Trevor sat on the worn dock, dangling his toes into the water and looking at everything but the girl beside him.
“Stop that,” Lilly said. She peered into the Ziploc bag between them and pulled out a piece of chocolate cake. That was the way he had met her so many years ago—sitting by that very pond, eating cake out of a bag that she had stolen from her mother’s kitchen. She had always been braver than he was. Since then, they had baked their own instead of pilfering someone else’s.
“What?” he asked.
“Smile,” she told him, licking icing off her hand. “Have some cake.”
He sighed, pinched off a piece between his thumb and forefinger, and put it into his mouth. As he ate, he watched her reach into the bag again, and his eyes found the bandage on her hand from her chemotherapy treatment that morning. It sat there like a parasite—but instead of draining her blood, it marked the spot where they had filled her with poison. She looked up, caught his glance, and shifted slightly, hunching her shoulder in a practiced gesture.
“I—“ he started.
“You did a good job with this one,” she barreled on. “I don’t know how you make such a simple thing so incredible.”
Trevor paused for a moment before answering.
“It’s just the chili powder,” he told her. “El Mercato finally got it back in stock.”
“Right, because regular grocery store spices aren’t good enough for you,” she teased.
He shrugged. “It’s your favorite. I wanted it to be right.”
They had tried every cake there was: angel food cake, devil’s food cake (because she found that much more exciting), red velvet, orange cream—the Mexican chocolate was the most intense, so it was naturally what she wanted.
“It’s perfect. And that crème brulee last week, with the lavender? Le Cordon Bleu has to accept you,” Lilly told him, closing her eyes as she chewed. After a moment she turned to face him and smiled. “No, you’re not really enjoying it. You have to savor it. Like this.”
He recognized the little twist to that smile and held up his hands but she had already scooped a handful of cake and crammed it at his face. He grinned, wiping the chocolate from his mouth, and palmed her nose with it. Lilly giggled, pressing her hands into her thighs, her wispy honey-colored hair floating around her face. This week it was streaked with strips of purple, setting off the green of her eyes. Trevor studied the way her nose crinkled and made new constellations of her freckles. Those little wrinkles seemed to be the strongest things in the world.
“Oh no,” she murmured suddenly, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. It came away red.
“Oh, Lilly, I’m sorry.” He watched as she rummaged in her bag for the pack of tissues she had started carrying with her. Tearing one in half, she twisted it into a point and carefully stuck it in her nose. Looking at her that way, with the chocolate and the blood and the windblown hair and the tissue jutting from her nostril, he wanted to laugh or cry, he wasn’t sure which.
“It’s okay. I’m used to it,” she said, waving her hand and looking out over the water. He studied her chalky arms, her collarbones, the bruise on her shoulder from when she had bumped into his kitchen bar two weeks ago. It should have faded by now. She was so fragile, so stupidly delicate. Her skin was veined, almost translucent, like the small fish that darted back and forth under the dock, their metallic organs pulsating softly. After a while she took the tissue out and set it on the soft wood. Trevor heard her intake of breath, and then the splash as she hit the water.
“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted, standing up.
“I’m swimming, Trevor, relax,” she said, paddling back and forth.
“You just got treatment this morning,” he sputtered. “You still have your clothes on.”
“Oh really? I hadn’t noticed.” Lilly smiled.
“You can’t just do stuff like this,” Trevor told her.
“I’m fine—I’m just treading…water.” Her breath grew labored, and she frowned. He watched as she seemed to deflate. “I can—” She stopped speaking with the effort of keeping herself afloat.
“Just come back,” he told her, acidity sharpening his voice. “You’re acting like a child.”
“Then let me be one,” she exhaled, drifting farther from him. “I just want to be—” She must have breathed in the water because she coughed violently and her blonde-and-violet head slipped under for a moment. That was all it took; before he realized he had moved, Trevor was in the pond. His clothes clung to his body, swelling with water and weighing him down. It felt like he was swimming through syrup. Lilly bobbed, gasping, and when he finally got to her, he turned her onto her back and pulled them both to the dock. Trevor climbed up first, then grasped her under the arms like a little kid and pulled her up beside him. She sat there, heavy in her sodden denim, coughing weakly. Water puddled around them, running in fingers down the ridges in the wood.
“You think you can do these things and you can’t, Lilly. It’s time to grow up. You can’t just run away from it. This isn’t fairyland,” he snapped. He wanted to stop himself, to take it all back even as the words were flowing out. The weight of them settled on her face, etching creases and filling her eyes with their liquid anger. She looked away, and her lips tensed the way they did when she was trying not to cry. She waited a long time before she answered, and when she met his eyes again, something unfurled that had been tight and heavy in his chest. She spoke slowly, emphasizing each word.
“What other choice do I have?”
He tried to think of something to say; kind, encouraging words that would erase the lines on her forehead and at the corners of her mouth. But there was nothing. So he cupped her face in his palm and smoothed out the pain with his thumb. Lilly closed her eyes and leaned into his hand, sighing. All the years they had known each other, he had never touched her like this before, and maybe never would again. Straightening, she took his hand. They looked out over the water, watching a pair of dragonflies weave drunkenly over the surface. They held hands and they held time, too, as if they could slow it down, at least for a little, as they dangled their toes in the pond.
“You know, I think you’re wrong,” Trevor said, and upended the bag over the water so that the last bits of cake and icing slid into it. “This isn’t very good. Let’s let the minnows have it. I think I need a little more practice before college. I might just stick around here for a while.” They watched the chunks of chocolate cake swell and fragment as they sank. Lilly reached over and slowly unclipped the medical ID bracelet from around her wrist.
“Let’s let them have this too,” she said. She held it up for a moment, watching the metal catch the light, and then it slipped from her fingertips into the depths. They sat together as their futures swirled down below the flashing silver bodies.
Sarah Sullivan is a student pursuing a BFA in creative writing with a minor in psychology at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Her work has been published in Cahoots and Atlantis. She’s a firm believer in joy, traveling, and showing love in all ways. She also enjoys exotic food, black coffee, wildflowers, and pajama days.