She's Too Pretty to Burn

by Wendy Heard

  “What’s wrong?”

  “So the thing is, there were a few shots left in the camera.”

  I blink at her. “Like, there was film in it after all?”

  She nods slowly.

  “Oh God.” I sit straight up. Oh no. What did I look like? Panic flies through me, a windstorm. It was so vulnerable, that moment. It’s like finding out there are pictures of me taking a shower or something.

  She sits up too. “It’s fine. It’s okay.” She puts a hand on my arm.

  I yank my arm away. “Did you develop it? Did you see it?” My voice is high and tight.

  She nods.

  I pull my knees up and rest my forehead on them so she can’t see the tears welling up. Just when I felt safe. Just when I let my guard down.

  She’s close, her face next to mine so she can speak into my ear. “I’m sorry. I know. It was the wrong thing to do. There were only a few shots left on the roll, and I figured I’d just toss them and it’d be no big deal. But—”

  Into my knees, I say, “You knew? You knew there was film in the camera, and you took the picture anyway?” She lied?

  Why are people like this? Why?

  She slips her phone under my arm into the cave of my knees so I can see it. On the screen is a black-and-white picture. It’s a girl, a young woman. It looks vintage, like a still from an old movie. The girl on the screen is looking at the camera with longing, and …

  She’s beautiful. It’s me, and in this photo, I’m beautiful.

  I take the phone from her and drop my knees, wiping my face. The girl’s eyes—my eyes—are searching, full of questions. She wants something. She’s starving for something.

  Veronica snuggles up next to me and rests her chin on my shoulder so she can look at the photo, too. “I had to develop it, I had to show you. See why?”

  The texture of the photo is gritty, better than an Instagram filter. It feels historical, like this is a moment that could exist in any place and time.

  “You captured it,” I say softly. I’m not sure she can hear me.

  She nods, her cheek brushing mine. “This is what you look like. I wanted you to see. Even if it means you hate me now. You’re so beautiful. You don’t have to hide.”

  The words unravel me. I turn my face and kiss her. The phone falls onto the grass, and her arms are around me, and we’re tangled up, her camera a sharp-edged thing between us. Her hair is between my fingers, and I feel angry and scared and exhilarated and like every nerve in my body has been set on fire. I’m full of wanting—I need her, I need her to come closer, closer. I need skin on skin, I need everything.

  She kisses my cheek. “Let me post it on my photography Instagram,” she says.

  I pull back. “What?”

  “This is the best picture I’ve ever taken. Please. Let me share it.”

  I don’t want her to do it. My whole body screams, NO. But then I remember Lily’s scornful Be careful with this one, like I’m a little girl who can’t keep up. So I say, “Fine. Go ahead. Post it. I don’t care.”

  Like I’m floating outside myself, I watch Veronica post the photo with the caption Just kissed.

  I watch her hit Share, and I feel that first kiss being torn away from me and flung carelessly into the wide, public world.

  She puts the phone in her back pocket. She lifts her camera up and off her neck, sets it aside, and moves forward, pushing me back until she’s on top of me. She leans down and kisses me, and the photograph is forgotten. The bass drums pound into my skull. No one can see us, hidden here beneath the dying trees. I’m anonymous and free, existing only in the world of sensation and in the invisible internet sphere in her pocket.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  VERONICA

  In the public pool’s locker room, I checked my red lipstick using the mirror next to a kid in a My Little Pony bathing suit getting scolded by her mom. I resisted the urge to take their picture and got my sunscreen out of my beach bag. It was one o’clock, and the sun was waiting to turn me into a sweaty lobster.

  I was wearing a fifties-style black bikini with high-waisted bottoms and enough strap action to control my boobs, which always wanted to flop around attracting unwelcome male attention, especially from gross older men who took one look at me and decided I was up for grabs. I finished applying sunscreen, slipped into my vintage silk robe, and shouldered my beach bag. I set my cat-eye sunglasses onto my nose.

  I was ready. I was prepared. I took a deep breath. I was nervous.

  “Come on,” I muttered. I flip-flopped through the locker room and out into the blazing-hot afternoon. The pool was pandemonium, kids screaming and splashing and chasing each other around the deck. Pop music played in the background, stuff I didn’t recognize but that reminded me of Nickelodeon.

  The door to the men’s locker room opened, and Nico stepped out. He’d changed from jeans into American-flag-printed swim trunks, a red visor, and a cobalt-blue fanny pack, and he had an entire armful of bright blue and red ring toys, the kind you throw into the pool and retrieve, looped around his wiry arm from wrist to armpit. On the tan skin of his stomach, he’d painted USA in block letters.

  “What. The hell. Is this?” I demanded as a horde of little boys sprinted between us.

  He slid on a pair of drugstore sunglasses that were decorated in stars and stripes. “I’m a red-blooded American man, and I’m here to have some family fun.” He pointed to the letters on his stomach. “It’s waterproof paint.”

  A whistle pierced the air. “No running,” a voice yelled. The kids ran faster. “No running on the deck!” The lifeguard jogged toward them, blowing the whistle again, and the kids finally obeyed, turning to face the whistle-blower, a girl in a red bathing suit—

  It was Mick. She bent down to talk to the boys, hands on knees, her face serious as she pointed to the signs outlining the pool rules.

  Christ on the cross. Mick in a bathing suit. What the hell. So much tan. So much muscle. So much skin. Oh my God.

  I looked down at myself. I was not prepared at all, actually. Why had I never spent any time developing my abs? This suddenly seemed vitally important.

  Mick sent the boys off and straightened up. She spotted me, and her face lit up. “You came,” she cried, trotting toward me. Nothing jiggled. Nothing.

  I tried to reclaim my confidence. Come on, Veronica, you’re better than this. I forced a smile onto my face. “Having fun guarding lives?”

  She hugged me, a quick hug appropriate for the setting, and pulled back to look me over. “You’re so stylish. I feel plain next to you.”

  I said, “You are not plain,” which made her blush under the tan, and now my confidence was all the way back.

  She turned toward Nico and looked him over. “Wow.”

  “I’m so sorry about him—” I began.

  She gave him a quick side hug. “You’re a few weeks late for the Fourth of July.”

  “Every day is Independence Day in the U S of A.” He saluted a pair of moms walking past.

  “Mmmmkay.” She returned her smile to me, and I noticed it looked a bit forced, divorced from her eyes. “I have a ten-minute break coming up in a little bit. Mind hanging out?”

  I squeezed her arm. “Take your time. I know you’re working.” I glanced at Nico. “I’ll keep him in line.”

  “Feel free to swim,” she said, and from the smirk, I was pretty sure she was teasing me.

  “I can just spray myself with bleach at home, but thanks,” I said, while Nico gave a passing family a Disney princess wave. The mom clutched her toddler closer to her side.

  Mick moved to the edge of the pool near two boys playing leapfrog off each other’s shoulders.

  I pointed at Nico. “You are on my list.”

  “I’m in a good mood. Tonight is install number one, baby girl.” He twirled one of the blue pool rings around his index finger.

  “I know, I know.” He hadn’t shut up about it. I didn’t know exactly what he had planned—he always kept
me in the dark till the last minute—but it involved the buckets of blood, and he was extremely proud of himself. I couldn’t hold it against him; he’d been completely focused on this for months, and I was dying to see these installs he’d been hinting about for so long.

  We made our way to the row of lounge chairs surrounding the deep end. I spread my towel on one, between a camp counselor and a mom with a baby. Hand-painted signs declared this to be the YMCA Annual Luau, and there were many parents lounging around with leis strung around their necks. I wondered why Mick didn’t have one. She’d have looked cute in a lei.

  Nico swam a little, his strokes graceful and clean. I was jealous of his ability to move through any environment with complete comfort. I always felt like I was imitating his self-assurance and never getting it completely right.

  Eventually, he settled onto the pool’s edge with his feet in the water, throwing rings into the deep end. Instantly, he was surrounded by a group of kids who wanted to play. Over their shrieks of delight, I heard him calling, “Fetch! Fetch, little minions.” With un-American flamboyance, he flung the bright little circles into the water.

  I pulled out my camera and entertained myself sneaking pictures of Mick sitting on the tall lifeguard tower like royalty, strolling around the edge of the pool, and chatting with exhausted-looking moms about their rowdy children. Occasionally, she cast Nico an amused look, and I was relieved that his antics didn’t seem to bother her. Still, after this, he and I were going to have a real talk about proper wingmanning.

  The more I watched her, the more I decided something seemed off. There was a heaviness to her mood despite her obvious efforts to be cheerful.

  Eventually, a tall, well-muscled guy our age came out of the boys’ locker room. He approached the lifeguard tower, and Mick came down to talk to him. They put their heads together about something, and then she waved him off and walked toward me. I sat up straighter and sucked in my stomach as she crossed the deck to my lounge chair.

  “Can I sit?” she asked. “I’m on my ten.”

  “Of course.” I pulled my knees up to make room for her.

  Mick wrapped an arm around my legs and gave me the tight smile again. “I’m happy you’re here. It’s nice to see you in daylight.”

  I peered at her, studying her face.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Something’s wrong.”

  She looked down at her hand, which gripped my leg a little tighter. “How are you this pale? It’s summer in San Diego.”

  “I’m a vampire, and you’re changing the subject.”

  She sighed and met my eyes. “Just problems with my mom.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “We had a massive fight today, again. She wants me to do this modeling thing with her.”

  “Really?” My eyebrows shot up. “What kind of modeling thing?”

  “Please don’t tell anyone. It’s so embarrassing. It’s for this stupid magazine ad for a company called Inner You.”

  “Inner You?” I repeated, skeptical. “What is that, some kind of feminine hygiene thing?”

  Mick snorted a laugh. “No, like, fancy interior design. My mom is supposed to be their ideal housewife. She’s, you know, blond and…” She gestured to her chest to indicate fake boobs. Wow. Interesting. I would never have pictured Mick having that kind of mom. It sort of made everything make a lot more sense.

  Mick said, “So they want a mother-daughter thing. They want me to walk around in a bathing suit—”

  “Really? What kind of bathing suit?”

  “A bikini,” she replied in a small, horrified voice.

  I blinked at her. “So they want you, a seventeen-year-old high school student with a fear of being photographed, to get almost naked with your mom in front of, like, a million people and then have the photos published in magazines and online.”

  She nodded. She looked miserable.

  “Wow.” I didn’t know what else to say. First, and most important, I wanted to be the one to take those bikini photos, and I wanted to take them in private. I was willing to bet I could get some very interesting bathing suit shots out of Mick if given the opportunity. Second, I wanted to beat up her mom. What kind of mother tried to strong-arm her teenage daughter into getting half naked for some stupid interior design ad? If any adult pressured me to pose for bathing suit pictures, my mom would set their house on fire.

  Mick said, “I’m thinking of just doing it. I’m not sure it’s worth the fighting. My mom is furious.”

  “Why can’t they hire someone else?”

  “She wants the money. Needs it, actually.” She looked away, and the expression on her face in profile was, what—ashamed, maybe? She wiped at her cheek with the heel of her hand, avoiding my eyes. She was crying.

  Her eyes latched on to something back at the pool. She stiffened and frowned.

  “Mick?”

  She lifted the whistle to her lips and blew into it hard. She jumped to her feet and broke into a sprint. She took a flying leap and dove in, cutting a razor-sharp line through the bright aquamarine water. I jumped up and ran to the pool’s edge, camera bumping my chest. Mick’s red suit flashed like a salmon past the kids and parents. She stopped and swirled around a smaller, darker shadow at the bottom of the deep end …

  “Oh no,” I whispered, clapping my hand to my mouth.

  It was a kid. At the bottom of the pool.

  CHAPTER NINE

  MICK

  The ear-shattering shriek of my whistle. A blur of color and light, and then I’m underwater, the hollow weight of silence heavy in my ears.

  I didn’t think about taking a breath, but my lungs are full of air, and I’m good for at least a minute. I swim past legs and bikini bottoms. I lose no sense of direction; the kid is like a beacon calling me. And here he is, almost touching the bottom of the slope that dips down to the deep end. He’s perfectly, horribly still.

  I loop an arm around his shoulders and chest. I push off the bottom hard and pull him to the surface.

  I burst through into chaos. Parents and kids are screaming. Angel’s voice rises above the din, and then his whistle blows. He’s in the water, swimming toward me. The kid in my arms is limp. His head flops as I throw him over my shoulder and swim hard for the edge. Angel meets me and gives me a boost, and I toss the kid onto the concrete. I pull myself up and kneel beside him. He’s not breathing.

  “Fuck!” Angel screams at my elbow. “You want me to—”

  “Call 911!” I yell, searching frantically for a pulse and feeling nothing. The little boy’s about six years old, with shaggy dark hair. I center my hands on his breastbone, and the song I learned CPR to (“Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley) pops into my head. I start compressions, praying hard with each push.

  I remember when, I remember I remember when I lost my mind …

  “They’re on their way!” Angel yells, cell phone in hand. “They want to know if you’re doing CPR!”

  “What the hell do you think I’m doing?” A crowd has gathered around me—a hollow, staring circle of people. I tilt the boy’s head back and pinch his nostrils. I don’t have time for that stupid plastic mouthguard that’s supposed to protect me from germs. I lower my head and breathe hard into his mouth, three times. Kids nearby are crying.

  A woman’s voice screams incoherently behind me. It must be his mother. I don’t turn around. I resume compressions, hands centered on his chest. Gnarls Barkley starts singing again. And I hope that you are having the time of your life …

  Another whistle blows the moment apart. “Step aside!” It’s my manager, Becky, finally out from the office. She shoves me out of the way with her beefy shoulder. She takes over compressions, and it’s clear she knows what she’s doing.

  I stand. I’m trembling all over.

  The boy’s mom is right at Becky’s side. She’s a mess, sobbing hysterically, incoherently. I realize I’m crying too, or maybe that’s just the way I’m breathing.

  Angel is at the
side gate, opening it up for the paramedics, a man and a woman. They run fast, all efficiency and blue T-shirts and shoulder bags full of medical equipment. They take over for Becky, asking questions while they work on the boy with obvious expertise. “How long’s he been down?” one of them asks.

  “Mick!” Becky yells. “How long?”

  “Just a few minutes.”

  The paramedics keep at it. Angel comes to stand next to me. “Get away from me,” I tell him.

  “Why?” He looks hurt.

  “You were supposed to be watching, not flirting with the swim teacher, you dick!” I shove him hard, hard enough to send him stumbling sideways.

  “The hell!” he cries.

  Becky snaps her head toward us. “Locker room, you two. Now. Wait for the police in there. And clean out your lockers while you’re at it.”

  Angel storms away from me, hot with male rage. The mom and the paramedics are loading the kid onto the stretcher. He’s got a breathing tube over his mouth, and they’re still doing CPR. I follow Angel and take a left into the women’s locker room. As I pass all the people who are now watching, stricken, I’m slammed with a wave of shame and grief. I let the door swing shut behind me, and then I sink down onto a wooden changing bench. My head falls forward into my hands, and I sob so hard I feel like I’m breaking.

  I wonder if he’s dead, that little boy.

  My fault. My fault.

  The locker room door opens, and I brace myself to get screamed at by Becky, but then the person puts an arm around me. Veronica. She sits there quietly, rubbing my back while I cry into my hands.

  “He’s going to be okay,” she says after a minute. Her voice echoes in the empty locker room.

  “You don’t know that.” My voice is muffled in my hands.

  “No, really. He was breathing when they left. I’m sure he’s going to be fine.”

  “He was breathing?” I look up and search her eyes. She nods.

  “Thank God.” I take a deep breath. It feels like I’ve been holding it this whole time.

  “You did so good. I’m honestly in awe of you. If I ever drown, I want you there to save me.”