Chapter 1

It was all so easy now.

If I tried even a little bit, I could zoom in like a telephoto lens, like I was spreading my fingers wide across the glass of my phone, sliding. I could see texture, and color; sopping wet cotton, the faded pink of one thousand hand me down washes. I could go deeper if I tried. I was good at this.

I could zoom out, too, watch the cuff of the pink sweatshirt (I’ve seen that before) grow a hand with a finger pointing high, see the flat glow of the flat white sky behind this little, wet, trembling hand. Focusing on the way the other little fingers try to straighten just before the dream ends. That moment never has to end when I’m in this deep, in charge of the dream. Maybe it’s why they say you can’t die in your dreams, because I can live right at that last moment forever, slowing the frames down, living as a freezing wet sweatshirt sleeve until the stars fade out or until I get bored.

After a real dream (and this was a real dream, not just a nothing dream, not just my mind wandering as I slept, it was a real dream), it’s hard to shake the feeling that I was forgetting something. Even though my journal was right by my bed, the spiral bound notebook with honeybees on the cover, my pen stuck in as a bookmark as I approached the final pages. Even though I dutifully wrote down everything I remembered as the seawater in my brain caught me up on my hangover. It was hard to not feel like I was forgetting something.

If I tried, I could remember it. I could—remember it.

If I could remember it, I wouldn’t feel like I had forgotten it.

But the memory of last night was getting in the way, and my Sunday morning hangover didn’t let me forget.

I pushed the blankets off and skated to the bathroom, socks never leaving the carpet. I drank long from the sink, gasping, water dripping from the sides of my mouth as I stared into the mirror under the throbbing bathroom light. My face looked puffy, my jawline softer. If I dared to look down at my body, I would have seen more alien softness. Was this how a twenty-four year old was supposed to look?

The porcelain-covered mechanical scale in the corner peeked at me. It could peek, I wasn’t taking the bait today. It was like I had lost my guardrail, my seatbelt, the floaty rope that kept you out of the deep end; and I listened to everything around me as it said eat me, drink me, smoke me, dream. Maybe it started when Lis moved in? Maybe it was just me.

With one backwards glance at Lis’ closed bedroom door, I shuffled down the stairs and into the swirling nest of a foggy Saturday night. Plates and bottles and blankets and a TV quietly on. I started coffee and found my phone, barely holding on to a few percent of charge. Mom had left a message.

I took a deep breath and stared at the phone. What could she have needed to tell me before nine in the morning on a Sunday? An apology? For the moods, the viciousness, the barbed words, tearing through my room and through Lis’ room like we were hiding something from her? An apology for making me stand between her and Lis, putting my body in between someone so fierce and someone so small?
Maybe it was to thank me for taking Lis in after she drove her out and Dad chose his other family? She didn’t have to thank me for that, not that she ever would. That was my choice. Both of ours. Being there for Lis was always my job, as far back as I could remember. Some people talked about it, but I did it. I made it happen. I could do that.
I swiped left on Mom’s message and deleted it.

There was a plate in the sink with a single ice cube in the center, from some long drank drink discarded before we crawled upstairs. I gently lifted it out and placed it on the counter. Cold water in the bottom of the dish was just starting to lap at the risen lip. The ice was melting faster.

I could lean down close and blow gentle over the water, making puckering little currents and waves. They crashed on the far shore icy, lapping against the crust of yellow with the sound of the surf. I drew them back with my breath. The ice cube sat blue in the middle of the sea, evermelting.

Nobody would bother me yet. It was my kitchen, my house. Even if Lis woke up I could blow softly and she would turn right back around, right back to bed. I was alone.

I leaned in closer, the ice cube towering over the white sea. A slow mist was hanging off of it, sublime. I could see a cleft starting to form, a hairline in the upper left. I could feel it now, too. It went all the way to the base, nearly all the way. I could work with it.

The mist was getting thick, but I had to be gentle about blowing it off or I’d make fearsome whitecaps below. The sea was already suspicious; calm enough, but every minute or two a wave would spiral from the deep to lash out against the shore. Icicles were hanging from the rim of the dish. More to come.

Instead of blowing off the mist, I breathed it in. All of it, into my lungs then back out my nostrils. Maybe in my next life I could haunt an opium den, soft in the corner, smoke roiling out my nose and down my face like tears, blanketing me in forget. I could dream and be seen and be felt.

But that was for another time, now I had to work. The fracture was already there, and I was as cold as it was. I just needed to cup the ice with my cold hands, use my fingertips like little swords, little wands to pry the cleft, speak to it, breathe my love into it so gentle it would almost fall asleep. Let it fall asleep and dream as I work.

CRACK.

A drop of blood from my nose splashed in the sea, boiling black and fighting not to freeze. The water was taking it in, taking it down, frost on the black blood. It still fought. Good. It dove and fought and won, a black boat defiant against the waves. I licked my upper lip to taste, then focused on work.

The second CRACK came fast and overwhelmed me. I stared over the counter, past the dining room table, past the living room where the TV was a dim flicker. The sun was going dark outside, a shadow crossing the large picture windows. Before the world went black, I saw a grove of trees rocking in the wind. Not the spindly dogwoods and Bradford pears I was used to, something more familiar with roots that went all the way down. It reminded me of being young again, being an explorer. When did I stop being an explorer?

I smeared blood on my face with the back of my hand and focused. The ice was almost cloven in two. It rose up triumphant in front of me, a tower of blue with a slender white fissure from upper left to lower right. I could hear the song of the ice now, deafening echoes over the jagged seas. White waves crashed against it, spray drifting high into the sky, turning to snow, falling back to the sea. The iceberg made its own gravity, the waves came to it. The stars were coming out now, reflecting off the pitted ice. The seas will be drained, the boats will be burned, the dream of death will be forgotten never to be remembered again.

CRACK. It was agonizingly slow, but the monstrous sheet of ice started to slide. TCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH it slid, the cry of the world serpent, and I dropped to the wet, wooden deck. My hair blew back from my face and froze. A tidal wave was coming. I was seeing its birth. It would soak me to my teeth. But it would have to wait. It was still Sunday morning and there was so much left of the day.