The Twilight Swimmer (2 page)

She couldn’t quite admit it to herself, but she always brought the second cigarette for Jenny. For her sister. She was one year older than Brandi and better than Brndi in every way. So much smarter. Filled with so much more kindness and thoughtfulness. Everything Brandi wanted to be, until… It was stupid, to bring the cigarette. Jenny wouldn’t have touched it even if she
were
here. She’d have smiled at Brandi in that way she had, that way of making her opinion perfectly clear, and perfectly persuasive, without speaking a single word. Perfectly clear. Perfectly persuasive. Perfect.

That was Jenny.

That
was
Jenny. Not anymore. Jenny was gone.

And this is where it happened. At least, this is where it
ended
. With her body lying on the rocky beach at dawn, her jeans and sweater soaked with seawater and clinging to her body like a second skin. She was lying on her back when the fishermen found her, stretched out, her hands folded on her stomach as if she was only sleeping. The fishermen claimed she still had color in her skin. They tried to put air back in her lungs. But no. She would not breathe. They called the police to report the body. The man who answered was the sheriff, Conrad Vine.

Brandi’s father.

Brandi knew that Conrad would have been silent when he heard the news. He wouldn’t have cried out, or yelled. He wouldn’t have slammed the phone down angrily. He wouldn’t even have asked questions to try to convince himself that it wasn’t Jenny. He would have known, the second he heard that a girl with auburn hair had been found on the beach, that it could only be Jenny.

Conrad had lovingly dubbed his daughter the
twilight swimmer
.

For years, a sudden fever would overtake Jenny. When the fever struck, she would need the water. It was a compulsion, and no amount of punishment or pleading from Conrad or Sherri could persuade her to be more sensible. On those nights when the fever took her, Jenny always found a way to swim. She wouldn’t bother changing into her bathing suit. She wouldn’t even bother undressing. She would wade into any body of water she could find, fully clothed, and slip below the surface. Bath water warm or icy cold, it didn’t matter. She needed to swim. She would swim at any cost.

And now it had cost her life.

Conrad rarely spoke of the day he got the call, but Brandi had pieced together the details into something like the truth.

Jenny’s body was lying on a steel table under cold fluorescent tube lights, her clothing cut away and discarded so the coroner could examine her body, her hair drying shapelessly in the refrigerated air, clinging to her bare shoulders and neck. The medical examiners covered her nakedness when Conrad came in the room to identify her. But he knew she was exposed and vulnerable underneath the sheet. That had surely horrified him most of all – the casual violation of his daughter’s modesty.

Conrad came home and sat in his police cruiser in the driveway. It was still summer, and the kids were home. He decided to tell Sherri first. He
had
to tell Sherri first. Jenny heard her mother’s screams from within the confines of the room she shared with Jenny. She knew immediately what the screams meant.

The family gathered in the front room. Sheri looked like a homeless woman, despite her immaculate clothes and hair. Despite the rings that always decorated her slender fingers and the silver necklace that dangled at her neck. She demanded an answer to a question that could not be answered: What could possess a perfectly sensible girl to go swimming at night?

It had to be the
medication
she was on. The pills the doctors gave her, to keep Jenny’s moods from swinging so violently. They would center Jenny, the doctors had promised. They would keep her level and steady. It was the only way to treat her condition, to keep her from racing toward the poles of human emotion. Sherri had convinced Conrad that the doctors knew best. And Conrad had reluctantly agreed. And Jenny started taking the pills.

And now she was dead. And Sheri was furious.

“She started swimming long before the medication,” Conrad insisted, gently. But Sherri wouldn’t listen to him. She had decided, she was
certain
, that the pills were to blame. They had made her Jenny worse, not better. They had made her senses dull, too dull to realize the water was too cold or the current too strong. Too dull to realize her body was too tired from swimming and she needed to go to shore.

The cigarette was making Brandi nauseous. She stubbed it out on the edge of Flat Rock. It slipped from her fingers and landed in the surf below. A wave washed over the cigarette and swept it out toward the open ocean.

As Brandi made her way from Flat Rock to her beached kayak, wiping angry tears from her eyes, she did not sense that another pair of eyes was watching her. Not from the woods behind the beach, but from the water. From just below the surface.

Gray eyes.

It was nearly midnight when Brandi climbed the oak tree in the back yard, hoisted herself onto the roof, and scooted toward her bedroom window. She could hear that the music was still playing on her stereo. Brandi sighed with relief. Her parents hadn’t come in to check on her.

“Careful,” said her father from the corner of the room. He was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall.

Brandi was badly startled to hear his voice. She had to grab the window frame to keep from falling backward and tumbling off the roof. “How can I be careful when you scare the crap out of me?”

“I didn’t mean to scare the… the
crap
out of you. Just get in here, would you. And turn off this music. It’s terrible.” Conrad pushed his weight up the wall and rubbed his back where it had gone sore. While Brandi shut the window behind her, he crossed the room and turned off the music himself. “I should punish you twice. Once for whatever I’ve been listening to for the past two hours.”

Brandi smiled despite herself and tossed her sweatshirt into the closet. “Where’s your wife?”

“Your
mother
is asleep. I told you how much it would hurt her if she overheard you say smart-alecky things like that, didn’t I?” Conrad sat down on the end of Brandi’s bed, his considerable heft causing the springs to squeal in protest. He wasn’t overweight, but he was a thickly built man, at least a foot taller than his daughter. She sat beside him, a few feet between them. “Cold out there?” asked Conrad.

“Kind of. It’s nice.”

Conrad nodded, reaching for her hand. He shivered at the coolness of her skin. “Too cold for me. I’m nearly sixty, you know.”

Brandi laughed softly. Her father was nowhere near sixty. “Only sixty?” she asked. “You look old enough to be my grandfather.”

“I feel old enough to be
his
grandfather. So no more roof expeditions, please. If I have to chase you out there, the chances I survive with my dignity are pretty slim.” That was his attempt at chastising Brandi, the harshest criticism he could muster for his only remaining daughter. She knew he felt much more strongly about her nighttime adventures than he would ever say. But he couldn’t bear to be hard on her. “I saved the rest of your dinner if you’re hungry.”

“Thanks.”

“Only if you’re hungry.” He slid off the bed and gave her shoulder a squeeze, then dragged his feet across the room until he reached the door. As he slipped out, he looked back as if to say one more thing to his daughter, but only lifted the corners of his mouth in a melancholy smile and pulled the door shut behind him.

CHAPTER TWO

Conrad dropped Brandi off at the high school the next morning, in his police cruiser. This had been their morning routine for months, since shortly after Jenny’s death. At first, Brandi was mortified at being seen in public with a parent, so much worse since her parent was the man most likely to bust her classmates for smoking pot behind the Quick Mart. But she understood why it meant so much to her father to drive her. She learned to swallow her pride and accept it without complaint. An eye roll or two on bad days, but never a complaint.

She pulled her backpack into her lap and was reaching for her door handle when Conrad stopped her. “Brandywine?”

“Dad?”

Conrad tilted his head, as if deep in thought. “What do you want to do for your birthday this year?”

“I just had my birthday, dad. Two months ago.”

“I know, I know. Sweet sixteen. I was just thinking. You’ll be coming up on seventeen, almost an adult. I mean, you already are an adult as far as I’m concerned. Not a lot of birthdays left when you’ll let your family anywhere near you.”

“I have to go, Dad.” She reached for her door handle again.

“Brandi?”

She turned back to look at his eyes, which were soft and tired.

“I’ll see you after school.”

Her high school was small, no more than five hundred students. To see a classmate whose name she didn’t know would be an event. If you wanted to get lost, this wasn’t the place. She walked down the hall with her book bag slung over her shoulder, watching through her hair as face after face looked up to watch her pass.

In the first weeks after Jenny’s death, she saw expressions on the faces of other students that ranged from pity to something like fear, as if her grief was contagious. The other students might want to be sympathetic, and many of them were, but they didn’t want to catch what was ailing Brandi. Now the accepted period of grief after such a terrible loss had apparently expired. She was as likely to see a malicious grin or the mock quivering of a lower lip as a sympathetic nod. She had grieved too long, and she knew her classmates were sick of it.

Candace and Lacy were the only friends that had remained supportive of Brandi, no matter how much she brought down the mood of a room. Candace was too thin, afflicted with the same distaste for food that afflicted Brandi. Her reasons were different, though. In the seventh grade Billy de Witt had loudly and publicly accused her of “chair abuse” simply for sitting down. Candace hadn’t had a full meal since. Lacy, on the other hand, had picked up Candace’s slack. She happily ate Candace’s leftovers every lunch period, and if Candace muttered aloud that she was craving something particularly fatty or sweet or otherwise rich and unhealthy, Lacy made sure to eat that treat as soon as possible. For her, it was a type of perverse solidarity to indulge for Candace’s sake and displaying the consequences on her hips.

The girls were waiting for Brandi at her locker, huddled conspiratorially over Lacy’s phone. “You see those? Those are white chocolate chips.
Those
are macadamia nuts,” said Lacy.

“They look the same to me,” said Candace, her hand running the width of her eerily concave stomach. “It’s a small screen.”

“I know, but the color is different. See? Those are the macadamia nuts and those… hey Brandi.”

Brandi gently pushed Candace away from her locker so she could spin the lock. She swung the dented door open with a metallic yawn and tossed her book bag inside. Her friends watched her every move, equal parts fascinated and disturbed.

“Did you even study?” asked Candace.

“For the test?” said Brandi.

“Um, yes. The test. Which is huge. Which is potentially life-destroying if you don’t pass it,” said Candace with a grimace, her eyes darting to Lacy for confirmation that she had struck the appropriate panicked pitch. Lacy nodded eagerly. “You could have studied with us. You
should
have studied with us if you, you know, care about your future.”

“I was busy.”

“Busy!” Lacy laughed indignantly and leaned against the bank of lockers, her eyes falling once again to her phone and the photo of the cookies: white chocolate chips and macadamia nuts. “It’s obvious which is which, Candace. They’re a totally different color.”

“Okay, sorry. Drama,” said Candace.

The bell for first period rang. Candace and Lacy marched off to their classroom. Brandi dallied a few steps behind them, in no hurry at all.

Candace and Lacy slipped into desks at the front of the room, like they had for every class, every year, for as long as Brandi could remember. She used to sit right beside them, eager to shoot her hand up and answer questions before the teacher even asked them. She liked the smell of chalk dust in the air, and you couldn’t smell it unless you were up close.

Brandi no longer noticed the smell of the chalk. She slid past her friends, who were already bouncing anxiously in their seats, and found an empty seat in the back corner of the class.

Twenty minutes later, Brandi hadn’t even looked at the test. She was staring, instead, at the back of her hand. Counting vaguely blue veins. Imagining rivers of blood coursing underneath her skin. Red blood, blue veins. The contradiction had something to do with oxidation, she remembered. She was thinking of oxidation when Mr. Francisco appeared beside her desk, his arms crossed above his belly.

“Shall we have a conversation after this period?”

“About what?”

“About your unwillingness to participate in my class.”

“No thank you,” Brandi answered, and looked down at her hands again.