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“You’re so mean,” Celie said.

“All I’m doing is saying what she said. So if anyone is mean, it’s her. Besides, you don’t know how to swim and the bottom can be uneven, it gets deep fast, and the wake from motorboats could knock you over. Stop asking.”

“You’re not in charge of me!” Celie shouted.

“Actually, I am. And if you listened, you would have heard that, too. Now move over there and don’t be so loud. I’m reading, and this is my vacation too.” It didn’t feel like it. More like I was Celie’s nanny, a nanny that got bossed around by the little tyrant. And a nanny who felt like an orphan. I wasn’t as pretty as Celie, I wasn’t as clever, I wasn’t as outgoing. It was clear to me, I wasn’t as loved.

I didn’t understand how a mother could love one child so much and be annoyed all day every day by her other daughter. But it made my heart hurt when I thought about it, so I tried not to. I tried to be like the people I read about in books. People who had bad things happen to them and were still given happy endings.

Celie grabbed her Barbies and carried them to the end of the bench, right near the steps. She came back and scooped up the loose doll clothes and the carry bag for her Barbies. “Don’t talk to me anymore. I don’t like you.”

I moved the book higher so I couldn’t see her. The story was getting really good, and after a while, the sound of people laughing on the beach, shrieking at the cold water, and moving around in colorful bathing suits all faded as if I’d walked into another room and closed the door behind me.

The sun was getting really hot. I looked up from my book to see if the sun’s movement had created more shade near the overhang of the roof. The first thing I noticed was that Celie’s Barbies were gone. So was Celie.

I slapped my book face down with the pages open onto the wood bench. I stood. “Celie! Where are you?”

She didn’t answer. I thought about going into the house to see if she’d also gotten too hot and had moved inside. But I had a sick feeling that wasn’t it. As the events happening in the story I was reading faded out of reality, I remembered Celie whining that she wanted to take the dolls swimming. I remembered the other woman and her child on the beach.

I turned toward the water, scanning the beach, trying to remember what she was wearing. I saw the woman and her child. The girl was sitting on their blanket now, the dolls put away. She was eating a Fudgsicle.

Running down the steps, I started shouting. “Hey! Hey!” I stopped at the edge of their blanket. “Have you seen a little girl with blonde hair? Carrying some Barbies, maybe?”

“She took them into the lake.” The woman glanced at me, smiled, then handed a napkin to her daughter. “It’s starting to drip. Use this.”

I ran to the edge of the lake, looking at heads bobbing in the water, arms waving, floatie toys spinning in the spray of kids kicking and splashing. And there she was. My sister.

I screamed, shriek after shriek, hardly noticing how all the other sounds faded, then stopped. Were my screams getting louder, or did they just sound that way because everyone else had gone silent?

How could this happen?! All these people on the beach, all these people looking at the water, but there she was, floating with her face looking at the bottom. Her hair swirled around her head like ribbons. Everyone was looking at the water, but no one was looking at Celie, because she wasn’t theirs. They could only see the people who belonged with them, the people they recognized. Everyone else was just part of the landscape.

The dolls floated beside my sister’s body, enjoying their swim, I guess. But the dolls were face up, looking at the sky, breathing clean, fresh mountain air.

I was dead too. I knew that, as I looked at her floating, my feet stuck to the sand as if it were quicksand and I was being slowly pulled into the earth, straight toward hell where I would be punished forever.

Inside my chest, I felt a horrible scream building, trying to come out, filled with crushing guilt and regret and unbearable terror. But before it could, my mother was running across the sand. Was it her connection to Celie, the bond she was always going on about, that woke her and sent her racing downstairs to find her daughters missing from the deck? Although it was only one daughter she was worried about.

My mother was screaming for me. A sound like a wild animal, its foot caught in a trap with sharp metal teeth. She splashed into the water, barefoot but still dressed in the dark pink sundress she’d worn to lunch. I stood there, not knowing what I was supposed to do, as I watched the water soak her clothes, then her hair when she plunged in all the way, taking a few short strokes to reach Celie.

She lifted Celie in her arms, sobbing and screaming words I didn’t want to hear.

When she was out of the water and Celie was lying on the woman’s blanket, covered with a towel, the paramedics and other officials came. Everyone on the beach was watching us.

Then the questions started. Not so much from the officials, but my mother. She’d stopped screaming, now. Her face was wet with tears, but underneath, her skin looked hard, as if her features had frozen into a permanent mask of grief and hatred.

“You left her alone!” She grabbed my shoulders, shaking me, forcing my head to snap back.

“I didn’t. I was right there, but she snuck away.”

“You were supposed to have your eyes on her!” She stabbed her finger just below my left eye. “I told you to watch her! You’re a murderer, Samantha. Do you know that? It’s your fault my beautiful, sweet, precious little girl is dead!” She ended on a wail that sounded like the siren on the ambulance that had just pulled away on the access road. As it left, there was no siren. Just a quiet crunch of tires on gravel.

After a while, when the officials had all their information, and my mother had run out of ways to berate and accuse me, when there were no other cruel words she could stab me with, she and my father went into the condo. They didn’t ask if I was coming. I wondered what would happen to me.

I stood there, looking at the water, empty of people now. I felt a hand on the top of my head, warm and gentle. “You’ll be okay, sweetheart. It seems terrible now, but you’ll be okay. I promise. A girl your age shouldn’t be given that responsibility. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

I looked up, feeling the hand slide off my scalp. The woman with the girl my age, chocolate ringing her lips, stood beside me.

“Can I give you a hug?” She folded her arms around me, pulling me close. “I promise, someday, you’ll be okay.” She stroked my hair and held me for a long time. I heard the water lapping at the shore. Her daughter stood silently beside her. Finally, she released me. “It wasn’t your fault, honey. You have to know that. This was not your fault. You’re just a little girl.” She smiled and I felt as if my whole heart was flooded with warm, melting butter.