The Fever

17

Lise

It felt great, her hands on the wheel.

Lise almost never got to drive, but that day she got lucky and her mom let her drive the Dodge because she was at the ophthalmologist, getting drops in her eyes.

Gabby had been sad all day, like she was a lot. You would only find out later it was because her dad had called or it was the anniversary of something bad with Tyler Nagy.

“She won’t even talk,” Deenie whispered to her. “Let’s try to cheer her up.”

So they went for a drive, windows down and Gabby’s favorite music and Big Gulps it took two hands to hold.

They saw Deenie’s brother in the parking lot and Lise beeped her horn at him. Sometimes she wondered if Deenie knew how good-looking Eli was, if sisters could tell. Lise liked to watch him on the practice rink, his hair flying and the faraway look in his eyes. Her mom always said teenage boys only cared about one thing, but watching Eli, you just knew it wasn’t true.

On the drive, Gabby and Skye didn’t say a word the whole time, but she and Deenie sang loudly to the radio. It was fun.

As they drove past the lake, Skye started telling them this thing that had happened last week. She saw two guys wading in the lake, drinking beers, their car doors open and speakers gushing wild music that made her want to dance.

“They were sexy,” Skye said. “One had a tattoo of a gold panther. It went down his whole body, from his neck down below his waist, into his jeans. I wonder where it ended.”

Lise could picture the tattoo and the guy. In her head, his shirt was worn denim and he had aviator sunglasses and a wicked smile. And the panther, its gleaming haunches stretched along his torso, the panther’s teeth disappearing below his golden hip bone.

“Maybe they’re there now,” Deenie said, laughing.

And Lise wondered about it, her stomach doing that funny kind of thing, like when Ryan Denning helped her with her fetal-pig dissection, seated on high stools and him reaching for the blunt probe, his hand brushing her lap.

“Let’s stop and go in,” she suggested, jumping forward in her seat, pressing against the steering wheel. “Let’s go now.”

So they did, hopping the orange safety fences. The guys with the car and the tattoo were not there, except it almost felt like they were, the lake glittering with borrowed glamour.

“Maybe they’ll show up later,” Lise said, running down the bank, nearly sliding on the mud, which spattered up her legs. “Maybe they’ll see us from the road.”

Gabby and Skye were so quiet. Skye lit a clove cigarette and squinted down at Lise. She was saying something to Gabby, but Lise couldn’t hear. They were always whispering to each other.

They were no fun and Lise felt high on all the sugar and soda and was trying to rouse Gabby and she tugged off her tights.

The water looked eerily lovely, like the kind of sparkling lake you’d see in a picture book, unicorns dipping their heads and cloudbursts overhead.

Waving up at the others lined up on the shore, she promised the water felt almost warm and like velvet under your feet and they had to come. It was true.

She pulled her skirt higher and spun.

“What’s that?” Skye asked, pointing her cigarette at Lise, at her legs.

“Nothing,” Lise said and felt her face go hot.

She knew what Skye meant, the mark on her thigh, a pink crescent. It was from losing all that weight, a tiny stretch mark she put cocoa butter on it every night, wishing it away.

“You’re just stalling,” Deenie shouted at Skye, and Lise smiled. “You’re scared.”

Deenie hated Skye.

And soon enough Deenie was yanking her jeans up to her knees and wading in too. And Lise was so grateful. Deenie was still hers.

“C’mon, Gabby,” Deenie shouted, her jeans already soaked to the thigh. “It only hurts for a second.”

And finally Gabby reached down and pulled off her tights, and then of course Skye did too, cigarette somehow still between her fingers, thin as a burned match.

The water felt soft and globby, like sherbet, but smelled strongly of something Lise had never smelled before.

It was only a minute before Gabby said she was cold and the lake was dirty and was making her head hurt. And then Skye said her head hurt too and the lake had a bad aura and you were asking for trouble being in it.

The boy who drowned here, she said, can’t you feel him? He was in the water for days. Do you know what happens? Your body turns to soap.

And they all looked down in the water as if they would see the boy.

But Deenie said that was kid’s stuff, and she scooped up a handful, foam bubbling, and flicked it toward them. That was when Lise knew Deenie was annoyed, or even mad, like she always was when Gabby was being secretive with Skye, which was all the time lately.

It never mattered much to Lise because she’d never felt as close to Gabby as Deenie did. Deenie, who’d never really gotten over the surprise that someone as cool as Gabby Bishop wanted to be her friend. For her part, Lise had realized a long time ago that the way to keep Deenie would be to let her love Gabby just this much.

Skye was the weirdest girl Lise had ever known. Once, a long time ago, in middle school, they’d been to the same sleepaway camp and Skye had the bunk above her. One night she came down the ladder, her legs snaking around it, and asked Lise if she wanted to see something.

Taking a deep breath, she lifted her nightshirt and showed Lise all these marks, like rosy ridges, on her arms all the way up to her shoulder. She said she’d made them herself, with a Bic lighter, and it had taken a long time. And now they were like the husk, the hard shell. Like finding a beetle or a mollusk shell at the lake, the rattle pods in Binnorie Woods. You shake and it’s hollow. The thing inside died. You couldn’t do anything to it anymore.

The cabin quiet and dark and Skye breathing hard, her arms outstretched, Lise hadn’t known what to say, barely knew this girl. What did you say to something like that? And the next day, Skye wouldn’t look at her, and then after that they never talked about it again.

She wondered if Skye remembered it.

“I can’t do this,” Gabby said suddenly. Her face looked green from the water.

Nodding to Skye, she began walking back to shore, her sweater heavy with water, trailing behind her.

“Come on, Gabby,” Deenie said, calling out after her.

Lise bent over and lifted a long stretch of seaweed, draping it around Deenie’s neck, like a mermaid’s boa.

And Deenie smiled and flicked its edges up and pushed Lise, but when they both turned around again, Gabby and Skye were walking up the bank, their legs stained green.

“Are they going?” Lise asked, looking at Deenie.

Her long sweater sleeves weeping lake water, Skye offered a slow wave.

Gabby didn’t even turn around, walking slowly up the slope, the damp edges of her skirt in her hands like petticoats.

“But Lise drove us,” Deenie called out.

Except they kept walking, their heavy hair and long-legged elegance, and it was hard not to feel five years old.

So she said, “Swim with me, Deenie,” backing up so the frigid water reached the bottom of her pelvis, the green water swimming between her thighs. “Let’s do it, huh?”

After a moment, Deenie stopped looking back for Gabby and they stripped off their sweaters and swam in their tank tops and bras, Lise’s skirt billowing like a white flower and Deenie’s jeans accordioned on the shore.

And then Deenie even put her head under, came up with her hair black and inky.

At first, Lise wouldn’t do it. She didn’t want to and kept picturing that drowned boy, under the pearling water. Was he there now? Would he curl his tiny fingers around her toe?

But then Deenie grabbed her neck from behind and dunked her, and the water came so fast she almost couldn’t breathe.

Under the surface, her ears hurt so bad she felt like someone had punched an iron rod in them.

But then the pressure broke and it was incredible, her head rushing with the feeling.

And while she was under, she knew it was time to tell Deenie, her best friend.

About the boy, almost as handsome as Eli Nash himself, but without the faraway eyes. The boy who’d looked right at her, rolling her tights down over her legs.

To whisper in Deenie’s ear the wonderful thing that was happening and how it felt. She wanted to share it with her.