Priya and I get to the lake before the kids and moms have left, which means towel space is at a premium. The only spot we find is far from the lifeguard tower, which, since the beautiful and out-of-reach Miranda is working, will not be a satisfactory location for Brian. Oh well.
I spread a couple of towels side by side and encourage Priya to sit down, but she’s gawking openly at the people on the beach, at the children playing in the sand and splashing in the water. She said she’s never been to a lake before. How can you live in Pennsylvania and not see a lake? We have, like, a million of them.
I take off my sneakers and socks and tuck them into the canvas tote bag I brought our stuff in. It’s already close to ninety and humid as shit.
I love watching Priya. Her eyes are wide with discovery; she drinks in everything and everyone she sees, from the little kids and their sand castles to the moms and dads with lobster-red skin because they used all their sunscreen on their children.
She’s like a golden willow bending softly with the breeze; her nose wrinkles with the scents of summer. Her tutu tangles up in her legs and she dances near the gentle surf, kicking up her heels and running away when the water threatens to lap at her toes. The little kids laugh and clap their hands as they run with her.
I could watch her forever.
Five minutes later, Brian and Emily arrive—and I feel strangely disappointed. I kind of hoped they wouldn’t show up at all.
“Dude, lookin’ 1985,” I say to my friend, who’s wearing a pair of mirrored aviator glasses and a black T-shirt over his board shorts. When I look at him, I see my pasty self staring back.
His eyebrows lift over the top of his glasses and he grins. “She’s here.”
I glance over my shoulder to Priya, who is playing at the water’s edge. How could he know?
Emily comes up behind him, dragging their bag of towels and other lakeside crap. “He found the lifeguard schedule online,” she tells me with a note of wonder in her voice. She sounds almost proud of her brother, as if he were a toddler who’d managed to use the toilet instead of crapping his pants as usual.
“Oh, you mean Miranda,” I say.
“Now I’ll know every day she’s here,” Brian says as he stares open-mouthed at the lifeguard tower. Miranda is wearing an orange bathing suit, and her black hair is twisted in a braid down her back. Her eagle eyes scan the horizon for an errant swimmer. Her partner is Eric Miller, so Em should be happy. He’s in orange too. Both have superb tans and toned bodies. Whatever. Muscles are so overrated.
Beside me, Emily spreads a towel and kicks off her flip-flops. Her eyes count the towels already on the sand, and she looks at me. “You brought your friend?”
“The girl who’s crazy beautiful,” Brian says without taking his gaze from Miranda. “Or did you say crazy and beautiful? I think I was stoned when you texted me that night.”
I avoid looking at Em but it doesn’t matter, I can feel her eyes on me, drilling into me. “Is this her? The one with white hair?” she asks.
I nod, and Em nods too. Then very subtly, she turns and looks around her, immediately finds Priya by the water.
“She must be hot,” Emily says.
“Why? You think the only reason I’d bring a girl to the lake is ’cause she’s hot? You think I’m that superficial? She happens to be pretty smart, too.”
“Whoa.” Emily looks up at me, her face a blank. “Are you done, Mr. Paranoid?”
“Me?”
“I meant she must be hot, like physically too warm. She’s wearing a heavy skirt and a T-shirt. Why doesn’t she have a bathing suit?”
“Oh. She, um, she didn’t bring one. This was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing.” I watch Priya hop back from the water when a gentle wave laps at her. Her musical laugh carries and I laugh too, infected by it. “Do you really think that skirt is heavy?”
Em looks at me like I’m crazy. “Duh. It’s a skirt. Look at all those layers.”
Huh. I thought they were like cotton candy—light and fluffy and feathery. It never occurred to me it would be warm. I call to Priya and she turns with a brilliant smile. Even Emily smiles in return. How could you not? She looks so happy. She has a hard time walking in the sand—who wouldn’t? I jump up and help her back to the towels.
Naturally, Brian comes over to meet her. I slap at him and point at his glasses. “Dude. Take those things off.”
“Hey, I’m Brian.”
“I’m Emily.”
“I know,” Priya says. “He thinks about you all the time.”
“Excuse me?”
“She means ‘talk’—I talk about you all the time. This is Priya.”
“Let her sit, Matty,” Em says. She makes space for Priya on the towel between us. As usual, Priya sits with her legs straight in front of her, hands in her lap. “So where are you from?”
“She’s just visiting,” I say quickly.
“From where?” Em asks again.
Priya opens her mouth to answer, but I jump in again. “Not far.”
She looks at me sharply. “That isn’t true. I come from very far away.”
“Philadelphia!” Brian shouts. When his sister sighs, he puts his hands on his hips. “What? Philly’s far away.”
“You moron. She means, like, another state.”
“Very far,” Priya says.
“Um—” I say, but am instantly interrupted.
“Oh, another country then.” Emily turns to Priya and acts all know-it-all. “Are you from India?”
Priya shakes her head.
“Pakistan?”
No again.
“Egypt?”
“Emily—”
Emily shuts me up with a raised hand. “Somalia?”
“Somalia? Jesus, Emily, no.”
Priya herself interrupts us. “I’m from a planet—”
“Hey, how was Gran’s?” I butt in. “You’re back early.”
“Near Gliese 581c,” she finishes.
“Did you say—” Brian starts, but I cut him off too.
“Did Gran die or something?” I blurt out, earning me scowls from both of my friends.
“What?” Brian shakes his head. “Not cool, man, not cool.”
Emily’s stare burns a hole into me. She turns away, but this isn’t the end. She’s got a mystery to solve. The mystery of Priya.
Just then, the sweet scent of weed mixes with the smell of coconut suntan lotion. Brian holds a joint out to me but I wave my hand, no thanks. “Dude, did you check out that suit on Miranda? Yasssssss,” he drawls. He’s already forgotten that Priya thinks she’s an alien space traveler. Thank god for his short attention span.
“Brian, hey, asshat? There’re girls here.” His sister punches him in the shoulder. “You wanna put it back in your shorts?”
“Whatever,” Brian responds, exhaling a thin trail of smoke. “Like you’re not checking out Eric.”
Emily blushes. “I’m not.”
“Oh my god, you so are.”
“Screw you, Toad.”
Brian jerks his thumb at his sister. “This is the brain trust going to Penn State?”
“Matthew, what are they doing?” Priya asks, seemingly oblivious, thank god. She points a long arm at a group of kids racing to the raft.
“They’re swimming,” I say.
“Don’t you know how to swim?” Em asks.
“Not everyone learned to swim when they were three, overachiever,” her brother says.
“My god, stop arguing,” I say. “Come on, Priya, let’s go in the water.”
I hold my hand to her and help her up. I recognize the wobble in her legs, the imminent buckling of her knees, and grab onto her waist before she can tumble—and before Brian and Em notice.
Brian doesn’t.
Em does.
“She just said she doesn’t know how to swim,” Emily protests.
“Leave her alone,” her brother mumbles as he pinches out the joint and tucks it into an Altoids tin.
“She didn’t know the word, but she knows,” I say. Please, God or Universe or whatever, let me be right about this. For once, let me be right.
“Where are you going?” I hear Emily ask Brian.
“None of your business” is Brian’s mature retort.
“Better not be the lifeguard tower.”
“Shut up, Em.”
I take Priya by the hand and walk with her to the edge of the water.
Does she know how to swim? She has to know, right? I mean, everyone knows how to swim.
Her eyes meet mine. “I know how to swim,” she says.
“Okay, but you’re not wearing a bathing suit,” I remind her. “You might not want to go too far.”
We wade into the lake together and I feel Priya’s hand grip mine tighter as the water laps at our feet. She jumps with each step.
“It’s cold,” she says.
But it’s not. It’s actually warm. Unusually warm.
Even so, she shivers and clings to me. I stand behind her and wrap my arms around her, keeping her warm, keeping her stable. There is barely any wind, but I worry that the slightest wave will knock her over.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Brian approach the lifeguard tower. I can only imagine what he’s saying to her, trying to get her attention:
Oh hey, Miranda, fancy meeting you here.
“This is beautiful,” Priya says into my neck as she leans back into me. “I will miss this when I leave.”
“No lakes where you’re from?”
I feel her head shake. “Our water long ago stopped being entertainment. We experienced a drought that made us severely restrict water usage.”
“Oh yeah, well, that happens.” What does she mean? Where is she from? California, maybe? They’ve had a drought there for years. I wish she would just tell me the truth. Brian may not care, but Emily’s the pit bull of the family. She won’t let it go and she’ll keep on me until she has an answer.
The sun on my shoulders heats up my T-shirt. I gotta take it off before I sweat to death. “I’m going to put this back on the sand, okay? I’ll be right back.”
I turn from her, stripping my shirt off over my head, and—
“What’s wrong with her?” Emily asks me as soon as I turn toward the shore. She’s standing on her towel, hands on her hips, surveying the lake like a sentry.
I brush past her, shoulder to shoulder, and go to my own towel. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Matty, she’s . . . different.”
I snort. “Yeah, I know. That’s what I like about her.” I kneel on the towel and reach for the tote bag.
Emily stands over me, hovering behind my back, watching my every move, dissecting it.
“Matty.”
“What.”
“I mean, she’s different, like, different. Like, wrong—”
I whip around and look up at Em. “There’s nothing wrong with her. She’s smart and she’s sweet and she’s interested in a lot of the same things I’m interested in.”
Em holds my gaze. “She’s super skinny.”
I feel my eyes roll. “Oh, it’s her weight. You’re jealous.”
“What? No!”
“Please, Em, I know what you’re doing. It’s like, fat-shaming or whatever.” I wave a hand at her.
“I’m not jealous of her weight, for god’s sake. You”—she punctuates the air with a finger—“are an idiot.”
“Whatever. I’m an idiot.” I start to go back to the lake but Emily stops me.
“If you can get past your ego for one second and the fact that I turned you down—”
“I don’t care.”
“And actually listen to what I’m saying—”
“What.”
“Your girlfriend—”
“Not my girlfriend.”
“—is like, really skinny. She doesn’t look natural.”
I shrug. “So, maybe she diets a lot.”
“Or maybe she’s sick. Or anorexic or something.”
“Nope. I’ve seen her eat massive quantities of pizza. She loves pizza.”
“Okay, bulimic then. She’s sticking her finger down her throat when you’re not looking.”
Okay, that’s gross. Girls are gross. “No, she’s not.”
“How do you know?”
“How do you know?”
“Hey, somebody help her!” We hear a kid behind us call out. Emily and I both turn and see Priya far away from shore, head barely above the water, hands waving, eyes bobbing, playing peekaboo with us. Definitely not swimming, not even kicking her legs in a doggy paddle.
“Hey!” I shout. “Priya, stop!”
“Miranda!” Emily yells at the lifeguard tower. “Eric!”
But Eric isn’t there and Miranda is busy—with Brian, who is splashing in the water in front of her, feigning distress. “Brian, what the—”
When I turn, Emily is gone. In the time it takes me to look from the empty tower to Priya, Em is already in the lake, swimming toward the raft, her long arms pulling her through the water in fast, smooth strokes.
I feel panic constrict my throat and my stomach and I can’t breathe, let alone shout for help. I hurl myself into the lake, flailing my arms and kicking my feet.
The sounds of the shore—the kids playing, the parents nagging, the lifeguard whistle blowing—become dulled background noise as I focus on Emily and Priya. It’s as if I’m staring down a tunnel, and everything around me goes into dark, soft focus.
Ahead of me, Em’s at Priya’s side. She flips Priya upside down so she floats on her back, then scoots underneath. Hooking her arms underneath Priya’s armpits, she swims backward, her powerful legs kicking and propelling them both to the shore. Emily is so much shorter than Priya, yet in the water, it’s as if her body has elongated to ten feet, her arms like muscular tendrils around Priya’s slender frame.
As they pass me, I hold on to Priya’s legs and help speed Emily to shore. Together we lift her out of the lake and lower her gently to the sand, just out of the water’s reach.
Miranda and Eric, the lifeguards who weren’t guarding anyone’s lives, suddenly appear out of the crowd. They quickly swoop in and edge Emily and me aside. Our eyes meet and I see the exhilaration in Emily’s face, the satisfaction that she helped someone—we helped someone.
“Get back, everyone, back, back!” Eric commands the onlookers. I hold my ground, refusing to give up my spot in the sand. I need to make sure nothing happens, that she doesn’t . . .
Oh my god. Please don’t die.
Miranda does all the stuff she was taught in lifeguard class: she checks Priya’s airways, listens to her breath with her head tilted sideways, feels for a pulse. Priya’s chest very slowly rises and falls, her breath hiccupping a few times before becoming steady, if shallow. Miranda nods curtly but is obviously relieved. No one’s dying on her watch. Not today, at least.
“She’ll be fine,” she says to the group of strangers. They sigh and applaud, belatedly. Eric and Miranda acknowledge the kudos even as they carefully move Priya from the sand to a blanket in the shade.
But everyone should be cheering for Emily’s bravery, not these two clowns in Cheez-It suits. They didn’t do anything remarkable. I search the onlookers for Emily, to thank her myself, but she’s gone, faded into the crowd.
I hurry to Priya’s side and kneel at the blanket. She’s as still as if she were sleeping. I wipe water off her chin and eyes with the edge of a towel, careful not to get sand in them. Her long black lashes sparkle in the sunlight filtering through the leaves above. The chain around her neck threatens to strangle her; I carefully adjust the charm.
I call her name gently.
Her eyes flutter open and she looks panicked at first, then sees me. I feel her hand reach for mine. I squeeze back and don’t let go.
“You said you could swim.”
“I can,” she says.
“No, you can’t.”
Her eyebrows knit. “I should be able to. I have the collected knowledge of thousands of people.” She tries to sit up and coughs a couple of times, spitting up some of the brackish water she swallowed and wiping it away with the back of her hand. “I don’t understand why I was unable to access that data.” She appears truly perplexed. “I have done this before.”
“You’ve gone swimming before?”
“No, but something similar. Back on my planet.”
As she says this, I feel someone hovering behind me. I glance over my shoulder and see Emily. She holds a bottle of water with a straw in it.
She heard. Every word.
“Um, for, uh . . . her. She should take slow sips,” she says. Then addressing Priya directly, she adds, “Don’t gulp it down, okay?”
Priya takes the water and nods. “Thank you. You saved me.”
Emily looks away, embarrassed. “Oh, um, yeah, okay.” Her gaze meets mine. “Matty, can I talk to you? Over there?” She jerks her head toward the water.
I follow Em to the edge of the lake, far enough away that Priya can’t hear us but not so far that I can’t keep an eye on her. I don’t want to let her out of my sight.
“What’s going on?” Emily’s tone is blunt.
“You asked me that already. I told you. She’s visiting from out of town.”
“Way out of town, to hear her talk.” Em crosses her arms over her chest. “Is she, like, slow or something?”
“Slow? What are you—”
“Is she an escaped mental patient?”
“N-noooo?” I answer less quickly. Emily notices my split-second hesitation and seizes upon it.
“Have you checked her ID?”
“Why would I—”
“Have you checked her phone?”
“She doesn’t have one.”
“Everyone has a phone.”
“She doesn’t.”
“Well, that’s not normal, either.”
“Just because she doesn’t have a phone—”
“And she thinks she’s from another planet.”
“—doesn’t mean she has mental issues. She’s sweet and kind and, you know, totally harmless, so what’s the big fucking deal?”
Emily takes me by the shoulders. Her hands are cool, her skin moist. “Matty, she’s wearing a white wig on top of her hair.”
“Duh. I know that.”
“Yeah, okay, but—”
“Girls wear wigs, Em. It’s not a sign of mental instability.”
We both look over at Priya sitting on the blanket. As usual, her legs are stretched out in front of her, two long sticks under a wilted tutu. She doesn’t see us watching her as she struggles to aim her mouth around the straw.
I hear Emily’s voice as I watch Priya. “Look, Matty . . . when I was in the water with her, I noticed the wig slip off. And . . .” Em pauses.
“And . . . go on.”
“She has a scar, like, a really crazy scar here.” Em draws a finger from the side of her head down to the base of her hairline in the shape of a C.
“So?” I shrug her off even though, yeah, of course it’s weird and of course I care. A scar like that could mean a lot of things. However, none of those things are any of Emily’s business.
“She’s covering something up.”
“If you had a scar like that, you’d cover it up too.”
Em shakes her own ponytail; wet like a rag, it smacks against her back and neck. “That’s not what I mean. Maybe you should talk to your mom about her. She’s a nurse. She might know something that—”
“I don’t need to talk to my mother. I don’t need to talk to anyone.”
I see Brian shuffling over to Priya, dropping his butt onto the towel next to her. He holds a joint out to her. I wonder if I should intervene. Do they have pot on her planet?
Did I just . . . ?
“Maybe she’s from another country, all right? Maybe English isn’t her first language.”
“Fine.” She pounces. “What is?”
“I have no idea, Em.” And that is the absolute truth. “But look, she’s not going to be here for very long and I really want to hang out with her.” I keep my gaze steady on Em until she nods that she gets it.
“Yeah, sure. I just think maybe you should allow for the idea that while hanging out with her and pretending everything’s okay is good for you—it might not be good for her.”
There is a long pause after she says this, and I feel like something more is coming, there’s something more she wants to say, but she doesn’t. “We cool?”
Em sighs heavily. “Whatever, dipshit.”
I start to walk away and then stop. “Thanks for . . . you know.” I know she knows what I mean: Thanks for saving Priya’s life.
“Yeah, yeah. Just don’t let her smoke any of that crap Brian’s got.”
“No good?” Em rarely smokes, but she knows quality.
She shakes her head. “It smells like a pizza.”
“Huh. She might like that, actually.”
I get to Priya just as Brian is showing her how to inhale.
“She doesn’t smoke,” I say, pushing the joint away from her. “And that’s not even good shit. Em says it’s, like, oregano or something.”
Brian brings the burning end of the joint right up to his eye. “What?” He holds it up to me. “Try it yourself.”
“No. And by the way, fuck you,” I tell him. I start to gather our stuff and shove it all in the canvas tote.
“What? Fuck me? Why?”
“You were talking to Miranda, distracting her from watching the lake. Priya could have drowned.”
My friend’s mouth opens and closes. “But . . . but . . . Em was there.”
“What if she wasn’t?”
“But she was.”
I help Priya up and tug her along with me. If Toad says anything of substance after that—which is doubtful—I don’t hear it.