Free One Heart by Jane Mccafferty

recklessness of that age. Well, that day at the pond he met a girl. Her name was Jan. She was fifteen in a green and yellow flowered two-piece. They ended up running around together in the woods. I don’t know what happened in those woods. We didn’t worry much then. I remember we watched Jan and Wendell swimming off together in the green water, laughing.
    â€œHe’s a young man now, isn’t he?” James said with mixed emotion.
    â€œHe is. And he’s turned out fine,” I told James.
    â€œEverything happens too fast,” James said. He was pouring us some white wine into small glasses. I ended up throwing those glasses out. Along with everything else we had with us on that trip.
    The glasses had Scotty dogs on the side, white and black. I think they were from James’s father. I can see the golden liquid shot with sun and pouring into the glass. A. was sound asleep on the blue blanket she loved. I had her face covered up with a sheet. She was pale skinned and burned easy. On her feet were blue socks. They made her legs look whiter. She still had some baby fat then. This is a picture frozen too clearly in my mind. I thought of covering her legs and then thought, no, I should let her get a little color. I can’t for the rest of her life protect her from all the sun in the world.
    When really, as it turns out, I could have.
    I began to feel the strange sensation that I was a girl again when I talked with Raelene in the cabin that night. Because I spent my whole young life talking in the dark to Ivy. Twin beds, windows, summer night, quiet voices . . . it was familiar at the very core, even though it was Raelene over there and not Ivy. Even though the things I was saying, that girl I was had never dreamed possible. I weren’t comfortable. But I kept talking. Not able to control it, really.
    I told her how James and me kept drinking that day. We weren’t completely out of control. It was never like that with us. We could hold it. And it was only wine. We had tolerance like nobody’s business. The sun was brilliant. Way high up there in a great blue summer sky. We were on the pink blanket lying down now and turned toward each other. That’s how we were, we just liked to lay there and stare at each other, and laugh and try to feel young. Sounds stupid but it was a good feeling. To feel comfortable like that. There’s no denying I felt at home with that man for a while.
    But we got too comfortable. And we fell asleep. It was Wendell who woke us. He was dripping wet, so was the girl standing beside him, Jan. I remember looking up at them and thinking, Why are they so wet and cold?
    â€œWhere’s A.?” Wendell was saying. “Where’s A.?”
    My hand reached over to the blue blanket, but it was an empty space. I sprung up. And as I sprung up, the whole world got dark for a second. And in the dark there was something evil, a force, or a face. It was there for a split second. I began to shake.
    James squeezed the back of my shoulder. He was trying to calm me. I pulled myself away from him. I screamed her name. I screamed it and ran along the edge of the water. But I knew even as I was screaming. I knew that she was on the pond’s floor. So I was screaming her name with no hope whatsoever. I could feel that she was gone like I could feel the water was wet when I dived in. James and Wendell and the girl dove in too. It was a fairly big pond, but not all that deep. We were diving for her, all of us.
    We dove and dove and finally James said, “She’s not in here. Jesus Christ, Gladys, why the hell did we assume the worst? She wandered off into the woods is all.” He called her name. “Where’d you get to, love?”
    James’s voice was packed with hope. I tried to believe it. But I knew. And I was mad at James for not knowing, hated him for being able to enjoy that bit of hope. I watched James head into the woods. He turned for a