“I think I see tracers!” Abby said, twinkling her fingers optimistically.
“You’re not seeing tracers,” Margaret sighed. “For the nine millionth time.”
Abby shrugged and went back to flipping through Margaret’s shoebox of tapes, trying to find something to play.
“Are you seriously doing homework?” Margaret barked at Glee, who was sitting against her bed and seriously doing homework.
“This is boring,” Glee said.
“What about the Proclaimers?” Abby asked.
“No!” Margaret snapped.
“That one song is good?” Abby ventured.
Margaret flopped back in her armchair.
“This blows,” she groaned. “Seriously, I’m not feeling anything. Do you guys want to get buzzed? Glee, stop doing your homework or I’m going to hurt you.”
Abby looked down the room. Gretchen was at the far end, staring out the window, putting braids in her hair, then taking them out. Abby went over and stood next to her.
“What’re you looking at?” she asked.
“Fireflies,” Gretchen said.
Abby looked down into the side yard. The only light in the bedroom came from a few candles, so it was dim enough to see out the windows and all the way across the yard to the black treeline.
“What fireflies?” she asked.
“They stopped,” Gretchen said.
“I’ve got a ouija board,” Margaret volunteered. “Y’all want to talk to Satan?”
“Did you know that Crest toothpaste is satanic?” Glee asked, looking up from her Trapper Keeper.
“Glee . . . ,” Margaret said.
“It is,” Glee said. “If you look at the side of the tube, there’s a picture of an old man with two horns and the hair in his beard makes an upside-down 666. And he’s got thirteen stars around him. Ouija boards are made by Parker Brothers, who make Trivial Pursuit.”
“So?” Margaret sighed.
“So,” Glee said. “If you want to communicate with Satan, you’d be better off brushing your teeth than doing ouija.”
“Thanks, nerd,” Margaret said.
The dim room got quiet. Gretchen hid a yawn in the crook of her elbow. Someone had to rescue the night. As usual, it was Abby.
“Let’s go skinny dipping,” she said.
“Fuck that,” Margaret said. “Too cold.”
“Just for a minute,” Abby said.
The idea of being outside sounded nice.
“I’ll go,” Gretchen said, pushing herself up off the window sill.
“Let me finish this trig,” Glee said.
Margaret walked over to Glee and clapped her notebook shut.
“Come on, spazmo,” she said. “Don’t chap my rooster.”
The four of them rumbled down the three flights of stairs, flipped on the yard lights, and spilled out into the backyard.
“Turn out the lights,” Gretchen said. “So we can see the stars.”
“Abby,” Margaret said, “the switch is by the back door.”
Abby tromped back up the stairs, found the switch behind the microwave, and the backyard went dark again. Instantly, the sky got lighter and the crickets got louder. A fat orange moon hung on the horizon, right above the treeline. The night felt like it was listening to them as Abby tiptoed back down the stairs.
“So pretty,” Gretchen was saying.
They watched the moon for a second, each of them willing herself to trip, but the moon just hung there being a moon. Then Gretchen pulled off her T-shirt.
“Bodacious ta-tas!” she shouted, and then she ran into the darkness headed for the dock, shedding clothes, reaching behind her back to unhook her bra, her long legs taking leaps that ate up the grass as she disappeared into the shadows.
“Hold up!” Margaret called. “It’s low tide.”
Gretchen didn’t slow down. They heard her feet thumping fast along the wooden dock.
“Gretchen!” Abby yelled. “Don’t jump!”
They ran after her, Margaret and Abby in the lead, stepping on Gretchen’s shorts and underwear in the grass. Ahead of them came the sound of a shallow splash.
“Shit,” Margaret said.
In the moonlight, they saw that the tide had gone out and the creek had been reduced to a tarnished ribbon of silver water that ran between two high mud banks. For a moment, Abby saw Gretchen hitting the pluff mud and shattering her kneecaps, or landing in three feet of water and slashing her face open on a hidden oyster bed.
“Gretchen?” Abby called.
No answer.
She and Margaret had reached the railing at the end of the dock. Glee trotted up behind them.
“Where’s Gretchen?” she asked.
“She jumped,” Abby said.
“Shit,” Glee said. “Is she okay?”
They looked up and down the creek but Gretchen was gone. They called her name a few times, their voices echoing across the water.
Abby bounced down the ramp to the floating dock.
“There’s alligators,” Margaret warned.
“Gretchen?” Abby called across the creek.
No answer. Abby realized she was going to have to go in.
“Do you have a flashlight?” she called up to Margaret. “We should put in the boat.”
“And run over her head?” Margaret said. “Genius.”
“Then, what?” Abby asked.
“She can hold her breath like a bone,” Margaret said. “Wait for her to come up.”
The water oozed around the floating dock, rocking it up and down.
“What if she hit her head?” Abby said.
“Are there really alligators?” Glee asked.
Something moved in the marsh grass and Abby jerked. Was it an alligator? What did an alligator sound like? Were alligators nocturnal? She didn’t know. Why didn’t school teach them anything useful?
Abby scanned the creek one more time, hoping to spot Gretchen because she really didn’t want to jump in the water. Across the creek, something moved again in the marsh grass. Abby strained her eyes and saw a shadow separate itself from the darkness and drag itself toward the water. She stared hard. A shape that wasn’t human slithered through the pluff mud, making a dead plop as it slipped into the black flowing river that led out to the sea. A sharp wind blew off the water. Summer was over. It was getting cold.
“Gretchen!” Glee shouted.
“Where?” Abby asked.
“Down there,” she said. “Where I’m pointing.”
“I can’t see you pointing in the dark.”
“To the left,” Glee said. “Where it curves.”
Abby looked downstream, using her hand to block out the bright orange moon. Far down, where the creek bent toward the ocean and disappeared around a curving bank of marsh grass, was a pale shape, long like Gretchen, picking its way through the pluff mud toward the treeline. Abby cupped her hands around her mouth.
“Gretchen!” she shouted.
The figure kept moving.
“How do we get down there?” Abby called up to Margaret.
She heard a lighter snap above her and smelled menthol.
“See,” Margaret said. “She’s fine.”
But Abby knew she wasn’t fine. Gretchen probably didn’t know how to get back to the house. She had zero sense of direction, and she was naked. She might have kept her sneakers on, but Abby had her clothes.
“Do you have a flashlight?” Abby asked.
“Spaz down,” Margaret said. “She’ll be back in five minutes.”
“I’m going to get her,” Abby said, heading up the ramp. “Give me one of those.”
Margaret slid a cigarette out of the pack and handed it over. Orange light flared in Abby’s face and then she was seeing spots and sucking menthol. She didn’t want to tell them, but her heart was hammering.
“I’ll be right back,” Abby said.
“Watch out for snakes,” Margaret called after her helpfully.
Abby picked her way through the long grass and plunged into the trees. Instantly, the woods cut her off from the house, from the stars, from the sky, and she was buried beneath dark branches. All she could hear were the cicadas shrieking, the sound of her own footsteps crunching leaves, and the occasional close-up whine of a mosquito in her ear. She had the feeling that something was listening to her walk. She moved as quietly as possible and stayed close to the river. To her left, the woods were pitch black.
By the time Abby emerged into the little clearing where the river bent, her Merit had burned down to the filter. She tossed the butt in the water, hoping it would bring Gretchen running out to tell her she was hurting Mother Nature.