He pulled her into the water, the reflection of the moonlight splintering around their bodies. She didn’t scream, but accepted the cold—the cold that shocked me as I joined them, throwing off my shoes and wading in, anxious not to be left out. Everything on the bottom of the lake was soft and slick. Mud and the slippery stems of cattails squeezed between my toes. There were no rocks in this area after all.

Following a brief tussle with Alex, Lonnie swam away, leaving a trail of waves behind. Watching where we could no longer see her, I reflected on how fucked all of this was. Alex thought she was the single one. He thought he had some kind of chance.

“Elle!” he called. It was jarring to register my own name, not directed at me.

We were just past the dock, up to our waists. He waited only another moment before taking off after her. I ducked underwater, trying to get used to the cold, but my scalp prickled with it, my jaw chattering. I crossed my legs, used my arms to move my body toward the bottom. I felt grass brush against my back. I had to keep moving my arms to stay down there, had to fight against my body’s buoyancy. I let all the air out of my lungs slowly and then just sat, feeling my chest pound.

I thought I might take a glob of mud to throw at Alex—or maybe Lonnie, whoever returned first—but the clump I pulled up mostly disintegrated by the time I broke through the surface. I was left with a single stone—a little convex, a smooth triangle. I liked the way it felt in my palm, so I held on to it.

Alex came back first, panting, shaking water from his ears. “She’s fucking fast,” he said. “I lost her, you think she’s okay?”

I didn’t have to answer. All either of us could do was wait.

There was the sound of water, the lapping of motion, but it could’ve been wind on the surface or the nocturnal loons, diving for food. I knew she was doing it on purpose. I thought she might’ve made it all the way to Rum Island, and was hiding out there as a child will hide from her mother inside a rack of clothing, for the sheer pleasure of another’s panic.

“She got jealous when you pranked us,” I said. “She wanted to do it too, and do it better.”

“You don’t seem like her boss,” Alex said.

“We’re friends,” I said.

He probably nodded, but I couldn’t see him.

Lonnie came back, of course, charting a straight line in our direction, though we couldn’t see her until she was very close. Alex went to dunk her, reaching for her sides, her belly, until she screeched, clutching at me, asking me to save her.