Part 7 (1/2)

So when Hannah captured me and my best friend Claire in the hall after our 18th- Century Wo us toward the wall, I already kneould be so sly She so to the coast? I got us a room”

Claire blinked so blankly her eyes looked like a doll's, and I think I coughed academically But I have to admit it My crotch went messy pretty much that instant

Listen, you probably think you wouldn't, but I' to the coast, raising her little trickster eyebrow and putting her hand right underneath your breast and against your first couple of ribs, going, I dare you, you'd go

Woo the See Vue Inn because of the thearden) The Crow's Nest (nautical) The Salish (Native American) Princess and the Pea (weirdly irl) The Cottage (you get the ”house” to yourself)

We had The Cottage

The little cottage sported a fireplace, so I said don't do anything without ot back, the door was open I went in The two of them were in bed with the covers pulled up just underneath their tits - Hannah's M&M S and Claire's glorious pendulous globes, s like Cheshi+re cats Cheshi+re cats who had licked pussy And in the ht - filled with toys

I immediately dropped the wood on the floor, shut the door, and stripped, launchingin the Princess and the Pea or the Salish or the Far East, they otten an earful Hours of woular lives didn't allow for such wild abandon Sometimes Hannah's fist upher epic tits Sometimes Hannah on her sto me a reach around - a skill she intuited So every hole licking everyher entire corpus shi+ver her head rock back her woone primal cum and shi+t stains and spit and tears I cas like soers in her ass and pussy, her body convulsing and falling off the bed,a dildo up herself while I buried my face in the clit of her She pulledand gagging but not not not stopping I don't kno

We ate each other we ate pickled herring we ate gruyere cheese We ate the animal out of each other's bodies we ate steak we ate chocolate tomen my chocolate We drank each other we drank all the beer we drank all the e peed outside We got high on skin and cuh on pot We came in waves we ran out and into the waves

I wanted to stay like that forever - outside of any ”relationshi+p” I had ever had and inside the wet of an unnarand spectator As full of alive as the ocean outside the door All the night it was difficult to tell whose body hose The woain Waves

I don't knoomen can't make the story do what they want

I don't

When we got back to our ordinary lives, Claire told me she was in love with me A sentiment I couldn't find in o back and try It was real, what she offered But kindness wasn't sonized

A Body in a Kayak WITH HANNAH, IT TOOK ME WEEKS TO FIGURE OUT IF she was attracted to me or just really pissed off - her jokes always see like a feood ones in the arh to leave a lu else, I could feel it

Once she bitlike I'd been hed so hard I cried

I never thought Hannah was hurting ainst a wall for fun hard enough to ache my shoulderblades I felt like I had pain in me that needed to come out More and more I wished for the force of her She'd drink ht in the graveyard next to the college and fuck on the stones of dead folks After she'd flip silver dollars in the air and we'd lay on our backs and watch bats dive at thes She'd let me

A few months in to our whatever it was she walked up to

The U of O pool is where I first ed - a slimy chlorine hell with Disney ducks painted on the walls We were two of three wo red, was 6' 2” with a mane of red hair all the way to her ass I had a hard tilass kayaks we learned kayaky things fros like the life-saving Eski to master an ender A pry stroke A put in A wet exit Hannah learned fast because she was a to in the water felt like home

Our last class in the pool our instructor put each of us one at a ti forward, and then he grabbed the back end and heaved so ent in nose first and hard The idea being that you'd immediately be upside down underwater and have to practice your Eski pitched over the edge and being upside down underwater I asked Jeff to do it again and again Harder, I'd say, and Jeff would shoveas I could - so my name

At the end of the five weeks our instructor took us all to the McKenzie River for our ”final” Little bit of speed in the alley, little bit of white water for exciteet incredibly high just before I e

On the forest trail to the put in I re annoyed withto putto secureto pick e down the forest trail to the put in as I stopped and turned to look at things and got the kayak tip caught in bushes andlook at nificent red converse sneakers a step at a ti around like su hats in the branches no wait those are BIRDS and stopping and laughing until she ca WHAT ARE YOU DOING, EXACTLY? My kayak in the dirt

Eye to eye, she saw it Christ Lidia, you are high What the fuck? You have to go in the water To ht on the cheek

Time stopped I'm pretty sure my pupils pinned I saw stars I liked it For a split second I felt alive I wanted her to do it again Harder But I didn't say anything

Hannah turned and picked up her kayak and left the trail in the trees, e We could see the rest of our class up ahead - some on the rocks, some in the water Still stunned into focus, at the point where the rocks met the water I saw a dead steelhead, half in water, half out Even dead, she was so The silver and black and blue sheen of her body, the white of her underbelly She smelled like ocean ”She” because of her split open belly, and the dried up jelly of sunburned eggs on the rocks I had a hard ti

No one seemed to notice ere a little late, they just dipped in and paddled around like spinning ducks in a big pool of sloater, their shi+ny bright colored hel red's hair briefly mesmerized me, as usual, and I reached rows and I got clear again In ent, Hannah ahead ofa little too interested in the black lines on the ends of ht blue tard hels stretching out the front of the kayak see left then slow right, around giant boulders that I knew had steelhead in the eddies The tree leaves hanging over the water quivered It sae I put my instructional paddle across the skirt over my lap and let my hands trail in the cold dark wet I closed my eyes I leaned my head back, up toward the sun, the skin on ht be touching bliss A surface I'd not felt in years Then I heardback at me: LIDIA PAY ATTENTION Too late, Hannah Too late

When we hit the ater, instead of the lane ere supposed to navigate, I went down the one that was out of our league Look at all the pretty white Like lace I sht Instead, I lifted oing LIDIA and Hannah's voice going LIDIA but I was laughing, so the power current took me into a spin and I traveled backwards for a bit and then down and sideways and then right over,down and down I didn't have to think about taking an enorulp of air first It's ins became oddly calm You'd think you wouldn't be able to see shi+t, but the water is icy and green colored clear up where ere on the McKenzie And the underwater blur isn't as pronounced as you ht think But it does er than bodies rose up dark black jade and shi+h layers of deep water I could see the botto by More than one steelhead shaped itself, their dark shadow selves doing that thing where they water - hover in the currentonly their tails The cold water made my temples pound My heart beat me up inout of air My lungs burned My hands went nu-I think a rock - scraped et yourself upright, dumbass My arms simply lifted to position until I could see the lines of my instructional paddle - exactly as they should be I definitely had the right grip to flip le with o

Upside down I saw the sun and sky at the surface th of current pulled my arms, rocked my head The upsidedowness of blood inThe cold wet of hterless void

It's possible it would be ih and tumble of the ater tunnel I pulled the skirt andto hold on to edelse on rocks and sawest breath ofwar me shi+ver

I saw the entire posse on the shore, so Then rabbed ave us a scare - you gave us a Goddao, Jeff,” I said, ”I can swih the hred ended up swinificently Hannah didn't say e She looked pale She fed e slices She looked extreh underwater Jeff acted cranky - both because I nearly lost the kayak and paddle but also because he watched me enter the ater and surrender It ht drown I wonder how often it happens If at all When we put our gear back onto the truck he pulledthe tight pitched nervous laugh of ato kill o the handlebars of the bike as a kid Letting go the steering wheel These are not questions I know the answers to

Later at home Hannah put her arhtly as whisper She tried to be wo My chest hurt I wanted to see stars

She put her hands on ently usher me inside I stopped and turned my head back to look at her - no, I said, harder I put my hand on the door She put her hand on ainst the wood Harder Let lips do what hands do Let hips

I wanted to be pushed through her door and shoved to the floor knees first, ainst the hardwood floor,next Her face close to my ear: you could have died

The truth is I was a wos All the tihters Dead fathers Dead steelhead I wanted her to somehow knock it out of me body to body, even if it killed me, which it never did

Maybe this is how the steelhead feels when it's caught - thrashi+ng itself against water, then land-a lifedeath fight How soet eaten and others just float away, too weak to survive All those body blows and wounds Or when they swi the life?

Inside her house, Hannah reen tea

But tenderness couldn't touch ht that week At a spot where hoodluot drunk and jumped in to shoot the rapids nobody cared that I was there Or that I was older than thehtwater, I didn't have to feel what people are supposed to feel There is a gloo peace there At the end of the rapids, there is a still

In water, like in books-you can leave your life

Writing AFTER MY MOTHER TRIED TO KILL HERSELF WITH THE sleeping pills, we shared a strange dreaether Every day after school and before swi room while she watched television soaps and drank She looked exactly like a zoiant vodka tonic she was drinking She dug into her purse She said ”Lidia” She handedcontest Out of the fucking blue

There was a prompt that required the story to include an important relationshi+p between an adult and a child

We talked for hours about what I could write about I would say ideas and my mother would sit on the couch with her tumbler and southern drawl and say, ”Yes That's a fine one” Or, ”And then what happens? Make it good, Belle”