small ghost looks to the future

When she says things like this, Victoria is reminded of every adult in her life who has ever described that fabled invincibility that young people are supposed to believe that they have. Victoria, for one, has always been acutely aware of her mortality, but she often wonders if Trinity never grew out of that particular teenaged feeling.

For what it's worth, Victoria admires this part of Trinity. It's why she agreed to drive out to the lake with her in the first place. Why she's hugging herself at a clifftop, not because she's self-conscious about Trinity seeing her in her swimsuit; rather, it's against the mosquitoes and the stiff breeze coming off the lake. Trinity's body is loose-limbed and relaxed, but she's wearing a white T-shirt that goes down to her knees over her swimsuit

They both pick their way, barefoot, over to the edge of the rock face to look down. The water below is clear and deep enough that Victoria can't see the bottom.

She sighs. Shakes her head. "I don't know."

"Look, we came all this way," Trinity says. "I bet the water's perfect. I'll go first. And then you'll have to come. Because otherwise I'll be down there all alone. And I'll stay down there until you jump in."

"You're seriously threatening me with death by drowning if I don't jump off a cliff?"

Trinity scrunches her nose. "I didn't say I'd drown, did I? I'm a strong swimmer."

She walks back from the cliff's edge, to give herself a clear runway. "Just watch first," she tells Victoria, "Then it's your turn. Remember: make sure to jump as far as you can, don't hesitate, and try to hit the water feet first so you don't break anything. Water isn't as soft as it seems."

So Victoria watches as Trinity runs toward the edge and flings her body easily into space. Arms raised, legs pointing straight down toward the water. For a fraction of a heartbeat, she seems to be held in midair, and Victoria thinks of angels and telekinesis and other impossible things. Then her body crashes into the lake and takes another two or three heartbeats to return to the surface. But she does, and she's laughing, exhilarated.

"Don't be a pussy," Trinity calls out, face upturned, arms waving gently just below the surface. Her voice bounces off the rocks; the word pussy reverberates across the lake, through the trees.

Victoria turns away from the cliff's edge, and fleetingly considers just waiting in the car for Trinity to climb back up. But the car is parked far away and she's not convinced that she wouldn't get lost in the woods trying to find it on her own. She's even less convinced that Trinity wouldn't make good on her promise to stay down there.

She blows out a long, hard exhale.

Runs.

Jumps.

Freefall is perhaps the most beautiful feeling Victoria Javadi has ever felt. Gravity takes over as a fact of physics; it doesn't ask for permission and she can't deny it, can't fight it if she wants to. And she doesn't want to. She gives in to the feeling. It's a freeing sort of helplessness.

And then, too soon, the moment's over and she hit the water. She feels it close over her head as she sinks like a stone. It takes her a second to push back against the water pressing her down and kick toward the surface.

Once her head's above water, she can't help it: she laughs.

It's her real laugh, not her usual nervous, awkward giggle. She sees Trinity a few feet away, smiling at her in a way that tells her that she's realized that this laugh is just for her.

And Trinity was right: the water is perfect. Victoria isn't a strong swimmer. She never needed to learn anything beyond keeping her head above water. How to float on her back. But she doesn't need to know much more than that right now. There aren't any waves, no deep currents to suck them under. The lake is a mirror broken only by the ripples that she and Trinity make with every tiny movement.

Trinity raises her eyebrows. "So?"

"That was everything," she gasps out another laugh. Her cheeks hurt from smiling. She's overwhelmed. She wants to cry.

"Do you want to go again?"

"Oh," Victoria pretends to think about it, but she knows the answer immediately. "No," she says, "absolutely not. It was too perfect. It wouldn't be the same the second time."

Trinity shrugs, and her T-shirt, now wet and translucent, wrinkles and clings to her with the movement. "It could be even better."

"It could be," Victoria agrees, "But I just want to enjoy this first time for a bit. So, ask again later. Maybe then I'll say yes."

Trinity treads water toward her. Little ripples come off her arms that blur to nothing by the time they reach Victoria, but she feels like she can still feel them gently lapping at her.

Up close, Victoria can see how the lake water has clumped Trinity's eyelashes into little wet triangles. She can see little goosebumps along the tops of her collarbones where her shirt doesn't cover them. Victoria wants to cling to her like a sea creature in a tide pool.

When they kiss, Trinity's mouth feels cool and tastes a little like the lake surrounding them. Dissolved minerals, Victoria thinks, safe enough to swallow. It's not their first kiss — far from it — but it feels like a first somehow. So much of this summer has felt like firsts.

Victoria gets a little too caught up and forgets to keep kicking her legs. Trinity has to tug her back up by the arm when her chin drops below the surface more than once.

"You're getting tired."

"No, I'm not," Victoria answers, because she doesn't want this to end. She can tell, though, that Trinity doesn't believe her.

"We should probably start heading back."

Victoria glances toward the shoreline. She'd thought that once she'd jumped down, she'd see some clear path, some man-made trail, to take them back to the top.

"Um," she says slowly, "How do we get back?"

"Oh, didn't I say?" Trinity replies. "The jumping's the easy part."

By the time they get back to the car, Victoria's heart is beating hard in her chest and her arms are tingling from the climb and then the twenty-minute walk back through the woods to where the car was parked. She can feel tender spots on her shins that are sure to bloom into bruises by morning. Her swimsuit still clings wetly to her skin; it is too late in the day for the sun and hot air to dry them and warm them back up. Trinity pops open the trunk of her car and brings out towels for them both, opens the passenger side door for Victoria to sit, then walks around to the driver's side. Victoria lays her towel on the seat so she doesn't get it wet, but Trinity keeps her towel slung around her shoulders.

Trinity turns the key in the ignition just enough to power the lights and the radio. They both stare out through the windshield and watch the moths fly into the headlights.

"How did you even find this place?"

Trinity reaches over and turns the music's volume down low.

"Used to come here with a friend," she says, still staring through the windshield. "People camp on the other side of the lake. Have cottages there. Nice ones. But for some reason this side never got developed." She glances at Victoria then. "It's why we couldn't just drive up to the cliff. No roads. No touristy lookout. Just—" she gestures vaguely toward the dark beyond the headlights "— a whole lotta untouched nature."

"So it's like a secret," Victoria says, and this lifts a corner of Trinity's mouth halfway to a smile.

"Not to me. This is the sort of place meant to be shared." She huffs out a little sigh that Victoria can't quite translate. "It's been a while since I've been back here. It hasn't changed, which is nice. I was worried it might have."

Victoria senses that there's more that Trinity isn't saying, but she doesn't press it. Moments like these are always fragile, and Victoria has learned that when she pushes against them, Trinity puts up defenses.

"This is really special," she says instead, and she means it. "This whole summer has been really special."

Trinity looks at her a little sharply. "Summer's not over yet," she says, and there's something buried there. Something else she isn't saying.

"I know," Victoria says quickly, as reassuringly as she can. "It's just going by so fast. I don't want this to end."

Trinity presses her lips together. "This doesn't have to end when summer ends, you know."

"I know," Victoria says again. "I didn't mean this has to end. I just mean that summer will. And I don't want it to."

"Okay," Trinity says. "Yeah. Okay. That's what I feel, too."

Victoria leans her head back against the passenger seat. "So, um," she says, "I jumped off a cliff for you? What's next? Sky diving?"

Trinity just laughs. Victoria's pretty sure it's her real laugh.

"Hey, Cassie! Wait!"

Victoria chased after her, stumbling, just a little. Her shoes were untied. Clearly she'd rushed out to meet Cassie before she'd gotten too far.

"You're leaving?" she said when she caught up, halfway breathless. "I'll walk with you."

Cassie froze. This had never happened before.

"Oh," she said, "Yeah, sure. Of course."

She was so used to making this afterparty trek alone, having left everyone else still mid-party, that she wasn't sure how to fill the quiet. Happily, Victoria was clearly drunk and bubbling over with conversation to share.

"Oh, the moon is so full tonight," Victoria said, slurring just a bit on the so. Cassie startled a little when Victoria lurched forward to grab her hand. It was smaller than hers, softer, her skin cooler somehow despite the humidity.

"You know," she continued, swinging both of their arms so gladly, like she no longer cared where her arm ended and Cassie's began, "I always thought it was a little romantic that there's a carpal named after the moon. Like, sure, I get it, it's crescent shaped, but lunate. It's beautiful isn't it? Like having some tiny bit of the universe inside your wrist."

If there was ever a time that Cassie wanted to put Victoria into a Mason jar with holes in the lid (to shake her like a bug), this was it. There had been myriad other times when she'd considered it, but this was firmly, firmly it. She wanted to crack open her skull and understand how she saw the world. That said, she understood in that moment that if she did take a peek into Victoria Javadi's mind, she would see that she sought to understand the world as it aligned with textbook descriptions. Her heart ached with this knowledge, knowing that so much of her world existed as fringe cases, not-so concise as an MCAT exam question scenario. Not something that might come up in lecture, but nonetheless undeniably real.

Cassie thought about untangling her fingers from Victoria's, about letting her down gently, but something stopped her. Maybe it was as simple as the kindness of her touch given so freely. She wasn't sure, but she let her grip hold.

"I always thought the great saphenous sounded like a wizard name," she offered weakly. It didn't connect at all to what Victoria had been talking about; in fact, it was not even in the same region of the human body, but she thought maybe Victoria might understand.

"Ugh, great saphenous," Victoria groaned, like the etymology of the vein's name was the bane of her existence, "Like, yeah, whatever, it means "hidden" in Arabic, and "evident" in Greek, but all I see is saph like sapph like sapphic like there's a big lesbian vein in your upper thigh."

"Yeah," Cassie replied. Her spit felt warm in her mouth. God, she thought, hand still grasped firmly in Victoria's hand. Fuck, she thought, I'm going to kiss her, aren't I?

"Yeah," Victoria repeated, apparently not noticing Cassie's agony. "Anyway. Um, I noticed you at the party and…you really just sort of let people come to you, don't you?"

It was true: Cassie did usually choose a spot to camp out as soon as she arrived anywhere, whether the end of a cough or a choice bit of wall to lead against with her comically large water bottle (that someone, inevitably, asked about, assuming it was filled with vodka or some other rank shit, like she were some frat boy guarding her buzz). She liked to stay barnacled to the spot for as long as she could tolerate, letting faces filter pass, letting conversation wash over her.

"I like to think of myself as a sort of axis that the party rotates around," she winked with confidence she couldn't quite summon. She hoped Victoria didn't notice (a part of her desperately wanted her to think that Cassie was cool.)

But Victoria nodded, considering. "I was watching you —" her eyes widened, hearing herself, "I mean, not like a creep or anything. Just, like, I noticed you, is all. People like you."

Cassie read the shift in tone and gave Victoria's arm a little swing out of sync. 

"Hey," she said reassuringly, "People like you. You're just new…ish."

"And a bit of a freak."

"Who isn't a bit of a freak?" Cassie replied amicably. She jostled her shoulder against Victoria's never letting her hand go. "People like you. I like you."

Victoria digested this quietly, then glanced around. They'd been walking for a while.

"You parked really far away," she said.

"Oh," Cassie laughed. "We passed my car ages ago."

"But—"

"But nothing," Cassie said firmly. "I'm having a nice time."

"Okay."

"But if we loop around this block, we'll get back to my car again. I'm sober," Cassie reminded her. "I've been keeping track."

Victoria nodded again, again, again, and Cassie wanted to cup her chin with her free hand to make her stop. She wanted to cup her chin just to touch her face.

She jammed her free hand in her pocket.

"What are you thinking about?" Cassie asked softly, not unkindly, and Victoria stopped walking. She dropped Cassie's hand and met her eyes.

"Mostly I feel stupid," Victoria admitted. "I saw you leaving the party without saying goodbye and I thought she can't just leave, she just can't not say goodbye…but you can, can't you? I don't know why I chased after you."

"You don't?"

Victoria crushed her eyes shut. Grimaced. Dropped Cassie's hand. "No," she admitted, "Of course I do. I wanted to talk to you all night. But you seemed so cool and above everything and I just kept drinking this weird stuff Santos had brought that she kept telling me was 'lesbian moonshine' and I thought, like, maybe that's what liquid courage is supposed to mean? Maybe it's supposed to mean getting so drunk that you uninhibit your frontal lobe enough to say something stupid for once in your life? I mean, actually, I say embarrassing stuff all the time, and I'm embarrassed. But I mean, this is where I can be embarrassing without feeling embarrassed, you know?"

Cassie nodded. She knew. "You haven't said anything stupid yet," she said.

"You say that," Victoria says, a weird frenzy climbing in her voice, pitching it upward, "but I ran out here like it was some Hallmark movie moment—"

"—Hallmark is for straight people—"

"—they have some gay stuff now—"

"—it's still for straight people—"

"Whatever," Victoria huffed out an exasperated sigh. "I just mean that I ran out here thinking, like, maybe if I stopped you, something would happen."Cassie felt that warm spit pooling under her tongue again. "Something like what?" She asked.

"Something like—" Victoria paused, glancing around. "We've passed this house already."

Cassie waved her off. "We passed my car again. Don't worry about it."

Victoria nodded and hugged her arms around herself.

"Something like—?" Cassie gently prodded again, but Victoria just shook her head, folding in on herself.

Cassie stopped walking, which forced Victoria to stop and meet her eyes.

She brought her hands up to Victoria's face, thumb grazing her jawline.

"Something like this?"

Victoria swallowed. "Maybe," she said, holding Cassie's gaze.

Fuck it, Cassie thought. She'd known this would happen the first time they'd walked around this particular block. Might as well lean into fate.

Victoria's lips were soft, and her mouth tasted like a nightmare (Cassie would ask Trinity later, would discover that lesbian moonshine had been an original concoction of everclear and raspberry sourpuss. Cassie realized in the aftermath that it was a small miracle that Victoria had managed to stay upright this far into the night, let alone chase after her.)

Cassie pressed her forehead against Victoria's.

"Your shoes are still untied," she said, gently. Victoria laughed.

"I think if I try to tie them now, I'll fall over and never get back up."

Without another word, Cassie knelt down and tied them for her. Double-knotted them, just to be safe. Victoria couldn't help herself: her hands found the top of Cassie's head, knotted her fingers through her hair while she was still on her knees.

"Don't stand up too fast," Victoria hiccuped softly. "I might fall over."

Cassie took her time. When they were both standing again, she looped her arm through Victoria's and let her lean her head against her shoulder.

"My car's just up ahead," Cassie said. "I can drive you."

"Anywhere?"

Cassie considered. "Anywhere within state lines."

Victoria said something then, rushing her words so that they were merely a slurry of syllables, and immediately buried her face against Cassie's arm.

"Hey," Cassie laughed. "What happened to being so drunk you can't be embarrassed?"

Victoria laughed, too, her mouth opening against Cassie's bare arm.

"My mortification knows no bounds."

"In any case, I think I understood" Cassie guided Victoria toward her car, to the passenger side.