly even more naked and chilly than Lynn should. “Yeah. My first crush and my best friend. Pretty much only friend. You wanna go inside my parent’s place to talk? We can split an éclair.” I stretch my calves with backward steps, hands linked behind.

“Maybe.” Eyes lifting, attention fully onto me. You were friends with him?”

I need to keep her around, if she’s connected to Sonny. The concern roots me and keeps me out of that contemplative beach-walk trance. “We were friends since forever. Born in the same hospital, and then we were next-door neighbors here, as luck would have it. He moved out when I was ten. Let me guess. You know about him or met him sometime after that, and now you want to reunite with him, too. Tell me that’s not it!” Laughter helps relieve tension...when it’s returned in any way at all. “No...?”

“I don’t know as much as you think, Sev.”

“I get it, sensitive topic.” I hum for a moment. “But you know, I came up to you in the first place because I thought that home was on the market and empty again, until you looked like someone who was living there.”

“Could you tell me...about the person you knew, who lived there?”

“It’s really your turn. Did you know him? Did you know... Sonny?”

The name doesn’t prompt any of the reactions I fear. “Loosely. We never met, but because of various circ*mstances, I’m trying to learn more. Don’t worry. I’ve got no nasty surprises for anybody. I’m just curious and like to help people.”

As if anyone with a brain would take that kind of statement at face value. But I do feel like I’m getting some solid theories on her being safe to talk to, regarding him. “Well, he was a boy, same age as me. Our parents were tightly knit for their own reasons.”

“Why were they tightly knit?”

“Oh, that’s a long one. Short version is that they had business together. Point is, it mattered to both sides that we got along. We did, which was good.”

“How did you get along?”

“We had a lot of shared pains from similar families. For instance, my full name, don’t tell anyone, is Svanhilde. So I would go by other things. Savanna, Anna, Savage, Ava, Sam, eventually I settled on Seven as a nickname, for my own reasons. He could relate, because his name was Poissonnier. It’s a type of chef.”

“Ouch.”

“Right. I alone called him Sonny, he alone called me Seven, there was a mutual understanding. We could be called many things, but we knew each other’s truest names.” I touch her hand. “Listen, you can’t keep me in suspense about him. We were a lot of things to each other, and I just need to know he’s alright.”

“It sounds like you and I both want to know the same thing.” Lynn finally smiles, and although I do feel an edge of fear in my ankles and lower back, a jolt like a distant cage being rattled, I think I can trust her. “To know what happened to Sonny.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know why you want to find out.” I put my hands on my hips, mock-evaluating her. In the broken surf at the background, two seagulls flap their wings at each other. Dredging boats float like pieces of highway transplanted into the water.

“Nor I, you.” She winks. “I think we can come to a mutual understanding of our own, Svanhilde.”

“Please, Sev or Seven.”

“Right. Excuse me. It’s just, your name is pretty. So was his.”

My face isn’t as cold against the ocean tide. “Thanks. I like the name Lynn. It kinds of reminds me of—”

“Don’t say it.” She narrows her eyes. “Don’t acknowledge it, at all. If you want this to happen, I mean.”

“Okay.” Somehow, I understand not to question that right now. “Okay. You got anywhere to be over the weekend, Lynn? Anywhere you have to call if you’ll be here? Overnight at least?”

“Not particularly. I’m a bit like you in that regard.” Imminently parentless? “Perhaps we can figure things out together. But we’ll need more than just one éclair.”

“Hear hear.”

We walk together, up the dryer, powdery sand and mixed coquina to the boardwalk. The sun has gone and we’re close to the nearest equivalent of a pitch-black night at the Gulf beach. Spotlights of other beach homes are starting to take over, like many little replacement suns that have burst free out of the original’s corpse.

“Excuse me.” A man’s deep, raspy, assertive voice darts through us from only a few steps away. I shriek and cling to Lynn’s waist on instinct, but let go and twist around soon after to fight if need be. But it came from... “Yeah, you two. The girl in the bikini was staring at my house for hours. Do you have some kind of business with me?”

When I let my eyes catch those perfectly shaped ears, those huge, weirdly angled eyes on a very white complexion, and short, brown hair in a flat top that makes his crown look a bit small. I could recognize that face by touch in pure darkness, although I’m not nearly used to seeing such a muscular frame underneath it.

“Sonny?” Lynn mutters.

“Sonny!” I leap forward to hug him, but stop on instinct from his body language. “It’s Sev! This is someone I just met on the beach, her name is Lynn.”

“Seven.” His shoulders relax, fists lower. “Your parents kept you all the way to eighteen, huh?”

“And not a week later. But enough about that. Lynn?”

With attention drawn to her, Lynn walks up with her head tilted down. “I just lost track of time. Sorry, Sir. I didn’t mean to stare at your house, or stand too close.”

He seems quite affected by that, and lets out a relieved sigh. “I’m jumping at shadows these days. My apologies for any shock, but I had just seen you going and coming back at night with a second person.”

“So territorial.” I survey him from the lamplight at the end of the walkway. “More importantly, how long have you been back?”

“I returned to the house two days ago.”

“Why didn’t you call, or respond to one of my texts? Or go next door?”

“Had a lot of work I needed to get done, coming back to that old house. I was going to soon.”

“Where have you been? And what happened to you, to get like this?” Although his shirt is a bit baggy like always, I can tell he’s beyond an athlete in physical conditioning. I couldn’t trace it to one sport or activity, though, like powerlifting. It’s like he’s just, well, strong. Like, Frankenstein’s monster strong. He was a chubby boy, but now he’s a chiseled wall of a man.

“Well, you know how it is with my mom. I trained a lot until I was ten, but it didn’t really start until she left. Going after her wasn’t easy. But, as a result of seeing it through, I look like this.”

“So your mother left and you went after her?” Lynn gets closer. “What caused her to leave?”

“That’s a good question!” It’s not, but I want to move this before Sonny gets mad. “Why don’t the three of us chill at my place for a bit?”

Sonny’s hands and fingers look insane, now. A mix between the calloused paws of a bear and an artist’s grip. Even when subconsciously rubbing a thumb and finger together, I can hear the grind. “If you two are hanging out, I’d probably get in the way.”

“Nonsense!”

###

And then we’re in the living room of my parent’s house. Night has fallen, so I let the bamboo blinds down. It feels good to be doing something, and acting like I have a part of this home, an obligation to entertain any guests. I leave Sonny behind me, knowing he is in my dad’s sofa chair.

“Let me handle that,” Lynn says from the other side, closing the rest of the tan wood over the glass walls, sealing up any outside view of this place. She is wearing a T-shirt now, one of my spares. It fits her like a tight dress, given our difference in hip and waist breadth. “I insist. You two have catching up to do.”

“Weren’t you going to ask him some stuff, too?”

“Sure, but on second thought, it can wait, and I’d like it to be in private.”

Sonny doesn’t seem to find this suspicious, even though the conversation will apparently be about his mother, pretty much the most difficult topic with a man like him.

“Well, okay. Thanks, Lynn.” That won’t do at all, but at least I can make plans to spy on them, when they talk. It’s more the sight of Sonny eyeing her body that inspires me to sit down across from him. I try to sexily recline, all legs accentuated by my turtleneck, but in front of his leaned, poised caveman form, my pale gams look like the bottom half of a chicken. How does a man even get legs like his?

“Nice place. Just like I remember it.” He looks around.

“It’s not going to be mine in a few days. My parents are disowning me.” I smile. “So if you have some creative ideas to trash the place, I’m open to it.”

“This place didn’t do anything wrong, though. I liked coming here, when I was tired of my family.”

“Did you?”

“Oh yeah. You’re next to the patch of prickly pear cactuses, and I liked to imagine bull-rushing your parents over the railing and into the patch.”

Compared to Sonny, most men I know have a fake niceness drilled into them that makes them disgusting. Sonny wouldn’t really hurt somebody for nothing, but he cuts to the core, and I feel everything he says, just a little. I flinch when he says that line, laugh higher than normal. “Having to crawl out would be even worse than the initial fall.”

“I also liked hearing you play the piano. Whatever happened to it?”

“Nothing. It’s still in the upper dining area.”

“Do you still play?”

“I eventually lost interest.” When you moved, since you were my only audience. “I keep it up here and there.” Now I’m too self-conscious to ask about him. “You hungry?”

“Haven’t eaten today yet. I could.”

“I’ll handle dinner!” Lynn says from the pantry.

“Oh, let me help with that.” I walk over as Sonny makes some remark about having food at the house. Lynn stops me with a hand up, like a crossing guard.

“I’m already working on it, just leave everything to me. And Sonny, I’m imagining from what I’ve heard that whatever you had planned for yourself isn’t actually a meal, but rather a category, like meat.”

“You’ve thought it through more than me.” You might say Sonny has two brains, a normal one for when he’s not hungry, and the rapid-response brain. They don’t interact, so I could never get the guy to live up to his birth name and plan meals ahead of time. “How much did Seven tell you?”

“I’ve known a few guys like you, so I can connect the dots. Instead of camping in a developed housing area like a hobo, rest in that chair and enjoy.”

“Okay then.” He returns to the leather chair, but seems hesitant to get back into its comforting depths, so she adds more.

“I have an idea. Sev, why don’t you play something for Sonny? I’ll probably hear from the kitchen.”

“I’d love that.” He locks eyes with me and gives me that wind-blasted, slight grin of his. Good enough. He is surprised but calm when I take his hand. This ought to awaken the reluctant, traumatized fingertips a little.

Piano is one of those things. You could say I was a prodigy, whatever that word really means. My mother’s father made her play, and the cycle continued. But unless I want to play, I play like sh*t, and when I’m in the mood, it’s like mistakes are impossible. I developed skill quickly, but without the same kind of passion for it as my mother or her father.

Wait a minute. Sonny was going to eat dinner next door. Has he moved in there?

I open the way to my mom’s TV study and entertaining room. The black grand is unlocked, the cover drawn back to expose the keys. “What should I play?”

“Your favorite song.” He stands beside the piano, reaching out but not touching it. His clothes make him seem like an ape-like beach bum discovering a monolith that will transform him into a properly dressed gentleman.

“And what is my favorite song, Sonny?”

“Chopin Opus 66 in C# minor.”

“Fantasie Impromptu. You have an ear for quality, you know.”

“I don’t know. I know what I like to hear, and it’s what you like to play.”

With that, I test the keys a little and begin.

It’s said that Chopin didn’t want any of his work posthumously published, and the man died before he was ever happy with this song. Despite that, Julian Fontana, Chopin’s friend to whom the piece was dedicated, had the work published as his musical executor.

Many of Chopin’s most well-known works were posthumous and likely wouldn’t have been approved for release. Regarding Opus 66, the prevailing theory is that Chopin found the work too similar to Beethoven’s Midnight Sonata, as a second, more distinct version was found by Arthur Barenboim.

Undeniably, the works bear technical similarities. It’s quite similar in tone to the third movement of the Midnight Sonata, while slower D flat major parts of the middle feel reminiscent of the second movement. To me, however, they are as different as night and day. Where Beethoven’s composition feels at times overwhelmed with speed, the impromptu nature of the Fantasie is overwhelming in concept. The composition has been called, concerning Midnight Sonata, one genius adapting another.

At one point, the right hand is playing sixteenth notes against triplets in the left. It’s also in cut time, making the speed feel more sinister and planned. When I hear or play the song, I can almost feel myself being pulled into Sonny’s grip, made to dance with him, my feet only occasionally touching the ground like he is my personal stunt-work jetpack.

Fast, slow, fast, slow, then faster than ever for the final 20 percent, like a mad rush of the middle-aged to reach a defining performance. More than any composition, Fantasie Impromptu truly feels like a song being improvised on the spot, defining itself on its first appearance, no dividing line between composition and performance.

“That was great.”

“It helps that I’m playing for a genuine audience. But thank you.” I turn to face the opposite way on the stool. “So, what brings you back to town? You said it’s been two days?”

He wanders on the great maroon carpet. “My search for my mother reached a conclusion. Circ*mstances have led to me getting the house. I don’t have to worry about family interference.”

“So you just came to check it out? Or do you want to live here?”

“I had some things to do here, but I probably won’t stay for long. I mean, this place is a paradise to a lot of people, but it wears on you.” He looks at himself and me in a floor-to-wall mirror I always hated. “So what’s up with this Lynn girl?”

“I was going to ask you. I don’t get a bad feeling, but she’s got some sort of connection to you. Any idea what it could be? Not an ex you’re pretending not to know, I hope.”

“It’s hard to tell.”

“Say what, now?”

“My father had a bit of a mid-life crisis about not contributing to the world. He went off to all these places, not National Geographic, but rich people can still be comfortable, that kind of poor. There’s no telling who he might’ve met. I got here yesterday night, and after waking up and going out to get coffee, boom, there’s this hot girl in a bikini. And I’ve had some weird experiences over the years, since moving away from here. That’s why I’m a bit unsure, to be honest.”

Hearing her complimented is frustrating for some reason. “Why didn’t you go out and talk to her?”

“I tried. She ran away.”

That’s kind of funny to envision. “Do you mind if I linger from afar, when you guys talk? The curiosity is starting to get to me. Sorry, no, that would be wrong.”

“I can tell you what she said to me, afterward.”

“Yeah, alright.” I’ll take it.

A ladle or spoon knocks against a skillet, ringing it like a bell, and then Lynn’s cheery voice from downstairs. “Burgers are done!”

I follow him down to the kitchen, without holding his hand, and to my dismay he doesn’t appear to long for it. He’s mostly drawn by the smell of beef, ready at the sequestered round-table, cheap buns and condiments lined up. I don’t remember those being in the house, but whatever. Sonny is a fit guy, but a big one. There are no burgers left, when all is said and done. I think at one point he was holding two per hand.

“Thank you for cooking, Lynn. You’ve got a knack for my dad’s grill.”

“I should work off this bread and meat a little.” Sonny stands up. “Lynn, fancy a walk?”

“Yeah, you guys haven’t talked yet. I can clean up here.” I practically shoo both of them out the front door, watching from the peephole to see if they behave any differently. They appear to be strangers, and he doesn’t seem to crave being near her. I can’t wait to hear his report.

Cleaning up three plates and some utensils doesn’t exactly make for time-consuming work. Thirty minutes pass, then an hour. Part of me wants to take a bath or turn on the TV and start blasting a loud movie, just absorb myself in something other than waiting. I eventually settle on a bath, partly because my hair looks decent when it’s wet.

Running the bath in what will not be my room for much longer, looking at the pink walls and rows of unwanted stuffed animals, it occurs to me that I could’ve fought for my identity a little more. But that’s more of me looking back at my child self and blaming her. I promised I would stop doing that.

So let’s put an optimistic spin on it. Would Sonny like my room? It hasn’t changed, but when he sees even that is like he remembers, perhaps it will pull him too far into nostalgia to even see me as a woman. As I look at my naked form in the mirror, I truly don’t know if I am attractive. Particularly when what attracts me to Sonny is not present in me, at all. I don’t have the horns-down, ready-to-gore attitude. I like to swim, sometimes for long hours in the water, but that’s about as physical as I get.

Oh sh*t, that wasn’t optimistic.

I’m submerged in hot water, beside my face and limbs, and just starting to relax when I hear the front doorbell ring. Damn it, Sonny. You know you’re welcome. I then get an awful, devilish idea. Let’s just ignore it.

Sonny needs little motivation to open a door. One of the most intense moments in my adolescence is when he heard I had been swimming for hours from my parents, who were used to it. He came out to the beach to check on me, saw me sink, and next thing I knew, I’m being hauled out like a fish by a swimming gorilla. His brute strength and panic to save me put me more in danger than I ever could be swimming on the beach. Oh yeah, you better believe him giving me mouth-to-mouth was my first kiss. It was weird, kind of inappropriate, scarred me for life in all the right ways.

And now he’s going to find me again. He’ll wonder why I haven’t answered, and there he goes opening the door.

“Seven?” Yep, he’s coming up the stairs. Probably wonders if I’ve gone to bed, which means he’ll find my bathroom door shut with the light on and the fan blowing. “Seven! Are you awake?”

I would be now. But actually, this water is pretty hot. My arms are sweating outside of the tub. My mind drifts when I laugh softly, to not be heard.

“Sev...” He’s trailing off. I can tell I am in a dream now, but still one of being in water.

Nearly frozen water. Darkness. Hair against my body that isn’t mine from behind, all back against my legs, neck. I try to move and something hard clamps my wrists, each of them.

Then I feel a hand tilt my neck up. It’s real, the rest is not. Opening my eyes, I jolt from Sonny’s sausage fingers on my forehead before he lifts me out. I’m lowered onto my bed, which is probably getting the sheets wet, before I realize he is soaking my other good towels in the sink to drape me in cold rags.

“Sonny, I’m good. Promise. A normal towel, please.”

“You sure?” He throws me one. “I thought maybe you had heat stroke from falling asleep in the bath or something.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Well then, why did you drift so suddenly?”

Why did I start to drift like that? I wasn’t very tired. And whatever I drifted to is sticking with me, that dark version of a bath, where I don’t think I was alone in the water. Because that was upsetting.

“Well, anyway...sorry about dozing off. But I was fine. And now you’ve seen quite a bit that you didn’t before, at least.”

He turns askew from me. “What is it with you and being rescued?”

I sit up as if my spine is the killing rectangle of a mouse trap. “Excuse me, then, Sonny. I’m going to bed now.”

“Hey, I don’t mean it in a bad way.”

“Your tone of disgust suggests otherwise.”

“It wasn’t...anyway, do you want to hear what Lynn and I talked about?”

“Does she know you’re telling me?”

“No.”

“Then bring it on.” I have to know after it took so long, so I secure my towel and stand up. “Just go outside and speak, I’m gonna get dressed. She asked you about your mom, right?”

“Yeah. Naturally, I didn’t feel like telling her much about that. But she didn’t seem upset by that. Then she started on this whole other topic. She basically told me that someone in Mallard Gardens is the world, like a single person represents this entire reality. Almost like they’re a god, I guess. And she’s doing what she can to help that god escape a difficult situation. It was hard to follow.”

Could be desperate bullsh*t. As I start to put on pajamas, I decide against it and opt for long cargo pants and a T-shirt. “How did that connect to your mom?”

“She said she wished she knew her own mother. That was all she added on that front.”

“Sounds to me like she likes you.”

“She just met me.”

“Some girls are like that.”

“Likes me today, hates me tomorrow? The opposite would be better. Although it’d be a relief, if that’s all it was.” He isn’t attracted to her, and I know that. We've long understood each other’s quirky ways of looking at the world and the opposite gender, so I have no reason to feel threatened by her presence.

“Where is she now?”

“She said she had to go somewhere and kept walking when I was ready to turn back. Maybe she was trying to get away from me.” He puts a heavy palm on the doorframe that makes the whole house complain. “You know what, I think she might be after something in my house. I’m going to check and make sure she isn’t trying to break in or something.”

“I’ll look for her, too. Down the street toward the town center; that’s where you guys went, right?”

“Yeah, but are you sure you’re okay?”

“I wasn’t in the bath nearly long enough to get dehydrated. If anything, the cool night air would help.”

“All right. Just look alive. I don’t trust Peppermint Patty yet.”

I give him a hug at the doorway, wishing he’d link his arms behind my back in return. “It’s good to see you again.”

This could work. My situation is odd, developing rapidly. But I did not get the chance to have Sonny spend the night when we were little. Perhaps I might have a final handful of days as someone worthy of family, a little time and insight.

###

On a cooler note, I have no idea what happened back there with the bath. I kind of wanted to get away from my house and find Lynn, just so I could erase any doubts like those Sonny had about my health.

In the dark, you can gauge the wealth of different parts of the intracoastal street by how much you can see. I move from aggressively lit castle-homes and 50’s pastel nightmares to unremarkable drop-ins with the occasional streetlight every half mile. I go a bit further and see the sign for the town, Mallard Gardens, in faded green and white wood.

In the town center itself, a sports car with overly loud music rips out of the area’s one intersection, leaving perpendicular to my path, soon out of earshot. I pass a motel and its yards of dry grass, guarded by an oversized plastic flamingo with the head broken off.

Could she be staying in a nearby place after all? The homes down the peninsula go a long way.

But intuition guides me somewhere earlier. A skip and a half from the Mallard Gardens Town Center is a vacant lot where there used to be a public park: Hermit Springs Crabbing Beach. The stretch of land follows the shore transition from the intracoastal under the main road’s bridge, wrapping around to the proper beaches. If you went down the regular beach in the direction I’ve been going, you’d eventually pass under the bridge ahead, find the trail, and come out to this lot right here.

One thing does catch my attention. Up ahead about forty yards, it seems as if there might be a tiny ruby glint of some sort, underneath the bridge. It’s a straight fall through pitch brambles and blackberry, though, trying to go down from over there.

Setting the flashlight app on my phone, I brave the nearly faded lines of neglected vehicle tracks, entering the park that no longer exists on GPS maps. I used to go here, heard there were a lot of plans for expanding it. But I think building enough effective attractions out of the limited dry land proved impractical. Plus, most people come to the beaches to go to the beach, not a swampy nature park.

Old wood bridges guide me over creeks and ravines, but the general path is a gradually lowering S curve of dirt and pine needles. I could make my way without the flashlight, to an extent, and the constant chirps and screeches of the wilderness at night alleviate any concerns about being watched and harassed in the dark.

Once I’m down the winding, tree-lined path, I reach the bridge’s underside and the small patch of jetty rocks. Circumnavigating with my light pointed down at the soft ground, I see what’s in my way, the source of the red light. At first, my confused eyes tell me I must have reached another house.

There’s a wrecked outboard boat here, and not a small one. The angle of the bridge makes most people unlikely to notice, but the appearance of this wrecked outboard, which does not appear very old, invites more questions. I’m not as confused about how it got such a massive wound in the middle, one I can see the moon right through, or of the floodlight perched on the cabin roof, as I am about how it got here.

Barring an exceptionally high tide, a ship of that size would run aground before ending up here. Even if the driver was racing and skidded to a crash beneath the bridge, it wouldn’t leave such a weird hole, like a cannon blasted it open.

Ah, hell, let’s just go inside.

I’m getting that trance-like feeling again. My feet seem to hardly move, riding a water and sand escalator. The red glow, a bizarrely strong half of the front navigation lights, bends back and pours into the wrecked cabin. I don’t see much worth looking at, until I shuffle my way toward the back and notice the rear of the ship. If I move down and out, the outboard is left outside in the shallow, intersecting waters under the bridge. The echo of the running water eclipses every other sense, and a car running over the bridge above sounds like the end of the world.

I’m standing on top of the engine cover, a cube of white fiberglass. Shining my light, a path of flat stones leads the way across to the shoreline at the other end of the bridge, but there’s normally nothing but intracoastal swampland and black creeks.

Following the same impulse that drew me after Lynn in the first place, I touch down on the shore in my sandals without getting my feet wet. I just crossed the river to the other side of the bridge. To the left is a pile of jetty stones covered in thick, intimidating barbed vines, and to the right is a sandy, grassy trail, thinner than the one on the regular side. The land is wilder, and I have an urge to look back, to confirm the boat still exists.

My eyes adjusted, I put my phone away. Up about ten feet, the path levels and I see it drop into pitch-dark swampland. The way ahead feels like a dare at this point. Cypress knees jut out of the ground or water, so many clustered nearby that their roots form a balancing nightmare: a stairwell consisting of only the minimal space needed for a step. I follow the path of cypress knees and start exploring forward over the swamp, risking myself in the dark on an extremely limited walkway for...well, I don’t know. Just curiosity.

It’s a bit hard on my sandals, but I can balance if I’m careful and brace myself against the trees. After only seven steps, there she is, standing amidst the black, still water, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Lynn is about five feet higher than I am, one hand leaning on the trunk of her gray, dead gum tree, and still in the T-shirt. “Sev. What brings you here?”

“That’s it, after finding you?”

“You first.”

“I heard from Sonny that you went off alone. This day has been pretty weird, so I don’t know, I’ve been going with it.”

“Well, rest easy. I would’ve returned after a few more minutes.”

“Can I help with whatever you’re doing?”

Lynn is perfectly balanced on the branch, pondering until the hand behind her hip moves into my view. “As a matter of fact, you likely can.” She’s holding a short wand, a column of candy-striped ivory and velvet ribbons with a red heart-shaped jewel at the top. “Question is, do you wish to help me if I say yes? With no promise of a reward?”

“I don’t know. But you can ask. The worst I can do is get mad.”

That’s an in-joke with Sonny; doesn’t take with her. Even as she appears seemingly at random withdrawing strange objects, I’m relieved by how human she seems in other ways.

Like a gumball dispenser, the pommel’s tip of the candy-striped wand pops free, releasing a sphere from inside. “Do me a favor. Throw this in any direction of the swamp.”

“Woah!” I catch her toss by reaching out, wobbling on my two footholds. “Are you insane? What if I dropped it?” sh*t, what if I fell?

“That would also work. The point is it gets dropped by someone, and retrieved by someone.”

‘It’ is a glassy, blood-red marble, about the size of an eyeball and cold to the touch. After I’ve held it for a few seconds, it starts to emit a pinkish radiance, much brighter than my flashlight. A small jewel shaped like a pink heart sits in a spot along the equator, hard and sharp on my thumb. “What is this?”

“Let’s just call them special marbles. If you want to help me, throw it. I’m not sure where to do it.”

“So you have to drop this, and then what? Someone finds them? Is this a geocaching game?”

“Anyone could drop them and anyone could find them. You can throw it as hard as you like, I just prefer it to land in the swamp.”

“It’s not exactly a problem, but I have to ask: is there some reason you have to do all this? One you can tell me?”

“Because of the moon, perhaps.”

Well, the moon is certainly up there. It’s looking quite large and full, but otherwise unremarkable.

“What about the moon?” I am struggling to hide my exasperation.

“I’m trying to get through it.”

Okay, that felt important. “Through it? Are you trying to go to space?”

“No. I’m trying to go to a place that requires me to pass through the moon.”

I don’t want to throw the marble into the swamp before I get whatever concrete information I can. I study it, more comfortable seeing the crook of grainy cypress I can lean against in the new, pink light. “You know, Lynn, I can’t help but notice that the moon isn’t something you pass through...”

“Usually not.” She turns to face me, balance slow and perfect, arms out like a Tai Chi stance. Hey, where’d the magic wand go? “Seven, I have a question. What do you consider the dividing line between a place and a passageway?”

“Huh?”

Lynn straightens herself, narrowing her stance. “You say the moon isn’t a passage. What would make it one?”

“Well, my point was that it isn’t a passage in any case. It’s a spherical object.”

“I see. That’s probably the best way to look at it.”

“You have to find a place where the moon becomes a passage?”

“Whether it exists or not, yes, I must find the dividing line between a place and a passage.” She moves the cherry red side of her hair behind an ear, speaking in a tone hovering on patronizing. “What do you think that means, Seven? Can an upper-class beach blonde figure it out?”

“Oh, I might’ve heard this before. A place can also be a passage, so what would for-sure divide them up? A place that has no entrances or exits. You couldn’t call that a passage to anything, right? So that’s the dividing line. I admit, though, I cannot wrap my head around what would make the moon a passage.”

“You were on the right answer, pretty much. The moon is normally separated from us, even though it’s visible, and we know it’s a world of its own. I appreciate the thought, but I’m just playing around. You can throw that orb any time.”

Was she playing, though? “So that’s what you’re doing in the swamp? Trying to pop into another dimension? How do the orbs help?”

“The world is full of energy, unseen energy that goes and comes back to humans. Words, images, notions. The more of these things, the more energy that fills up the world.”

I cover the ball in both of my hands, shutting out most of the light. It’s not warm, but it’s strong, highlighting all the contours of my fingers like glowing seams of a mutant baseball. “And it’s everywhere?”

“It’s everywhere, but it’s nowhere literally. Which means it exists somewhere else, figuratively. It has representation within reality, but if you were to go inside, you’d discover a whole other world.” She motions to the orb. “Culminations of extravagant or unusual energies at work in the universe, self-contained and repeating as much as you like. But, if it’s got nothing to show, then it’s just recording you now, saving your story for another who is fated to see it.”

“Gotcha...” Hard to believe this isn’t going to turn into a healing crystal scam. If it isn’t, though, it sounds a bit like the start of an incredible adventure. “So, other worlds exist?”

“Are you going to throw the marble, Sev?”

“Now I’m kind of curious what happens when I don’t.”

At that, she sits down and looks straight up, normally a terrifying experience when balancing on a high object. “Did you know that a line and a triangle, by some arguments, are ultimately the same?”

“Yeah. Nicholas Cusanas. Theologian. I’ve read the argument. How do you know so much about specific things that no one has talked with me about before?”

“Does it seem like I know what you’re thinking?”

“I guess. Or like you’ve seen my memories, maybe.”

“Well, I have.”

“What?”

“Seen your memories. And I also know what you’re thinking.”

“Why?”

Lynn points at the ball in my hand, again. She could just want me to throw it already, even by freaking me out. Maybe she really is crazy. Perhaps we both are, to different extents, and that’s why I’m taking any of this seriously.

“So you can learn about other people’s pasts and personalities with these orbs. Basically, you’re saying that I’m being recorded right now, for something I cannot comprehend. If that were true, I don’t see why you’d be throwing one in the swamp.” But I fire it anyway, as best I can, over her head. It lifts in a parabolic arc, hiding the red light soon after leaving my hand.

“Well, now if it is the orb of Seven, it’s safely hidden away.”

Time to throw in the towel, for one night. I’ll follow her along the cypress knees and back the way I came. “Well...in either case, you should be careful walking around in the swamps by yourself. You could get hurt and stuck out here for days, or weeks. And if any wackos invested in defending private property happen to catch you trespassing, that speech about literal figurative balls ain’t going to cut it.” She quietly walks with me. “You know, I could understand the motivation to enter a different world. I mean, however you look at it, this is a world where evil has won.”

“What? You’re not making any sense, Sev. I’m not doing this because of good or evil. It’s what I have to do.”

“Well, let me know if I can help with whatever has drawn you to Sonny. I kind of feel like, if not for you, he’d have just moved out again in a day or two, without even checking next door to see if I live here.”

“You must have some confidence that he’d go looking for you, though, before moving elsewhere, right?”

I guess her mind-reading methods are flawed or have limited reach. “Can you read Sonny’s mind?”

“No.”

“I thought so.”

Now it’s Lynn’s turn to be frustrated with vague answers, although I get it. I wonder if she’d expect Sonny to talk about her to me. Their relationship is still frustratingly tenuous.

“How much time have you got to find the dividing line, by the way?”

“Today is the 13th. At this rate, the moon should be this full and close till the 16th.”

“What a coincidence. That’s also when my parents will get back to sign my disownment. Ah, what the hell, let’s go play with the glowing marbles. I assume it would help you do something good, so just let me know what I could do.” And with Sonny close, I won’t lose him to another woman.

“I will. Thank you, Sev.”

“Well, all this mystery is starting to get kind of fun. I feel like...”

“What?”

“I don’t know about other worlds, but I feel like maybe I have something interesting ahead of me, after all. In my future.” We duck out of the boat. “Also, I won’t tell Sonny about this conversation, if you want.”

“I don’t mind you telling anybody. It’s so absurd, though, I doubt people will keep up with it.”

At least she’s self-aware. “By the way, I don’t expect my parents to come back, but yours aren’t looking for you or anything, are they?”

“I have no parents in this world. Don’t worry about that.” She says it in such a way that I can’t tell if her parents are literally dead or may as well be.

“The three of us are all pretty abnormal on the parent front, eh?”

We’re out of the park and back to the street. My eyes wash with green and purple colors, pressure relieving. A passing car lights up her pink and white hair, augmenting it into grey and red around her gray skin. “So, Sev, I apologize for imposing, but I’m not sure we ever got down to it. Do you mind if I spend the night? I can handle all of the basics as long as I’m staying there. Cooking, cleaning, laundry.”

“I was thinking of asking Sonny to stay over, actually. You do live somewhere, I assume?” The way she speaks can lead to me having to ask questions that would normally sound bitchy.

“Do you think there’s much precedent for asking him?” Like that, she saps all my confidence. “Unless...”

“Unless what?”

“Well, he seems pretty guy-ish. I wonder if he’ll be more interested in staying over if two girls are asking.”

“If two girls are asking, things can get complicated.”

“Eh, whatever you say.”

###

When we get back inside, Sonny rises from my father’s chair. It always did have an unsettlingly direct position across the house’s front door. Lynn and I start catching him up with the immediate drama.

“Wait, you want to spend the night at my place?” He looks at her, thankfully still suspicious.

“I get the ‘strong sense’ that Sev and you should spend the night here. I think it’s best for everyone that I don’t intrude, so why not let me stay at yours? I’ll clean it up for you. Hell, I can work the whole night to clean, cook meals for you that you can warm up, anything. I just need a place to stay nearby, and my other options are limited.”

“You couldn’t drop 50 bucks on a motel room?”

She shakes her head. “Gotta be a house. But I also don’t mind just walking the streets all night, if I must.”

Sonny is a true Spartan, with little patience for weakness. But even he can be lured by a sense of chivalry.

“Sonny, mind if I have a little word in the piano room? Just a couple minutes, Lynn.” I beam at her, practically dragging him over a shoulder like Santa with his sack of toys.

###

I inform him of the things she said to me, thankful over how quickly we’ve passed under the bath incident. If anything, Lynn’s presence has helped Sonny and I not only reunite, but bond through a common mystery. Not that I consider her dangerous. I see this as more of a cozy mystery that will reveal she had some sweet intentions, and hopefully not an action thriller nightmare like Sonny would want.

He taps a foot as I finish up the story. “And this was her response to being told she can’t stay with you. But I get the sense she wanted to stay in my place from the beginning. I think she worked you up to not expecting her to ask me, or else she’d have told you.”

“Yes to all of that.” I’m casually playing The Dreamy Fish as a lighthearted cover for our words. “So here’s what I’m proposing. You want to know what her deal is. Ditto for me, right?”

“Yeah.”

“She assumes I am pretty possessive of you, so I’ll work with that. That can inspire you to also invite me for a sleepover at your place. Lynn herself brought up the idea, so I want to double-check how she responds when you offer it.”

“I don’t know.”

“I know you leap to extremes, but I really don’t think she’s a bad person or planning anything. I doubt anything will happen to your place. I think she might just be a little loopy and socially disconnected.” Somehow the situation feels like a lure, or like if I don’t quit, it’ll lead to some kind of strange problem. But I’m in, now, and this seems like the wisest move. “She might be after something she’s afraid to ask for. Maybe in an environment with her close to it and us, she’ll finally give up some of the mystery girl act.”

He crosses his arms but doesn’t speak. All that’s left is to stick the landing. With the song done, I stand up. “Plus, we won’t have to cook or clean, and I kind of want to know where this moon orb stuff is going. Worse comes to worst, you had a sleepover with two girls.”

###

“Lynn and I have been talking about feelings, comfort levels, and stuff...” Sonny wrings his hands, an unnecessary gesture, but acting isn’t his strong suit. “I was thinking, how about the three of us spend the night at my house? It’s like three things unified to one in just the right way.” Not too close to the candid conversation topics, dude!

“Sure. As long as I’m not imposing.”

“Let’s ditch the past or future and have fun tonight,” I say, putting an arm around Lynn’s broad shoulders.

She doesn’t take much convincing. Sonny and I look at one another as we walk, following him to his boardwalk and back pool-ground entrance. Already, I have my doubts, but I keep a confident face, remembering my role here as the jealous childhood friend, turning an untenable sleepover request into a threesome. Not literally, although I imagine the idea would lift Sonny’s eyelids all the way up.

His house is just like I remember it. Books everywhere, dark wood furniture contrasting a white marble floor, and weak, soupy lamps that give it a log cabin vibe. “Haven’t had a chance to clean yet, so...”

“So that’s what inspired you to invite me.” Lynn tisks. “Where’s the supplies?”

“For cleaning?” I ask, shutting the sliding door. “We can’t just try to hang out while you clean all night. Let’s throw down some sleeping bags!” I’m getting into it now, but we’ll have to choose a place to sleep.

Going to his room is too daring, at least for me. Lynn and I both accept the study, which has a nice, oak floor that isn’t bone-chilling against the sleeping bags. It’s all pretty nice, casual talking, no TV, a different type of quiet house.

“So where is your family now?” I ask Sonny.

“I ran into some conflicts with them. Let’s just say I won’t ever be seeing anyone in my family again.”

“Your mom was pretty cool, though. Not even her?”

“She died. So definitely not seeing her again.”

“Oh.”

He’s a bit emotionally grayed out, but fair enough; it’s his mom. “It was soon after moving away. By now I’ve spent more than twice as many years without her as I have with her.” She could be a bit of a character. I’ve seen her punch strangers who angered her, so it’s not that hard to imagine a sudden, tragic death.

“How did she die?” Lynn asks.

“I’d rather not get into it.”

We turn the lights off and saddle up for the night, soon after. I think about Lynn and her questions. Soon I have to go to the bathroom, so I unpeel myself from my bag and step over Sonny, making sure not to suspiciously look back and check on Lynn. It would be spooky if she wasn’t in her bag when I looked back, but come on, I’d have heard her get out of the room. Not to fear.

As I return from the bathroom, the moon shines hard enough on the pool and beach ahead that my brain starts to think it might be daytime.

What’s this? Another impulse? Another éclair?

Unlatching the sliding glass door, I coax it open a little and slip into the salty air. I unhook the wooden fence door and gravity creaks it open for me. Down the sandy walkway my feet patter, until softly crushing a solidified layer of top sand on the dry powder beneath. It’s been drizzling just a bit, and the tide is halfway up the beach, rushing louder than usual. I sink into the cake-like dunes where I first found Lynn standing in her bikini.

I crouch onto my shins and start to dig between her footprints. The sand is a little different, lighter than it should be as I go deeper. I couldn’t have noticed before, in the daytime. A few more inches of digging, and a crimson glow highlights the rest of the hole.

###

When I’ve washed my limbs at the poolside tap, I remain quiet, though not suspiciously so, as I return to the slumber party in the study. Sonny nearly makes me snort in laughter, curled up and conked out like an agitated pill bug, but Lynn is sitting up in her sleeping bag, watching me return to mine.

I keep my tone casual. “You buried a marble outside this house.”

“Did you take it?”

“If I didn’t put it away, it’d be glowing on me right now.” In case she got mad or it being moved had bargaining power, I decided to pull back at the last minute, sneak into my house, and put it in the garage. “Is that okay? Did you want Sonny to find it?”

“This is all fine, the way it turned out.”

“So you admit you buried it?”

“Yes. I did.”

“I’m not sure about how fair your game is, Lynn. That’s a lot harder to find than swimming for it at night, when they don’t glow until you touch them.”

“But it was different. It was the most obvious I had ever been.” She lays down again, looking up at the old-school popcorn ceiling.

“What are these orbs? Seriously. What am I getting into?”

“If you really care, then find more. Maybe Sonny can help.”

“Help what?”

“Goodnight.” She imitates Sonny’s pill bug pose, shutting me out.

###

It’s hard to stay mad at someone for not answering your questions when they have breakfast ready before I’ve woken up. At my place, no less. Sonny wakes me up to lead me out of his father’s study and across the street to my kitchen. He has already eaten and is pretty bothered that she escaped his notice. I don’t have it in me to tell him he sleeps like a dork and that he wouldn’t notice anything that way.

We’re back to the piano room, but I’m too loaded with pancakes and questions to play. We sit together on the bench, which croaks in protest at our weight difference. I explain the situation with the orb, as well as reiterate the other things she said.

“Maybe I can help, huh?” He crosses his arms.

“I know it sounds like a way to get us out of the house—”

“No, forget about that for a minute. I would like to know why she would put one of these things by my place. I hesitate to just play her game. I’ll do what people say until they ask me to stop, but if I go too far or learn too much, I can’t be held responsible for how I react, you know?”

One of these days, I should ask him for more details about what happened to his family. “Sure.”

“So, it’s settled. You can let her know that you’ve gotten me involved. Now, what did she talk about?”

I would love to kiss him, but the energy isn’t right, so I just smile. “She talked about a lot of stuff. Theological math. Places that aren’t passages. All kinds of weird sh*t. I don’t know.”

“What was the first thing again?”

I explain to him the concept of holy trinity theories and Nicholas Cusanas. He takes it in for a moment. “It sounds like she’s saying to get three orbs.”

I grab his shirt. “What if orbs are locations in a triangle?”

Drawing is not my strong suit, and working with a GPS app is annoying. We start sketching on some of my mother’s old drafting paper.

“I have to think this through. She dug one at Sonny’s house. She threw one into the swamp, which would be around here.” I mark the two positions.

“Well, we have a point that is south by the shore, and then north by it. If we draw a relatively clean, equilateral triangle with one more point...” He connects the shape. “If those guesses are right, there’d be a third orb about a mile offshore.” He looks at me. “I can rent an outboard, no problem. But it might not be easy, diving for something like that.”

“We’ll look. That’s good enough, right?”

Then I hear a knock at the doorway. We both snap our heads up and see Lynn wearing a strapless stretch tunic in leopard print with daisy-duke cutoffs. One foot perched on the wooden frame as she checks on us in profile, I mean, come on. There has to be a limit on how hot women can be in the presence of other women. “Sorry to intrude, but I figure you two are okay with me knowing that you’re looking for the orbs.”

“Is that what we should be doing?” he asks.

She holds up a finger, as if in thought, and then holds in a laugh. “Lunch will be ready at 1:00. After that, I’ll clean up Sonny’s place and you two can go hunting. Unless you’d be uncomfortable with that.”

We look at each other. I kind of forgot about leaving Lynn around. Specifically banning her from his place would be incredibly rude by now.

Sonny comes up with a decent counter. “You sure you don’t want to come with?”

“Watching my own puzzle get solved? Sounds lame.”

“Since it’s unclear how long we’ll be out, let me get your number.” I take my phone out, readying the contacts.

“Oh, erm... I kind of don’t have one at the moment.”

“A phone?” I saw her use a small one, here and there, usually when she didn’t think either of us was looking. She definitely has one.

“A number that can receive calls. I can call you guys occasionally, to see where you’re at.”

But then what number would be calling one of ours?

“Lynn.” Sonny’s low, direct words cut through the air. “Let’s get real. I should be able to call you if I’m going to trust you to stay in my house.”

Lynn sighs but doesn’t seem that bothered. “Sonny, give me yours and I’ll text you. I wasn’t lying, I’m in a situation where if I give you one number to dial, it might not work.”

“Fine.” He reads out his digits, ones I’m all too subtle about marking down in my own phone, then holds his own up closer. “Yeah, okay. I got your text. ‘Unknown’ huh? So you’re the one who’s been spam calling people.”

“Guilty.”

###

After the joking, Sonny takes me in his truck and we go to a nearby marina to, as he puts it, “rent a 10-footer that can handle the shallow intracoastal waters and surge.” I ride with him past Mallard Gardens proper and the bridge, storm clouds cramped way into the corner of the sky, too far to worry about. Even in daylight, you can hardly tell Hermit Springs Crabbing Beach’s entrance is to the right.

The boat ramp and marina dominate a gradual curve of land a few miles down the straight, narrow road. Once we park in the white chalk lot, I wait as he leaves to talk business. After a few minutes, he comes back and I guide his reversal to our vessel’s trailer hookup. I don’t know boats, but it’s enough for two people to get around each other.

“So we’re going after the one in the swamp?” I ask from the passenger seat again, as he waits to back the boat down into the waters of the Gulf.

“Yep. We’ll have to come in south down the beach to the bridge again, then under it. We’ll need to pick a tide where we’re not too close to the bridge, but not low enough to run aground or hit any rocks, and I think now should do it. We’ll work our way into the black creeks from there.”

I know enough about boats to back it out for him, letting him park the truck and come back. “Thanks. I got it.”

“It’s okay, let me.” I reverse carefully, watching the green wake markers.

“I forgot that you could drive a boat.” His hulking frame forces a pained wheeze out of the seat cushion.

“I prefer it to piano. There’s no endless mountain of expectations. I can just use the skill when I need it.”

“You’ve kind of turned piano into that, too.”

“How so?”

“You said you don’t play much, but you will for me.”

“I do like to please you, Sonny. I would do anything.”

It’s nice to see him blush for a change. We’re in a safe range, so I kick up the motor higher, then higher, the rushing wind serving as a firm end to that conversation and moment. It’s hard to linger on any thought, lifting and crashing on the surf as we ride. The beach and homes stand watch to our left, the full sun and daytime-visible moon to our right.

Eventually, the jetty’s open hourglass of granite boulders guides us into an even crossing underneath the bridge, puncturing the shoreline and flowing into a contained, sluggish river, a literal merging of fresh and salt water. The dead boat’s red light isn’t visible now, even shadowed under the bridge.

“That’s the boat?” His voice echoes in tandem with passing cars over our heads.

“Yeah.” I arc our path to stay well clear of the engine cover and shallower waters.

Soon, it’s nothing but high, thin, straight trees draped in moss, mixed with pines. You can’t see it, but these waters are low, muddy, and dangerously riddled with jagged oysters. The shores of the tiny mud beaches to either side are ringed with tiny beaches of discarded, sun-bleached shells.

We pass slowly at minimum wake as I turn northeast again, into a patch of water lilies hiding nearly all of the black water in this narrow path. Here, there are no shells, but the water is still, reacting to our presence in a slow outward shockwave that makes it seem like black gelatin.

“I don’t want to hit a gator or manatee.” I drop from as slow as possible to neutral and turn the engine off.

“I’ll paddle from here,” Sonny says, eager to be useful. “Can you sit up front?”

“You got it.” Gives him a view of me, anyway. “Looks like it widens a bit if you keep left. We might start to hear the sound of cars as we get closer.”

After a nice moment in the water, surrounded by gull and warbler calls, Sonny speaks up. “You know, it’s lucky we ended up crossing paths. I was going to check up on the beach house, clear it out for anything I felt like keeping, and then just sell everything as soon as possible. Go somewhere else. I’m a bit off schedule for that, but I realize, out here with you, I don’t mind. I haven’t even thought of it since early yesterday.”

“You’ve grown a lot.” I cross a leg. This is my strapless, tiered fabric cup bikini, the one that makes my breasts look much bigger than they actually are. It felt good earlier, taking my huge shirt and shorts off before getting on the boat, sensing that men wanted to look at me, but knew better than to attract Sonny’s attention.

He, on the other hand, has no qualms with looking at what he wants. “Maybe. You’re the one I hardly recognize.”

“Why?” What more could a girl want than to be told by someone special from the past, ‘I like you more than ever.’

“You must know, come on. You were a good-looking girl when we were young. Now you’re a beautiful woman, and you kind of seem the same, personality-wise.”

Keep it cool, do not fish for details. “Is that a problem?”

“No. I think it just means you were the mature one.” He sighs, rowing on the other side. “The concept of maturity is... complicated for me.”

“In what way?”

He prepares his next sentence. I’ve gone from slightly afraid of seeing a gator to enjoying the ebb and flow of the boat and water, when he quietly but powerfully churns us forward. With one leg up on the side, his calves look like the upper leg muscles of a bull.

“I want to propose a thought experiment, Sev. Imagine that every day, you woke up in a new world, a new life, everything different.”

“Would I still be the same?”

“Sure. You’d remain constant, still have memories, but everything else is not guaranteed.”

Many people can think of a novel or movie covering a topic like that. I try to envision his concept: one day, here with him and learning things about this mysterious new girl. Next day: a totally different life where my parents aren’t even leaving me. How would that go? “Um...”

“Wouldn’t it be fun?”

“I think it would be pretty scary, for most people. The idea that nothing is certain and you’ll never make progress in any relationships would be sad, too.”

“I think it would be awesome. Point is, I see maturity as obeying the tendency for things to stay the same. Consistency. Today is fine, just like yesterday. Would you agree that living up to that concept, living every life with full consistency and respect to the past, is conservation of it?”

“In a way.”

“I don’t feel like living consistently. And I’ve made changes to explore and find more extreme moments, more inconsistencies that teach me the truth about life. That’s what I mean when I say I don’t feel mature, as most would use the word. But you’re happy with what happens to you. You find a way to handle it. Even when your parents leave you.”

I feel my heartbeat pumping.

“I couldn’t,” he said. “In your situation, I’d have killed them painfully. They deserve punishment, for letting you go.”

“Is that what you did to yours?”

He smiles, then looks past me. “Do you remember when we went into the intracoastal, to run away?”

No answer, but that’s okay. I’m not sure how I’d react if I got one, so I eagerly pass into nostalgia with him. Neither of us could begrudge the other for wanting our families to die.

“I can hardly bear to. It was so humiliating having to come back.”

“I don’t remember that. But I do remember the camp. Finding that nice pine tree island and planning a life there. Having to try and not just survive, but make things comfortable and teach you stuff. Felt a hell of a lot longer than three days. I think that was our best adventure.”

Right, yes. Because he was familiar with foraging and survival even at a very young age. “You know, I had actually forgotten all of that.”

“You mean that meat of the experience? How do you forget that, but only the sucky ending where we went back home?”

“Yep. My brain is f*cked.”

“There’s a lot of cypress trees up ahead. I think we’re wrapping around to where you were.”

“Yes, that’s it! That’s the dead tree she was standing on.” When I see the pathway of cypress knees, it isn’t quite so scary. But still, that was in the dark. I guide him in the direction that I threw the orb.

Sonny drops the oar with a clatter and catches the boat at a point where the cypress knees would’ve bumped the bow. “Looks like it’s time.” He ties a quick knot around one of the trees in place of dropping the anchor, climbing around the smooth column like a video game character.

“You still got the orb?” I ask, slightly worried.

He drops down into the boat, black shirt coated in streaks of moss. “Yeah.”

When I explained to Sonny, earlier, he naturally wanted to see the orb I had placed in my parent’s garage. So, before breakfast, I demonstrated how it glowed when touching my hand. It came to life from proximity to my skin over about five seconds, turning brighter and brighter over the next five. However, in Sonny’s hand, it remained dark and opaque. His touch did not activate it, so we came up with a little bonus tactic. He’d keep it on him and I’d be careful to even think to myself that I had placed it in my parent’s garage, but not that I showed it to him.

After all, Lynn did say she can read my mind. I’ll have to do what I can to counter that, even if she isn’t an enemy. Because that’s not cool, and I got enough of it from my mother.

I take the marble, pressing my thumb hard against the golden heart jewel at the middle, not that it does anything. Soon, it’s glowing hard enough to highlight the boat’s aluminum surface in red. Behind him, about ten yards, I think I can see a weakened, darker red glow, revealing an orb in shallower water and a mess of cattails. If not for the glow shining back and casting a porcupine of shadow, I’d never have noticed.

When I point, he grins and leaps into the brackish water. I nearly fall out of the boat when the rope cuts off its backward motion. There’s no wildlife in this era that wants a piece of that.

When he climbs back in, dripping and coated in tiny clovers, his feet caked in mud, he hands me the second orb, and the two shine brighter together. “So,” he pants, “when you touch any of the orbs, they all glow. Good to know.”

“Two down, one to go, if the triangle theory is right.” I fist-bump him. “Now can you let me rinse you off with the bilge?”

“By all means.”

###

In the hot sun and glaring metal, it doesn’t take long for Sonny’s clothes to dry out. We could go for the third orb now, but he says there’s no guarantee the triangle’s third point isn’t further inland, instead of out in the Gulf. Nor do we have proof the triangle would be equilateral. We decide to head back after a few hours of adventure.

As Sonny’s driving back with the boat still connected (he’s got it for the week), after getting some lunch, we’re driving back along the main road. About ten more minutes and we’ll be passing the bridge and near the houses.

“We haven’t tried calling Lynn,” he remarks. “Do you think we should? Or maybe just show up and see if she’s doing anything weird?”

“Before that, I just realized something. Our phones can share contacts.”

“Yeah?” His eyes open wide as he slows to a stop at a red light and hands me his phone. “Good thinking. Go ahead.”

I swipe to reach the unguarded home screen, somewhat excited by the digital snooping, and add my number to his contacts, followed by sharing the no-number contact for Lynn to mine. It’s a bit strange how empty of any apps his phone screen is, but I guess it fits. “There we go. Why do you think she’d be so resistant to sharing that to both of us?”

“I’d have to listen to some more piano and ruminate on that one.”

As I smile at him, my eyes spot what I think is Lynn, out in the street. My stomach lifts like we’re about to hit someone. “Did you see that just now? That was Lynn! Pull over for a second.”

“You sure?”

A woman in closed sandals wanders along the side of the road, on the sand lane right where the common beaches begin, those without homes built on them. The hair is different, dark brown and sweeping, but the body, it’s very similar if not the same person.

Most people can’t stand to walk there because of the painful sticker plants and the cars whizzing past, yet she has no apparent care in the world. “Yeah, pull over. Let’s try calling her.”

He pulls to the side. The girl is wearing the same clothes as what we saw Lynn wear this morning: dukes and flow top. “Well I’ll be. She’s a hell of a walker, if she got this far on foot.”

“Hurry up and call her.”

“Oh right.” He remembers that only he should have the ‘number.’ I hear it ring on speaker once and pick up just before the start of the next tone.

“Sonny,” Lynn says, fully expecting him. Might not connect, my ass. “I was just taking a look at the crafting tables in your father’s study. Do you have any bleach?”

“It’s in the laundry room, upper left cabinet...” He eyes me slowly, as I glance back at the figure. She’s still many yards behind us, walking leisurely but a bit hunched, but both hands are empty. And yet, the closer she gets, the more undeniably similar she looks. The hair is the same general type, just in a natural color instead of one-half red and one-half white. I have to see her face.

“I don’t see it in that one, Sonny.” Lynn’s voice rings clear, none of the wind that should come from speaking beside the beach.

“Oops, I remember now. It’s the right cabinet.” He grimaces, waiting for what we’re both afraid to hear. He lied to see if she would.

“You got it this time. Found the bleach! So, are you heading back already?”

He looks at me and concedes the phone. “I’ll let Sev catch you up.”

“Yo, Lynn. Sonny and I are splitting off for a bit. He’ll be back soon, and then he’ll get me and bring me back later.”

“Oh, okay. When should I make dinner, then?”

“Same as before, I’ll watch the time. Thanks!”

We end the call as this new girl walks ahead of the trailer, and then passes beside my door. Sonny’s not loving the chauffeur fate I’ve given him, but on seeing her in profile, we both agree: observe the two of them at once.

“I’ll call you,” I tell him, getting out before I hear any protests about the risk.

###

I follow behind her for a few seconds after Sonny drove onward. We’re past the bridge and back on the cobble by the pavement. A loose plastic shopping bag wanders through the wind. I hop to avoid it, making that my cue to approach and speak.

“Excuse me.”

She stops and turns, not afraid, only curious. “Hm?”

“You look incredibly similar to someone I know. This is pretty out of nowhere, but would you mind telling me your name?” I probably won’t get an answer.

Her voice is feathery, orotund. Staggered and sleepy, but unpretentiously feminine. “Tamara.”

Then it all clicks into place. “Holy sh*t. You’re Tamara Laurel-Downs Ross!”

“Yes. I’m Tamara Laurel-Downs Ross.” Her tone is a borderline imitation of mine, like she has just woken up from a dream and is coming to terms with my excitement.

This girl is a hugely famous, reclusive actress. The way Lynn acted when we first met sort of reminded me of her, and when most people think of that cartoon show these days, they think of Tamara’s involvement. “So, you’re starring in the live-action movie adaptation of Dee III Fights the Devil, aren’t you? It sounds exciting!”

“I definitely heard it said. It’s probably true.”

Now I’m starting to get it. Lynn must be a fan of Tamara, and that’s why she talks like her. Ross is well known for her enigmatic persona. The contrast between that and how well she plays characters is what drove her public image. That would explain the similar clothes, too, although it’s still a freaky coincidence.

I’ve been asking ‘What are you doing here?’ enough, so it feels nice when she asks me “What’s up?”

“Well, I’ve been going through a lot of different stuff, and, yeah, I don’t have a good reason to bug you other than noticing a celebrity. Sorry.”

“You look like you’ve been boating.”

“Yeah, yeah. I asked my boyfriend to let me off here just because I thought I recognized you. He needed to get back.”

“Ah, that must be nice, riding a boat with him.”

“Actually, I was driving.”

“Oh, pardon me.” Her toothless, mawkish grin unveils an intelligence and awareness far beyond the façade, sending a bit of a chill through my neck and back. She studies me from beneath the rim of her bangs, blown up and dancing like puppet strings. “Let me show you something.”

“Huh?” I jaywalk after her.

“It will take the evening, but I think by the end, you will be glad that we met.”

###

Tamara leads me to the nearby gas station, where she gets into a red sedan from the 2000s. It’s clean, adorned with a wooden air freshener painted to look like a lemon slice. I don’t feel a sense of danger as I ride with her, but I also wonder why we’re going further inland toward the metro area.

She parks in a spot with no other cars and we get out. My feelings on the city are mixed. The views over the rooftops aren’t so bad, but something about stucco. Looks like the walls are slowly rotting.

“In here.” She leads me to a multi-level storefront, the first floor on this side serving as a boutique and makeup product store. I follow her into the cool, nose-stinging breeze and she steps to the right, watching the outside and her car from the display window. The place isn’t busy, basically empty, so our presence isn’t noticed.

“It’ll happen right here. Look here for a minute.”

I do as she says. “What am I waiting for?”

“You will be presented with an image. Then, I will ask you a question. Simple?”

“Simple.” It takes a minute or two before a passerby triggers a reaction. Familiar face, a boy. From my high school, maybe. My head follows even though I can’t tell much from the back of his short hair.

“Does that boy look familiar?” Tamara asks.

“Well, no. Or maybe yes? He looks like someone who I went to high school with, but if I’m right, we never shared any classes. So it’s not like I really knew the guy.”

“Let’s assume you identified him correctly. What do you know about this person?”

“His name was...Cody? No, Colt.” I scratch my head. “And uh... I think girls didn’t like him. In general, he was just one of the less popular guys. Not that I had any particular opinion.”

“That’s all? Nothing more specific? Nothing more...intense?”

“Did he hurt somebody?”

“Someone could’ve.”

I’d like to see Lynn and this girl meeting one another. Assuming it doesn’t create a black hole of weird and destroy the universe. I wonder if I’m right about Lynn being her fan.

I feel a buzz in my pocket and check my phone. Sonny texted me.

She’s at my house. Whoever you’re talking to is someone else.

I reply with a thumb’s up emoji and get to brass tacks.

“You know, Miss Ross, I’ve had a lot of practice in weird conversations lately. It doesn’t even bug me that you’re from California, and yet you know about people I went to school with. So let’s play. Someone from my high school might’ve done something bad. We’ll put that aside. All I know is that might be a guy from school. Nothing more definite. So, answering that, what comes next? Where is this going?”

She nods. “You’re well prepared.”

“Sure doesn’t feel like it.”

“Ironically, that is just how you need to be. Do you want to know the answers to all of your questions, though? Sometimes the answer isn’t what you wanted to hear.”

“When I don’t even know what I want to hear, it doesn’t matter.” I shrug. “Lay it on me, baby.”

Tamara wears even less emotion on her face or in her body than Lynn, but she likes bravado. Her smile reminds me of the Cheshire Cat as she takes my hand. “Let’s go to the roof.”

###

We enter one of the glass elevators to the higher floors of this complex. After floor fifteen, an administrative or record-keeping office where we stick out like black sheep, I follow her up a roof access stairwell. With a pressurized, satisfying noise, I push the door open at her invitation, walking out onto the gritty, warm surface. The afternoon sun is a good backdrop; earlier would’ve been much too hot.

“Let me tell you what I see now.” I walk to the edge and lean my hands on the parapet. “Buildings and sky. Clouds. Bird flocks. And I know all of these things already. Yet, I kind of like how I notice no patterns, no familiarity. I recognize nothing in particular. This is new to me.” She’s a few feet away, just watching. “I didn’t get that feeling down below, even though it was just as true. I’ve never been here. I wonder why now, after that inclination, I can appreciate new stuff more. Is that why you took me up here?”

She nods. “It’s up to us how much we see, and where we look. But it’s still just looking. It’s still just sight. What if you could see in a way that went beyond these clouds, this sky, these buildings? To what lies beyond? And then beyond that. And then beyond that. If you could see every beyond you ever wanted to. If you could do that, what would choose to focus on?”

I wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but it was sounding kind of like what Lynn was getting into. So either spiritual philosophy, pretentious wordplay, or a religious pitch.

“Heh.” Tamara smirks. “You thought I said something weird.”

“Anyone would.” Wait, was that intuition, or did she just—

“Oh, look, there goes the time.”

But there’s no way that could really happen. Time can’t just go or be taken. People say it figuratively, like ‘Where did it all go?’ But there isn’t such a thing as time being lost. That would be silly.

“You’re right. The sun’s already setting. That’s...what the?”

“Look what’s happening over there.”

“Is that...Lynn?”

It is. And Tamara hasn’t asked who that is, yet. In fact, she somehow knew I’d like her spotted. “She is throwing another orb,” Tamara says, as if she’s got all of this figured out. “That will expand the shape and stop you from having collected all of them.”

“No kidding. I was thinking once I found three, something would happen.”

“Ah, I see. So that’s what you thought.”

“Is that wrong?”

“If it’s what you came to decide, it’s probably right.”

“In what way does—” I’m interrupted by Tamara gasping slightly, at the sight of Lynn casting her arm back and throwing the orb after all, recklessly into the city below. For a second, I thought I wouldn’t be able to see it fall, but I did.

“Why throw another one now?”

“July 16th, 2023. 8:24 p.m. Sunset. Probably almost no cars on the roads, but she can still see clearly.”

I check my phone. Yep, she’s right about the time to the minute.

But she says more. “A place that is not of this world is not of this spirit.”

“Of this... huh?”

“Even if an act is meaningless in one world, it may represent a necessary act in another. That act would be reflected, maybe, on a different July 16th, 2023, at 8:24 p.m. One soul forever looks out on a sea of souls, even if it looks upon one version of every time. What different versions might exist, of that roof at that time? And if there are any, why?”

“Um, Tamara? Do you know Lynn’s story? You seem to know her.”

“That is an interesting question.”

“Can’t answer, huh? How about this, what do you know about Lynn? Is she the real Dee? Is she real at all?”

“What I know for sure is this: a place that is not of this world is not of this spirit.”

“You’re just repeating yourself.”

“I am repeating that.”

Exasperated, I think about calling Lynn, though who knows where that may lead. Would she bother to try and explain why, despite Sonny telling me she’s at the house, I just found her on the far side of town? The next roof over is empty, now, so she could deny to the end.

“Don’t worry. She went down the normal way.”

I couldn’t quite grasp why, but I got the sense that there was something dreadful about this ritual of Lynn’s. Like the orbs, or throwing them, represented a part of the world I couldn’t process.

###

I rode out in Tamara’s car to the restaurant whose roof I saw catch the thrown orb, and there it is, glowing in a corner by the neon sign when I touch the other two in my handbag. Not one question from Tamara, indicating that none of this is necessarily new to her.

No one would probably notice a little red marble up on the rooftop for years, especially if it never glowed. I don’t remember if I actually asked her to give me a ride there. Thinking more, I don’t recall how we got back down from the shopping complex rooftop.

“Tamara, I mean, is it okay if I call you that?”

“Yeah.”

“I haven’t even asked why you’re here, and I won’t. But I would like to know why you’re helping me.”

“I’m just curious and like to help people.” Same line.

“What is your connection to Lynn?”

She winks. “Ask her. If you can remember to.”

Yeah, not getting answers yet, so off I go. I shut the car door and approach the dumpsters.

This is risky. I could be spotted climbing on trash cans and rooftops of some restaurant after closing. Screw alternate realities, right now I just want to stick to one that doesn’t involve jail time. But I climb up to one more roof for the evening and claim my prize.

“Well, now I have three,” I say minutes later, showing them off as I close her passenger door. “I better head back home. Do you mind?”

“Not at all, help yourself.” Tamara gets out and motions for me to get into the driver seat, walking in some random direction.

“Oh, um, you want me to drive?” I get out and move toward her seat, looking back at her as I sit down.

“Well, you’re going home,” she calls, “and it is your car.”

My car. My car.

This is my car. How did I forget all this time? And what was it doing out of the driveway in the first place?

“Tamara!” Out of the car, stalking around its perimeter, I gaze into the streetlight-wounded darkness. Not a soul to be found. Instead, I endure a drive home that feels far too long. How the f*ck did I forget my car? My loyal air freshener? What is happening to me?

When I finally get back, I pull into the driveway at my place and walk over to Sonny’s. Maybe I forgot some things along the way. How the hell would I know?

###

That night, Lynn’s acting normal, for her anyway. After dinner, I consider admitting the stuff about the orb and rooftop, but didn’t. I caught Sonny up with everything, assuring him, and more myself, that finding the fourth orb before Lynn threw another one might be important.

“We have to do this soon,” I tell him. “Because this sh*t with Tamara...I’m starting to worry that I’ll wake up and just forget her entirely.”

“You told me everything.” He leans forward in his sleeping bag and hugs me in mine. “If you’re ever afraid you’ve been misled somehow, ask me what you’ve told me. I’ll recount it all. And I’ve always had a good memory.”

He has, literally. He remembers the good, I remember the bad. If we were together for every moment, you’d have a completed article on life as it should be perceived. Maybe. It also helps that he’s hot.

“Tomorrow is the third day. My parents will probably come home in the middle of it to sign the papers.”

“They won’t get in the way. Tomorrow night, then, we’ll try the gulf spot I marked out. For water that deep, we’ll probably need darkness on our side.” Ah, Sonny, you’re saving my life by being so reliable.

“Can I fall asleep in your arms? Please?”

He surrounds me from behind with no verbal reply. For now, I am at peace.

Lynn throws the orbs so that they’ll be collected. This allows her to discover the dividing line and pass through the moon. That is the logic I’ve been able to loosely follow. First it was just: where is she trying to go? What lies beyond the moon? But Tamara introduced so much more. Why would she suddenly throw another one, right as it seems like we’re going to complete the game? Does she want to keep it going longer?

Dividing line between place and passage. I feel drawn to those words again.

###

The next morning, Lynn gets me up early, saying she wants to show me a place at Hermit Springs. It’s all too fast. After a hurried breakfast, we leave Sonny to sleep and go outside. A white van has been waiting, gas running and double doors open. There’s nothing but a corrugated, spray-in liner surface inside, plus a few cargo ropes. The dash has a sun guard laid over it, with various empty patches of sticky Velcro tape apparently used to hold different items.

“This is yours?”

“It’s a humble little vehicle I am forced to use.” She shuts the doors. “Shall we?”

The high, crunched-in passenger seat makes me feel like I’m at my first day of a new job. The engine hawks and groans to life, balancing out once she turns and we accelerate.

For as long as I can remember, Hermit Springs Crabbing Beach has been the main nature park of Mallard Gardens. The wooden path is free of pine needles, kept clean by consistent foot traffic. It’s always been pretty popular, a nice place to have a good time and avoid the typical beach-going headaches. Once she’s parked nearby, we get out and I follow her into the brush. “So, where are we going?”

“An amusem*nt park.”

“An amusem*nt park? At the end of a nature preserve? Must be well funded.”

“It doesn’t have a ton of things, but there are carnival games and stuff. It’s pretty cool...” She seems kind of sad that I don’t remember it, but to be honest, my memory of this park feels a bit off. I’m not sure why.

“Have you been there?” I follow her along the guided trails. We’re far from the bridge and the noisy cars passing by, thank goodness. Nothing interesting along that side of the park.

“Once.”

“Oh? With your parents?”

“No. I was with the person I loved.”

“Oh! So you have somebody like that. Is there a reason you’re using past tense?”

“They changed. Everything about themselves.”

“Everything?”

“The person I loved no longer exists.”

“Sorry if I brought up something I shouldn’t.”

“No, it isn’t your fault. Moving from that, see? Here it is.”

Indeed, at the end of a final, curved trail with kids playing at a tire swing, a larger field has been transformed into an open-ended theme park. However, this land of wonder is pretty faded. The few people around seem to be ironically enjoying it.

“This is only a place that is important to me. I understand if you would rather go home.”

“You should be more honest, Lynn.” Though that feels a bit awkward to say. Since going straight home after boating with Sonny, a building unease has started to sink its hooks.

“I am honest. Riding with me early in the morning, and in my weird old van, is charitable enough for me. I can cherish this much.” That was quite forward, so I got what I asked for. “I wish you didn’t assume my honesty. It’s not like you have no point, but...come on. Haven’t you gotten that I can’t say everything?”

“Yeah, I suppose I have.”

“I would like to spend some time with you, even though getting you away from Sonny is pretty hard.”

“Getting me away?” I never sensed that was her goal in all of this.

“Please don’t tell Sonny I took you here. Please?”

“Of course. I have no reason to do it or not do it. If you want it to be a secret between us girls, no problem.”

“Good, right. Good.”

“And by the way, please don’t worry about Sonny. He wouldn’t do anything bad. He can be a bit protective, but I think he’s more interested in you than me.”

“There you go again. Look, I happen to know that if Sonny knew I had taken you here, he wouldn’t be happy.”

“But you can’t tell me why. I get it, I get it.”

She frowns. “You don’t have a suspicious bone in your body, do you? You assume all of my omissions are innocent.”

That's a touch insulting. “You don’t really act suspicious, just mysterious.”

“In that case, please enjoy some of these rides and games with me. And maybe they will have clues to the mystery.”

Well, that was blunt. I wish I could dig to the core with her, but I agreed to understand that she can’t right now.

“Let’s do it!”

Specifically, the amusem*nt park section is a clearing of coquina sand, a warmly glowing pearl in the forest of saw palmetto. The fronds are huge, their split and curling ends form a perimeter of jagged shadows. The entrance and exit are where the palms are relatively well trimmed and you can fit through, dotted with simpler carnival games. The concessions are mostly to the sides in the open space around the largest attractions.

She pulls me toward the shaved ice stand, where she gets grape and I get lemon. “Shaved ice. Not bad in this heat.”

She feels hot right now? “Thanks. You didn’t have to pay for mine,” I tell her.

“That’s because you’re kind.”

“I don’t know about that. But anyway, seems like this place gets good traffic.”

“The good number of people shows that it’s a wonderful park.”

There was a mermaid castle decorated with pastel foam starfish and sea serpents, a merry-go-round that dared to follow some kind of roaring 20s theme, and dominating much of the west end’s saw-palmetto shade, a wooden coaster looms like a private observation box in a baseball stadium. My mind lingers on the coaster. The wooden tracks disappear into a plastic cave glowing with red light. I think the implication is that you’re riding into a tropical island volcano, but honestly, it felt a little bit more tiki-chic. Find faults where you want, but there are no volcanoes anywhere close to this town.

So is Lynn right, calling it wonderful? Perhaps in the literal sense that it makes you wonder. There was no consistent theme, and yet, people had fun with it. They each seemed to have their own things they took from the experience. Watching them, I had an unsettling feeling in the soles of my feet, like they were losing the force of gravity. In an empty lot of grass, I could imagine some other attraction. So fast I couldn’t hold onto the idea, but there just long enough to please my senses.

She puts a hand around my waist, making me think, for one strange nanosecond, that she is Sonny. “Today is my treat. Let’s enjoy it to the fullest.”

I settle back into the moment. “Roger that!”

“Also, do you mind this being called a date?”

No problem. Woah, hold it. “Don’t tell me that’s what you were after.”

“Just nostalgia talking. I feel an urge to say things I did back then, and that was a date. Because the other person said yes when I asked that.”

“Nothing wrong with reliving the good parts of life.” Sonny taught me that again. “Okay. It’s a date. I’m on a date with a girl, what will the world say?”

My feelings toward Lynn are hard to parse out. When she asked for this to be a date, I felt both dread and a kind of embittered thrill. If she’s attracted to me, great, but also not great, because I prefer someone of romantic interest to not be incredibly suspicious and mysterious, as a rule.

“You know, it’s the 17th. Your parents are supposed to be coming back today.”

Now that she mentions it, that’s true. “Yeah, but today is just the first day they legally can do it. It’s likely they’re gonna make me wait till tomorrow. More importantly, the moon won’t be in the right state for much longer, right? So we’ve got to figure out this moon passage thing soon.” I realize then, what she is telling me. There’s only so much time, so do what you want to do.

“I’ll help you and Sonny, if you want. Or you two can finish it on your own. But tomorrow. That would be the last workable day. You can finish up then.”

“Well, I hope we find a way through the moon.”

“Yes. But once we do, I don’t think we’ll be able to meet the following day.” Staring at her forces an explanation. “Did you think I was going to go out and drown myself or something, on the 17th? I was just kidding. We’ll still be able to spend time together. It’s okay.”

“Don’t scare me like that, then.”

“Sorry.”

Time passes. We finish our shaved ice, and when I come back from throwing out our containers, I’ve made a decision.

“You know, I saw you throw another orb, yesterday. I happened to be nearby.”

“On July 16th, 2023, at 8:24 p.m.” Why does she know the exact time? Lynn covers her eyes with a hand. “f*ck.”

Can’t help but laugh. “Was that one for someone else? Is it bad that I got it?”

“No, it doesn’t matter. I guess you could say I was starting to find the dividing line.”

“Tamara said it was supposed to cause a change in another world, or something.” A name... Yes, Tamara. Remember, damn it. You’re talking about something important. Everything around Tamara and this park, this whole day even...

“Tamara Ross.” Lynn’s tone wakes me out of my self-conscious stupor.

“Yeah. Something wrong?”

“Nope. Huh. So something like that can exist even here.”

“Even here?” Something?

“Still, parts of her could be kind, when I think on it. My path tirelessly exists before me. It’s inevitable, or destiny, or neither.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Those were her last words to me. Sorry. What I mean is we had an argument, of sorts, and those were her parting words. My path tirelessly exists before me. It’s inevitable, or destiny, or neither.”

So they do know one another. I guess they could have some pretty involved conversations.

“I didn’t realize you two spoke that much.”

“We haven’t since. Please don’t overthink it. Or the orbs. I was just practicing.”

“You need practice throwing?”

“Yeah. I needed to know I could still do it.”

“What makes it difficult?”

“I don’t have that many. And there’s no guarantee the right person would ever find it.”

“Who would be the right person?”

“Someone like you would work.” She looks ahead. “One thing is clear. If a substantial triangle isn’t drawn in time, we’ll never find a way through the moon.”

A substantial triangle. “Like, say, one where all the sides are equal? That kind?”

“You could say that, yes. I think having an equal balance on all sides is pretty substantive.”

“Okay then.” I kiss her on the cheek. She gasps. “That’s for not being completely indecipherable.”

She blushes, which catches me off guard, but we need no more words on it. She understands that try as she might, I will not distrust her to that degree, but nor will I walk blindly.

“Last time I was here, I was on pins and needles,” Lynn remarks, passing a stand to try and net goldfish. “I can enjoy it, now.”

“Well, it’s natural to be nervous the first time, if you were with a person you liked.”

“I like you, as well.” She clings to my waist as we walk in a pretty childish way.

“That’s different. Isn’t it?”

“I loved the person who took me here the first time, and I love you.”

Woah. “I mean, like, I think I get what you mean, but I’ve never experimented in that way.”

To that, she scowls. “I think if a good amusem*nt park ‘teaches’ you anything, it’s to experience more variety in life.”

“It’s a pretty cheap park, though, isn’t it? The variety helps, but...sorry, I’m being too negative.”

“Dreams are cheap,” she insists. “They’re loosely held together. When they’re brought to life, pinned down into a practical existence, it’s never the same. But speaking of variety, what do you think of the coaster? It looks like not many people ride it.”

“It looks like it might be a water ride.” I motion to my torso, my hands wrapped in the cuffs of the turtleneck sleeves.

“You’re wearing a bathing suit underneath, right? We can put our outer clothes in a locker.”

“I don’t know...” I feel hesitant to take off my turtleneck, and not because I get the feeling Lynn would like that. I’m not certain why, perhaps there was no reason, but I am weird that way. Even though I like to wear the turtleneck at the beach, I won’t take it off easily.

But before I can linger on that, Lynn’s already making her way to the coaster, and I’m not daring enough to plant my feet. I hate the idea of leaving someone who wanted to show me something out in the cold.

“Look, look! It’s called the Moonlight Passage. How can we not ride it?”

My ears do perk up at that name, as I approach the sign. “The lettering seems kind of sinister.” It’s in balloon font, carries an impression a bit like an after-school special’s opening title drop. Cartoony, but grand, important, a real message.

“Coasters are meant to get your blood moving. They should be a little bit scary.”

“I don’t see any tracks climbing up into the distance. So my guess is it’s a slow-moving cart that tries to turn some wetland environment into a haunted house ride.” Although, how that connects to moonlight is anyone’s guess.

She leads me into the left seat, shutting the door after sinking next to me. Even for a wooden coaster, it makes quite a lot of noise, as if the bolts are loose. The tracks lead us in a slight curve, then a straight path about ten feet above a five-foot-wide waterway. To our left and right, as far as we can see once out of the shining red cave, are fields of tall, aquatic reeds. They look pretty nasty, like they’d cut you if you fell.

Then our cart moves back into the woods, black still water above our feet and thick cypress jungle to either side. We began passing wooden gazebos that depict different scenes. Mannequins wearing common Floridian clothes are positioned and crudely painted. I’m just distracted trying to figure out what each scene is meant to be.

To our right, there’s a mannequin in a large, orange diamond pattern Polo shirt and cargo shorts, another with long blond hair and a summer dress, and two smaller mannequins, a boy and a girl. The boy is welcomed into the fold of the other three.

The second scene, coming forward on the left, is like the first but flipped. Two other parents and the boy watch the girl approach their unit. What disturbs me, though, was that the boy’s parents were completely naked and featureless mannequins, if you could call them that. It was more like they were something once, but were so old and faded you could not even tell their gender. Time ate into the white plastic, forming green dimples in sick patterns, like gangrene.

“I thought we were in a river. Is this another part of the volcano?”

We are now going through an indoor path. The crisp, cold air and more condensed, echoing nature to the cart’s noises came without warning, but abruptly. I could’ve sworn I was paying attention.

We ‘continue’ to pass scenes, but now it’s like we’re in a completely straight, underground access tunnel. It must be the cave we saw from afar. Inside is like a subway track. Raised platforms, like train stations, display more scenes to the left and right.

The chug of wheels and mechanisms reverberates, not unlike the gasp of sound after raising my head from water. This time, I think we are viewing depictions of daily life. There was a convenience store on the right. Ten seconds later, a school classroom on the left. The difference was that there was no one there. Not even mannequins. But there were little barricades of two bars and thick yellow and black lines, and silhouettes of people behind them. Whether they were mannequins or not, they weren’t moving.

“You were right, Lynn,” I say, matter of fact. “This is scary.”

I half expect the shades to start moving, startle us. But strangely, nothing else happens. There were a few more scenes. An office building, what looked like maybe a dojo or an eastern-themed spa. An airport. All of them are full of these tall rectangles, like the warped glass of a shower door, and the human shadows keep a pose from behind, suggesting a regular inhabitant. One is a woman pulling luggage, some are children next to families. It’s like the mannequin gazebos on the river, but much more advanced, at least in appearance.

That’s when I pull a Sonny and climb onto the concrete edge, inserting myself into the scene.

“Sev! What are you doing?” But I can tell she’s climbing up after me. “What about the cart?”

“There’ll be another one.” It’s not a standard, braked coaster that accelerates a group of carts. More like a tunnel of love, and considering how unpopular this weird ride is, another cart should arrive any minute.

From up here, I see all the electrical cables, out of sight from the lowered position of the carts. I walk behind a barrier, the one with a shadow on it made to look like a woman pulling a luggage case behind her. To my relief, there’s nothing there, other than a lighting trick. For each plastic rectangle, a stage light is placed out of sight, from across the gap, up in the rafters of the other scene across from it. In other words, the dojo or spa’s shadowy figures come from the airport, and vice versa if I went over there.

Each light is brutally hot and has a small metal silhouette placed in front. The combination lets you cast a large, strong glow with a shadow puppet on it. From afar, it looks like human beings frozen in place behind glass. Really, it was just a frontal projection you don’t see coming from behind your head.

Then I look closer, in the middle of the front side. Text is scrawled like a computer-generated mold, a recess in the material that you must be very close to read:

#20: Dividing Line Industries Presents: End of Normal – Scene D: End of Airport

S: Can I take everything you say as direct truth?

T: No. But there is one true reality, one Earth, on which I can base my experiences.

An indecipherable doubt clambers up my spinal column, at the sight of Dividing Line Industries. Must keep my mind clear. Where have I heard that, now that I think of it?

Lacking understanding of all three lines, I bring up the first, once Lynn is reading beside me. “End of Airport. What do you think that wording means?”

“Maybe this is the final state of an airport.”

“Then what about the question and answer?”

“No idea.” Lynn crosses her arms. “The S and T parts seem like a question and answer from an interview.”

“But who’s S and T? What the hell is this? Social commentary?”

“I don’t know, but it seems complicated.”

Before I can think about it, we are back in a cart. I don’t remember stepping back down, but I guess that’s fine.

Lynn’s mysterious agitation grows. “This tunnel part of the ride is long, isn’t it?” But when she’s scared, I don’t feel alone in my own fears.

“It makes you wonder if it’s right to build such a large, long tunnel in the middle of a nature park...” We’ve gone far past the boundaries of the park map by this point. “Dividing Line, though, eh, Lynn? What do you think? Is this place a clue?”

“I’m not sure. The coaster wasn’t this long last time I was here. Definitely different.”

“How so?”

“I’m having trouble remembering, now.”

“Well, that’s not good.” Here comes another scene to the right.

The tunnel is now painted yellow and lit differently, setting up a bright contrast as if we were entering a new, day scene. The path was made to look like the black tarmac of pavement, and the scene to the right was like a pretend cul-de-sac of sand and fancy homes. It looked an awful lot like my street. But I did not dare get out of my seat, because instead of the white plastic monolith rectangles, the mannequins were back, and with the same clothes and sizes.

“What the f*ck is this?” I can’t help but blurt out. “I get the feeling like some social commentary is going totally over my head.”

“Perhaps it represents fears of family life and familiar memories falling apart into nothing but a string of meaningless images, in the eyes of any random observer.”

When I take in what Lynn must’ve been preparing for a minute, the rush of wind from my inhale is a bit painful. “I think I’m starting to get a theory.”

“You have one?”

“Maybe.” How to word this... “I think whoever designed this ride was from here. It’s like a chance to experience it again. Seeing these separated places that once mattered, and how no one is really there, and those places are gone. Your place in them is lost.”

“So there aren’t going to be any scary ghosts or anything that pop out at us. Lame.”

I laugh, seeing that Lynn has been worried of a jump scare this whole time. “I don’t think the creator would do anything that blunt. Because the second there really is a ghost, or a monster, it would confirm to us both that we’re the humans.”

Then, I realized we were coming up on another scene, right in front. It would be impossible to miss before the path finally took a dip downward. This final scene is of a hospital, with huge red letters on a wide, narrow chalkboard above the empty scene. Barely even lit properly, the little world has no mannequins, no light barriers, nothing. Just that huge, red chalk message.

THE LAST PLACE YOU ARE FORCED TO MAKE MEMORIES

“That’s got to be one of the most cynical things I’ve ever seen.”

Lynn glanced at me. “Wait, I’m lost.”

“This hospital, where I guess everyone ends up, would be the last place you have to see as your home, just like that cul-de-sac. So it’s like saying, this is where making valuable memories gets you. Making memories in sh*ttier and sh*ttier places, until it’s over.”

“Wow.”

And finally, after an increasingly slow build-up to a drop into blackness, this supposedly braked coaster makes a 90-degree drop.

At the point where the coaster should’ve been scary, we didn’t even comment on how fast we were flying, how the speed combined with the tunnel, and it was now twisting and turning on itself in ways that seemed impossible, and then, we both screamed and held each other on reflex at a flash of blinding light.

We’re outside again, eyes adjusting first through the dark green and black of sharp reeds and water. The loop is done, and I have just experienced a ride that was much scarier after being done and off of it.

It felt like everything we had seen was a cruel set-up to the joke that was real life. Ta-da, here we are back in this inexplicably sunny, barely logical world. This was where we started, and it’s where we end. No point discerning the journey and destination.

“It’s all the same. We were riding the dividing line from the beginning. There was no way off, and even if there is, the only place to go is back on. Who cares about when you jump off, or whether you go left or right?”

“Why don’t we get your turtleneck out of the locker and find a more relaxing attraction?” Lynn says, fast-walking. If I learned one thing from that experience, it’s that Lynn hates me acting like her.

###

I get an idea to try the funhouse, which lives up to its name through primal novelty. Hallways of warped mirrors, kaleidoscopic puzzles, and goofy paintings that don’t wrap around into creepy territory.

Best part? Lynn is terrible around mirrors. It’s like the sight of other Lynns moving around induces serious vertigo. After helping her out of the maze, we sit in a wooden thoroughfare where people can exit early or rest on the benches near a vending machine.

“I’m actually glad this is considered a date,” I tell her, kicking my legs. “Because I think I nearly got to second base with how close you were holding me.”

Her tone is quiet and servile. “Shut up, please.”

I laugh. “You sure have made things a lot more interesting. It’s a shame I don’t like girls. I’m guessing you don’t either?”

She shook her head. I guess when push comes to shove, I’m not a boy like whoever took her here before, even if she wants to relive that sort of thing. I can’t even dish about Sonny, as I expect it would salt the wound. Sonny is what drove her here, and until she tells me why, I can’t open up fully.

That’s when I remember something Sonny said yesterday. I think it was yesterday. The days have been blending, lately. “Hey Lynn, what do you think about this? Let’s imagine that the world changed to a completely different one, every day. You’d still be you, but you’d be facing new situations every day, to the point that you aren’t living one singular life.”

“I don’t really get it.” Boy is that ironic.

“Well, let’s say today we don’t like girls. But tomorrow, we both do. The next day, maybe back to normal, or both, or something well beyond anything like that. Nothing set in stone, is what I mean. If life were like that, what do you think?”

“If the world changed every day...” She puts a finger to her chin, but it seems a little too innocent.

“You could have a reason to do things over with all your energy. Because it was necessary to survive.” I’m not great at explaining it. When Sonny brought it up, I initially found it vague and intimidating. But now, in the presence of her, for some reason, no rule is off limits. I could be someone different, around her. I could be someone different around everyone.

“Yeah, but it would probably be pretty rough.” She locks eyes with me.

“Definitely the opposite of how he saw it...”

“Sonny, you mean?”

“Yeah. Just something he mentioned to me. I kind of like it.”

“The one I loved had a different opinion.” Lynn got up and used some coins in her shorts pocket to buy a soda. “He was a monk, a fighter, and a lover, but in no way a philosopher.”

“Can you tell me his name?”

“I never got the chance to learn it. I thought, maybe, after hearing about Sonny from elsewhere, that they might be the same. Just a passing interest. But no, the Sonny we’ve met these past few days, that isn’t him.”

I get a chill up my back. “Wouldn’t you have recognized him on sight, that night at the beach, and known?”

She avoids the question, but rewards me with a different tidbit before kissing my cheek. “Hey!”

“You want the answers, right?” Lynn mutters, cracking her can of root beer. “Well, you can wait until midnight to go looking for the last orb with Sonny. But remember, you may be in a situation that requires choosing between truth and happiness.”

“Can’t do both? Learn the answer and then be happy?” To that, she doesn’t reply. “I suppose there’s neither, too. Don’t learn the answer and don’t be happy. More and more, Lynn, I wonder about who you are, perhaps even what you are. You apparently had a connection to a man that pointed you to Sonny’s house, and yet, Sonny can’t clarify a thing about it.”

“Perhaps he was lying?”

I shake my head. “I’m starting to think maybe your purpose is to distract me, to offer a choice between two fantasies, neither of which can be fulfilled. An illusion of choice.”

More silence.

“Lynn, I’m used to pain. My prerogative is getting an answer that satisfies me.”

We walk out together. When she tosses the can in a metal trash bin, the echo is louder than it should be. Then I realize that barring Lynn and me, this place is now empty.

“You must desire this preamble.” Lynn offers her hand. “An extension, before the final journey can begin. As soon as you don’t, the ride’s over.”

###

“Alright, everyone,” Lynn says, more excited than usual after dinner. “Gather up in the study, we’re going to play a game.” Although it had its weird parts, going to the amusem*nt park left her in high spirits.

“What kind of game?” Sonny enters wearing a white tank top and cargo pants. Lynn grins at him and unfolds a deck of cards like a fan.

“Strip poker.”

“Wait, what?” I had been quietly digesting and marveling at Lynn’s cooking skills, but now I’m up off my father’s chair. “You want to strip for cards?”

Lynn is in a black tank top with a clover painted on it, plus a short, pleated white skirt, a new outfit with more parts to it. “We only have a little time left, it seems. And you can’t wait till the very end to do something like this. Otherwise, you have no time to regret it!” She cackles, tipping forward a bit too far while sitting to cross her legs.

“Lynn, have you been drinking?” Sonny asks.

“Not that much. You two, there’s plenty more bottles in there.”

Sonny and I look at each other, and a kind of amazing, dark camaraderie forms. Partners in crime? I think so.

“Okay, we’ll play.”

“Perfect! Sit on down. The game is regular-ass five-card poker, no visible cards, one round each. Sonny, I found a thing of chips, so we’ll divvy that up. If you’re out of money, someone can offer to buy an article of clothing. You can buy stuff back, too, at the same price. Clear enough?!”

“Yeah...” I chuckle. “I hope I don’t lose...” I get uncomfortable when I take my turtleneck off and go full bikini, like on the coaster.

Five minutes into the game, Sonny and I have eaten away at Lynn’s money by raising each other. We make her fold when she’s confident, and raise when we both appear confident in our hands.

“Okay, okay, sh*t. Hang on a second. I am... I have 250 left. Can someone float me 50? Come on, that isn’t much...”

“I’m afraid that isn’t in the rules, Lynn.” Sonny crosses his arms. “Perhaps you could sell us something to continue? Like the top. I’ll give you 750 for it.”

“I guess I don’t have much choice...”

“Wait!” I said, leaning forward. “Lynn, if you buy that shirt, I want you to ante it, because I’m putting up 750 right now!”

“You’re on! Gimme da chips!” Lynn flings her tank top off, revealing a matching black lace bra, and cups in a size that would not look good on a report card. “750, let me have it!”

“First let’s see if you are going to win this hand, shall we?” Sonny asks. On confirmation, he reveals three-of-a-kind tens, two pair queen high for me, and two pair seven high for her.”

“So no shirt after all, and you’re back to 250,” I tease her.

The game proceeds. Sonny loses his shirt to me, revealing an inverted pyramid of muscle and thick but lightly distributed chest hair. I get Lynn’s skirt, which has the stretchy fabric of workout spandex. She gets quiet, plays with the cards close to her face. There is something erotic about watching her torso and stressing out over the cards.

In another two rounds, Sonny offers 100 chips to buy her bra and raise her back from negative 50 chips (don’t ask).

“That’s not fair, you’re treating me like a cheap slu*t now, with these prices.”

“Maybe you’ll surprise us yet again and be one.” Sonny slides the chips that she needs forward. “If you have the guts.”

I suppose I should be jealous, but maybe it’s different this time. We seem on the exact wavelength to an uncanny degree. We’re both enjoying what we’re doing, but neither of us wants her specifically.

She’s been reaching back and unclipping for a while now. Looking at both of us with sultry, unabashed pleasure, she lets the bra fall away, as if her breasts were tired dock workers throwing their boots off. When she starts taking off her underwear, too, which she tosses into my lap, neither of us knows what to say.

“Oh my f*cking go—” Her chest intervenes with a hiccup. “I’m out of clothes. What happens if I need money again?”

She still does, she didn’t even accept payment. “Maybe a dare?”

Sonny looks at me, a smile of stunned openness dominating every pore of his face. “What kind of dare?”

“Like a kiss. That’d be cool, right?” My eyes are clear that I mean her kissing me. It’s all fun and games, but him kissing her, hell no.

Her naked body slides on her sleeping bag against the polished floor, bringing her close to me. Oh damn, this is going to happen. Am I ready?

“Oh, another kiss on the cheek.”

“Yep,” she withdraws. “Were you expecting something else?”

“No, that’s good.”

“Huh.” Sonny is visibly deflated.

“Now’s probably a good time to stop,” Lynn says. “Sorry, the idea came to me all of a sudden, but I lost so quickly.”

“No problem! Yeah, it was fun.”

“Of course you’d say that,” Sonny says to me, as we hand her all of her clothing back. “You lost nothing.”

“I have a feeling you didn’t, either.”

“Not immediately,” he grumbles.

The night is awkward, quiet. My sleep is forceful, like being caught in quicksand while experiencing time too slowly to get out.

###

The next morning, I’m awoken by glaring, deafening omissions. There are no gull screeches or cardinal chirps, no distant Doppler rushes from passing cars, no sounds of Sonny’s house and his parent’s old-timey cast-iron cookware at use. The rush of the shoreline crashing and ebbing feels too loud. Most of all, no one is waking me up. Damn.

I stretch and climb out of my sleeping bag before realizing that I am naked. Weird. Afraid of being spotted, I look for my sleeping shorts and tank top, but can’t find them. There are still two other sleeping bags, yawned open.

A red, tight leotard of a top with white shoulder trim and a matching miniskirt are all I can find for a woman’s clothes in my size. They’re vaguely between my bag and what should be Lynn’s. This is the outfit that Dee wears in the cartoon show, brought to life. Although without a person around it, even the most fantastical outfit can look disquieting.

It’s not my style of clothes, that’s for sure. The fabric tight on my chest brings up old, molten memories. But I need to be wearing something. I slip on my regular shoes at the door and rush to my house.

“Excuse me,” a man’s voice says from behind me and to my right. Can’t get distracted.

“I’m busy right now.”

“Sorry to interrupt, but I just have to ask.” Steps behind me, fast ones matching mine. “Are you supposed to be Dee III?”

“Nope, these are just clothes. Bye.”

“Oh, come on, the outfit is obviously appealing to a girl with a smaller body.”

Just keep walking, fast. “Leave me alone.”

“If you don’t want men to pay attention to you, why are you dressing like that? And not to be rude, but don’t you think you could put a little more effort into it? After all, it might help compensate for the fact that you’re white—”

“I said I’m busy, Asswipe!”

I turn around and accidentally touch a mannequin, making it wobble back and forth. No motion, no sound, no other life on the street. When my legs can’t run anymore, a fog starts to ride its way into the morning glow, so I can’t see if that thing is behind me. The place where my elbow bumped it still burns cold.

Heading to the closest neighbor, I get no reply from ringing or knocking hard. Sick to my stomach at the thought of seeing another figure, I don’t wait long, go house to house, shouting “Hello!”

It takes me a few more tries before it sinks in: wherever I really am right now, I’m alone. The fog clears, and when I go back to the place that had the mannequin, defeated into not caring about my past fears, it’s gone. My house being empty of Sonny or Lynn is not much of a shock, but when I return to my room, all of my clothes are missing.

I walk to Sonny’s again, putting on a fake smile as if I expected to see people there. Phone calls don’t even ring, no matter the number. One TV after another leaves static, same as in my house. No internet, nothing live.

The food is still in his fridge, along with other signs of Lynn’s cooking. The clock still ticked away every second without skips or delays, no matter how long I stared. I sit down in the middle of the floor without taking my eyes off that clock.

The room sure is big. Full of traces, signs that people existed. Lifestyles after life.

Still, in the time since the lost internet, I haven’t gotten another visit or contact from my parents. Even though by now, they really should’ve come back.

Every second ticks by, the call of a deafening bell, the ringing in of a new world. For fixating on the clock for a while, it is now sunset. A day in three minutes, sunset at 11:35 a.m.

Laughing softly, I walk out down Sonny’s boardwalk to the amber and candle-wax-yellow state of the beach. The urge to stretch my legs and drift is back again. The firewheel blossoms have grown beyond where they should, a thick trail of them extending to the place where Lynn dug the orb into the sand. A great bouquet of red-orange flowers, a grave decoration.

No sign of Sonny’s truck or Lynn’s van during all of this, and yet the boat he had rented is ahead, floating in the water, about to hit the shore with the propeller. I run to it, legs free in the skirt, splashing and jumping to not be slowed down. Pretending to be sumo-strong like Sonny, I lift and pull with both arms to turn it around, chilling water clapping at my stomach through the frankly minuscule leotard.

I get it started and take it out of neutral, careful that the prop is not too close to the sand. The engine purrs to life all too well, and once I am hoisted out of the initial surf, the coming night sky is as gray as the ashen remnants of an undisturbed, burnt piece of paper, except for an orange and blood-red moon.

“Yep, I’m losing it.” I push the rubber button for the GPS, which guides me to the place Sonny had scouted out, the third point in an equilateral triangle. I push the engine to nearly full speed, even though at this point I think I am good with answers. Now I’d just like to see a person. Talk to somebody.

There’s no need to check the GPS to tell if I’m close. Night has fallen, and yet, the moon is gigantic, taking up over a third of the sky and shining a crimson stage light upon the world. The usually sand-clouded water is clearer than air; I see how shallow it is up to this point, while a few paces ahead drops into abyss. The uniform darkness is far too deep than it should be, just off the shore.

Out from there, a point of land rises, an island on-demand. No, it is an island, appearing out of the water. It’s the destination, but looking for an orb is the least of my concerns. I don’t even know where the other ones are.

This improvised island is only sand, hard-packed stuff you’d expect on the very bottom offshore, and now it’s lifted to breach the surface in a plot the size of a house. Somehow, even though my eyes don’t believe, Lynn’s van is lifted out of the water, parked on this new land. Despite being underwater seconds ago, the engine and brake lights are running, and there are words painted on the back in blood red.

STAY ON

THE BOAT

OR DIE

“Hang on, Sonny,” I mutter throwing the anchor into the sand and leaping down with a splash.

The beach homes and town all look like nothing but distant, unfinished assets off the edge of a video game map. My sneakers are waterlogged, so I leave them and approach the van, parked on rippled sand that glimmers with pockets of crimson moonlight-reflecting water. I go to the passenger door, but it doesn’t open, even when I knock. I can’t see through the tinted windows, so I go back to the rear doors, face that gruesome warning, and open them to crawl inside.

“Hey! Lynn?”

“Hi, Sev.” She looks back at me from the rearview mirror as I hoist myself onto the cargo mat. “Don’t value your life, huh?”

“I value warm cars.” I point to the passenger seat. “May I?”

“Of course. Climb on up. Those clothes look nice on you, by the way.”

“Thanks. Nice island...” I’m distracted by her appearance, which is like my outfit but blessed by some otherworldly spirit. The leotard ruffles float as if weightless, the skirt glimmers with nonreal sequins. It is what I’m wearing but idealized, both in terms of how it looks and what person is wearing it.

“What a weird world I ended up living in,” I mutter. “Everyone went and vanished, time started to fail, it’s anarchy out there, I tell ya.”

“Maybe it’s a holiday.”

“So, what is this? Where am I right now?”

“Is there a point to asking?”

“Yeah, literally here. I found the point in the triangle, so I should be able to ask whatever I can before...whatever happens.”

“But when there’s no one around, you stop caring about questions and you just want to find somebody.”

“Yeah...so what?”

She has the van in park and turns to face me better. “Well then, one answer is that this is the Gulf of Mexico, just a mile out from the beaches of Mandarin Gardens. We’re in the middle of a horizon you’ve seen all your life.”

“Not good enough. I mean, what’s going on with this world? Is this real?”

“That is complicated.”

“Stop it, Lynn! I’m ready for the cost, so one step at a time. First of all, where is Sonny?”

“The truth is, I don’t know.”

“Well, where did you last see him?”

“Seven, he was never here.”

The ocean has stopped moving. In its place, all that energy churns and sloshes in my blood. My head throbs. An eyelid vessel wants to extend from the skin like a cypress knee. “What do you mean? Never here? I have plenty of memories of him the past few days.”

“Memory is a funny thing. For example, when we went on the roller coaster together, did you think about the fact that Hermit Springs Crabbing Beach is abandoned? That you haven’t seen crowds there, no less a coaster, in years? That they weren’t there just the day prior? How about that you met a celebrity that looks like me at random, but it affected nothing? How about that you promised to explore this place with Sonny last night, but both of you got wrapped up in my striptease, instead?”

“I get that something’s not right here, but I felt his hands, heard his voice.”

“An invention. Basically a mannequin I dressed up and remote-controlled, with a little magic. Your mind and desires did 90 percent of the work.” She sits back in place and unparks, though there’s nowhere but a short sandbar, faintly submerged one inch in the now perfectly black, still ocean, creek water as far as I can see.

As she drives, the ground meeting the wheels is dry and ever so slightly rising higher.

“Seven, I’ll tell you what really happened, at least for you. When your parents left, you went out to the beach. You went swimming, and a boat came by, far too close. The man driving that boat captured you. Things were done to you. It’s been a lot longer than three days, but now, you’re about to die.”

Some things are difficult to just be told, rather than know by experience. After so much of a preamble, my emotions arrive inexplicably on gratitude, on hearing gruesome words. “And you did something to my memories to hide real life, make my death more peaceful.” The van is coming close to a 45-degree angle now, and from a glance out of the side, we’re approaching helicopter flight limits.

“An illusion was the most I could do to help you. Along the way, I invaded your privacy, reading your mind and giving you images and sights you wanted to see. But you’re different than the others. I couldn’t learn everything, couldn’t see a lot of your memories. So, I don’t know Sonny. I don’t know the inside of his house. I used your fantasies to create a believable, satisfying adult version of your long-lost friend. It was pretty much all I could do. I’m sorry.”

All the memories I made with Sonny over this brief time were just her play-acting with me. That feels even more painful than knowing I have been kidnapped, probably raped, and killed. “Why? What do you get from this?”

“Because what happened to you is too much. It would be cruel for you to experience that.”

“Damn. Sounds like I got kidnapped by a real loser.”

She fights a laugh. “It was all I could do for you, guiding your imagination. As you’ve gathered, I am not exactly an ordinary human. I did try to puppet the figure when you brought it forth on the beach, use it to give you want you want. The trouble is that you’re kind of all over the place regarding what you want, not that it’s your fault. You didn’t even know it was your last chance to really want something and get it. And telling you upfront would’ve been too much like the others.”

I can hardly make heads or tails of the majority of what she says. “What was that you said in the beginning, when we first started talking? You said you heard about Sonny and would like to meet him. Explain.”

“Sorry. I was being indirect since I couldn’t just say that I read your mind and saw what he was like. I have no idea where the guy is, but I imagine he’s out in the ‘real’ world.”

“So you didn’t go on a date with him?”

“No, I promise. My man was a monk artist type, remember?”

“Then what is this, instead?”

“A pocket of captured time. For you, this is just the past few days since your parents drove off the lot and you went down to the beach. It’s a continuation of what you always knew. But to me, it was a welcome reprieve from my usual routine.”

“What is your usual routine?”

“Ruining men’s lives with magic,” she wryly says, and with a dip that sends painful wriggles all up my feet and legs, the van breaks free of the constant ramp. We’re floating toward the moon, its red and orange cratered surface all I can see without craning back to look at the ocean.

“What are you, exactly?”

“Apart from a magic bombshell and a pretty great cook, given the chance, I can’t get very specific with you. All I know is that I have existed for a long time, and my name is not Dee Pauline. I do remember a show, where I was a cute and bubbly champion of justice and love who went by Dee. But I don’t feel like a cartoon, nor do I look much like that young girl. You can tell looking at me, we're not the same. So, I just take myself as I am.”

“Why do you look like a cartoon brought to life?”

“That’s what I want to find out. I remember my life in that show, and that feels as real to me as what’s happening now, but I cannot trust those memories. But from your human perspective, it must be simpler. Cartoons are imaginary. Of course, from my perspective, I’m a human girl who found magic powers and exists in this real, human world. I can't have been a cartoon first, that doesn't make sense. So I'm human. Isn’t that enough?”

I’ll accept things I’ve seen having legitimacy beyond what first appeared. I can accept cartoons coming to life, in a scenario where reality is clearly not the dominant force. Funny that she's the one who takes an issue.

“Start from the beginning,” I tell her, relaxing as much as I can. “I remember the last episode of your show. What do you remember happening after that?”

“You’re really more interested in what I am than what happened to you?”

“Yes.”

In response, she takes a cigarette from a pack on the dash. No need to keep her hands on the wheel, as a new force gradually hauls the van like a space shuttle. She waves the cigarette through the air and there’s a noise that makes me scream, like the crack of a whip. Then, the cigarette is lit and drifting. It’s like she moved fast enough that the force ignited the tip, but with superhuman grace to not destroy the entire object.

She takes a puff and airs it out. “On the last episode of my show, in those last moments as I married and kissed my love interest, the tall, dark, handsome Trace Mansion, there was this wish that I uncovered, deep down. In the show, I look happy, and I was. But I was resentful, too. I have the memories in my mind, and I know it's that character, but I know it isn't me. Someone just wants me to be that, to believe I am a cartoon brought to life."

How funny, the similarities we never got to sharing.

My first clear memory as the real me, here in this world, is just like all the rest. They take the context of a show. It took a while, I know, to understand that I'm considered Dee, and have her magic. Eventually I was able to evolve and develop my abilities, turning my peace-justice magic into something I like to call bombshell magic. I was able to finally do things I never could, while at the same time, viewing the scope of reality in an entirely new way."

“I can see how Tamara might come into this.”

She sighs. “Talking to another girl is rare for me. Tamara is related to me, you might say. An emergency link. I can't explain too much, it isn't about this.”

“So, is this place real to you?”

“Yes, as real as myself. The way it works is, I get brought back. Over and over, for a new ‘episode.’ And I do mean it like a TV show. I only experience this world in separated segments, seeing through a subject who uses my magic, before getting blipped to the next.”

“In what way? Is time repeating?”

“More like stuck. I always get sent to men in the Mallard Gardens vicinity, but it could be on July 1st through July 28th, and it always starts in a mixed-weather version of this month and year, a mix of cold and hot days in the same part of Florida. Beyond that, it’s always the consciousness of a man who recognizes me as Dee. Only that subject can see and hear me. I don’t literally appear to them first and get approached, though, that was unique for you, and I’ll get to why. But put simply, I get moved from one man to the next with little warning and have to try and find the connection. I can’t choose who to go to, unfortunately. I don’t know who or what determines the subjects, although I have an idea.”

“What do you do on these episodes?”

“I meet the guy, having seen what he wants. I offer him some magic to help him out, which comes with pretty simple rules. Inevitably, things go wrong, and once his fate is obvious, I’m able to exit the scene. The narrator in my head leaves, and I can linger in that world and enjoy it, usually for a day or two. Then I hit the end point. Things get like they are right now and keep getting worse, like this, and everyone turns into mannequins, until I finally pass through the moon in my van and leave that world behind.”

“So the van is a constant?”

She rolls her window a bit to vent the smoke out. Our gradual ascent brings no distractions. “I learned to make it with my magic, so I don’t get gradually levitated up by myself. It’s a long story. Point being, every person whose world I inhabit, eventually their episode has to end, and I have to pack up and drive out of here by passing through the moon. That has to happen here, as well. I don’t know why I exist in this way, how much of it is due to my own actions and responsibility. But that’s how it is.”

The endless depths to either side’s windows are getting smaller, no longer terrify me. “These men, have you ever tried just giving them advice, and not any supernatural aid?”

“Yes. It still didn’t work out. It was as if I was only delivered to targets on the brink, guaranteed to bring about their own destruction. You’re probably wondering, if every episode of this ‘new show’ involves me entering the mind of a man, what am I doing here in your mind? You can have one more chance to admit it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re attracted to me, Sev. You were the moment you saw me, but you are not able to recognize those feelings even in yourself. That is a definite factor shared by every man who got an episode. You’re barely aware of it, due to your sheltered upbringing, but I just want you to know that it’s okay. Your feelings are natural, and they are not inferior, nor are they wrong. In fact, it’s because of them that we were able to meet.”

Is she for real? “I don’t know what you mean, Lynn. It’s very flattering, but I kind of got the sense that you were more into Sonny.”

“Fair enough.” Tossing the crushed cigarette out the window, she doesn’t roll it back up, but rather lets the arm lean out against the side. Up and up we go, until you can’t see anything in the sky but the orange-red moon. It’s relaxing, my full body weight vertically leaning back against the chair. “But we’ve focused on me enough. It’s time for you.”

“To die?”

“I did not want to be so bleak, when I wanted to give you a pleasant adventure. But the ultimate dividing line, between place and passage, or real and non-real, is death. Death is the inescapable final destination we are all destined to enter.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“I just thought it was something totally different.”

“Well, Seven, that’s part of what makes you fun. For whatever reason, I’m very bad at reading your memories and thoughts. I’ve seen some low-quality men, and every time, I saw all of them. But with you, I’m stuck. I think your personality may be one way, or another, but I cannot tell without just experiencing some time with you.”

“Sounds like we give a lot of credit to people who interest us.”

“Yes. It’s turned me into someone who expects men to behave a certain way. Of course, I’ll reward those who break the mold disproportionately, so it’s not like I’m a misandrist.”

“But that’s kind of bullsh*t.” Our eyes meet. “Let’s say you’re not Dee, not the justice girl. Even so, you don’t want to do all of this tormenting and monkey paw stuff, do you?”

“Well, I have you to thank for some relief. This time, instead of a man, I was able to hop into the mind of a second person who recognized me, someone who was really hurt, but wouldn’t ask for help or invite it as readily.”

“So you started in the mind of the guy who kidnapped me. This is his episode.”

“Correct.”

“Are you still there?”

“Yes. At this very moment, I have two perspectives. Beside him, and beside you.”

“Let me see.”

“No.” Her glare frightens me into silence. “You’re a fascinating girl, Sev, but you don’t know when you’re in danger.”

“What are you saying? There’s a show on, and I wanna watch.”

“Don’t be glib, Seven. Maybe your parents being far away and you disappearing before they had to sign the documents, and you being captured, are not coincidences.”

I thought so. The emancipation would’ve triggered a legal loophole that could’ve sunk the boat that was their reputation. Once people started looking into why I left them, everything would come apart. Better our daughter disappeared tragically than left by choice, better optics.

“Lynn, you must’ve seen a lot. Who is the worst person you’ve ever known?”

“In my opinion? It’s a tie between your mother and father and the sick f*ck who paid them. That is why I had to act. I had to appear in your mind since you recognized me.”

“So I’ve been kidnapped and probably badly wounded. And it comes to this moment. Where my body can no longer keep up, and it’s time to leave my dying mind.” This has all been a dream, and like many of my dreams, they remind me of how long it’s been since Sonny held me.

“I designed my bombshell magic to work on men, since I only ever had episodic appearances around them. Today, though, I am here to offer you a boon. It’s the little bit of magic that will work on you, combined with a fair explanation of your two choices. Unlike the many bastards I’ve had to deal with, I want you to make an empowered decision.”

“What do you really want, though?” I sit forward. “Like, before we get into any of this, I’m still curious about you more than me.”

She’s amazed, but smirks. “No bullsh*t? I’m like you. I want answers and for whoever pulled me into this situation to face comeuppance. I want to find something better. I want a lot of things, just like you.”

“And you’ll probably get what you want.” I laugh. “You’re a perfect, magical bombshell who can travel between worlds. Can I do that?”

“I’m sorry. You are this world, and the ending is imminent.”

“I’m dying, sure, but you’ve seen the reality of what happened to me. There’s no saving me, no chance at all?”

“There is not.”

The quiet rushing is punctuated by my hair grinding against the vinyl seat. We are tuning in now, cutting through all deceit to find the signal. “Bring it on. What’s the deal?”

“You know those marbles? Inside each of them can exist one past ‘episode,’ a self-contained universe of that person. Only I can put people inside them and only I can carry them.”

Her voice gets quieter in comparison to the roar of wind resistance. Lynn cranks her window back up, creating a seal that pops my ears. We are flying now, or rather, building velocity upward with no sign of stopping. “I was thinking those would end up being a lot more than they seemed, but holy sh*t.”

The cabin shakes, and I glance over my driver’s affectations on the dashboard. The cigarette pack, spyglass, scarf, a Hawaiian bobblehead, a lipstick tube, some kind of monitor shaped like a heart, a row of credit cards, and other items all have a cartoonish, magically enhanced motif to them, all kept in place with velcro.

“When we fly through the red moon, it will become a skin around you, and I will enclose it with a kiss to create a new marble, one that will preserve your ‘Episode’ like the others.”

I swallow my spit and bear with the unease in my guts. It’s akin to the nerves and pain of parting I associate with airports and travel, but amplified. Though all of this is to protect me, I’m not sure how to feel.

“Your mind will be fully centered here instead of your body in the kidnapper’s world. You will dream happily, and you will get your memories of all the good times we had here, all of them. I may even be able to visit. But you won’t ever be able to leave. You’ll be fully conscious, though, as the goddess of your own world.”

“What’s option two?”

“Option two is I take you through the moon without wrapping you in an orb and storing you in my magic wand. That’s what happens to every other person I’ve encountered over the episodes. I cannot say for sure what happens to those men and their worlds. I had an episode with Colt last time, which, of course, means things did not end well for him. You saw a version of him here who did not have those experiences, but that is probably not the same person. I’m fairly confident that if you stay behind in that way, your existence will reach finality.”

“So...familiar afterlife or nothing.” I grip the armrests. “Doesn’t seem that hard of a choice.”

“There’s a little bit more to it. Don’t worry, we’re nearly at the moon.” After taking a deep breath and putting both hands on the wheel for some reason, Lynn shrugs. “In the cartoon memories, there was someone else Dee cared about, someone left out of the script who dissuaded her from the wedding. I know that he, if nothing else, is real. That man who did to me what’s being done to you. He tricked me, found a way to kill me. I won’t say how. But that was what he wanted. To make a magical girl come to life in his everyday world and brutalize her.”

“God.” I shiver.

“I got too close to finding him, a few episodes ago. I was able to recover, because I’m a magic bombshell. But you, for all the wonderful things you are, Seven, you’re a mundane human through and through. Neither you nor Sonny are guilty of what happened to me in any way. I’m convinced of that.”

“Thanks...?”

“So, I admit it. Having lost any feelings for the Seducer, I was attracted to you and Sonny. It was an odd experience, seeing your idealization, sharing an enjoyment of him. I’m a virgin, you know. I have curiosity like anyone. With men, I literally can’t live out any fantasies or desires. It breaks one of the three rules of my magic and dooms them, ending the episode soon after.”

“You’d think bombshell magic would be a little less uptight.”

“That isn’t part of my magic, it's the Seducer's trap. Sure, I could pull myself into the mind of another person nearby, create a sub-world of sorts. But only because you knew me, were attracted to me, and were dying. I couldn’t exactly replicate that very easily. I just never saw any reason to bother going into other minds, since nothing would continue until I progressed with the current man’s episode. With you, though... I didn’t know who I was leaping into at first. I just knew it was better than trying to appear and assist the scumbag who hurt you. Then I saw a bit of your memories, your life. I got to feel someone pursue me, walk with me on the beach. Yeah, I liked you. So I thought I could have a little fun. Dating, stupid games, regrets. I don’t know what those are like.” The Earth behind us now appears smaller than the moon.

“What do you think of them?”

“People take them for granted too much.”

“Not the ones who missed out.” I take my hand and leave it open. She intertwines one with mine, nervously refusing to meet my eyes. “How many loops like this have you done? How many episodes? Because that magic wand only holds so many orbs.”

“It holds three. This may surprise you, but they’re all empty. If you get stored, you’d be the first, and I’ll keep you with me. But I have no idea what will really happen, what it will be like for your perspective. What I can tell you is that I will not forget you. Even if I end up placing people inside the other two orbs, I will never cast you aside.”

My eyes are wet too, now. “Lynn, this is only curiosity, but did you have no possible way to stop my kidnapper?”

“Not with force, because it’s their world I’m inside, right now. I’d normally use persuasion and magic, but the man had exactly what he wanted. He had just successfully gotten you, by the time I appeared. Since he was thrilled by his present find, completely enthralled, I couldn’t draw him away.”

“Why would you appear to someone who has no desires you could fulfill?”

“That question continues to haunt me.”

We’ve been riding, building speed, for a while. I think we’re approaching the limits of the atmosphere.

“It’s time to choose, Sev. Do you want to be wrapped in an orb?”

“If I do that, what will happen to you?”

“The next episode begins after I’ve wrapped up the world in an orb, with or without the subject inside. No telling what’s next.”

“So either I get collected, whatever that entails, or that’s it? The Big Sleep?”

“It’s the most power I’ve ever given to someone I inhabit. We don’t have a lot of time, but do think it over carefully.”

“If you orb-ify me, will I get bored of living forever in this place? How much can it change?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can I make Sonny exist again and believe it?”

“I don’t know.”

“It sounds like these two options are just one more game, a distraction. Because both are the same for me: I don’t get to experience my honest fate. There’s a third option you don’t want to say, isn’t there? And it’s to go away. To let me back down, fly through the moon out of my world, without any protection, and let the illusion collapse. Let me see how I die. Let me see the motherf*cker’s face, just once. Because if there’s any real bird in the hand, any chance of seeing him and remembering, it’s now.”

She can’t stand to reply. I continue.

“You're just entertaining me, and yourself, more at the last minute. The truth is that there are no options at all. You have no way of knowing what happens to people inside the orbs, but you’ll damn well lock me inside one. You have no way to verify anything. Well, I guess one thing is obvious: this can only end with the illusion stopping and going back to what’s real.” In a way, I have been captured twice. First by a malicious man, and second by a too-kind woman.

“I’m sorry. I just don’t... I don’t know what to do!” She starts to cry in full force. “Sev! You can’t remember so much of it, but I’m falling for you. And yes, I’ve deceived you. It seemed like all I could do is mask the pain and give you every reason not to think too hard. I couldn’t use my magic to save you.”

I take a deep breath. “I get it. Either way, my life ends here. Maybe not my consciousness, maybe not entirely, or maybe yes. But it hasn’t happened to you. You don’t know what I’m in for.”

She tilts her head down and closes her eyes in pain. “It really is all I can do. If I am a god, Sev, or have any power, I don’t even know how to use it to help you. So I used you.”

“No, you didn’t. Perhaps we met one another because I can help you find your Seducer, help you see what you have wanted to see. Because even if I cannot resolve anything, see Sonny, can’t have anything good, let me call his name. Maybe, eventually, on some version of that day and time, or across days and times, he will hear and tear down the door. I don’t mind if you keep me in your pocket. I’m used to that. So give me whatever time I have left to act. Just a few seconds will do.”

“Sev, are you sure?”

“Whoever did this needs to be stopped. The enterprise that made it happen needs to be put down.”

“I know, and I have a plan. But I cannot change your past, cannot save you.”

But on another July 16th, 2024, 8:24 p.m. One where you can throw a man off a rooftop for real, not just in a contained marble.

“Sev...” Her voice cracks. “I would say to you that I will find Sonny if I can. But...”

“The episodes are unpredictable?”

“Every subject dies. Some have their episode end before that. But it’s a truth I’ve never said to anyone. They’re all just killed at the end.” She covers her face.

Damn. I guess our being able to meet, and her being able to see a guy like Sonny, really was only possible through our interfacing in this bizarre way.

“Man, I could’ve done more with my life.”

She’s hugging me, pulling me tight into her grip at the driver’s seat. “When I am finished, Sev, I swear you will get to live the life you should’ve, freed from your parents, free of stalkers.”

What a nice dream. Too bad we have glossed over that the choice was fake. She’s definitely not leaving me behind. “I’m not sure what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything.”

The imagery and senses I knew are ripped away.

###

There is a small room with red double doors and green walls styled to look like the giant foam puzzle pieces of a daycare play zone. Mortimer hums to himself, wiping his apron at the washing station. The last of the bags were full, and the bodies carted for further processing. He felt woozy on his feet, like he had just had an extremely long daydream but suddenly forgot it.

Behind him, dressed in undersized rags akin to the Dee III outfit, his victim’s tattered throat claws out a primer for speech but chokes out dry plugs of blood. She is nude, cannot see, but feels her lack of skin from the navel up.

“SONNY! HELP ME!”

###

“You did it. That’s good enough. That’s good enough.”

“Why is the world getting small...” It’s like I was unplugged and plugged back in, but now I’m laying in the black creek the Gulf of Mexico turned into, my breath blowing apart window glass on the nearby pier restaurants as Lynn massages my scalp through my hair.

“It’s not.”

And I am enveloped, condensed in a cloak of red and orange, preserved in fire, a contradiction that will not stand.

###

Back in the green puzzle room, there is no girl now, just flesh, and a glowing green mist escaping from the mouth directly into a red marble, held in another girl’s hand. Mortimer is shocked, needless to say, after hearing one thing and seeing another in the span of three seconds.

“I couldn’t bear for that poor girl to know how little choice she had,” the woman says, slipping the red orb into the shaft of the upside-down staff before snatching the hinged pommel back into position. She looks at her wand and the red heart-shaped jewel dominating the top. “One promise will absolutely be kept, and that is this: Svanhilde, you will be my beautiful swan again.”

“Hey, how’d you get in here? You look like Dee, too! I guess I better take off your skin.”

Lynn studies the man without fear, like how an entomologist would at a praying mantis lifting its arms from behind a looking glass. “You don’t want anything, Mortimer, do you? You’re completely happy and satisfied.”

He thought it through before stopping a foot from her, towering two whole heads above her braids. “Yes.”

“As long as you get to cut women up.”

“Yes.”

Lynn turned to look at the figure in the corner, locked in the braces and forced to kneel, missing skin from the middle and upward, excluding the arms, turning them into grotesque gloves of remaining flesh. Fortunately, it cannot suffer anymore.

“One last time, I’ll ask you. Did you know a man who was an artist and a monk? A hunter and woodsman, too, I think. Know anyone like that? Is he the one who taught you to do this?”

“What’s his name?”

“I keep telling you, I don’t remember. He made me forget things.”

“Your skin looks nice.”

Lynn lets out an impatient sigh. “Do you believe in magic?”

“Magic? What’s that?”

“It’s a force beyond all others that can grant your greatest desires.”

“I just like to cut.”

“You must feel other urges, sometimes. I would not be here if you didn’t.”

“I like to cut skin.”

That was all that lingered in terms of desire or feeling. That was when Dee III realizes she miscalculated on some level. Not all men she had episodes for would be attracted to her, or at least, not in any way that allowed her to use magic. “You work for Dividing Line Industries, don’t you?”

“I’ve heard that! I think they hired me. Hired me to cut skin and make masks.”

“Make masks? What for?”

“He said I couldn’t know too much, or I wouldn’t get what I wanted.”

“Who is your boss?”

“I don’t know. I’ve always just followed notes or orders.”

“Well, I realize that it’s better not to direct my anger at you. You have no ability to understand morality or desire. So this isn’t an episode where you have to break the rules to turn my favor against you. It ends with death, no matter what.”

“Huh?”

“Our time together is over.”

“Wait, I have to get your skin.” He reaches for the scalpels before the double doors beep and open.

An armed guard with a featureless white oval mask, like the ones who always escort him and his bounties to the operating room, is standing where that milk-chocolate-skinned woman was before. Now that he thought of it, she looked a bit like a cartoon he saw on the TV back home, once.

“What are you doing? Did you see that lady—”

He realizes the guard is pointing his shotgun at him. There’s an explosion of gunpowder, an instant of pain through his eye and broken bones. Very loud, and yet nothing to hear.

“Looks like you were just being used,” she says, in the depths of his mind, somewhere other than the buckshot-shredded cochlea. “Not that I care. Next.”

His perception has ended.