Cam Girl

by Leah Raeder

“You’re just using me so you don’t get lonely till you find the man of your dreams.”

  “Give it a fucking rest. You’re the only one I want. The only one who’s made me feel this way.”

  “Liar.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Know why it’s a lie? Because you’d never marry me. Ever. But I’d do it. In a heartbeat.”

  Gut punch.

  How can you look that far ahead? How can you imagine that, when I can barely see us getting home safe right now?

  “This is so unfair, Elle. You can’t judge my love based on some faraway future.”

  “You don’t love me the way I love you. And you never will.”

  Fifty-five miles per hour.

  “So you’re just leaving? Do you know how cruel this is? I’m losing my girlfriend and my best friend.”

  “Now you call me that. Because you have nothing left to lose.”

  “Fuck you, Ellis.”

  “Fuck you, too. And slow down before you kill us. Or just kill us, actually. I don’t care anymore.”

  A scream rose inside me. I pressed it back down.

  And as I did I pressed the gas pedal, feeling the fuel burn brighter, hotter, tires devouring the road. I clung to the curve. Always in control, even when I was going too fast. Ahead of us the tree line broke and iron struts rose against the night. A bridge.

  All this time, Elle had endured my misgivings in her patient, understanding way. The way that sometimes made me see her as a doormat. Not once had she pulled herself out from under my feet like this. And when Ellis Carraway had enough, that was it. She’d cut her parents off cold. She’d left her entire extended family in Chicago, for me.

  Now she’d had enough of this. Enough of me controlling our relationship, framing it in my terms. Enough of it being about me and my needs and my hang-ups.

  Enough of me, period.

  I’d finally pushed too far. She was leaving me all alone in this cold, dark, empty place.

  Who the hell was I without her?

  No one. A ghost.

  If I was already a ghost, then what did it matter if I sped up?

  If I smashed this car into pieces.

  If I broke us. Like she was breaking my heart right now.

  Fifty-six miles per hour.

  Fifty-seven. Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine.

  The bridge came up faster than I expected. Night played tricks with distance. I braked. The car fishtailed.

  Black ice.

  Oh, fuck no.

  Steer into a slide, I thought, steer into a slide, but it was too close and we were going too fast and we’d hit the bridge rail before I could straighten out. My first-ever accident. In this strange, lonely state where I lost everything that mattered to me. Where I lost her.

  Only me, I prayed as the railing rushed up. Please, God. Let it hurt only me.

  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.

  My truth was out, now.

  All of our truths were.

  “I’ll give you some privacy,” Ellis said. “I just wanted to be here when you woke up.”

  I caught her hand before she turned. “Don’t go.”

  Her jaw tensed. She looked at my hand instead of my face.

  “You remember that night,” I said. Not a question.

  She nodded.

  “You know what I did.”

  “Yes.”

  “Max knows, too. I’m going to jail.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I did it on purpose.” My hand clenched. “I tried to hurt us, Ellis.”

  “For a second. And then you tried to stop. It was a mistake. He knows that.”

  “I could’ve killed us. I killed Skylar.”

  “You stopped Skylar from hurting anyone else. It was an accident. She was trying to kill herself.”

  “And I ended up doing it for her.”

  “Listen to me.” Ellis worked her hand free and then laced her fingers back through mine. “We couldn’t change what was going to happen that night. She had the gun in the glove box. She knew what she wanted.”

  How can you hold my hand right now? “Ellis, I tried to hurt us. You.”

  “I know.” She gripped harder. “I’ve tried to hurt you, too. You make me feel things so much I can barely stand it.”

  I kept swallowing, but my throat stayed dry. “I couldn’t have lived with myself if something happened to you. I wish I was the only one who got hurt. I’m sorry. I’m such an asshole. So selfish.”

  “Baby, don’t cry.”

  Oh, that’s why my throat was dry. All the water was coming out of my eyes. “I knew about it, okay? About your boy side. Not the exact details, but I’ve always accepted it, subconsciously. That’s what came out in my art. Part of me recognized it while part of me was still in denial. I’m not as brave as you. I couldn’t face it—who I am, who you are. Who we are together.”

  “I lied about it,” she said.

  “Because I made you too afraid to be honest. I’m sorry I made you afraid.”

  “You didn’t.” She bowed her head. “You’re the only one who knows. The only one who really understands me.”

  “Look at me, Ellis.”

  She looked. Glassy-eyed, hair raking across her forehead. Not a boy or a girl, not any binary, rigid definition of a person. Just my everything.

  “I love you. No matter who you are. Okay?” My throat felt all mucky and thick. “You’re the best person I’ve ever known. You make me want to be better.”

  Ellis brushed my tears away with her hands.

  “Know how much I like you, nerd? You made me fall in love with you twice.”

  “One of those wasn’t real.”

  “It was all real.” I brought her hand to my chest. “When I was camming, half the time I felt like somebody’s therapist. But Blue was mine. He helped me work through my depression. To see myself as the person I want to be. I loved him for that.”

  “That’s how I felt, too. You made him—you made me feel like the person I’ve dreamed of being.”

  I stared at her hands. “How did I look right at you and not realize?”

  “Because you see who I am inside. Not outside.”

  “Sometimes I wanted so badly for you to be him. It almost feels like cheating, that you are.”

  “You didn’t want him to be Max, or Dane?”

  “No.” I kissed her hand. “You’re perfect. You’re all I want.”

  “I’m sorry I broke your heart.”

  “Yo también, pajarito. Maybe we needed to break a little, so we could put ourselves back together more beautifully than before.”

  She was doing that squinting, this-is-too-much, I-can’t-even thing.

  I let her go. “It smells really good in here. What is that?”

  “Oh. Almost forgot.”

  Ellis crossed the room and returned with a foam takeout box.

  “They’re not hot anymore, but I thought you’d be hungry.”

  Unmistakable. The scent of my childhood. Fried plantains and caramelized sugar. “Oh my god. Maduros? In fucking Maine?”

  “I had to call a million restaurants to find them.”

  I flipped the box open. Golden plantain slices, still warm, topped with a dollop of cream cheese.

  “My sweet prince,” I said.

  “My rebel princess.”

  I swear, my smile could’ve swallowed the sun.

  I motioned Ellis closer and mimed for her to open. She let me feed her a slice, then took the box and fed me the rest by hand.

  Things were finally starting to feel normal again.

  I closed my eyes, sighing. “Why are you so sweet to me?”

  “Because I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” I said, immediately, easily.

  “And you’ve got a great ass.”

  I laughed. “You sound li
ke Brandt.”

  “Why was Brandt looking at your ass?”

  “This may shock you, but men often find me attractive.”

  “I can’t imagine why.”

  “Ask Blue about it.”

  She glanced away. “Brandt knew. He tried to throw you off the trail, with the knife and stuff.”

  She was that terrified I’d reject her. That afraid of losing me, when I’d been so scared of losing her once she knew the truth.

  “It’s okay. It’s kind of nice, actually, that he’s so loyal to you.”

  Ellis peered at her shoes.

  “Hey,” I said. “Tell me something.”

  “What?”

  “Do you actually have Superman underwear?”

  Her face went red. “I’m leaving.”

  “Nope.” I caught her arm, yanked her back onto the bed. “This patient needs supervision. And superstrength. Superspeed.”

  “Will you shut up.”

  I couldn’t stop snickering. Her expression softened.

  “Still cold?” she said.

  I wasn’t, but I nodded.

  She took off her glasses and hoodie and shoes and slid under the blanket. For a moment we looked at each other, hesitating, and then I pulled her into my arms. It felt no different from always. Holding too tightly, hearts beating in sync, her pulse matching the quick staccato in the background. I pulled the stupid metal clip off my finger so the monitor went quiet. Now we could only feel it, my rhythm against hers.

  * * *

  The headstone was blank.

  We stood on a moor overlooking the ocean. Below us the drowned coast tumbled down to the water, shards of chopped rock jutting against the rush of black waves. Tide pools churned and breathed mist. At night they’d freeze solid, starfish and barnacles and other strange sea creatures trapped in ice like clear quartz. Up here, in the muddy scrub, we faced the wind and the grave without a name.

  Ellis walked along the precipice. Max stood beside me, his coat flapping against his legs.

  We didn’t talk about what happened in the water, or on the road. Neither of us was good at expressing our emotions verbally. We spoke better with our hands. I cooked food and brought it over. Then I started inviting him to dinner at our house. He fixed the creaking floor. He hugged Ellis one night, which made me cry, for some reason. He even coaxed Brandt into helping him work on the yacht.