by A. C. Wise
With her mouth against the woman’s, Emma Rose thinks of Corinne. By the time she climbs back to the shore, her skin is so wrinkled it feels like it will slide off her bones, and her legs are trembling. Emma Rose turns to look at the water one last time, scanning it for a shadow beneath the waves, any glimpse of the woman. There is nothing, only the sun sinking and painting the water bright gold.
*
After her second encounter with the woman, Emma Rose begins swimming at least twice every day. She swims first thing in the morning before school, and first thing in the afternoon when she gets home. Days and weeks at a time pass where the woman keeps herself to a constant flicker of motion at the corner of Emma Rose’s eye. But other times, she glides close as a shadow, her face inches from Emma Rose’s own. When Emma Rose’s muscles burn and she wants to quit, the woman brings her lips close, closer, until they touch. Until they share a heartbeat, share breath, and Emma Rose feels she could swim forever and never stop.
Other times, the woman is nowhere to be seen. On those days, Emma Rose swims purely for herself. She comes to love the solitude as much as the company, but it’s a different kind of love. On those days, the water is hers and she knows one day she will cross it. Her name will be written alongside Gertrude Ederle, Amelia Gade Corson, Mercedes Gleitze, and Florence Chadwick.
She can’t be first to cross the Channel, but maybe she can be fastest? The most crossings? Maybe she’ll be the one to swim across and never come back. She’ll find another sea, another ocean, another crossing and just keep going, swimming her way around the world.
Emma Rose spends so much time in the ocean that her father jokes she will turn into a fish. Emma Rose can’t remember what wish she made before cutting her birthday cake, so she wishes for her father’s words to come true.
*
Emma Rose is sixteen the first time she kisses a girl outside the water. Her name is Martha. Corinne has long since moved away, and Emma Rose barely even thinks about her anymore.
The kiss with Martha happens on the bleachers at school. Martha runs track, her legs flashing graceful and long the way Emma Rose’s do in the water. She is faster than anyone else on the team.
Emma Rose and Martha have been friends for seven months when Emma Rose starts regularly watching track practice. Martha lives just a few streets over, so it only makes sense for Emma Rose to stay so they can walk home together.
The sun warms the bleachers, heat soaking through Emma Rose’s uniform to the back of her thighs. She watches Martha, her brown skin gleaming with sweat, even though her motions seem effortless. Gravity doesn’t apply; she pushes off the ground, and the earth pulls her along. Practice ends, and Martha comes over to the bleachers, grinning. Her frizzy hair is tied back in two poofs, and even they glisten with sweat, the black overlaid with droplets like a net of diamonds.
“That was brilliant,” Emma Rose says, then blushes. She’s been watching Martha run for weeks, why should this be any different?
Martha sits beside her, their knees almost touching, catching her breath. They talk about nothing for a while, then somehow they’re kissing. Emma Rose isn’t sure who started it, but she doesn’t care. Martha’s mouth tastes like the orange sports drink she says is her secret weapon—sugar-brightness exploding on Emma Rose’s tongue. The kiss goes on for so long, Emma Rose is sure she’s drowning. And when it ends, it’s far too soon.
When they finally break apart, Martha rests her forehead against Emma Rose’s, dampening it. Grey eyes meet deep brown, and they giggle. The laughter runs out, and they kiss again. The nervous fluttering in Emma Rose’s stomach calms; instead of butterflies, she’s full of sunlight, bursting out through her pores.
*
Emma Rose and Martha have been secret-not-so-secret official girlfriends for three months when Emma Rose brings Martha to the beach for the first time. She hasn’t been swimming as much lately, her afternoon sessions melting into time watching Martha practice, or going to the shops together, or pausing to kiss by the side of the road, around the corner of buildings, anywhere and everywhere they can. Emma Rose and Martha are constantly amazed by each other, discovering all the things they have in common, wondering how they managed to grow up so close to each other without ever knowing it because they didn’t go to the same school until now.
They play the ‘what if’ game. What if you’d never transferred schools? What if I’d transferred years ago and we’d known each other since we were five? What if we walked right past each other on the street one day when we were twelve and we never knew? And they both agree now that they’ve found each other, they need to make up for lost time.
“You never came to the beach when you were little?” Emma Rose asks, leading Martha down the flower-lined path.
Martha shakes her head. “My dad’s little brother almost drowned when they were kids. He’s been terrified of the water ever since.”
“My grandfather used to race sailboats,” Emma Rose says. “My dad always loved being out on the water. My mom wanted to be a marine biologist until she discovered a passion for baking and became a pastry chef. They’ve been bringing me here since I was a baby.”
The sun is setting, tinting the water shades of peach and coral. Standing on the shore, Emma Rose feels the tug of France, gentle, yet ever-present at the edge of her mind. There’s a pang of guilt. She’s been neglecting the water. And there’s something else that isn’t guilt; it’s almost fear. Emma Rose hasn’t seen the woman in the water since she first kissed Martha. It isn’t unknown for her to disappear for months at a time, but this feels different somehow.
“Fancy a swim?” Emma Rose pushes her doubt away and pulls her shirt over her head, revealing the swimsuit underneath.
“It’s getting late.” Martha looks at the water with unease.
“We won’t go in deep.” Emma Rose kicks off her shorts. “I promise I’ll hold your hand the whole time.”
That does the trick. Martha skims out of her clothes, and it turns out she’s wearing a swimsuit underneath her clothes too, which makes Emma Rose’s chest squinch in a complicated way.
She’s been thinking about telling Martha she loves her for days. The words are always on the tip of her tongue, but she keeps swallowing them down. She’s pretty sure Martha will say it back, but what if she doesn’t? What if she says it but doesn’t mean it? What if it comes out all wrong, or she scares Martha away?
They walk to the water’s edge. Martha hisses at the temperature; the waves tangle lace around her ankles. They take it slow. To their mid calves, their knees, their thighs. Waves surge around their waists, and Emma Rose lets herself fall backward. The water catches her and plays a soft game of tug of war. She smiles at Martha, in up to her armpits now. Emma Rose sees she’s standing on her tiptoes, afraid to cede the last bit of control.
Martha has never been anything but graceful; there’s something comforting in seeing her out of her element. It makes her more human.
Emma Rose holds out her hand. Martha takes it, letting Emma Rose guide her until the ground no longer supports her. In a moment, Emma Rose will put her arms around Martha’s waist. She’ll kiss her. She’ll finally say what she’s been longing to say.
Then, sudden as a blink, Martha is gone. All Emma Rose can do is stare. The water froths, Martha thrashing, and Emma Rose dives, trying to pull Martha to the surface. Something holds Martha down. Emma Rose catches a glimpse of a face beside Martha’s. Grey eyes meet grey. A flash of teeth. Emma Rose wants to pretend it’s a trick of churned water and flashing limbs, but she cannot. The woman’s face is undeniably there, and in this moment, she looks more like Emma Rose than ever, mocking her.
Emma Rose uses all her strength, and Martha pops to the surface like a cork, gasping.
“Are you o–” But Emma Rose doesn’t get any farther.
The sky bruises purple, the first pale stars beginning to appear. Martha’s pupils are impossibly wide, dark like the ocean where it’s deepest and coldest. She scrambles fo
r the shore, trips, bangs her knee on the stones. A thin strand of watered blood runs down Martha’s leg like a ribbon as she picks herself up again. She must have cut herself on the stones, Emma Rose thinks, and she tries not to picture sharp teeth like mother of pearl.
Emma Rose wades for the shore, trying to quell the thoughts spinning through her head. The water resists her so she’s breathing hard by the time she gets to Martha’s side. Martha shivers, her teeth clenched so hard the vein below her jaw protrudes.
When Emma Rose touches Martha’s shoulder, Martha jerks away.
“Don’t,” Martha says, her voice fraying.
She gathers her clothes, and when she turns, she reveals a mark like a bruise, the faint outline of a hand upon her skin. More than that, it spreads dark tendrils through Martha’s veins, flushing them the color of ink and the darkening sky. Emma Rose blinks, but the mark refuses to disappear. She reaches for Martha again, but Martha steps back, holding her clothes against her in a wet bundle like a shield.
“Just stay away from me.”
Martha’s eyes are wide; they are hurt and afraid. Afraid of Emma Rose. She pivots, heels striking the ground hard and when she reaches the road, Martha runs. Her track star legs carry her away without a backward glance.
Emma Rose’s heart cracks, and it keeps cracking. The words she never got the chance to say lodge in her throat like barbs. Martha isn’t coming back. She’ll never talk to Emma Rose again. This is her fault. The woman tasted Martha on Emma Rose’s skin, and now she’s punishing her, hurting Martha to hurt Emma Rose.
The sky is full dark when Emma Rose flings herself back into the waves. She beats at them, letting her body rage. Salt water stands in for her tears. The ragged, horrible rhythm of her breath stands in place of screaming until her throat is raw and coughing up I love you in blood.
And when that is done, when her muscles tremble with exertion, she keeps swimming. If she’s only allowed to have one thing, then she chooses this. Hollow, numb, her skin wrinkled and every part of her hurting, she refuses to leave. The waves can’t frighten her away. Even though they took Martha, she won’t quit. This ocean is hers, and one day she will force it to carry her all the way to France.
Finally, exhausted, Emma Rose puts her face in the water and drifts. Her eyes sting. She holds her breath, and waits. She thinks of all those days with the woman gliding just beneath her, lending her strength to Emma Rose’s own. Will she come to share this heartbeat, too, to lessen the burden, ease the pain?
Emma Rose loses track of time. Her chest aches with the desire to breathe before the woman appears. The sharpness of the woman’s cheekbones and ribs is even more pronounced now. The grey cast to her skin makes Emma Rose think of sharks and hunger.
Emma Rose is hungry, too. The woman looks like her. Maybe they have always been the same. Maybe they are both monsters, unfit for the love of any but their own kind.
Emma Rose lets out the last of her breath, bubbles escaping in a silent scream. The woman rises and Emma Rose falls, a tangle of arms. Coldwater lips crush against hers and Emma Rose bites down. Mouths and saltwater. Love on the cusp of violence. Desire that tastes like drowning. Release. It’s almost as good as crying.
*
Emma Rose goes back to swimming twice every day. She doesn’t speak to Martha. She avoids her in the halls. All she needs is the water.
There’s a story Emma Rose remembers from when she was very young, from a big book of fairy tales, thick like an old-fashioned telephone book, with different colored pages. In the story, a rich man is visited every night by a ghost, or a water fairy. She stands at the end of his bed, dripping. She claims to love him, but he gets sick from lack of sleep and always being wet and cold. Finally, he tricks her into following him outside in winter so she freezes and never bothers him again.
The story both fascinated and terrified Emma Rose as a child. There was an illustration of the woman, glittering and perfect, frozen for all time, with no sense she would recover at winter’s end. Emma Rose could never work out who the villain was supposed to be—the man who only wanted a good night’s sleep, or the ghost who only wanted to be warm and loved. Maybe they were both monsters in their own way, perfect for each other.
It’s nearly a year before she allows herself to kiss another woman on land. Her name is Joan. She’s in her second year at university, and when Emma Rose meets her, she’s home on summer holiday. She has a ring through her eyebrow, and one through her nose, and others Emma Rose will discover later, hidden by her clothing. Joan’s laugh is almost a bray, unapologetic and full of joy. Her hair is red, not like Maureen’s long ago, but dyed and cut short, spiked like the crest of an exotic bird.
Emma Rose doesn’t love Joan; Joan is safe. She’ll be back at school soon. In-between, they go to cafes and music clubs. Once, they go to a traveling funfair. The Ferris wheel carries them high up and then stops, suspending them over the twinkling lights below. The car rocks when they kiss. Joan’s hands move under Emma Rose’s shirt, and for just a moment, Emma Rose feels like she is the exotic bird, the one who might take flight. For just a moment, she feels like everything might be okay.
She doesn’t take Joan to the beach. She never mentions the ocean at all. She leads a secret, double life, because she never stops swimming either.
She showed Martha her heart, the ocean, and she ran, so now Emma Rose keeps it locked inside. Instead of making time for the water in-between seeing Joan, she makes time for Joan by pulling herself away from the water—from the woman—as long as she can, which is never long.
*
Emma Rose is twenty-one when she attempts to cross the English Channel. Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to make the crossing, did it at nineteen. It was her second attempt, and she did it in fourteen hours and thirty-one minutes. Emma Rose has memorized the times and ages and number of attempts of every one of the women to cross the Channel, and some of the men, too. She will carry them with her when she steps into the water. If she succeeds, she will carry them with her all the way to the other side.
Emma Rose’s parents are both in the boat accompanying her. Like her grandfather’s sailing, like their love of cooking and baking, they understand her passion even if it doesn’t exactly match their own. The whole way across, they will be there to feed her sugar cubes and protein blocks, to give encouragement, and gather her in their arms whether she succeeds or fails.
Emma Rose enters the water at 6:09 a.m. Scraps of cloud cling to the sky, the moon forgetting to clean up after itself. The water is a deep blue, brushed with hints of purple and grey. Her hair is short, curls flattened under a swim cap. Emma Rose lowers her goggles, rolls her neck, shakes her arms out so they hang loose and long.
Breathe. She reaches as far as she can with each stroke. The waves don’t fight her, and she allows herself to hope. She keeps her rhythm steady. Stroke, stroke, stroke, turn, breathe. She kicks. She counts in her head, reciting names to keep time. Webb, Ederle, Toth. Breathe. Chadwick, Corson, Gleitze. Breathe. She sights by the boat so she doesn’t go off course. Her parents speak encouragement, but mostly she is alone with the water, with her lungs and her heartbeat. France waits for her on the other side.
At seven hours, the water grows choppy, but Emma Rose doesn’t stop. Her legs and arms burn. She has to fight a little harder against the weight of the water, but she won’t quit. She thinks about the woman, about the times she pressed her lips against Emma Rose’s, breathing for her. Doubt creeps in. What if she can’t do this on her own?
As she turns her head to breathe, Emma Rose catches a flash of long limbs, blue-grey skin and mother of pearl teeth. A wave of panic rolls through her. She tries to push the doubt away, but it nags, sapping her strength. Just past eight hours, a cramp hits, hot and bright as though a hand slapped against her muscles. She thinks of Martha on the beach years ago and the not-bruise blooming on her skin.
No.
Emma Rose’s heart fractures infinitely and intimately, branching patterns rea
ching all through her bones. She bites down hard on her lip, tasting salt blood and tries to swim through the pain.
Please, let me go.
Her legs won’t cooperate, dead weight dragging her down.
A face glides just beneath hers, hair all twisting seaweed ribbons. Nothing about it is human except for the eyes—they are Emma Rose’s own. The woman opens her mouth, but no bubbles emerge. Her smile is gloating, mocking.
Don’t touch me, Emma Rose pleads silently. I want to do this on my own.
The woman reaches for her, and Emma Rose jerks upright. She signals the boat, the cramp stitching through her side, knotting her until she nearly screams. Hands pull her in, and maybe one hand lifts from the water, but whether it is to push her higher or pull her down, she cannot tell.
Emma Rose’s lips are blue, bruised, as though someone has pummeled them. She can’t stop shaking. Her mother wraps a thermal blanket around her shoulders. Her father brings her a thermos of tea, holding the cup because her hands are trembling. Her parents put their arms around her. They tell her it will be okay. They can try again. Exhausted, Emma Rose leans against them and sobs her broken heart out. She is four years old again, and her parents encircle her with their bodies until there are no tears left, until she finally stops shaking, until she is warm.
*
Emma Rose tries again at twenty-three, and twenty-five, her confidence wearing thin. The first time, a mechanical failure in the boat turns them back; the second, an unexpected storm. She will never know whether she could have made it across. If she simply accepts the woman’s help, will all these problems go away? But if she does, will she really be the one making the crossing? Maybe she isn’t even meant to. The certainty she’s carried since she was four weights her like a stone. How many times can she try and fail? How many times can she stand to have her heart broken?
