I looked at him and didn’t say a word but just laughed and shook my head. He was smiling back at me.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘shall we?’
I nodded, bit my lip and laughed again. But there was not even an ounce of doubt in me. I was actually looking forward to it. I threw off my sneakers, socks, shorts and sweater. A sudden biting gust of wind made me gasp. He laughed.
‘Okay,’ he said.
He turned around and ran towards the lake’s shore. I followed him, hugging myself from the cold, and hopping to avoid sharp stones. He was already knee deep in the water and had turned to await me.
‘And?’ I said.
‘And it’s cold!’ he said.
The water was far, far colder than the air. My toes felt numb as soon as they touched it. But I waded in further. Foot deep… ankle deep… calf deep… knee deep, all the while clutching my hands at my chest and repeating the word fuck! He turned back around to walk further in. And when he was hip deep he let out a little yelp and dove in, submerging his whole body. He was under for a few seconds and then emerged, shaking the water off his hair and looking at me with the biggest grin I had yet seen on his face. It was ridiculous.
‘It gets much warmer after a while,’ he said.
I couldn’t say anything. I was concentrating too hard. And after a while I simply decided to run in further as fast as I could, still shouting fuck fuck fuck, and I finally threw myself down like a sack of potatoes and yelled at the top of my voice. Shit fuck shit, oh my god, fuck. He was laughing uncontrollably. Oh my god. I was gasping. We were both gasping, stunned by the cold. And then I too couldn’t stop laughing, like a maniac. With our heads bobbing above the surface our laughter was interspersed with the chattering of teeth.
‘Go under,’ he said, ‘and open your eyes. You won’t regret it.’
Without giving myself time to think or question it, I gulped, held my breath and dove under. It felt like glass shattering over my head, like a thousand needless piercing my skin. I opened my eyes. It was a little murky, but I could see rays of light streaming in and hitting rocks and algae. I was back up in a split second, too cold to stay under for any longer.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘Yup.’
It was beautiful, though I imagined that what he could see looked far more beautiful. The colours must have been incredible. I almost felt a pang of jealousy, but that subsided immediately. The cold didn’t give me a chance to think stupid thoughts. I quickly took a few strokes back to the shallows. My feet felt totally numb as they slid around on the slimy rocks below. My muscles were stiff. But I was grinning like an insane person. I felt like a child. We were screaming, gasping, laughing and splashing. We were children.
I jumped up, tilted my head back, looked up at the sky and roared, as a wave of euphoria soared through my body.
Not even a whole two minutes after entering the water, I started striding back out, still laughing, still elated, teeth chattering. I looked down at the goose bumps on my body. I had the impression that my limbs were about to fall off, and I couldn’t feel my feet as I walked. But slowly, as I jumped and shook about on the shore, feeling started seeping back into my skin.
With my shaking hands I picked up my sweater and attempted to dry my body off with it. But I didn’t have the patience, and so instead I started layering the clothes back onto my damp body. My frozen fingers fiddled and struggled so much with the buttons on my sweater that in the end I gave up on them.
Jack was still in the water, properly swimming now, doing the front crawl. I was doing star jumps and stamping my feet. I was shivering. And yet, somehow, the exhilaration didn’t leave me. I danced about on the shore like an idiot, trying to soak up the last rays of the evening sun. When Jack finally came out about five minutes later, he found me curled up, kneeling on the ground, head down, hugging myself and rocking back and forth.
‘You need to get out of those damp clothes,’ he said.
‘My boobs…’ I said, still rocking back and forth, ‘feels… like… they’ve fallen off.’
We went back to the van, dried off with a towel and changed into dry clothes. Dusk was approaching. We got the stove out, and cursed ourselves for not having prepared the equipment earlier as we struggled to put the gear together and open packets and tins with our numb hands.
We sat opposite each other with the stove between us as we waited for the spaghetti to cook, taking turns to heat our hands above the steam every now and then. With the blood rushing back, my scar seemed to glow more obviously than ever. The shivering subsided and slowly a glowing warmth came over me. Finally I felt better able to hold a conversation.
‘So,’ he said, ‘how do you feel after your first wild cold water swim?’
I thought for a few seconds, grinning into the air.
‘Alive,’ I said, ‘very very fucking alive.’
*
That night, as we lay wrapped around each other in the back of the van, I felt so close to him. I wondered if now was a good time to tell him, because my mind wouldn’t rest until I did.
*
Silvia: 2:30am, Sunday 1 July 2007
Oh wow. I’m buzzing. This night has definitely been a turning point. We just had a house party and I am one hundred per cent drunk. And high. That’s right. Silvia did alcohol and drugs for the first time tonight! I danced so much and hung out with so many cool people and no one thought I was weird! It was amazing!
Oh god, but I’m so drunk…
Donny: 2:45am, Sunday 1 July 2007
Mom and Dad are away this weekend and so, of course, I organised a party. It was definitely better than Jared Hartley’s party two weeks ago, and he’s the high school jock, so I’m feeling pretty proud of myself. I’m also feeling pretty drunk.
Most people have gone home, but some are sleeping downstairs in the lounge, some in mine and Silvia’s rooms. We’ve managed to keep Mom and Dad’s room out of bounds. Silvia’s been pretty cool about the whole party thing, I thought she’d protest but she didn’t. I think she actually had fun.
I say goodnight to the boys downstairs. They’re all shitfaced and already half asleep. Josh says hey man, gnarly party, and immediately starts snoring. I climb up the stairs with a bottle of beer. Mine and Silvia’s rooms are full and there’s even some kid sleeping in the hallway. The place is totally trashed, but we’ve got the whole of tomorrow to clear up. I should be taking photos of the state of the house now as proof of how rad the party was. I go to Mom and Dad’s room and Silvia’s already lying on the bed, watching TV and… smoking a joint! No way! Where’d she get that from?
The room is dark except for the light from the TV. I climb onto the bed, get comfortable and Silvia hands me the joint. I grin. She’s both drunk and high and she’s laughing. She looks pretty hot in the dark. Who am I kidding. She is hot.
I barely get to smoke any of the joint. We’re kissing pretty much immediately. Silvia’s clearly never kissed anyone before but she’s actually not so bad at it. I wonder if the same goes for the sex.
Despite being shitfaced drunk I manage to get it up. Today is a success day and I feel pretty good about myself. The sex is all right, she’s not an expert but then neither am I – I’ve only ever slept with two other girls before, and only the one time with each… and that was over a year ago…
Donny: Thursday 6 August 2009
I’m standing in the queue at Carla’s Café ready to order, when Silvia walks through the entrance. There’s no way of avoiding her, she’ll look up and see me any second now.
She’s seen me. Oh my god, Donny, she says. We haven’t seen each other for almost a year. I think we were both hoping we’d never see each other again. I’ve pretty much avoided every reunion Mom and Dad have had with her since she moved out.
The stuff we did behind Mom and Dad’s back was pretty weird, but I think it’s high time she got over it. We were never actual brother and sister so it’s not as creepy as she made it out to be.
How are you? I tell her I’m okay, and soon we’re sitting at the same table and having coffee together. She tells me about her art and I tell her about how I’m training to be a police officer. I’m surprised at how good her English has become. I ask her if I can see any of her art and she tells me she doesn’t have any of her work on her to show me now, but she doesn’t live too far from here if I want to come see. I say okay.
Her apartment is amazing. It’s full of flowers and books. I wonder what books she’s been reading, how smart she is and if I should be worried. She tells me she does loads of abstract stuff and still life. Flower paintings are currently her thing, she says. She’s obsessed. There are thousands of different flowers everywhere. Her art is pretty good. All her paintings and drawings are in black and white and I suddenly remember that of course she can’t see colour.
I ask her if she’s ever painted nudes before, she says no, but she smirks when she says it. I ask her if she wants to. She shrugs. I ask her if she wants to try now and she says Donny, shut up! but she’s definitely still smirking.
Soon enough I’m naked and she is actually drawing me. This is great, I’m actually going to do it with Silvia again, I never saw this coming!
It gets cold when you’re naked and have to sit still. I ask her if she’s finished. She says almost and I say hurry up. When she is finished though, she has a huge smile on her face. Donny, she says, I fucking love drawing nudes! Thank you! She tells me that from now on she only wants to ever draw naked bodies. It’s like flowers but way, way better, she says. She’s found herself a new obsession.
We’re both laughing. The drawing is pretty good. But I’m still naked and now I’m horny. I press myself against her from behind and start kissing her neck. She jumps away. Donny! She says, and she looks horrified. What? I say. No, she says, no, no, no. And she’s shaking her head. What the fuck Silvia? I’ve just sat naked for you for almost an hour in the cold. You fucking owe me! She looks even more horrified now and I realise what I just said probably sounded pretty bad, but I think to myself we grew up together, I’m allowed to talk to her like that. She’s practically my sister!
We get into a fight. We’re shouting at each other and swear words are flying around while I’m dressing myself. I’m so fucking angry. I haven’t been this angry in ages. You fucking slut, I say, you’re just a cheap fucking whore, with dumbass parents who got themselves killed because they were loud mouth hippies. Fuck you and fuck them!
Oh fuck. Oh shit.
She’s gone silent. What did you say? she says. First quietly and then louder. What did you say? What the fuck did you just say? I sigh. What have I done? I’ve really gone and said it, haven’t I? I’ve really just gone and done it. And I repeat myself in a more diplomatic way.
She refuses to let me leave. She’s gone psycho and she’s actually holding a knife and crying and I can’t tell whether she’s threatening me with the knife or threatening to hurt herself. But she says she wants every last detail. She wants to know what I know.
I tell her the basics. She asks me loads of questions. I knew it. I knew it, she keeps repeating.
She asks me about the money she gets each month from Mom and Dad. Where does it come from? she asks. How am I supposed to know?! I don’t fucking know, I say, because I really don’t. She’s yelling now and I’m hoping to fuck no one else can hear her. Why didn’t they kill me? Why didn’t they fucking kill me?! I tell her I have no idea. She doesn’t believe me. Why didn’t they just pull the trigger? It would have been so easy. So much easier than all this, she says, gesturing at the apartment. It had never even occurred to me that she might have been there when her parents were killed. This is more fucked up than I ever knew. I just know who her parents were and why they were gotten rid of. I overheard Mom and Dad talking about it once. Now I wish I never had.
I can’t believe I let all this slip after all those years. I can’t fucking believe it. How am I going to cover my back? I need to tell her it’s dangerous. I need to scare her into silence. I tell her she can’t ever tell anyone any of this. I tell her that if anyone finds out that’ll be the end of her. I don’t mince my words. And before I leave I tell her not to contact me ever again.
Silvia: Thursday 6 August 2009
I lie on the kitchen floor amongst the debris. Broken glass, plates, cups… I stare up at the fuzz of ceiling and I imagine cockroaches crawling over me. I am death. My right hand pulsates as warm blood oozes out onto the floor. I didn’t want to hurt myself. Silly Silvia. I should have been more careful in my rage. But now that I lie here with the dark flooding the room, I imagine all my blood slowly seeping out of me overnight, and the thought doesn’t seem so bad. It seduces me.
Today I have learned three very different things. The truth about why my parents died. What I love to draw most. And that I must now learn to draw with my left hand. Perhaps I won’t wake tomorrow. I laugh my way to oblivion.