She’s beautiful in an unconventional way. If the red hair weren’t enough of a differentiator, she wears a tiny diamond in her right nostril. How many girls in my class wear a nose ring? I catch sight of her left ear and count. Seven earrings. Why only seven? Why not eight? And why aren’t there any earrings in her right ear? Does one nose ring equal seven earrings, so that now the left and right sides of her body are balanced?
Despite the excessive earrings, she looks better than any half-drowned possibly suicidal person has a right to. The blue fabric drapes against her creamy skin, and the shocking red hair fans out around her. Her chest rises and falls with her breath, and my eyes are drawn to her collarbone. I’ve never noticed that part of a girl before. On her, it’s captivating.
“Don’t you have a girlfriend?” She’s got one eye cocked open, and her hand lifts to shield it from the sun.
“Sort of,” I say. My unease has more to do with the fact that she knows me, yet I have no idea who she is, and way less to do with the fact that my break-up with Kelsey is still secret, and I’ve just lied to this girl.
“How do you dance in water?” I ask, before she can ask me to explain mysort ofrelationship status.
“The same way you dance on land.” She gives me a perplexed look, like I’m the one who needs help.
“Sure,” I say, nodding. I turn, heading to the shoes I threw off before running into the water.
“You don’t believe me?” The wind takes her voice and throws it, but I catch what she’s asked. With goosebumps covering my arms, I spin around.
“Not really.”
Rising gracefully from the boulder, she comes toward me. Her lithe gait reminds me of a goddess. The sun has dried some of her hair, and it falls around her face in waves.
“Put your hands above your head,” she instructs.
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
I sigh and look at the lake. It’s so calm now.
Raising my hands, I look back at the girl whose name I still don’t know.
She nods her approval and lifts her own arms. “Now,” she says, “close your eyes and think of your favorite song.” As I watch she closes her eyes, and in seconds her hips are swaying. A smile plays on her lips, and she turns in place, until she’s facing me again. She looks free. And happy.
Her eyes narrow after she opens them and looks at me. “You didn’t do it.”
“I…uh…I meant to.” I can’t confess I was too busy watching her. “I don’t know how to dance by myself.”
She stares at me again, and again the feeling of being evaluated comes over me. She holds out a hand. “Dance with me?”
I take her open palm and curl my fingers around hers. She steps into me, bringing with her a rush of nerves. Her other hand comes to rest on the back of my neck, and it’s her, not me, who makes us move.
It’s slow, so slow, and there’s nothing to move to. No beat, no timing, no constraints. Nothing to tell us when to start. Nothing to tell us when to stop. She lays her head against my chest, and when I look down at the shock of red, I feel nothing short of wonder. It’s a color I’ve never been this close to.
“I know you don’t know who I am,” she says against my chest, as we sway together.
I opt for silence. Nothing I say will make it better.
“I’m not mad,” she says, with her head still on my chest. “I wouldn’t expect you to know me.”
Suddenly, I wish I did. She’s everything I want to be, and everything I don’t have the guts to admit I am. She is all the things.
At some point, she decides our dance is finished. When she steps away from me, I fight the urge to pull her back in. Then, when she picks up her sandals and walks away, I want to ask her to come back.
She pauses just before stepping onto the trail and looks back at me. Tree branches hang down around her, some low enough to brush her shoulders. She looks like she stepped from a fairy tale. “My name is Ember.” Then she turns around, and in a few seconds I can’t see her anymore.
I want to chase her, take her hand in mine, and tell her I’ll never hear music the same way again.
* * *
“Noah, where have you been?”
