Jes turned her head slowly and looked right at me. Even in “regular” clothes—today she wore a runner’s crop top and neon leggings with mesh panels on the sides—the ink on her fingers and the gold in her teeth made her look like a traveler from another dimension. Her eyes were cold and her nostrils flared with distaste. I stiffened beneath her gaze and dropped my eyes to the ground.

“He doesn’t usually let his girls have studios,” she said. “What’s so special about you?”

“I’m not his—his…girl,” I stuttered. “We only just met.” I was still avoiding her eye.

“What are you even going to do with this much space?”

“My painting is big,” I said lamely.

“Hey,” she said, snapping her fingers.

I looked up right away. She’d moved closer to me, and I could smell cedarwood and sweat, could see the malice glinting in her pupils.

Then: “Boo,” she cracked, inclining her chin toward me.

I flinched.

She rolled her eyes and jogged outside.

*  *  *

After a few minutes of pretending to use the studio bathroom, I followed. The drops came down, soaking my clothes, cold beads on hot skin, under the olive sky of the afternoon storm.

Tyler had jumped in, and Marlin and Jes followed, diving fearlessly into the lake. I walked out to the end of the dock and paused, tasting red water in my throat, panic on my tongue.

“Come on!” Tyler yelled as Marlin shoved him underwater. Their bodies disappeared completely under the opaque tint of the surface.

You’re not alone, I reminded myself. Nothing bad is going to happen.

I didn’t jump, though. I couldn’t bear it. Instead I scooted on my butt to the edge of the dock and dropped in gingerly, letting the water—it wasn’t nearly as cold over here—rise up and over my shorts as I gripped the metal frame of the dock. I was pleased to discover it was shallow, only four, maybe five feet deep. I pushed my feet into the sand and stood still, holding my bearings. Don’t be afraid of the lake, I told myself. You have to look at it every day.

That’s when the rain stopped and the sun shone through, warm yellow beams dissolving the clouds.

Tyler was doing a backstroke and Marlin was towing Jes around, dragging her through reeds and into the sand. Jes actually smiled (not at me, and no teeth, but it was a smile) and then it was true summer.

We played around in the sun, floating on our backs, in the space that separated Carey’s rotten cedar dock from the finished one on the other side. I swam over to it without thinking, climbing up the shiny aluminum ladder and scrambling across the polished maple of that finer Eliot dock, before I turned and looked back out at the three of them.