chapter one.

“I am 22 years old,” said Charlotte Claire. “I can tell a 2003 Cabernet blend from a 2005 vintage just by smelling it. When no one is looking I drink my coffee through the small black stirrer so I can taste the sugar on the bottom sooner. I get dressed up before I go to the library because I feel more alive. My eyes are grey when I’m shielded and blue when I’m feeling. I don’t know what color they are right now. He is sitting across from me. He gets sad when people say the word ‘suicide.’ He is sad but he has not lost hope, because if he lost hope he would not look sad, but hard and empty like a smooth cold black jar. I am smiling. My teeth are white because I whitened them yesterday. My eyes are painted black. The bag around my heart cinches tightly like a full purse, it draws the back of my throat together into a gravelly undertone to my words. I see you note with the forced relaxation in your shoulders, with your eyes directed outwards, that we do not connect. You don’t know why but I know the bag is cinched tightly, you can hear it in my voice. I want you to look, but I know I would attack you. I want it to be right. I want to be alone.

Now I am driving. I am 22 years old and I had three dates this week. I like the upward curve of my eyes and the way my brown bangs fall just below my brows. I want to lose 15 pounds. I didn’t love anyone today, or yesterday, or last week. I want to go back in time and uncinch the bag. I realize that I don’t know how. My foot gets heavier on the acceleration, the streetlights pass like missed joys overhead. The electric music passes like a watery dream into the passenger seat, a tuned-out guest. You Charlotte always drift across the white-dashed lines; they are guidelines not rules, until their reedy bending ends in your imminent perishing. The bridge’s potholes torment my wheels. Now the bay stretches into a sunset behind the silhouette of cranes and naval warships. Now the road sinks into a tunnel, the shoulders disappear and cement walls lift the ocean blue above my head. Everything constricts; I hear the hum of the engine echoing in circles down the hollow underwater tube. When I was little I held my breath from beginning to end; now I know that you could live your whole life underwater, breathing in and out, in and out, and not pass out of existence.

“My name is Moriah,” said Moriah. “I hiked 10 miles up a mountain in 20 degree weather. I liked the feeling of my foot plowing into the rock, each conflict declaring, ‘I am this, not that.’ I liked feeling warmth generating from inside of me, flowing through my capillaries and hanging in a coat around me. I liked the frozen cascades of small waterfalls over boulders to climb around. I liked pulling myself through the rocks, hiding in the earth, emerging to the endless views of valleys and mountains. I like hovering in the log cabin shelter halfway down, gathered close to friends and strangers around the flickering heat, pouring fiery chocolate down our gullets before bearing the teeth-chilling 2 degree wind chill again.

Now I retreat like a bear to its cave. I hoard nuts and meats. I curl under blankets. When I am not moving I am cold. My body temperature is two degrees colder than the average human. When I drive I wear a coat and hat and scarf and gloves, and turn on the heat until the air scratches my sinuses. When I shower I stand under the stream unmoving. I do not dress until I am dry, so I do not shiver when the droplets chill and bind to my clothing. I shower before I exercise so that my sweat is clean, so I can revel in my health. Today I visited a friend on the other side of the bay. I navigated through the wide open streets of the beach town and parked in his cement drive. I step into the cold and let myself shiver violently, in hopes of generating heat between now and the doorway. There he is. He knew of my arrival; he has already opened the door. I greet him with a hug (I am this, not that). My shoes slip off and my feet hit the hard cold floor. I sit on a stool and twine my legs like roots around its base. One hand holds the counter, the other the top of the stool. I speak of the studies I’ve read and the shows on TV. I toss heaps of earth onto the kitchen table: this is real. We speak of the sacrament of marriage. When I see the water shift in the center of your chest I crush my insides into sandstone, a clumsy wall. I comment on a small detail, the food perhaps, and the danger is passed. My name is drawstring; I bind things together.

“I dream of flight,” said Evangeline. “I bind myself to motion and I skim on top of water. The board slaps the cohesion beneath me like cement; air makes all else solid, deadly. The foam peels before me in a running “V” like kings and queens bowing. A crash would be like slapping onto a flat road. I must make myself small. I jump with the foam around me. I live for the moments of breaking-away from the endless blue expanse, the leap into white. But Moriah has bound me in a sandstone box. I told her the water was solid and she believed, she rode on the board and when she fell she nearly shattered. Then the concrete gave way to sinking; her feet pulled her down. So she bound me in a sandstone box, carved it around me and forbade my flight. Now I wait until she sleeps and I creep out, I gingerly sidestep her stalactite warnings dripping from our ceiling. I pass Charlotte, swimming in blankets with sea-salted spray on her cheeks. The door creeps open and the night air envelops me in its arms, breathes into my lungs. My eyes turn blue and my cheeks are kissed with pink. The door creaks closed behind me. I drift up the path to the cliff. The clouds are moving fast overhead, like a stampede. I crest the bank and raise my arms like I used to on roller coasters at night, to the side with eyes closed, imagining flight. The wind peels the sleeves of my nightclothes away from my arms and twine around me. I stand unmoving. I dream of flight.”

“I dreamed I was a prison guard,” said Charlotte in her silence. Her hands, twined tightly around her mug of coffee, and her head tilted slightly down as the morning rays poured around her back, murmured together, “We planted a spy in one of the cells. She succumbed to brutality. She saw our injustices and she succumbed to the bars. One day she escaped. She ran with her blonde hair streaming behind her. Her face was distorted with hate. I ran after her but I couldn’t keep up. So I crouched on all fours like a wolf and vaulted myself towards her. She screams (or laughs, I can’t remember which) that I am jealous and I launch towards her, I pin her to the grass by her shoulders. I am not jealous, I said, you broke the rules. You broke the rules. She fights but I fight harder. We throw her back into the cell and lock the door with a triple padlock. I stand guard like a crouched thing. Now she is a prisoner. Now she is hateful. Now she is lost.”

“I put the bread into the toaster and I prepare the butter,” said Moriah. “I eat it quickly to feel the heat rest in my center. Charlotte is sitting at the table by the bay window – the light from the sea reflects onto her back, and her face is in shadow. Evangeline has gone for a walk. She is in love with the man from across the bay. But I have placed her in a sandstone box before she learns that love twines roots too tightly together, that separation means some measure of death. The hard clay of the coffee mug warms in my hands and I sip the hot black liquid. It seeps like warm earth through my veins and binds my hand to the counter.”

“I see the fresh sun resting precociously above the horizon,” said Evangeline. “My feet flicker lightly across the boardwalk. The swallows spin in whirling dervishes. The clouds are cotton candy, pink and yellow. A line is drawn from my eye through water to the burning orb, another from the celestial blue through into the deep to earthy bottoms that no eye has seen and big-eyed fish flit through the gaps. The world is an orb divided by one line up, and one line across. A woman is collecting shells of beings that once were. A boy is searching for treasure with a beeping beggar’s cane swinging to and fro, to and fro. The seagulls squabble over breakfast.