“I guess.” I glance at her, the humidity curling the baby hairs around her forehead. “Why? What do you think?”
“I don’t know. That line has always stumped me,” she muses, wiggling her toes.
“You’re not supposed to take it literally. It’s poetry.”
“But it doesn’t make sense.” Her nose scrunches.
Before I can reply, a beach ball smacks me in the back of the head. Stella burstsout laughing, collapsing in the sand as a little girl races over to us, apologizing.
Grinning, I toss the beach ball back to her. She scampers away in her Strawberry Shortcake swimsuit and pink bucket hat.
Stella’s coffee-brown hair fans out over the lake-stolen sandcastles and glittering pebbles. There’s music in her eyes. While my sister was born a fish—and our parents have always steered her toward competitive swimming—I know that with every year that passes, her dreams blur. She’s almost sixteen. Old enough to know that dreams aren’t always linear.
“Do you ever think about quitting?” I ask, nodding at the water.
I watch her trace circles in the sand with her toe. She doesn’t respond right away. Just stares at the lake like it might answer for her.
“Every time I dive in,” she finally says. “The water feels like home. But music feels like me.”
And there it is. The silent tug-of-war between expectation and identity. Between what we’ve always done and what we might become.
“You’ve got time.”
“Yeah.” She sighs. “Maybe if I become a lyrical genius like Leonard Cohen before college gets here, the path will become clearer.” A beat. “Even though I still don’t get that line.”
A smile tugs. “Doesn’t matter what it means. Just what it means to you.”
“So…someone he loved hurt him first, and he had to learn how to hurt them right back?”
“Could be.”
“Okay, but how do you shoot someone who outdrew you?” She looks up at me, her hazel eyes narrowing in the midday sun. “You’d already be dead.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” I murmur. “Love is a losing battle.”
I press back on my hands, breaking away to look out at the water.
Baby waves ripple across the surface. White egrets flock overhead.
The air stills.
I glance down at Stella. “No one gets out alive.”
***
My knuckles rap against the red door.
Nerves flick down my spine; I have no idea what I’m doing. But options are low, and given the way my neighbor is tearing it up on that kit—clean fills, steady timing, no overplaying—I’d be stupid not to ask.
I ring the bell. Once, twice.
The drumming cuts off mid-roll. A second later, the door swings open.
Rock appears in a pair of ratty jeans and a wrinkled T-shirt, twin drumsticks in his hand. “Yo. If you’re here to complain about the noise—”
“I’m not. Kind of the opposite.” I wedge a shoulder against the age-old pillar and stuff my hands in my pockets. “I was wondering if you’d help me make it.”
He blinks half a dozen times. Slow. Processing. “Pretty sure I’m too high to get the context.”
