Free Nothing But Blue by Lisa Jahn-Clough

friends.” He tied the bracelet in a double knot around my wrist. “So you’ll remember me.”
    As if I could ever forget.

N OW
    I don’t know when I fell asleep, but at some point night sounds stopped and morning sounds began.
    The dawn sky is a grayish purple at first, and then turns pink. The sun rises through the trees, and slowly everything brightens. I always thought a sunrise looked the same as a sunset, but it’s not the same at all. Dawn is soft and quiet, as though it wants to wake the world up gently. Whereas sunsets are so bright and electric they almost seem to scream,
Hey! Day is done! Go to bed!
It seems it should be the opposite.
    Shadow is still nuzzled under my shoulder. He fits there in a tight ball. His back legs are curled under him, and his chin rests on his front paws. It’s amazing how small he can make himself. His cheeks flutter a little bit as he breathes. Every once in a while he makes a small whinny, like a tiny horse. His eyes flicker back and forth under his lids. Perhaps he is dreaming of chasing squirrels or rolling in the grass, or maybe he’s dreaming of a comfortable, plush dog bed—the fancy, expensive designer kind. Stuff he’ll never get from me.
    I stroke his nose. He murmurs a little. He lets out a deep sigh from way down, then yawns awake. Our eyes lock and I swear we are telecommunicating. The gold flecks in his eyes glimmer.
    â€œI need you,” I say out loud.
    He curls back his mouth and smiles. And then it’s like he actually is talking and I can hear him
.
    I need you, too,
he says.
    He breaks the gaze and does a perfect downward dog stretch and then shakes from head to tail, like nothing happened. It must have been my imagination.
    My stomach releases its now familiar grumble. I don’t think I have ever been truly hungry in my life, up until now. There were girls at school who bragged about how many days they could go without eating, how they craved emptiness more than food, but I was never one of them. I’ve always liked eating, even if my parents said I was fussier than a baby about what I ate.
    Though fussiness is not a problem anymore. Now I’m happy if I can find a crust of bread—I don’t care if it’s white or wheat or full of vegetables.
    I take a drink of water, then pour some into a cup for Shadow. I try to work out the gnarls in my hair. I know I’m probably starting to smell worse. I can still feel the welt on my cheek where the branch swiped me. There are mosquito bites on top of mosquito bites, but they hardly itch anymore. I remember the frog from last night. That means there must be a pond nearby.
    â€œDo you know if there’s water around here?” I ask Shadow.
    He leads me through the woods to a pond. I don’t know if it could be called a pond exactly, but it is a body of water and it’s big enough for me to submerge. There’s algae around the edge, but the center is clean. A morning mist rises from the surface. I take off my shoes first and then the rest of my clothes, glancing around nervously. I’ve never been naked outside. I fold my clothes into a tidy pile.
    A breeze whispers around my body as I kick aside the algae and dip my toes in. The muddy bottom is soft and squishy. I wade in farther and it gets colder.
    It’s only thigh-high, but I paddle around for a minute until I’m used to the cold, then duck my head under. I heard somewhere that in the old days people used to clean themselves with leaves and mud, so I take some from the brink and rub myself down, then dive under again.
    When I’m done I dry off with my T-shirt and put on my second pair of clothes. I rinse and wring out the clothes I’ve been wearing and drape them over some branches to dry. This will make them smell like muddy pond water, but it will be a vast improvement from how they were smelling.
    I sit by the pond and wait. I suddenly wish I had a book to read. I can’t