“Lily!” said Louise, grabbing her by both arms and hanging on. “Lily! Something will eat you!” But Lily was already up to her ankles in mud, little pools of water forming around her feet.

“Ain’t nothing out there’ll eat her,” said the spoon player, holding the flashlight up to his forehead and playing the light across the water. “I don’t see no red eyes.”

“Lily!” said Louise. “You’ll drown! Your belly is full of duck!” But Lily was up to her knees, throwing off her shirt.

“That duck will give her strength,” said the spoon player.

“Lily!” said Louise. “I’m sure this is against the law!”

“The law ain’t looking,” said the spoon player.

It felt terrifyingly spooky at first, with the rough grass scratching her legs in the dark and the mud squishing up around her feet. But when she got deep enough to stretch out and swim, she thought nothing had ever felt so good as that silky black water against her skin. At first she swam elegantly, as she had been taught, with long, smooth strokes, lifting her head to the side to breathe. But when she finally stopped to look around, she saw that she had lost the light and was yawing off into the darkness. She treaded water for a minute, twirling around in a panic looking for the light. She couldn’t tell whether it was exhaustion or terror making her breathe so hard, deep, gasping gulps and whimpering exhalations, so she just floated for a while to calm down, with her back to the darkness and her face to the starry sky. Then she turned over and began to swim again, dog-paddling with her head up this time, staring straight ahead at the light. How simple it was, she thought, for just this little while—nothing in the world but black water and deep blue sky, and these silly little movements of her hands and feet keeping her alive. Then it seemed as if all at once the light was closer, then quickly closer and closer, then she was in the fringe of grass again, and there was Louise throwing Lily’s shirt over her shoulders and saying, “I have never heard of anything so foolish!” and “Lily, what in the world,” and there was the spoon player smiling his gap-toothed smile and saying, “I knew you’d come out of it,” and they walked back around the street with Lily’s teeth chattering the whole way.

They never found the clean sheets, but Louise cleared a space on a sofa in the front room and they fell asleep with their feet propped up on a box fan and their heads on a twelve-pack of toilet paper, Louise still scolding softly, “Why on earth…,” and Lily with her hair still dripping, feeling clean and strong, as if with all that gasping and gulping she had finally breathed out something poison that had settled in deep.