Where the myth fails, human love begins.

ANAÏS NIN

I stand inside the dark cottage and watch the men untie the ropes. Flames flicker low in the boat as they push it away from the dock. It glides into blackness, stops thirty feet from shore, quiet for once, its engine off. The boat floats on its own reflection. A lifejacket bursts to orange. The flames spread and climb. The captain’s seat becomes a pyre, the windscreen a warp of gold.

Together, we watch the boats burn, one up, one upside down. The water so calm it’s hard to tell which is real and which is not. If the men are cheering I cannot hear them. They stand motionless on the dock. They are not drunk or high or dangerous. They do not turn around. They do not see me standing half-asleep in the front window, the wild outline of my hair. They do not see the black bears printed on the nightshirt I’ve had forever, the finger-sized hole near the neck, the pulled threads. My breasts underneath, the right one a little smaller than the left. My not-so-flat belly. My private girl parts, what I’ll need to make a new life. They say pussy. They say cunt, slut, bitch. I say clitoris. I say womb. I say earthling. When I press my hand to the window the glass is cool, the heat of the flames far off.

My mother will be happy. She never liked the boat. One night, their fighting woke me. She was crying, pleading with my dad to get rid of the fucking thing, him yelling he would not. It was a long time ago, but I still remember the shock of hearing my mother swear.

In the reflection, my father is a generous man. He gives his money to charity. Orphans come to live with us. My mother teaches them to speak English. We have a houseful of people and no boat to burn.

Michael knows how to handle my father and is always kind to his son. He is not the type to throw balls at other people’s houses. My father is not the type to throw casserole dishes at women.

Eli asks me to go to the movies and I say okay, but just as friends. I never kiss him in the kitchen trying to make Finn jealous. I am not the kind of girl to do something stupid like that. I do not lose my virginity to Eli on the floor in his basement, just to get it over with. He does not pound into me because he knows it’s my first time. I tell him it’s my first time.

When I walk home alone on a hot summer night, I am not thinking about my tight top or my short shorts or my long legs. I do not look down at the gravel as I pass under the bridge. I do not make myself small. There is no reason to be afraid of those boys.

My mother frowns when she sees my new nose ring, but she doesn’t make me take it off. She listens as I tell her it’s my body and I can do what I want with it. Later, when my dad freaks about the piercing, she tells him to back off. I tell him to back off.

When Mia asks if I’ve met anyone special I say, yes, I’ve known him all my life. When I ask her about a birthday present for my father, she offers the photograph of me laughing and it is already framed.

When Finn turns around in his chair at the party he’s happy to find me standing behind him, and we are both only pleasantly lit. He takes my hand and leads me out of the kitchen. We put our boots on in the laundry room, zip up our coats, dig through the hats and mitts and find him a glove that fits. We slip out the side door together and clomp into the backyard where we throw poorly packed snowballs at each other, like couples in those rom-com movies who are just about to kiss.

This is the story I choose. A fun, easy night, fooling around with Finn and the possibility of love in the distance. The generous choices. The good people. The girl I am, the girl I was, safely back in bed and the canoes headed home with their crews of righteous men, their paddles dipping soundless into the water.