Dark Water - Laura McNeal [18]
I heard the swish of a car on the road. The breeze was soft and sweet-smelling, neither too hot nor too cold. I took out my burrito and though I’m not proud of it, I ate with my usual gusto. The sauce dripped like it always did into the folds of my hands, and like always I didn’t have quite enough napkins to get clean. I sucked down in a few gulps the cold, sweet horchata. It was like if I finished the food, I could go back and nothing bad would happen. No one would know.
But I finished, and we were still there. My shoes sank into white sand by the khaki water. I balled up the foil wrapping and stuffed it into the paper bag, which I then shoved into my backpack. I tried walking in the direction of the current, and for a minute the glittery water had its old charm. Nubby tadpoles flitted away from my shadow and bright green moss trailed like hair from a piece of driftwood, but when I tried to follow the river around the next curve, I could go barely fifty yards. There was no trail on this side, just reeds and bleached piles of sand and trash—more trash than I’d ever seen on what I considered the real river. The reeds trapped cups, plastic bottles, broken glass, McDonald’s wrappers, straws, beer cans, bottle caps, and cigarette stubs. A diaper had been folded into a bundle and left on a shoal like artificial pastry. It disgusted me enough to make me walk back to where Hickey and Greenie were holding hands.
“So what’s up with your eyes?” Hickey asked, looking right into them. I was aware this was how I’d framed the question about his name a few minutes ago, so I shouldn’t have been offended, but I was.
“I have magic powers,” I said.
“Really? What kind?” He flipped his head the way you have to if your bangs are always in your eyes.
“One eye’s normal,” I said. “It sees the present. The other eye sees the future.”
“Cool,” he said, humoring me. He took a drink of beer, leaned back on the sand, and asked, “Which is which?”
“Blue sees you here, brown sees where you’re going to wind up.”
He didn’t look amused anymore. He could tell I was being snotty.
“In case you’re wondering what you see in the background of that future shot,” he said, “the yacht called I Told You So is mine.”
Hickey had clearly been spending too much time reading the poster in Mr. Fresno’s room that showed the rewards of a higher education as a mansion with a Ferrari parked out front.
“Good,” I said. “I think I’ll take a little walk on the other trail if you guys don’t mind. The river’s nicer over there.”
“Don’t you want to fish?” Greenie asked, a little too incredulously, I thought, considering we’d never, ever gone fishing together. “Hickey has a net in the car!”
“Nah, I feel like walking,” I said.
“Suit yourself,” Greenie said, her sunglasses obscuring her eyes.
I darted back up the bank, through the sand, and across the road, past Hickey’s car, past the tire tracks left behind when the horse trailer was pulled away, over the yellow stile thingy, and along the narrow, shadowy, unlittered path, which on this side was overhung with oak and willow and white-limbed sycamore. Tiny flowers bobbed slightly in the breeze. Dragonflies the color of blood hovered and then zoomed away in the direction of water. I could hear the river now like a giant draining bathtub. The farther I went from Greenie and her strange new boyfriend, the better I felt, so I ran for a while. I ran until the path took a sharp turn up into some boulders and I picked my way, goatlike, to the next part of the trail, glad that I had no textbooks in my backpack to weigh me down. Huge trees lay where they had fallen, and a lone duck floated on the water.
I reached the place where I normally left the shady