Page 10 of The Last Five Yards

When they are done floating, they push to deeper water again. This time it feels like a choice, not a dare. Reese counts off on her fingers like a little kid. One. Two. Three. They sink and rise together. Maren matches Reese’s pace without making it obvious. She keeps her breath slow and her eyes soft. She talks about how to sight on a fixed point on the shore rather than on the buoy. She talks about how to trust the lake to hold you and not to fight the up and down with panic.

They touch the nearest buoy together. Reese gives it a shove that sends it wobbling. She grins wider now, less bravado in it, more light. “Thank you,” she says, her voice almost a whisper.

“For what?

“For not making it a thing when it was a thing,” Reese says. “For not calling me out.”

“I wouldn’t do that. Believe it or not, I get freaked out over weird things too.” Maren states with plain honesty.

Reese flicks water at her, then flinches when a scrap of a weed touches her ankle. “Ugh! Nature is rude.”

Coach corrals everyone in for one last team drill before food. They form a human buoy chain holding hands, perpendicular to the shore. The line wobbles and rights itself and wobbles again, a clumsy centipede in neon suits. Someone starts a chant that is not quite in rhythm. Laughter keeps breaking it apart. Maren feels the tug and give of the chain and thinks about the small ways that balance will always return.

They stay in the water until the cold begins to draw their energy down to a thin thread. Coach Hensley calls them in with a whistle that snaps clean through the air. The team groans, relieved, and disappointed all at once. There is towel chaos. There is the sting of air on wet skin. There are sandwiches that taste like dry cardboard and something sweet somebody baked the night before. A parent volunteer sets up the fire ring with practiced grace. Coach checks his watch and raises his voice. “About an hour and a half left of s’mores and stories, then we police our trash and pack the vans. We will be out of the lot before curfew.”

Reese wraps herself in a towel that doesn’t match her normal bright and pink themes. It is orange with faded suns that have lost their faces. She sits on the sand and tips her head forward so the bun collapses. Wet hair spills over her shoulders in thick ropes. She combs it with her fingers and grimaces at the knots.

Maren sits beside her. Her own hair lies in obedient lines. She watches some ants work on a crumb next to her. They carry it under a leaf with single-minded attention. She gets that.

“Did you swim laps in your head when you were benched?” Reese asks around a bite of her sandwich.

Maren stares at the ant leaf. “Yes.”

“Did it help?”

“No,” Maren says. She picks a long grass blade and knots it. “It hurt. It was like having an itch I could not reach. My brain ran the math without my body following.”

Reese rests her chin on her news and studies her. “You can just say it sucked.”

“It sucked,” Maren says. The word feels good. Simple. True.

“Good.” Reese leans over until her shoulder presses against Maren’s. Warmth soaks through the thin layer of cold still left on their skin. “Then we are even. The lake got me today. The bench got you. We put a stone on each side of the scale. Balanced.”

“I don’t want to be even because of bad things,” Maren says.

“Me neither,” Reese says. “I want to be even because we both just keep showing up.”

Maren lets that settle. The idea fits. She nods.

The day thins out in the gentle way they always do at the beach. A few of the younger swimmers nap wrapped up in hoodies. Someone starts a game with a frisbee that seems determined to escape. Coach Hensley talks to the parents who have shown up to help wrangle the team about coals in the fire, hot spots, and the best way to trick damp wood into remembering it wants to burn.

When the sun slides down, the team drifts toward the fire ring. The logs crackle in small, eager snaps. Smoke climbs and then makes complex decisions in the wind. The light turns into something that lives, warm on the faces, wrists, and cheeks, bright on the curve of the smile, soft in the hollow of a collarbone.

Reese holds a stick with a marshmallow that bubbles too fast. She rotated it with solemn concentration. “The trick,” she says, very serious, “is to make it so ugly you feel sorry for it. Then it tastes perfect.”

“That is not a trick; that is a crime,” Maren says. She holds her higher, rotating the stick slowly, patient for the golden brown color to appear. She can be patient when there is a result she can see, golden crust forming, soft middle waiting.

“Watch and learn,” Reese says. Her marshmallow catches fire. She yelps and shakes the stick back and forth till the flame goes out. The surface turns into charcoal lace. She holds the blackened orb like a jewel. “Exhibit A. Disaster and delicious.” She pops the marshmallow into her mouth.

Maren laughs. It feels easier now. Like she can finally relax. She sandwiches her perfect golden mallow between chocolate and graham crackers and bites. The sugar rush is immediate. The hot middle sticks to the back of her teeth. She licks it away as she watches the smoke curl into the kind of darkness that pushes the lake up into a wide, invisible presence.

Nicole tells a scary story that has more plot holes than plot. The freshmen shriek at the wrong parts. Reese pretends to be bored but then jumps when a stick cracks behind them. She scoots closer to Maren until their elbows touch. The fire paints both their knees in warm orange. The stars come out in confident points. A cool breeze moves across the top of the dune grass like a hand smoothing a dog’s fur the wrong way and then right again.

“Tomorrow,” Reese says, quiet, like she is speaking to the fire, not Maren. “I will go to the buoy. No sharks. No logs. Just me.”

“You do not have to prove anything,” Maren says.

“I know,” Reese says. “I want to do it anyway.”