Page 90 of So Thirsty

“Nope,” I say, turning my back to him.

“Do I have permission to follow you?”

“You’ve never needed it before,” I say, walking to the other side of the pond, toward a shipwreck. Another photo op, maybe. Or a big prop for kids to climb all over with their greasy turkey-leg fingers.

“Will you forgive me?” he asks.

“For what?”

“Following,” he says, walking a few steps behind me.

“You don’t care about forgiveness.”

“Yes, I do.”

We reach the ship. Its name is carved in the side in big, bold script. Unfortunately, appropriately, the Demeter.

There are stairs up to the deck. I climb them cautiously, afraid there’s ice hiding under the snow. I don’t want to fall in front of him again. I listen for his footsteps, but he doesn’t make any sound. He’s stealthy.

From the deck of the ship there’s a solid view of the fairgrounds. The kingdom. It’s a clear night, and the moon is out, the stars. They reflect off the frozen surface of the pond, make everything shimmer.

“Have you thought about what you want to do next?” he asks.

“Well, Naomi so generously shared our plan to go to Wilmington,” I say. “But I don’t know what after that. It’s hard to make plans when you don’t know if you’re a fugitive or not.”

“We took care of that for you,” he says.

“What about traffic cameras? What about other witnesses? What if the convenience-store camera footage uploaded to the cloud? It’s not so easy to get away with things these days.”

“I know,” he says. “Not like it used to be.”

I remember something he said to me in the conservatory. Something I’d initially dismissed as a joke. “Are you really five hundred years old?”

“Five hundred and ninety-two. But who’s counting?” he asks, leaning back against the mast of the ship.

He’s too old for me. Way too old. “How old were you when you were…?”

“When was I turned? Twenty-seven.”

He’s too young for me.

If this had to be my fate, couldn’t it have at least happened when I was twenty-seven? Before the mercilessness of collagen loss. I was insecure then, of course, but now I aspire to those insecurities.

“I thought it might bring me glory,” he says. “But we never know where the paths we take will lead us until we get there.”

“Didn’t lead you to glory?”

“It did. Until it didn’t.”

“You won’t go into detail?”

“Another night,” he says, staring out across the pond. “This one is too pretty to spoil with sad songs.”

“I love a sad song. All the best songs are sad.”

“No,” he says, coming toward me. “You can’t believe that.”

He takes my hand and spins me around. He’s dancing with me. We’re dancing, gliding across this fake ship deck. My clothes are soaked from the snow, and I can’t remember the last time I showered. I don’t know how I look, since I can’t check my reflection, but I can’t imagine it’s beautiful. It’s been a long time since I felt beautiful. Desirable.