I was saying something—it wasn’t until after that I’d hear the words in my memory, I’m sorry I’m sorry I love you—and then lights flared in the rearview mirror, and a terrible force struck deep inside my bones, and the world broke into a million glittering pieces.

The words hung in the air between us.

I felt so light now. The truth is a heavy thing, and you can’t fight the undertow forever.

Max got to his feet. I tottered backward, slipping in the snow as I stood.

Now he’ll hurt me, I thought. The way I hurt his child.

He still had his boots on, unlaced. He kicked one off and turned around.

“Max,” I said.

He moved down the dock, kicking off the other. I followed.

“Max, wait.”

By the time I realized what was happening and started to run, he’d reached the end of the dock. He dove headfirst into the icy water.

I slid to a halt, barely catching myself from going over, snow geysering beneath my feet. Max thrashed clumsily, more fighting than swimming. White wings of spray beat the surface at each stroke.

“Don’t fucking do this,” I screamed after him.

I dug my phone out, hit 911. Whirled around, peering through the snow. I needed something. Anything.

Orange caught my eye, hanging inside the yacht cabin.

I tore off my coat and pulled a life vest on, then grabbed another. The dispatcher was saying Hello? Nine one one, where is your emergency? in my ear.

“Peaks Island,” I said, running down the boat ramp. “North side. In the water.”

What is the nature of your emergency?

I stopped at the edge of the dock, staring through the snow at the splash and churn in the distance.

“Two people are drowning. Please help us.” I took a deep breath. “I can’t swim.”

I set the phone down on the dock, pulled my boots off, and jumped.

It felt like diving into a pool of live electricity. I kicked to the surface, gasping, clinging to the other vest like a surfboard. My hair lashed across my eyes. The water was so cold it registered only as pain, not chill.

No sign of Max. I kicked in the direction I’d last seen movement.

Why the fuck had I never learned to swim?

In my dreams this past year, I drowned again and again. Always it felt less like falling to the ocean floor than falling in outer space. An abyss that kept expanding the deeper you fell. Dying would be like that, I thought. Like falling asleep without ever reaching the soft floor of your dreams. Just deeper and deeper into a blackness with no saturation point.

A hand crested, slapped the waves, disappeared.

Bastard, I thought. I’m not letting you die.

I kicked furiously, managed to propel myself little by little. Then a wave rose and flung me backward and I wanted to sob. My clothes weighed a thousand pounds. Bones made of lead.

“Max,” I screamed, snowflakes filling my mouth.

My foot kicked something warm.

I kicked again, and it wrapped itself around my leg. Heavy. Pulling me under.

I kicked with the other leg and then he surfaced, spluttering, clinging to me.

“You crazy bastard,” I said. “Put this on.”

We fumbled at the extra vest, both inept. My fingers stuck together as if in mittens. His lips and hands were actually blue. I thought that was a thing in cartoons.

The vest finally slipped over his head but when it did, I couldn’t move. My arms were too heavy. They could only clutch him, my body craving his faint heat. Max held on to me weakly, coughing.

“We’re going to die,” I said. “Of hypothermia.”

“Swim to shore.”

“I can’t swim. This is all I had in me.”

He started laughing, weird, shivering laughs, and wrapped me in his arms.

“Don’t go to sleep,” he said.

“I’m not.”

But my eyelids were heavy, too.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry for what I did.”

“Don’t talk. Conserve heat.”

“It’s not even that cold anymore,” I murmured, burrowing into his shoulder.

My skin tingled, almost burning. The water lapping over us was blessedly cool. I thought of Lake Michigan in summer, driving to the Indiana Dunes with Ellis. Watching our city far away across the blue. Tracing pictures in the sand with my finger until the tide rolled in.

That’s all we are, I told her. Here for a moment, then swept away.

It’s sad, she said. Why do we try? Nothing lasts.

But it’s beautiful for a moment. What other reason do you need?

I didn’t even notice when Max’s arms loosened and my head slipped beneath the surface. It was like going to sleep.

“Vada.”

I stared up through the darkness, at my hair trailing above me in black vines. Cold water weighed on my chest, working steadily at my lips like a kiss, until they parted and let the ocean in. It felt strangely good. Something filling the hollow place inside me.

“Oh my god, she’s alive.”

Then I was rising, being hauled out of the salt and ice, dead fingers dragging below me. I felt the slow toll of my heart like a ferry bell, distantly.

Something pounded on it. Warmth against my mouth. The sear of hot air in my throat.

I vomited seawater, a brackish burn. Voices floated overhead.

“Blankets. Hurry, Brandt!”

“I’m hurrying. Fuck.”

Dimly I sensed hands on my body. Something crinkling, like Christmas wrap. I opened my eyes.

A face above me, blurry. Hair plastered to her forehead, glasses knocked askew. She smoothed a foil blanket over me. Dazedly I pushed her glasses up her nose. She grabbed my hand.

“Hi,” I said.

Her face did that frowning, furrowing thing that meant she was trying not to cry.

“Stay awake, okay, Vada? Please. Stay with me.”

I tried, staring up into the falling snow, but after a while the sky went dark and the snow winked out like stars.

After that there was a long blankness. At times things sketched across the void: neon reflective strips on a paramedic’s coat, a pouch of quicksilver saline hanging above my head. Ellis’s face, mostly. Watching over me. So pretty, the pink lily petals of her mouth moving softly, saying my name. I’d inked them on Blythe’s shoulder a lifetime ago. So she could remember. And I thought, If I die, that’s what they’ll find in me. This face, inked in the surface of every cell.

I woke first this time.

For a moment I thought I was still out in the snow, but the pale haze grew solid and became white walls, chrome rails. Hospital. A tube of warm fluid ran into my wrist. I was wrapped in fleecy quilts. Still shivering.

In a chair beside the bed, my best friend slept hugging a pillow.

I lay there for a while, watching.

In Life Drawing class we’d spent a whole week learning how to use our eyes all over again, like infants. How to trick our brains into actually processing what we saw instead of subbing in symbols and shorthand. Not red-haired girl, but Ellis. Not Ellis but a lopsided grin, freckles like a handful of sand blown across her face, the way she’d squint when she felt some emotion too intensely to handle, as if trying to let less of the world in.

How strange, that I could look at someone every day and every night and not really see them.

I cleared my raw throat, and she stirred.

“Hi,” I whispered.

She smiled uncertainly, came to my bedside.

“How do you feel?”

“Cold.”

Ellis touched my wrist and I reached over and covered her hand with mine. I heard her sigh.

“Do you remember anything?”

“I was in the water. You and Brandt pulled me out.” My chest tightened. “Is Max—?”

“He’s okay. He’s in the ICU. They said he’s fine, but they’re keeping a close eye on him.”

Thank fucking God.

I let go of her and looked toward the windows. Night, snow falling slowly, glittering in the hospital lights like diamond dust.